When I teach professional development sessions about engineering for elementary classrooms, we always talk about the student who might really hate engineering projects. It’s usually a high-achieving kid, usually a girl, who is not used to this kind of learning. She wants to learn from the teacher, practice the skill, and then demonstrate her knowledge. Engineering is not like that. In engineering and other STEM projects, you start out knowing the end goal but not much about how you’ll get there. You have to prototype, test, get it wrong, improve your design, try again, experiment with different solutions, fail before you succeed, etc… Sometimes the kid gets nothing done at all because they don’t want to be wrong.
Today I realized that I am being that kid with this blog. I have some ideas but am paralyzed by the amount I don’t know. How do I know what anyone will want to read? Should I care about the audience, or just write? What if I deviate from my stated topic – which is already two topics anyway? Should I try to MONETIZE this blog so I can justify spending time on it? If so, how does that work? (I already spent hours trying to learn how to use ads and affiliate programs, with nothing to show for it yet. How much social media should I use? Will I have to use Instagram to make it work at all? How do I handle use of images and different creative commons licenses? Have I picked the right theme? Will anything here embarrass me in front of my friends? Should I tell friends about my writing or just post relevant articles to Pinterest for strangers? How do I handle Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? What else should I learn about WordPress? Do I need to get Photoshop and learn it first? Should I allow comments? Where do I start? What if it’s not good? What if I make mistakes?
When I realized this, I decided to just write. I guess I can’t create something good if I don’t create anything at all. So here we go…
Baba
Cary Busby