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Tag: Toastmasters
Love Your Public Library and Librarians — the Video! by da-AL
Here’s the video version of my previous post, the one that trumpets the wonderfulness of U.S. public libraries. This was my 7th speech for Toastmasters, and it fulfilled a project called, ‘Research Your Topic.’ Toastmasters is an organization for people who want to learn public speaking and leadership. Worse than public speaking, I fear memorizing things. This speech was when I finally understood that props help me to loose up and prompt me in term of what comes next in my speech.
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My Experiences with Blogging to Date by da-AL
While I decided whether to blog, I asked friends if they could direct me to bloggers they knew. Nada.
As I gathered courage anyway, I perused existing blogs, deciding what tickled me about them and what didn’t. I asked myself was whether I could develop ongoing interesting content for a blog.
Publicizing my novel, “Flamenco & the Sitting Cat,” will also require me to speak publicly about it. Hence, a few months ago I joined Toastmasters, an international organization that inexpensively teaches public speaking and leadership skills. 
As I learn to write and perform speeches, their subject matter appears on this blog.
Once I decided to blog, I needed to learn how. I signed onto my favorite public library site, which you’ll read more about in a future blog. 
In addition to books, they offer free on-line courses. I took a teacher-hosted Gale 6-week course called, “Blogging and Podcasting for Beginners.”
It covered Blogger, WordPress, podcasting (audio version of blogging), and vlogging (video version of blogging). Too much at one time for me.
Thanks are in order for my dear husband. His encouragement helped me immensely. Decisions threatened to overwhelm me — platform, name, subject, style, dedicated blogging email, blogger identity/avatar — any one of them could easily take the course’s whole six weeks to choose.
I have bumbled and re-bumbled through. For instance, WordPress offers an endless selection of free themes/templates. This blog began using ‘Splendio,’ switched to ‘Writr,’ then to ‘Yoko,’ and now uses ‘Big Brother.’ This explains why, while I am not at all messy, my blog has been beyond messy.
More experimenting has centered on how long posts should be. Some people said my first post, “Happiness Teachers Can be Furry,” was too long. Others said it wasn’t descriptive enough. As I post this, its serialized into three entries.
Pictures: people complained that the original ones were ugly and/or confusing. Hopefully what’s online now are cuter.
I was working my way through an excellent video on how to become a blogger but then I found that my library offers a 6-week course solely on WordPress. I’m taking on my second week of it.
For now, I’m dribbling out invites, so that I can get fresh feedback as the site hopefully improves. Once this blog feels more ‘formed,’ I’ll tell everyone about it.
My sincere thanks to all who have offered their insights, all of it useful.
Followers, too, are much appreciated. Someday I might (not ‘may’) learn enough about blogging to figure out how to thank followers individually.
Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 