Thanks to everyone who participated in tonight's #nctlchat on blogging and our #nctlblog challenge! Lots of great ideas and perspectives were shared & I look forward to re-reading them all through the Storify archives! (https://storify.com/LisaMilstead/nctlchat-august-10-2014)

If you haven't already done so, please click here to sign up:  http://goo.gl/wSbZ0l   I will begin sharing blog URLS soon.  If you'd like to go ahead & get started, we'd like to suggest that one of your first #nctlblog posts be an introduction of yourself and your library, along with a few of your goals for the year.  Please include at least one picture of your library if possible.

Your blog is your tool for whatever purpose you choose.  If you don't yet have one, some of the platforms suggested tonight were: Blogger, Weebly, WordPress, and TypePad.  You can have a blog that is linked to your school site, or a separate site, depending on what works for you.  If you have any questions as you get started, please don't hesitate to reach out using the #nctlchat or #nctlblog hashtag on Twitter, or via email ([email protected])

The challenge is to post at least twice a month from September, 2014 to June, 2015.  This will be a wonderful tool for reflection, for understanding our students' challenges better, and for deepening our #nctlchat PLN. While we will posts topic suggestions here for those who need a little inspiration, you are always free to ignore them.  When you publish a new post, please also post it to Twitter using the hashtag #nctlblog so participants can easily find it.   If you aren't a Twitter user, I hope that you will give it a try as it is the most valuable PD tool I know, but I don't want that to keep you from participating in the challenge.  You can email your posts' URLS to our gmail account.

We will choose a few posts each month to feature on this site.  You can comment here on the post, or write a response post and link it. It is our hope that as the year progresses, through developing the habit of blogging we will not only become more confident communicators, but also more effective educators.  

Thanks for joining us on this journey! 
~Jen.
(Sorry about my seemingly Royal We - it refers to our #nctlchat team along with Tavia Clark, whose post originally inspired this challenge, and who has been instrumental in getting it off the ground)