And The Award Goes To...

I think that reading my own writing is one of the hardest parts with writing. I am my worst critic, but at the same time, I find it VERY hard to recognize the flaws or "areas that need improvement" in it. Just looking back at my professional blogging over these past months, I can see that it is hard for me to get outside the box. I have a tenancy to take each prompt or guiding questions so literally and answer them in a way that almost seems formulaic to me. Most of my blogs follow the same pattern; reflect on the question in relation to my classroom, discuss how I can or can't use it, and then find an example or resource. Blah..blah...boring.

I really enjoy reading other peoples blogs and seeing how they took the guiding question and brought it to another place. Maria's blog is a perfect example for that. I know that we are supposed to choose a blog that encompasses voice, thoughtfulness and multimedia components and she is amazing at this. Maybe it is because I usually sit next to her in class and hear her voice all the time, but when I read her blog, it is like she is talking to me. Her creativeness and ability to link one things to another is very engaging and entertaining! I am a little biased in that I can honestly say that I have spent most of my time interacting with blogs from teachers in my curriculum group, but I do believe she is the best.

As for myself...the hard part begins! Lets just put this out there from the start. I do not feel that any of my professional blogs are stellar. I find it much easier to blog about things that touch me, such as family experiences, than professional things, that most of the time I am nervous to write what I really want to write for fear that it will viewed by someone who interprets it in a negative way. But here is my attempt.

1. --Professionalism
I chose this post because I feel like I really thought about article and reflected on how I could see myself in it. As teachers, we need to admit our fears about taking on new things. This will only help us to "jump in" and conquer the new adventures before us.

2. --Creativity
My blog posting on my voice thread experience wins for this! Not because I feel that it is all that great, but because I impressed myself with how fun and easy it was to create a voice thread. I was absent that day in class and thought for sure I was going to be struggling to figure it out and I was happy to be wrong.

3. --Design
This was hard. Design is an area that in my professional blog I am not sure that I even touched. I am working more on this in my digital writing project than in my professional blog. But, since I have to chose one, I went with this. It is not an amazing designed post, but more a great resource that I found for designing blogs. Does that count?? I think that my blog page would be my design choice. Even though it was my professional blog, I added family pics, a favorite quote and a few other touches that made it my own. :)