Before I write anything further, let me state for the record, I am very computer literate. Unfortunately, where I have been bowled over, is with the concept of putting us and our projects 'out there" on social media and what that entails.
I am a classically trained musician (read no mikes or digital instrumentation here). I have embraced technology in a big way in my teaching career. But, this is a whole new level internet existence. Till now, I have used the big I, to communicate and do research to enrich my teaching. Now I, with Anne-Marie, am also on the other side of that experience as well, making, monetizing and marketing content.
Presently, building our web presence requires that we "Jiggle the Jello" to coin a phrase my late father used to describe how neurotic traders are on reacting, and acting on the stock market.
This means....
We are on now 3 sites as vendors. (Uh as a check out in the side bar here on our blog.) Yup, I say that almost like I am sneezing, can't help myself. Part of the biz!
Anyways the purpose of all of this, is to let people know what A-M has produced and in the case of educational materials we are co-developing. To get all that content, on our proverbial lemon-aid stand in the desert and our product, into peoples online consciousness, takes an enormous amount of time and tweaking through, what are now about and additional half dozen sites like Pinterest, Tumlr, Wanelo, FaceBook, ...... etc...
By necessity, this digital multi-headed hydra, requires that we, sadly, build a requisite blizzard of usernames, passwords and settings for; email accounts, PayPal accounts, this blog of course,web sites, web hosting services, along all with all of these and the ever growing list of web presence sites, and so on and so on and so on ... Keeping all these virtual plates on sticks spinning, wow!
Can almost see my Dad slapping his forehead in amazement!
I have this almost overriding need to scribble on paper notes to the universe and fold them into airplanes, chucking them out the window, instead of all this tagging and tweaking, blogging, liking, pinning, hearting, favoriting, and ... and what ever.
... yet ...
Building something; like our children's books projects; sharing our creative journey; developing new graphical materials for schools that are truly useful and engaging; all that without the drudgery and frustration of banging on doors old school, to be seen and marketed, is simply amazing.
But keeping it all in play and attended to ... and also pursue in my case teaching full-time, again I say, wow.
Oh and by the way, I will one day soon, write of the steps A-M and I go through to produce and place stuff on-line. That is an epic story in itself.
Stay tuned, and of course, check out the new stuff we have posted on our sites. :-)
Cheers
Desmond
