Course Shells, Creativity, and Social Media Coordination

Yesterday at our new student orientation, part of me was amazed to hear myself waxing eloquent about the benefits of having a Learning Management System for each class.  Our LMS, eCompanion, is quite clunky, but I'm still happy to have it.

I didn't actually use it until the fall 2015 quarter when I returned to teaching onground and had to set up my course shell.  I found myself saying, "This is sort of like blogging."

I see a blog as a compendium--there's new writing, old writing, links to resources that might be important, links to other blogs that have value.  Likewise, an LMS shell.  Happily, a blog doesn't have a gradebook that must be maintained.

The LMS shell was similar to the blog in a different way--I was never sure if anyone was utilizing it in the way I envisioned.  I posted so many good resources and links--did my students ever look at them?  I never knew.

This week, I accepted a new volunteer position that might be similar--or it might be like a full-time job I might want in the future.  I am now a Social Media team captain for the Create in Me retreat planning team.

What does this mean exactly?  That's the beautiful thing--it's new, so I can help create it as I'm living it.

We need someone to do basics, like make posts on Facebook.  Ideally, we might want posts on Instagram and Pinterest.  I already understand how Pinterest works, although I have never created a pin (is that even the lingo?).  I don't even let myself stay on Pinterest sites for very long--I understand how several hours could get sucked away instantly.  We already have a Create in Me Pinterest site, so the next step will be to make a pin or pin a thing there.

We are also going to have Facebook/Pinterest Planning Parties, and I'll help organize those.  These will be times of more intense posting, in the hopes of inspiring the group, in hopes of more posting.  These parties will help with retreat planning, at least in an ideal world.

The goal of the team is to do anything that keeps people engaged with the retreat community - & excited about creating.  That's a job description I like!

I will report back here periodically.  Just like my retreat planning and workshop reporting has been important in later years when I want to know what I did, I anticipate that periodic reports on this new volunteer position might be essential later.

So, I've made some Facebook posts so far, and I just posted a link to our Pinterest page on my own Facebook page and on the FB closed group Create in Me.  Our FB closed group page postings so far consists mostly of images of our various sketchings as we experiment with visual journaling.

This morning, my quilt group comes over.  I'll set out my camera to try to capture images of fabric and needlework to post later.

And speaking of that, I suppose I should sign off now to do the final preparations for a fun day of creating ahead!