Blogger tag–a meme that personalizes!?!

Tagged by my teacher and mentor, Cheri Toledo, I felt like a school girl who found a chain letter in the mailbox. But once I followed her instructions–”check my blog…read the directions at the top of the post”–I realized that this was different from a chain letter. Having been tagged gave me an opportunity to step outside of my role as edublogger and share something of who I am with my readers and also, have a chance to reflect on what is or has been important to me as an individual. So, thank you, Cheri! 

However, before I post my 8 random facts, I must also confess that I checked a couple of bloggers who had also been tagged to see how they had posted their responses. The picture posts were inspired by my visit to Brian Crosby’s Learning is Messy blog are not of my own inspiration. And in visiting Lucy Gray’s blog, A Teacher’s Life, I was introduced for at least the second time to a new word: meme. And so, before I could even act on my tagging, I had to have a conversation with the Merrriams to discover the meaning of meme–an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. Now it all makes perfect sense–bloggers are spreading this behavior of tagging that allows them to step outside of a personna and present themselves in a personal and random way…or at least that is how I am seeing this phenomena.

If you’ve been tagged-here are the Rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

My Eight Random Facts:

1. Before becoming a teacher, I was a free-lance writer and photographer…even took a magazine cover shot.

2. I like swans and geese.

3. I like to travel and learn about different cultures. I once studied in France at the University of Dijon for a summer stint and have since traveled there with my daughter to visit a French foreign exchange student we hosted in 2004.

4. My husband and three children traveled to Eygpt where we spent one month climbing, studying, sweating, hiking, sweating, and learning to appreciate both having nothing and having much.

5. My house burned to the ground on February 2, 2004 and so I have no pictures of my life or the lives of my family prior to that date.

6. I am returning to France this fall with my husband and so we have both been studying French all summer long!

7. I live on a farm where we raise more than 15,000 pigs each and evey year. Have another pork chop!

8. As an educational entreprenuer, I would like to establish a non-profit educational consortium in the middle of central Illinois to meet the needs of rural schools wherever they exist.

I tagged

Rich

mnakamura

Karen Dennis