It’s been 3.5 years since I took the plunge. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into or what would happen in this space I created, but here we are… 166 posts later, and I’m still here, going strong.

I’m talking about blogging. Or more accurately, about a digital portfolio to share my learning and my growth.

Blogging has become a huge part of my life for several reasons, but the biggest one would be that it provides the space I need to process, reflect, and think more deeply about all of the chaos going on inside my head and heart. It has drastically reduced my number of sleepless nights and has allowed me to grow at speeds I didn’t know were possible. And while sharing all of these thoughts with the world, I’ve also found that my words resonate with others which provides comfort because I know that I am not alone.

Has the process been easy? Nope! But I just finished telling my friend George Couros last weekend that it’s the struggle that’s made it that much sweeter. I’m not going to lie… some days I felt I had nothing worthy of sharing. Other days, I’d try to tweak something and end up crashing my site. But through this challenging process, I grew. I grew a whole heck of a lot, in several areas. And because of that, my blog is one of my proudest accomplishments to date. I can look back on my growth and see where I used to be and how far I’ve come as an educator, a mom, and as a human. I can look back and see all of the hard work that has gone into not only learning how to be a better writer and share my message, but also the technical stuff of having my own blog. I still don’t consider myself all that knowledgeable (confession: I had to ask George what the difference was between Edublogs and WordPress!! ha!), BUT I do have a fully functional digital portfolio with categories that link to indicators of professional practice as well as tags that make finding blog posts with similar topics easy! I also own my own domain and have the most incredible host, Reclaim Hosting (but haven’t always had… trial and error through which I learned, and lost a bit of money along the way!)

Speaking of George, he is the reason for this incredible space. I’ve certainly put in the work over the years, but he’s the one who pushed me to get started, and who was always by my side when I ran into problems that I didn’t know how to troubleshoot (or failed miserably while trying). He was also there pushing me to make it better by adding those things I didn’t understand at the time, like tags and categories and my name as my URL. He understood what having a positive digital footprint was, and helped me make my own! He guided me and gave me tips for the last 3.5 years and I am forever grateful. It is for this reason that when I found out that he was putting together a Digital Portfolio course, I was SO excited. To think that educators around the world would have the opportunity to learn about this incredibly powerful space that they can use to skyrocket their growth, like it had done for me and I know it did for George, too… I had no words! This is going to be powerful.

If this peaks your interest even just slightly, I highly encourage you to check our George’s introduction video by clicking right here. You don’t have anything to lose, and that’s the mentality I had from my very first blog post on:

“I’m not sure what this blog will end up looking like, nor do I know how often I’ll be posting… But I am here now, and that’s already a great thing!”

Give it a try… you might just fall in love with the process and end up growing at lightening speed like so many others!

Still need more convincing? Check out this blog post that Katie Martin and I co-wrote about The Power of Blogging for Professional Development.

Or, click here to read about how I felt after only a year of blogging and The Places You’ll Go… With Open Reflection!

Lacking confidence to get started? I’ve got you… Reflect. Share. Grow.

Finally, no one said you had to have it all figured out before starting. Just start, and start small… because I’m a firm believer that Small Goals = Big Results!