Playing Catch Up - Teacher Challenge #6 and #7

Snow days. Sick days. Seems I'm having more days away from school than in school. And we are anticipating more time out of school this week due to more inclement weather. Oh well, we all wanted to work till the middle of July, right?

So I've missed two challenges due to missing school. Fortunately for me, I can roll them both into one post. I know I probably shouldn't, but time is an issue when I'm so far behind on everything!

Challenge #6 was about using media in our blogs. This is one I can think about - but not do. At least not today. I'm not sure how slides or video would enhance my blog at this point. A slide show of what? I guess it could be step-by-step instructions to doing a task, though I've usually done that with just two or three photos. And it could be a powerpoint from a recent presentation, though my slides are often just graphics or a few words to catch the eye while I talk about the topic. As a stand-alone, the slides are somewhat meaningless.

So using media is something I'll have to ponder.

Challenge #7 was all about widgets in the sidebar. And my sidebar is already full of them! Most of what is there I like...but a bit of updating might be in order here. As I write this, my sidebar contains (top to bottom):

About Me - something I think should stay, even though we created an About Me page. I like having some bit of info right on the front page for readers.

River Street School Online - a widget with links to other key pages for our school. This seems important as a way of giving people easy access to other information about our program.

Subscribe To - a quick and easy way for readers to subscribe to posts or comments via RSS.

Labels - providing a quick way for readers to find items of interest. Though I wonder, is there a better way? I know I need a Labels area...but the long list takes up a lot of sidebar space. Maybe a more condensed way of presenting the information?

Shared Items - the five most recent links to items I've shared from my RSS feed. I like this feature...not sure anyone else cares.

My Blog List - another good reference, I think. But again, a pretty long list to scroll through. Not sure about how good that is.

Great Sites To Visit - a static list of a few sites that I would need to update and work with more to really make that meaningful. This one will probably go away.

And what is missing that we should have there? I have no tracking for visitors. So I need to add that. Check back soon to see if anything changes!