Am I Involved?

This is the post I have been dreading. Do I try and "blag" my involvement or do I write a honest post and accept my limitations. I have gone for the latter!I hate writing comments. If I was articulate then maybe I would love it, but I am not. Every comment takes me ages to write, read, re-read.... As I have mentioned before I am a face-to-face kind of girl. That doesn't mean that I do not want to get involved, I just prefer it over of glass of wine! I see community involvement as something I must be able to sustain. So this is what I do:

• Reading Blogs (New and Old) (commenting only when the passion takes me)
• Keeping my own blog
• Tweeting, Resharing, Sharing Resources on Twitter
• Being involved in Twitter Chats
• Youtube Channel
• Flickr Account
• ISTE and CommonSense Media (Webinars, Disussions...)

BlogsI have become interested in blogs. This is not a sentence that I ever expected to write and is probably something that I should have embraced along time ago. Blogs are not new, we were discussing them in 2001 when I first started teaching. However, I think they have developed over that time and now they are a great place to share ideas and concepts. I follow a few and I have even been inspired to comment:I was introduced to Sonya Terborg's Blog by @triciafriedman in a recent Twitter chat. Very inspirational writer and I love to read about her ideas, as they often resonate with me. I have used this beautiful blog as an example in a recent blog on "Blogging"  This article on the Intrepid Teacher's blog about resisting the urge to teach made me consider my own teaching (so much so that I wrote a comment!). I thought about the times when I have "waded in" when I should have sat back and let the pupils make mistakes. For me this especially relevant within the context of coding. Failure is normal and overcoming this to find solutions is key!  Here is my blog. Not as pretty as those above, though I am constantly working on this. It allows me to share great practice, ideas and comments with staff members and great World Wide Web. I have had comments and discussions take place on it and in the faculty lounge based on it. Success! TwitterTwitter has been an awesome find (I was spurred on to do this because of my involvement in Coetail). Such great resources, great community of ideas and you can chat. But unlike comments on blogs they have to be short and sweet - perfect!I was involved in the #March2C chat about collaboration. I found it very enjoyable and must thank @triciafriedman for organising the event. I leant so much and was able to make useful comments (that were retweeted - yeah!). It was  a very lovely and fulfilling experience and one I would like to do again. This embed did not work. Click on view in twitter at the bottom to read the conversations!#march2c Tweets//I have a also added my personal tweets to give you, my dear reader, a taste of my involvement in twitter.  I have made comments, shared ideas, shared others ideas and comments on a regular basis:Tweets by @Blinkingnora1FlickrI have created many blogs posts (especially for Coetail) that have used many images. It made me think - I should be giving images back! I love photography and have taken  (and still take) many images. Another passion to run alongside crafting, hiking, teaching, dancing, tinkering.... This community involvement piece got me thinking. I should be sharing my images and letting others use them, it also made me consider the images that I use - really they should all be mine! So I now have a  Flickr account - it seemed to be the sharing site that was most commonly used. I have added my images, I have set the permissions so that they can be used by all. I have set my images free - very scary actually, but it is exciting to know that they may be used anywhere and that I am now a part of a global community (cheesy I know but true!) Humble Beginnings. I am slowly adding more images and trying to take images whenever I need them. They are all here for the taking so feel free to dive on in!  YouTubeI have developed a YouTube channel for school. We are adding how to videos, teaching resources and much more. I am working with my colleague to ensure that it is informative and easily to use. It is used within classes for support, for instructional information for pupils and provide outside of classroom support for pupils and teachers alike. It is public so anyone can take a look.https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHSTechSupport/feedSo this is my current community involvement. Could it be better? - Yes, but I think that is the case for most things we do - we can always improve. I will keep extending the blogs that I read and the people that I follow. I will try to joinWebinars (when they are in my time zone). However, I must also be realistic and stay honest to myself. I have learnt so much through this Coetail experience and have been able to put that knowledge into practice. I want to be able to sustain any involvement I have started and I know that I currently can. Whenever it becomes embedded practice and I feel I can honestly add further elements then I will keep extending it. Like nurturing a flower.....oh no I had better stop now before I really start to waffle!//