What is your domain name and what is the story, meaning behind your choice of that as a name?
I had trouble being in rectangular rooms eight hours a day as a student. It is odd that I now work looking at a rectangle so many hours a day, but that is another story and possibly some useful karmic payback, or something. But I’ll not dwell on that.
I chose thewholeclassroom.com as my domain because I wanted to express the idea that there was stuff beyond the rectangles that was part of what should be included in all classrooms. Field trips, guest speakers, community service, making products that extended beyond the classroom walls.
As a young student I think I was aware of the limited audience I had as a poet. That also, is another story. Later, as an English teacher, I tried hard to make sure my students wrote, if they wanted, for an audience beyond me and my “red markers” and the classrooms they sat in. I did things like this, and this. That was back in the early days… I learned that if their audience was “authentic” they tended to try harder and do better work.
What was your understanding, experience with domains before you got one? Where were you publishing online before having one of your own?
I started making websites in PageMill and then Dreamweaver. Thankfully, Blogger and WordPress were invented and let me focus on simple design and on content. I am not smart enough for those other fancy applications. Blogger let me run a class like this is 2009 and that was well before I purchased my domain.
What was a compelling feature, reason, motivation for you to get and use a domain? When you started what did you think you would put there?
I am a control freak.
What kinds of sites have you set up one your domain since then? How are you using them? Please share URLs!
I have had two other occasions to help create domains. One is just recently up here with the folks I work with today, and the other is not really keep up to date like I wish it was, but we had some good times there. We ran a really awesome 9x9x25 Challenge from it. That was a good thing. I did some presentation about it. Here is one.
What helped you or would have helped you more when you started using your domain? What do you still struggle with?
Posting on a reasonably consistent basis…
What kind of future plans to you have for your domain?
I am still learning about what it means to me and how to use it. I have been doing presentations from blogs (under “presentations” on my domain) and I should have always been setting them up as subdomains but I am too chicken to try that… I don’t know why.
What would you say to other educators about the value, reason why to have a domain of your own? What will it take them to get going with their own domain?
I would say, don’t tell me what you and your students do, SHOW ME! And you can do that with the web today. So be that and do it.
It is not easy to look at a blank piece of paper and start writing our great novel or poem. You have to start somewhere, so start where you are and know that you are enough. Move forward and say yes.