I first met Jakes at EdubloggerCon in Atlanta. He led some of the conversations, and really challenged my thinking about digital storytelling among other things. Then I befriended him in Twitter, and discovered he had worked early in his career less than a year here in SC, down in the lower state. I sort of rode on his coat tails virtually during Alan November’s Building Learning Communities Conference during the summer, blogging about it several times. I also blogged about joining him virtually at New York’s TechForum. You can read those posts here, here, and here.

You meet all kinds in the bloggospher and twitter. (See the screenshot of a few o my Twitter friends?) They could turn out to be life-long friends, some of ‘em, even if only in the virtual sense. Okay, so this one was too long too. I’m working on it. And it is still not Jan. 1 so I have another couple of days before I must adhere to my personal goal of shorter posts. Some things just can’t be shared in brief posts.

Attribution:

Image: ‘Down on the corner‘
www.flickr.com/photos/21787159@N00/324191327

Image: ‘Twitterfriends_dec07‘
www.flickr.com/photos/c_nelson/2149390049/

As I see others reflecting on the year 2007 as it draws to a close, I must as well. There have been several changes for me including a new job, a new living arrangement for my family, and new opportunities that are as a direct result of joining the blogosphere and interacting with a network (like Twitter.) I won’t bore you with my favorites, but instead make some goals:

• Brevity – In my own blog reading I find it difficult to read long posts. I know I’m guilty of writing long posts too. So I have a goal–be brief and get to the point! I am planning to reduce verbiage, and try to say it with far fewer words, and instead use more pictures, and maybe a video or two (stored sensibly on video and picture storing sites–hello, YouTube, TeacherTube, Photobucket, & Flickr.)

• Relocate – I am becoming ever increasingly unhappy with Edublogs. I dumped blogger a year and half ago, and jumped ship to Edublogs, primarily b/c I feared Blogger would be blocked at school (and I was not disappointed.) Edublogs was good for me, but as I have grown, my material requires more space. Since it is time to pay for more space to be allowed the service, I see it also as a good time to explore hosting it on my own space/domain. I don’t even know if I understand it, but I have been assured help from my friends Chris Craft, Jennifer Wagner, and perhaps even David Jakes. (Counting on you all, actually!) Timeline? I don’t know. I need to get bills from Christmas squared away before I decide. But in the meantime, my posts will probably be limited.

• Video – I’m going to seriously look at adding video to my mix here. I’ve created myself a YouTube and TeacherTube account, and want to begin playing in the green screen department. Dean Shareski is responsible for that! (Note to Dean–You inspire me!)

• Redesign – I have some presentations coming up, and I plan to redesign them. I’ve been reading a lot lately about the 10-20-30 rule for presenting. I’ve also come to understand that folks don’t want to read it, they want you to tell it-and what better way than in a story. So I’m going to be hitting Flickrcc hard, and trying add in the mix some videos (for commercial breaks, as I heard one blogger call them–wish i could credit that person!) And I’m going to rehearse my spill in the best storytelling format I can come up with. Along with that, I hope to add some kind of interactivity to my sessions–though I haven’t quite figured out how yet. Anyone have any suggestion? Look out SCASL, SCASA’s SLI, and SC Edtech.

Okay, I know, I know, still way too wordy. Give me a break, it’s not 2008 yet! Rag me about it after the first. Happy New Year everyone!

Attribution:
Image: ‘massive change‘
www.flickr.com/photos/20532289@N00/31219031