Happy New Year!

Sorry, should I whisper?
Ready or not, you woke up to a new year today! What are you going to do with it?

I am ready to grow this educational blog into the next phase. While I do not know the final result, I have some solid ideas for 2017.
After re-reading my post at this time last year, and adding a year-ending comment, I am ready to move forward in the direction this blog takes me.

What Worked

Through a comment in an #ETCoaches Twitter chat, the #ETCoaches Blogging Challenge was born this year! I have shared how a blog challenge really rallies me to write, this one was even better because EdTech Coaches *comment* on each other’s blog posts too. That back and forth conversation is an awesome validation about the content you are discussing! Just five weeks was very stimulating, not just the content, but the conversations – I hope I am included next year!

The blog post that really caught on this year was Why you haven’t Resigned from Teaching. I wrote it in November 2015, but it caught fire on Pinterest November and December of 2016 and became my number one post on the blog.

What Didn’t Work…Yet

In review of last year’s goals I realize I am not further along with a HotLunchTray.com Newsletter, and honestly I am just not into this right now. I know it would elevate traffic to the blog, but I am not enthused about this yet. Maybe I need to examine my network and find someone who can help me be excited, offer readers something other than spam, or just give me a reality check on how/why I want to do this? This is at the bottom of my list. It is still there, but it will take a catalyst this year to make this happen.

The undervalued blog post of 2016 is ❄ Snow Day 101: Invest or Wing It? ❄ – but as they say, Winter is Coming. And since it took one year for my top blog post to catch on from last year, there is still time for this one to hit it big too.

What I Plan To Do

But here is the excitement of this time of year – what are you planning to do *this* year? And as the time of year dictates – I have some ideas.

Since Pinterest fueled this year’s top blog post, I am interested in further tapping into Pinterest. I have joined several group Pinboards and hope to promote an on-going Educator’s Blogging Challenge. My thought is a stand alone 30 day challenge, but tie it back to 30 posts on my blog where people can post their links and read other’s posts. It would have been great to have it ready today, but I am freed by the idea of an ongoing challenge with a synchronous place to point back to – stay tuned for more details.

I am going to turn many of my more popular blog posts into Kindle books. Topics: Blended Learning, Digital Classroom, and Professional Growth. Self-publishing is such an interesting topic, I continue to learn about more awesome features of WordPress to help me, and cannot wait until I take a deeper dive into Amazon formatting. I am a little apprehensive about the editing process, but anticipate enough momentum from the other areas to push through even that! For now, I continue to document the process and will update you in some future blog posts.

What will YOU Do?

Share your hopes and goals here – maybe we can be accountability partners.
Educators unlike many people can appreciate the start of something new – and 2017 is just that opportunity!