Have You Made Your Twylah Page Yet?

My Twylah Page

After viewing a friend’s Twylah page, I had to see what mine would be like. What you see above is the top part of it. You can see my entire Twylah page here. In case you haven’t heard of Twylah, its a free service that makes a page that looks like mine, above, except it organizes your own Twitter tweets in an attractive format. Best of all, it takes almost no work on your part. All you have to do is sign up on the Twylah site and they send you an email letting you know you’re on their list. Then after they approve you in a couple of days or so, they send you your link, and you see the magic.

This is a great way to share your interests with others, and it also makes it possible for you to share power tweets right from the Twylah site.  Whether you use only use Twitter on your home computer, or use it as part of your classroom activities, you can probably think up some interesting uses for it.

I’d love to see yours when you get it made. Feel free to post your own Twylah link here in the comments, along with your city, state, and country if you are outside the USA. I will moderate spam out of these, and will consider any comment with a link spam unless it includes your city and state.  Optionally, anything interesting about your education connections, if any, would be fun to know. Are you a parent, teacher, or home educator? What subjects do you most like to read about?

What’s Happening to Communication?

I read in this morning’s paper that Facebook is aiming to make email obsolete in personal communication. Supposedly we are too busy to exchange long personal email and phone calls. Instead, we will tweet, email, and text short bits, and send all these communications to our Facebook page at the same time in a sort of one-click publishing  communication.

I’m wondering what has happened to thinking and real heart-to-heart or mind-to-mind communication. Must all our thoughts be reduced to 140 characters more or less? Perhaps the ugliness on the political scene is related to posting propaganda and talking points in 30 second sound bites and tweets thrown out at the world to whomever will listen instead of engaging each other in thoughtful face-to-face conversations.

Perhaps we do the same thing in personal conversations with family and friends. We laugh at the Zits comic strip as family members text each other, or text someone else while someone in the same room is attempting to have a conversation. But it really isn’t funny. People are tuning out those who are present in favor of those who are absent.

Supposedly the schools are trying to teach critical  thinking skills, but where do you use them in a Tweet or a Facebook post? Complex thoughts need complex sentences. Have our attention spans become so short we haven’t time for complex thoughts? For more than surface communication? No wonder people  cannot solve problems or reach consensus. It takes more than a few Tweets.

Exploring Writing Communities on Line

I haven’t posted much in the past few weeks because I’ve been exploring and enjoying some of the on-line writing sites, and some of them can be addicting.  Each of the sites I’ve joined has its own personality and culture. Many people, including me, use all four. I’m going to share the little I’ve learned about each with the hope that you might find one that’s right for sharing your own work. The sites I plan to review are Squidoo, HubPages, Qondio, and Red Gage. I will deal with each of them in a separate blog. This post will be a general introduction.

Each site offers financial incentives to participate, but I wouldn’t plan on getting rich on any of them — especially quickly. People who have lots of time to devote to their writing seemingly do make a living out of it, but I’d be leery of those selling e-books and such telling you how to make hundreds of dollars a month in a few hours a week. Maybe they make it selling those books, but, in my opinion, those who do make money have been adding to their work over time until they finally reach a critical mass that starts producing income. I’ve been on Squidoo about six months and the other sites for less time, and I’m glad I still have my day job.

One thing to keep in mind about all these sites is that you won’t generate much income unless you market your own work actively and participate in the life of each community where you publish your work. You cannot just sit at your computer, write, publish, and forget about it. Instead you must tweet, blog, bookmark, and find other ways to get people to your site. Don’t just sit back and depend upon google or other search engines  to do it all for you.

The community aspect of all these sites is also very important. I am most familiar with the Squidoo community, since that’s where I publish most of my work and where I spend the most time. Other members of the community can make or break you, so learn the culture and treat everyone as you would like to be treated yourself. Help promote others and they will give back to you. Make friends. Thank people who help you. Tweet their work as well as your own. Join groups, read the work of others and rate it, and comment on what others have written. That is how you meet people and form helpful relationships.

You might wonder how writing on one of these sites differs from blogging?  First, I’ve found that you feel less isolated as a writer. A community of people surround you that will probably be your first readers.  They will read your work and comment on it because helping one community member helps build up the entire community. When the community grows and has more quality writing, everyone in it who contributes also benefits as the community becomes more well-known.

You not only feel less isolated, but if you are an active member of the community you will have plenty of encouragement as you try to improve your writing.  After I published my first few lenses on Squidoo, for example, I starting getting invitations to join various Ning groups for lensmasters that offer tips and provide discussion forums. One tends to run into a lot of the same people in many of the groups, and after a while you feel you are actually getting to know them. They critique and rate each other’s lenses, and you are able to let your group know when you have completed a new lens. This is quite different than tweeting and wondering if anyone will even see your tweet before it’s out of sight. You can actually visualize the exact people who will be reading your message and possibly, your lens.

So why would you want to join Squiddo or HubPages or Qondio or RedGage? First, if you aren’t a professional writer, but you do like to write and want to be read, this is a good way to get a responsive audience.  Second, if you have web sites or blogs you’d like to promote, there are plenty of opportunities to get back links for them from these sites, and thus increase your traffic and page rank. Third, you might earn a few dollars if you are diligent and market your work. Lastly, you might actually meet people you enjoy.

For more information and for comparison and a feel for each site, please see my profile pages.

See my Squidoo Lensography and sample my lenses.

See my profile on HubPages.

See my profile on Qondio.

See my profile on RedGage.

RedGage is unique in that it offers a way to market the content you have on your other on-line venues and you might even win some contest cash by actively participating in the RedGage community.  (I won once without even consciously trying. ) For example, as soon as I post this blog, it will automatically be imported to RedGage. You may also submit original content that does not appear elsewhere on line.

Now, go have fun exploring these sites.

Update, January 6, 2011: I want to state that I am beginning to get monthly payouts from Squidoo since I have made over 100 lenses, achieving membership in the Giant Squid 100 Club. I also made $150 in one month on HubPages by winning a contest with one piece of writing. I will talk about this in more detail  in future blogs. I have also discovered and joined a new site, Best Reviewer which I will address in a new post.

Update, March 6, 2011: I have just added What I’ve Learned About HubPages to this series.

Guess I’m a Social Networking Junkie

“Twitter is limited to messaging, keeping people on the site an average of just eight minutes per month. Facebook offers far more diversions, with users spending an average of nearly three hours per month on the site, according to Nielsen.” by Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer from Facebook moving into Twitter territory posted 3/14/09

I’ve always wanted to be above average at something, but it’s hard to believe that so many Twitter users average only eight minutes a day, let alone a month. Maybe this is because I’m still in my Twitter honeymoon period, learning the ropes, and finding the right followers and people to follow. I want to connect with home school families and school educators in order to see what’s happening in schools of all types. I’m hoping I can cut down to eight hours a week on Twitter.

Facebook is a different animal altogether. I use it to connect with people I actually know or have gotten to know on Facebook groups. It’s an easy way to keep up with long-distance friends and the everyday lives of those I see once a week. It’s a great way to share photos with people who might want to see them. And it’s  way to let friends know which causes are important to you. I used to spend about two hours a week there, but since Twitter, I’ve cut down to maybe 30 minutes a week.  So maybe I’m approaching average there.

I have to admit I’ve changed my mind about Twitter. I used to think it was where teens kept each other posted on what they were doing all day. There is some of that, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned in a week on Twitter from those in digital education about the new face of education and how teachers are being encouraged to use computers in their classrooms. I get updates on CPSIA developments, and get links to terrific blogs and videos I would never have found any other way. Come to think of it, it’s not Twitter itself that I’m spending all this time on — it’s all those links it leads to. If you haven’t begun to tweet yet, try it.  You can follow me as barbsbooks and be among the first to find out about sales and new products for educators who are still using books. I’d love to network with you.