learntowriteablog

I’m really into a personal project so I’m putting my usual business activities aside while I try to finish this up. I’m trying to fund 30 libraries in 30 small rural schools in Cameroon (a small country in Africa). Here’s a piece of trivia about me…I was a US Peace Corps Volunteer 1980-82 in Cameroon (for a quick bio on me, John Edelson). I was contacted last week by Wendy who is a currently serving volunteer who is trying to build 30 libraries in schools Cameroon and is looking for help. As in donations. I helped. A lot. I hit on my friends and family and other X-volunteers for some $$$’s and did a matching grant for $1K to my friends who contributed. We’re most of the way there but there’s still $4.5K to go. I helped. Will you?
Books For Cameroon

I think this can make a world of difference to those kids. It’s hard learning to read….when there aren’t any books!

There are blogs and there are blogs. I find the best blogs to be ones that:

• Discuss or teach about a topic that I need to learn about. For instance,  SEO and education and technology and homeschooling and karate are topics that I need to know more about so I read blogs on these topics.
• Are interestingly written or funny or racy or all of the above.  I tend not to read the racy ones in the office.
• Have an author whose life or situation or stories I find interesting and connect to. So a 50 year old guy struggling to balance work, family, and sports, I find that interesting and very pertinent.  A writer interested in English vocabulary and blogging about it? Good.  Someone with an off-the-walll hobby like joker collection? tell me you are kidding….

I’ve been a big blogger for awhile so it was with a lot of interest that I read this post about about learning and communication technology.  The cool part of it is the mixing of media. Is that good? Useful? Grotesque?

When I launched my online learning venture a few years ago, a blog was the cutting edge technique for online communication. Forums and Yahoo newsgroups were well-established by then and the traditional internet list-servs and old-fashioned bulletin boards were waning.

Since then, Friendster and Myspace hit their peak and have declined. Google groups came and seem to have gone.

Podcasts arrived and claimed their niche as did wikis and Linkedinand blog communities. They aren’t exactly taking over the world but they seem to have their spots.

Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, on the other hand, are taking over the world. They have dramatically changed our personal networks of communication and how we get news and communicate. Amazing. Thrilling.

Time4Learning is trying to navigate these trends and find a balance of how cutting edge we should be. We do have a Time4Learning fan page on Facebook. We started it within the last month or so and are up to 600 fans. Is that good? I’m not sure. I try to compare it with the fact the Time4Learning parent forum has 3521 members who’ve joined and 28 users on the site right now (it’s Saturday, 4:48, 7 registered, 21 just visiting) but I find that I’m trying to compare apples and oranges.

So, we’ll keep trying to listen to our members and locate interested non-members where-ever online they seem to be.

THIS is interesting. The Facebook streambox works on Blogger but not WordPress.

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Somehow, I missed the fact that a major motion picture just rolled out in which blogging is the star.  I’m talking about the Julie & Julia film about Julia Child and the cute lady in New York.

I just read a great blog post about it and how any topic is good for blogging.  Want to blog about your joker collection?

It reminded me that there is no subject too specific – - too specialized to blog about.  And that is great news because it means that ANYONE can start a blog.

That’s right.  You have a rubber band collection?  Blog about it.  You dream of becoming an opera singer and you are tone deaf?  There’s a blog in that.  You are Jimmy Hoffa’s biggest fan?  Go for it!  You knit booties for kittens?  Hey, so maybe it’s not my thing, but I’m sure there are plenty of kitty-lovin knitters that are anxious to hear about your exploits.

How about preschool online activities or homeschool software or math lessons?  All bloggable.