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 Some rights reserved by Ashley R. Good |
For 20.5 hours according to Blogger, posting was down.
There is an important deadline this Sunday for a prestigious award that you didn't get Friday morning when more of you would have read it.
Lost: Two Days of Posts
So far two days of posts have been lost. Wednesday and Thursday are gone.
A post on the best time management apps for the iPad. (Corkulus, 2Do, and NextThing) A post on being an original, and one other post.
Lost: The Backup of the Posts
Backupify has backed up Google Docs, Gmail, etc. but perhaps in celebration of Friday the 13th it DIDN'T backup Blogger as it says it did (probably b/c my blog was down when it tried.) So much for redundancy.
Guess this is why many savvy bloggers use Windows Live Writer and perhaps I should go back there for composing posts to have an extra backup on PC.
Lost: Links Broken
Retweets now link to nothing. I have places to get these posts back but if blogger restores, will I have problems?
Lost: Conversations
Several posts have been actively shared and discussed in the last few weeks:
- Facebook Friending for Schools 101,
- 7 Golden Rules of Twitter,
- 20 Questions that Will Make You a Better Person.
- The Classroom QR Code Implementation Guide,
- 15 Fantastic Ways to Use Flipboard etc.
Those links stopped in their tracks when this blog was down.
From 50+ retweets a day down to nothing. STANDSTILL.
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FOUND: The High Standards of Retweeting in the Educational Space
Many people wonder if others retweet without reading.
You don't have to wonder about the readers of this blog! The shocking decline of retweets actually shows that most of readers here DO READ and then retweet. (The Cool Cat Teacher blog has very well educated readers, after all! ;-))
That is comforting and encouraging and says a powerful message to those trying to send JUNK through the educational space. We check our links. Oh yes!
Not Lost: The Comments
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Not Lost: What is Really Important
Did you die without getting my posts or my blog for two days - I doubt it. Who is that important?
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| Some rights reserved by Will Clayton |
We celebrated my daughter's birthday, went shopping, ran several miles, screened some PHENOMENAL videos for this year's NetGenEd project and got our annuals at school this week.
Some of you still called me about speaking at your conference next year and that is cool too.
Found: Identity Theft Warning
Not the kind of identity theft that comes from someone stealing your credit card and driver's license number.
The kind that comes from thinking that something IS you.
The Cool Cat Teacher blog is an important part of my life right now, but it ISN'T me.
Should I "lose" this blog today, "lose" all of the friends, "lose" any kind of influence I may have, it would hurt but would I cease to exist? I doubt Boots the cat pictured in the top right hand corner of this blog cares a bit. And you can't lose people who are really your friends if they are still alive.
Is there anything in your life that you're doing right now that if you could not use it or access it that it would cause you to be physically upset? Are you allowing your identity to be stolen by something you do? Beware of Identity Theft, my friends.
FOUND: Identity Reaffirmed
This blog cannot steal my identity. The nature of social media itself might not cause groupthink but it certainly causes group speak. We need people to talk about what needs to be said not what he or she said all the time. Some originality.
Sometimes you would think that some of this technology is going to save the world. It is not. Nothing replaces the hard working, attentive, well educated teacher. Nothing. Why is so little said about what is really important in the classroom?
I am personally reaffirmed to be an original me. Please be an original you.
Found: The Gift of Blogging
When we thought we were losing Mom to cancer several years a go and she pulled through by the grace of God, we told Mom she'd have to put a bow on her head at Christmas and walk in the room and say
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 Some rights reserved by howcheng |
"I'm here. I'm your gift this year."
This week is a reminder to me that this blog along with the readers and retweeters are gifts. Put a bow on your head.
How can a blogger love her readers? When you come up to me at a conference and you've felt the words I felt -- it gives purpose to the time spent alone plugging away at the keyboard.
How can a speaker love her audience? When I see you there, some of you stressed about the grading. Not knowing how you have time to do pd but knowing you need it. Pulled in a million directions. Most of you sitting there with wounded hearts over a student, a situation, a test score. To teach means that you are archery practice for the most careless inexperienced generation alive. You deserve the best because you are the best.
You deserve writing and speaking to help you know that:
- You CAN help schools transform into a 21st century learning model without sacrificing content.
- You CAN help us reach every child with an amazing, personalized education.
- You CAN overcome the Achilles heel of our generation (an over-reliance on test scores as an indicator of effective education) and still teach.
- You CAN parent this generation to be successful.
- You CAN be an amazing administrator who understands teachers.
- You CAN be in school IT support and understand the teachers in the classroom.
- We CAN work together to learn about each other's countries and cultures and improve the understanding in our world!
Be it Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube it is focused on the same mission of inspiration, effective technology education, and the nobility of teachers. Two days of downtime on blogger stinks but it isn't the end of the world. There were other places I could share.
Not Lost: The Last Six Years of Links
Some have told me that I'm less of a blogger if I use Blogger.
"Everybody whose anybody is on word press, " I was tweeted.
To use a southern expression: HORSE HOCKEY!
Links are more important than the platform you use. I'm not giving up the links built to this URL over the past six years because of one outage. Whether you use Edublogs, Wordpress, Typepad, Tumblr, Posterous, Blogger, Elgg, or whatever, if you stick to it, know your audience, consistently post, you can be a contributor in your blogging space.
If I were a Seth Godin, I could go where I wanted and the traffic would follow, but I'm not. When I reach 100,000 followers then I could probably move with minimal problems, but not yet. I'd hire someone to handle the headache.
Bloggers who are beginning and move their URL early on are taking a step backwards. Yes, I own coolcatteacher.com and vickidavis.info and tons of other domains. I can configure them in my sleep. If someone thinks I'm not professional because of my URL, so be it, but right now, I feel I should stay here to keep momentum and conversations going.
I want to be a full time teacher in the classroom who encourages and inspires other teachers to be their very best even when they don't feel like it and when the world offers nothing but criticism and right now, I'm not ready to move my blog.
Staying the Course (for Now)
We'll wait and see what Blogger does in the future but meanwhile, I've got grading to do and a graduation movie to make and the final deadline on the Flat Classroom book due in three weeks. Time to sit tight and make it through the next few weeks. Knowing Google, they'll aggressively deal with the problem and implement those new changes we've been hearing about soon enough. (Dynamic views has me excited! See the youtube video in this post.)
Sometimes it is good to have things you care about crash.
Maybe we learn to find what we've had all along and to lose the unimportant. We lose the unimportant and find out what we're really doing with our lives.
Blog well. Be real. Be noble.
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