How to Make The Most of Your Time Online

I wrote part one of 'How a Blog Can Help You Reach Your Goals, as my blog will be a year old on April 18 2012, I will post the second part on Wednesday. In that post I will let you know which goals were reached....trust me...it is going to be a pretty interesting post!

Don't waist your time surfing, pausing, reading. You need to decide what is it you want to know from the web.

 

I want to know more about:

Digital marketing

Creative writing

Book reviews

Children's literature

Social Media

Instructional writing

e-publishing for education

Published Irish Writers

Technology

All things App-ish

Book Fairs

After talking with Bernie "topgold" Goldbach, I set up my instapaper account and downloaded Readability app, this set up a 'read later,' option on the links from twitter. Then when I go to my web account on instapaer all my links are there. If I see something I like while browsing I just past the URL into the add function in instapaper.

It is pretty awesome. If you want to read all the links I have read, (or plan to read). You cannot set your account to public so I downloaded the CSV file and pasted all the links below. This took me a lot of time to curate...so you're welcome!

On new news from the web....I have found some pretty cool new on line applications:

Vuvox

This free, easy app for creating scrolling timeline-style content is a fun way for students or teachers to create presentations.

Screenr is a new web based screencast recording tool. You can record screencasts and publish them to your profile on Screenr.

Dipity is a site that makes it simple for you or your students to create and share interactive timelines about any subject or topic. You can embed You Tube videos, Twitter, RSS feeds, Blogger, flickr, Picasa, Last FM, and more into your Dipity timelines.

Watch the How To Youtube videos here:

Vuvox

Screenr

Dipity

Do You Dream at All?

Around this time last year I got to know Derek on Twitter, at the time we were both newbies to Twitter and neither of us blogged.

A year later, I have written two books,(I'd hardly call them books yet, they need a LOT of redrafting), taught social media and even did a spot of lecturing in it, as for Derek....well, he has written a book, organised #Tweetup's, started a blog and website and has even released a CD.

Phew!

I have long been a fan of his music, every time you get something new and exciting. As Joseph Addison says, “Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.”


If you want to experience heaven here, then have a listen to Derek Flynns music on his Blog.


You know me, I like my videos...so here is the music video to one of Derek's songs.

If you live in Europe, you can purchase the physical CD here
If you live in Europe, and you want to download it, you can do so here
If you live in the US or the rest of the world, you can purchase the physical CD or the download here
And finally, if you want a signed copy of the CD, from anywhere in the world, send me an email at derek_flynn@hotmail.com and I’ll ship one to you.



You can listen to samples and buy the CD here:
Contact details for Derek -
Website
Blog
Twitter

How a Blog can Help You Reach Goals (part one)

This is part one of a two part series.

The blog will be a year old on April 18^th 2012. I original set it up just to get some primary school teaching, but when I realised the power of social media. I reassessed my plan. We all plan, whether we know it or not. Sometimes, we need to sit down and study to come up with a better plan. If you want to be a social media teacher, published writer, make important connections, a better IT teacher, or simply want to know how to set your goals for your blog/life ambitions then stay tuned, stay informed and read on to see how I did it.

When I started to blog I coagulated my IT degree, marketing experience, teaching post grad, financial reporting, web design know how and my stubbornness and spewed out this set of goals. The main ingredient is stubbornness, we all have that, now you just need to apply it.

My blog ambitions:

1. Gain more IT knowledge

2. Share more IT knowledge

3. Read more teacher blogs

4. Get paid to teach IT

5. Read more writer/editor and publisher blogs

6. Get published on other blogs or websites

7. Use the blog to get published on traditional media

8. To get over 35,000 hits at year end April 18^th

9. Study the hits to cater even more for the readership

10. Study the hits to grab new readers

11. Grab the non-blog readers

12. To be included in a print newsletter

13. To be seen as a ‘go to gal,’ in IT teaching, creative writing in primary schools, blogging, scratch, social media,

14. To learn more about the areas above

15. To guest lecture somewhere (anywhere)

16. To write book reviews on children’s and or YA (young adult) books

17. To write book reviews on children’s and or YA (young adult) books for powerful bloggers, recognised websites or traditional print media.

18. Become more efficient at curating the best information from Twitter links

19. Write a book

20. Make connections with published writer and publishers

The thing is guys, I am a primary school teacher with a degree in IT, a live lived in financial reporting in the IFSC and I do not want to become a full time primary school teacher, it was never my intention. I always have seen this post grad as a jumping off point. I needed to learn and network. And guess what....its working!

I will post the results of my goal setting later in the week.

Can you see how having goals can help you study and re-align your content; thus aiding you to reach these goals. It is imperative to plan, research, study, and plan again. If I can achieve all of this that so can you. We are all IT-capable.

On a side note, I have changed the blog's Facebook fan page to MoloneyKing, in keeping with the brand.

How has your blog helped you achieve your goals?

Has Twitter helped you in any way, either personally or business wise?

How To Master IT

Long story, my min sim for the iPad and meteor hotspot ran out of data! Meteor became confused when I asked them how to check the balance. I checked my account on line and my bills and all of a sudden, this month the mini was nowhere to be seen.

I must have gotten it on a short contract, but there I was with no data! I am lucky to know some serious tech heads and they have been at me for ages, ‘why don’t you use the phone as a hotspot and just get a bit more data on it.'



Now I know that some people out there think I have everything IT sussed, but I really don’t. I have to find my way just like you guys do. Sure my primary degree is in IT&T, but that was all quantum physics, programming, analogue and digital thingies. I didn’t learn many practical things. So it wrecks my head when I listen to people say, ‘Sure I am dead-head when it comes to IT.’

 I cried when I got my phone. I had issues with syncing, data back up, I couldn't figure out a way to save documents from my pc to iPad to iPhone and edit them all,  and what in god’s name was iTunes? I only listen to music on the radio;  the last music I bought was on a tape.

But the difference between me and the ‘dead-heads’ is that I am stubborn and will never give up. I locked myself away for three solid days until I figured out the iphone, dropbox, syncing all of my devices, the best word software for iPad and iphone, icould,  iText, viber, instapaer reading in kindle, iTunesU, readability, Evernote, audiobooks, picturebook, iBooks, QRReader, instagram, glow draw and the list goes on.


And what else did I do? I sent out a few tweets asking for advice, I followed a load of tech-heads and read their blogs, heck I even read the iPad magazine. I don’t like depending on the spoken word for advice, I like my information to be in text format, be it in a text,tweet,  email, blog post or book.

We have no excuses; if I can do IT so can you.

5 Common Author Website Mistakes

1 – Concentrating on Content  Over Design

No one, and I repeat no one wants to read your amazing work if you have light text on a dark background. Keep the layout clean, clear and central. No right or left aligned texts, keep it centered. Don’t clutter the sides with irrelevant badges. Pepper your posts with images or videos.