Build It and They Will Come

On Sunday my cousin came to visit. She is a nurse and isn't happy with her job anymore. I kept prodding her. "You could blog about nursing. Someone will see your professional articles and hire you." She said, "No." she wanted out. "What else do you like to do?", I asked. She replied,  "The things I like to do won't pay for retirement."
Then we started talking about recipes and making holiday cookies. I showed her my King Arthur Flour catalog.  She sighed, "I would really like to be a caterer."  Then, with every turn of a page, "Oh, look at this, look at that!" And I would interject, "are you listening to your life?"
Last week I gave a presentation to the GRADS teachers in Delaware, Ohio, "Blogging: Are You Listening to Your Life?" The intent was to show them how easy it is to start a blog..  But the consensus was, "If you building it, we will come to your blog."  The next time I give this presentation I'm going to create a new blog right in front of the audience.  Then they will see that with just a couple clicks they can  have a blog site of their very own!

Here is the video I showed during the presentation: Blogs In Plain English. Click on the arrow in center to start.

Here is the rubrics I use for scoring a student's post (article) on their blog.

• Is this post creative? (color, font, picture, good opening)
• Shared thoughts, ideas, opinions
• Entry is positive, engages reader, contains more than 1 link, asks a question of reader
• Uses correct spelling and grammar.
• Contains 3-4 paragraphs, demonstrated understanding of topics.