A New Year, A New Goal

So as 2015 starts, I have been reflecting on what I want to re-start in my life.  It is always a time for new beginnings.  It seems to be more so for me this year as I kind of got thrown into a new beginning at the beginning of the school year and into a whirlwind of planning, students, grading etc.  

I often pick my restarts in life with what I feel like I have been missing in my life. One of my missing things has been this blog.  One of the things that I really had been missing is writing on this blog.  This blog's history with resolutions has been 1 for 2.  In 2013, I did a 365 challenge in which I wrote a blog post everyday.  It was hard at times to come up with new content, but overall I really enjoyed the experience, learned a lot, and it really kick started my blog.  In 2014, I resolved to blog 3ish times a week--I was going to set aside certain days and then on the off days I was going to do all of the things I had learned over the year to help grow my blog.  I felt like I could give it the right attention if I commented, shared, interacted on the days I didn't write--and it wouldn't take over my life.  I was also going to do some fixing up of this blog--new design, update links etc.  But if you notice over the past year--I've done nothing in that department and I'm pretty sure I only wrote like 15 posts...okay I shouldn't beat myself up it was like 67--but a very noticeable decrease from like July on and half of those are April A to Z Challenge blog posts.  

Anyway....I'm rambling again.  Point is: I am resolving to write everyday again this year.  I am applying everything that I learned over 2013 and 2014 to hopefully make this a little bit less stressful, more organized, and do everything that I want it to do! I will be sharing them as I go along on a couple of different places.  To start with I will be sharing things: here, my Twitter feed, and my new Facebook page!  Yes, this blog has a Facebook page. :) Please go like it!  And check back for the next posts--hopefully I don't regret doing this again!

My Love Hate Relationship with Twitter Part 2

It's funny, but I wrote that title...and then I read it back.  I was like....hmm that sounds familiar.  I did a quick search on my blog and found this post that I did back on January.  I guess that was bound to happen at some point this year....I repeat myself and I don't even know it.

But today's topic is actually a little bit different.....my love-hate relationship this time is that I have gotten so out of Twitter.  I started my account, and I was retweeting like crazy, doing chats, and just keeping up with what was going on with everyone.  Now, all I do is tweet out these posts basically.  Part of my problem is the whole time thing---I have become distracted with other things.  But the other part of my problem was the fact that I was getting information overload! I love Twitter for the articles/ideas/etc. that I can get from it...that's the only reason that I see to use it--just sharing.  While sometimes the little "status updates" are great, they are not why I get on.

I have done a couple of different things to keep track of articles/ideas/etc....I pin a lot of stuff to Pinterest and I "favorite" stuff on Twitter with the hopes that I can see it again---though I have actually never gone looking.  But sometimes they don't have anything Pinterest will use to pin, and I have lost the actual Tweet somewhere, and then it stays open on my computer until I have to shut it down.  And that is so annoying...

So I am putting this out into the world....how do you deal with the Twitter information overload??


P.S. There is a great literary giveway by Judith @ http://leeswammes.wordpress.com/ and I get extra points by linking you here: http://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/2013/06/literary-giveaway-blog-hop-6-titles-to-choose-from.html they are giving away some great books!

My Classics Club List!

I thought that I had joined The Classics Club already...I follow them on Twitter, did the read-a-thon earlier this year, and read fellow member's blog posts.  However, I realized earlier this week that I am not officially a member, because I haven't joined officially or created my book list!  So today I am rectifying that situation.  I am going to post my list of 50 books below.  I am going to try to read all of these books by the end of 5 years (so December 31, 2017) and then start with a new list of 50, especially if I finish early.  I like that I can easily read 10 in a year. Though as I make this list...a lot of them are goals for this year. In terms of how I made this list--it included ones that I want to read this year but also ones that I have always wanted to read but never have. Well, I am considering myself already started...so I have linked my review from Sense and Sensibility below.

1. Sense and Sensibility  by Jane Austen  review
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen
3. Mansfield Park  by Jane Austen
4. Emma by Jane Austen
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
6. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen review
7. Lady Susan by Jane Austen
8. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
9. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
10. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
11. Anthem by Ayn Rand
12. We the Living by Ayn Rand
13. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte review
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
15. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury  Finished sometime in Fall of 2014 
16. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
17. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
18. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
19. Animal Farm by George Orwell
20. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
21. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
22. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
23. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
24. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
25. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
26. Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
27. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
28. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
29. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
30. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
31. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
32. The Brothers of Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevesky
33. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
35. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
36. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
37. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
38. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
39. Beloved by Toni Morrison
40. 1984 by George Orwell review
41. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
42. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
43. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
44. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
45. Dracula by Bram Stoker
46. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
47. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
48. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
49. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
50. Echoes from the Macabre by Daphne DuMaurier

Productivity...Part 2....Online

I read this interesting article here, that is actually a book review of a book about how to be smart with your time online.  As I mentioned previously (here), I don't know if productivity is helpful to all people.  This review says that the biggest advice that the Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold gives is to really plan out what you are going to do online when you get on.  This is hard to think about practically for me because I am influenced by what I see--I will go to someone's blog post because they posted and I happened to see it.  Or I will read an article that I happened to see on Twitter etc.  But I like the idea in theory. So...how would you go about planning your online adventures each day?

Thank you www.effective-time-management-strategies.com

My Love-Hate Relationship with Twitter + Reading Like an Historian Thoughts

So...each Monday a group of Social Studies teachers get on to Twitter and discuss a topic for about an hour or so.  I found out about this at a recent Utah Council of Social Studies teachers conference and I finally got up the courage a little while ago to start my own Twitter account.  Feel free to follow @KimberlyNHawks :)  However, they had taken a break for the Christmas holidays and this was the first time that I felt like I could know what I was doing enough to get involved this time and not make a mess. Problem is I didn't realize that it started at 7 ET time not my MT! Hence the hate relationship with Twitter...I lose track with ALL of the posts.  I get why people have it on their phones, because that could be the only way to possibly keep up.  Though I would not want it constantly bugging me with new alerts.

My love relationship with Twitter is how much I have learned from everyone on Twitter!  Since I missed the chat, I got on and look at a couple of the posts that went through.  If you want to go see it is always #sschat and the moderator tonight was @SHEG_Stanford.  They did a great job talking about teaching ideas with primary sources and helping the students read as historians.  I want to do a quick run down of what I learned and my own ideas since I didn't know the time difference.

Impressions

• Students need to be writing about what they are reading--and it doesn't have to be an essay because we all know that we are SO busy to grade.  There was a def theme of even writing a paragraph is great because you can focus on different things at different times.
• I retweeted the best idea I saw: : frequent quick writes on 3x5 cards. Thesis para on front, 6 bulleted pieces of evidence on back I can see my students actually maybe willing to do this.

My Quick Ideas

• Along the same lines as the 3x5 cards, since I have the benefit of a small class but you could do this in groups too--come up with what the main purpose/thesis of the source was and then have the students chalk write the supports/evidence of that thesis
• I love the site: http://web.wm.edu/hsi/?svr=www because they are set up for the kids to be detectives.  I did The Case of Sam Smiley to introduce the ideas of being detectives.  The kids really got off on the CSI idea of it.  

P.S. Tomorrow there is a #Wrldchat at 8 pm est...so I will be getting on promptly at 6 pm....if I remember :P