Readers of this blog might, or might not, know that I also write another blog called Engaging Parents In School.
I just noticed that the widget that allows people to subscribe by email was missing and put it back. So, especially in light of Google Reader’s imminent closure, more and more people are choosing the email subscription route to blogs and I wanted to let people know that option is available (as it is for this blog).
In addition, you can always subscribe for free by email. You can quickly sign-up here. If there are multiple posts in one day you will still only receive one email containing all of them.
Of course, I also publish links to post on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook (and sometimes Pinterest), so those are other ways to access this blog’s content, too.
Which brings me to the second thing I ask of all of you — I ask that you persevere. Whether you start a business, or run for office, or devote yourself to alleviating poverty or hunger, please remember that nothing worth doing happens overnight. A British inventor named Dyson went through more than 5,000 prototypes before getting that first really fancy vacuum cleaner just right. We remember Michael Jordan’s six championships; we don’t remember his nearly 15,000 missed shots. As for me, I lost my first race for Congress, and look at me now — I’m an honorary graduate of The Ohio State University. (Applause.)
The point is, if you are living your life to the fullest, you will fail, you will stumble, you will screw up, you will fall down. But it will make you stronger, and you’ll get it right the next time, or the time after that, or the time after that. And that is not only true for your personal pursuits, but it’s also true for the broader causes that you believe in as well.
So you can’t give up your passion if things don’t work right away. You can’t lose heart, or grow cynical if there are twists and turns on your journey. The cynics may be the loudest voices — but I promise you, they will accomplish the least. It’s those folks who stay at it, those who do the long, hard, committed work of change that gradually push this country in the right direction, and make the most lasting difference.
California Democrats blast efforts to overhaul schools is an article in today’s LA Times reporting on a resolution passed at this weekend’s Californis Democratic Party Convention condemning many “school reform” efforts. Here’s an excerpt:
Unfortunately, Education Week began having some technical issues later today, and all their blogs went off-line. They’re working hard on the problem, and I’m sure they’ll have it fixed soon….
The upcoming demise of Google Reader has left me with a decision to make — What do I do about the untold zillions of backlogged posts I’ve “starred” and saved? Do I just export them to another RSS Reader, or should I take this opportunity go through them?
I’ve chosen the latter option.
So between now and the summer shutdown of Google Reader, I’ll be doing one of three things:
1) “Unstarring” the ones that I think are of no interest to me or to anyone else, and letting them drift into the oblivion of the RSS netherworld.
2) Since it’s so easy to share content to Google Plus with Google Reader (an aspect I wonder if Google gave as much consideration to in their decision — I suspect there may very well be less content shared in Google Plus with Reader’s demise), I’ll be sharing posts there that are useful, but probably not useful to me enough to add to some “The Best…” list. So expect a blizzard of Google Plus posts from me over the coming months (you can follow me on Google Plus here).
3) I’ll be sharing the “cream of the crop” on Twitter (so expect even more tweets from me than usual over the next few months), and create a series of collections of those tweets on Storify. Eventually, I’ll post about them on the blog and add them to various “The Best…” lists, but who knows when that day will come. In the meantime, if you want, you can subscribe to my Storify posts here. I may also post them on this blog.
At least, this is my intention. Let’s see how well I do in my follow-through….
As I’ve previously mentioned, after 31 editions of ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, it was time for it to be refreshed. So I’ve worked with other bloggers to “re-brand” it as The ELT Blog Carnival and it now has its own permanent site!
You can see links to all previous Carnivals there, along with plans for future ones.
The next ELT Blog Carnival will be hosted by EFL Classroom 2.0 on March 01.
You can send your entry HERE or directly to teachers@eltblogcarnival.com
The Theme for this month’s carnival is
Using Your Students’ Lives: Personalizing Your Teaching.
The site also has this announcement about future hosts:
Want to host a blog carnival on your blog? Please contact us! We hope to have blog carnivals each month and hosting on your own blog will help share so many valuable blog posts written each month by teachers all over the world.
