Bump on the Blog

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Christmas Greeting from Brian Grenier on Vimeo.

Steve Dembo over at Teach42 has started a very interesting series of posts entitled “30 Days to Being a Better Blogger”.  After an extended absence from the blogosphere, and moving my site to a new home, I felt this was something that I could benefit from.  So I have taken up Steve’s challenge to go down this road with him and see where it takes us.  Thank you Steve for your efforts and guidance on this.  Steve’s third challenge  is focused on thanking those people that have influenced us, taken the time to read, comment and link to our sites, and have provided us guidance in this online community of learners.

I am afraid that if I took the time to thank each and every person that has influenced and inspired me this post would go on for pages and pages.  That said, however, there are a few people in particular that really stand out.

I’d like to start by thanking Neil Hokanson for the kind email he sent me this past September.  Your email came at a time when my blog was still in a period of stagnation, a time when I was not expecting anyone from my online community of learners to contact me, and my desire to continue blogging was at an all time low.  Your kind words lifted my spirits, and motivated me to get back up on my feet and start reflecting and writing once again.  I can’t thank you enough Neil…I’m glad to be back.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to thank Wes Fryer.  Not only were you one of the first people to leave a comment on my blog, but your tireless efforts to improve education in all of our schools serves as a model for the type of change and reflection I strive for. On top of all you have done virtually, you’re an all-around good guy, always there to lend your support.

I have to thank Herman Seufert, a fifth grade teacher at one of the six elementary schools I work with.  Thanks Herman for always being open to trying out new things, listening , and implementing (enthusiastically) some of my hair-brained ideas.

Thank you…

• Sheryl for being such a wonderful person and great conversationalist.
• David for your selfless contributions to our schools classrooms.
• Aaron for your sense of creativity.
• Miguel for inspiring me to write write write.
• Doug for always taking the time to respond to a comment left with a personal email.
• Darren for being one of the first to follow me to my new site and for constantly challenging us.
• Ewan for modeling what an effective speaker and writer should be.
• Mark for offering you assistance in times of need, for modeling professional development best practices.
• Dean for all the hard work you have done for this year’s K12 Online Conference.
• John for making me laugh.
• Tim for being a pretty cool guy to work with.
• Cheryl for one of my fondest conference memories.
• Brian for inspiring us all.
• Chris for reminding us that it’s students, not subject, that we teach.
• Karl for awakening millions of people to the shift that is occurring.
• Eric for keeping my interest alive in History.
• Gary for continually making us think deeply about our convictions.
• David for your advice and guidance, whether you realize it or not.
• Jeff for your enthusiasm and sharing.
• Will for your leadership, intended or otherwise.
• Paul, Scott, and John, for your friendship, kindness, and skills.
• Sherita for your work ethic and sense of humor.

The list could go on and on. Thank you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

-Brian

I can’t help but be reminded of this 3-minute TED talk I recently viewed

It truly has been quite a long time since I have posted anything , and if you are still subscribed thank you for not dropping the feed.  In going over the reasons in my head, why I have not posted for quite some time I came to the realization that, mostly, I was just providing excuses in an attempt to justify my “tuning out”.  Truth be told, I just haven’t felt much like writing the past few months.  Life has been pretty busy, and blogging just seemed to get pushed to the back burner.  That said, over the past couple of weeks a new spark has been lit and I have made a promise to myself to get back into the swing of things.  I, first, needed to take care of a couple of items that have really been causing me some frustration, starting with moving my site over to a new hosting provider.  Hosting the site myself, on an old Gateway computer, just proved to be too much of a headache.  Load times were too slow, WordPress would time out when trying to post,  my own school district was blocking my site as a result of the DNS service I was utilizing, and, honestly, the age of the computer/server led to some internal anxiety that one day I would wake up and everything would be lost….not a good feeling.  Another challenge facing me was to get my digital life organized.  The widespread password-protected accounts, emails, subscriptions, feeds, personal websites, etc…. were just increasing  my frustration level.  It was time to thin out Google Reader, set up Thunderbird to retrieve messages from many email accounts, set up a password manager, and really just sit back and think about the magnitude of sites I am currently a member of.   If this disorganization led to a level of frustration in myself, I can only imagine the kind of frustration less “exposed” teachers go through as we show and encourage use of these constantly changing digital tools.  With that in mind, I have decided to begin putting together a workshop that address some of the strategies I am currently putting in place…a workshop about organizing one’s digital life.  I’m sure in the future, I will be writing more about this.  In the meantime, thanks again for sticking around, I’ve been away far too long….and don’t forget to subscribe to my new feed.
-Brian