Blogging Bootcamp

I want to publicly thank my dear friend, teacher BFF, and other two peas half, Jen Jones, from Hello Literacy  for single-handedly launching me into the blogosphere. Jen has been encouraging me for well over a year to join her with so many of you in this amazing on-line virtual learning community. With her patience, tutoring and incredible support, I finally made the leap. What an incredible opportunity this is already proven to be by providing me the opportunity to  meet so many wonderful like-minded educators who are committed to best practice literacy instruction for our children. Gosh, what was I waiting for????  Just in case there were any of you out there who are following blogs and have been itching to start one. I wanted to share a little bit about my technology learning curve that took place this past week which we have now coined Blogging Bootcamp!

Blogging  bootcamp began when I packed up my bags, including with my laptop and ipad, and flew from California to North Carolina to move in with Jen and her family for the week. Her school  Lake Myra was still in session. Having heard so much about Jen's experiences supporting her staff, my first and foremost priority was to visit her school and meet all the wonderful students, teachers and administrators I have heard so much about. What a fantastic experience! There's nothing like a  North Carolina welcome. Check out the link above to Lake Myra if you want to know more about it. Here's just a sample of some of the anchor charts and student work I was able to see.

  

As you can see, the walls were teaming with anchor charts and colorful displays of student work. It was truly a magical place. I want to extend my thanks and gratitude to all the staff for welcoming to their wonderful school.

My week was a whirl-wind of to-dos. In five short days, I learned the ins and outs, how-to's, tips and tricks of how to start a blog and set up a Teachers Pay Teachers store. I thought it would be fun to share with you what was accomplished during my stay in order to get this blog up and running. Each night after work, Jen and I would collaborate on my blog design, import templates, graphics, fonts and gadgets to get mylifeasaliteracycoach up and running. Jen would then assign me a list of things to accomplish the following day, and I would set to work on my "homework assignment" and  in turn create a list of a bazillion questions. It was quite a collaborative exchange and learning experience for both of us.

So here's a short list of the tasks we accomplished to make this blog grow from a whisper of a dream to a reality...

All you need to know to get you blogging or Blogging Bootcamp 101

• Set up a Pay Pal account and link it to my Teachers Pay Teachers store
• Set up a membership at Teachers Pay Teachers
• Selected a name for the blog and set it up through blogger.com
• Set up a dropbox account
• Downloaded dropbox to my computer
• Downloaded Jing by Techsmith
• Purchased clipart at Melonheadz (aren't they the cutest)
• Purchased fonts at kevinandamanda.com
• Downloaded Jen's fonts at helloliteracy (aren't they darling)
• Downloaded Jen's borders at helloliteracy ( just adorable)
• Purchased sets of borders from Mr. Magician (he was so nice & easy to work with)
• Purchased the colorful alphabet for my blog header at Lettering Delights
• Created the template for the blog
• Created the banner 
• Created follow me on TpT button
• Created the hellotwopeas button
• Signed up for bloglovin
• Added the follow me on  bloglovin gadget
• Added links to favorite authors 
• Created first product (a list of on-line literacy resources)  for TpT
• Created first thumbnail for first product 
• Learned how to resize thumbnail (so it would be under 200 mb)
• Wrote free product description and uploaded first freebie to TPT
• Signed up for a Twitter account
• Updated my google+ account 
• Uploaded pictures from my phone to blog
• Learned how to take a screen shot using my phone
• Replied to comments
• Followed other bloggers back on Bloglovin'
• Set up a webpage with GoDaddy
• Link my TpT store with GoDaddy

Good Luck and Happy Blogging!
Kathi