Tonight you get the answer key… but see if you can’t match at least some of them first!
Or, if you’re really good… go to the bottom images, cover the names, and guess the name looking at the map. Bet you don’t get many right that way this round!
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Maps from yesterday and today:
This morning we’re also celebrating 19,000 visits to Ireland by Chance. Thanks South Korea, Pakistan, and India for waking up earlier than everyone else (due to the earth’s rotation) and checking the blog. 🙂
19,000 visits to the blog
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Yesterday’s geography lesson was a hit, so let’s see what we can learn from today’s visitors. It’s hardest if you cover the map above and try to picture each country on the list. For a much easier exercise, try to match each country name with its location on the map. Some of the answers are shown below.
Most recent map for today.
Sitting at home, working on the computer, and listening to nearby church bells ring. Meanwhile my mom sent an email that mentioned:
Had to look up one of the countries on the list! Everyone’s getting a geography lesson!
I decided a geography lesson wasn’t a bad idea.
I’ve included maps of the places most Americans probably can’t find on an unlabeled map. I realize that the names of several of these countries have changed in the lifetimes of both my mom and me. We learned different names when we were in school — so now is a great time to brush up!
I’d had to look up Burundi myself this morning. It boarders Tanzania (where I’ve been twice!?!). It’s to the northwest of TZ. It’s just below Rwanda and is very small.
Exciting additions for today.
Cool! I awoke this morning to find two new countries added to my WordPress visitors map: Burundi and Kazakstan.
Look at the size of Kazakstan–it covers a huge area.
Welcoming my first visitor from Sri Lanka today! The holes in the WordPress map for my blog are starting to fill in. I was happy to add Peru and a number of countries in Africa recently. I hope you all will want to keep coming back to read my Fulbright stories….
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We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto! Let’s tell our story…. (Image posted on Flickr by James Clark.)
This is the final installment of a four-part series on blogging. The full set includes:
Fulbright’s sponsors encourage the students and scholars who receive Fulbright grants to blog about their experiences. They want to publicize the Fulbright program, the work we (their Fulbrights) are doing, and the cultural nuances we are discovering. They want us to share who we are and what we learn. Why not generate as much good publicity as we can?
If you’ve gotten your Fulbright blog up and running, you are ready to publicize your work. (If, on the other hand, you haven’t gotten started blogging because you’re still feeling overwhelmed by technical issues, you may want to check out Daniel Piechnick’s Website Setup Guide 2013: The Dummies’ Guide to Setting Up a Website.)
Based on past blog tips I’ve posted, you may have determined what level of privacy you desire. This matters because everyone in the world will be able to see what you post on a public blog site.
You may have shied away from being very open or very public about events in your life, but even if you don’t want to be highly public about everything you do, you will probably want to your friends and family know about your blog. In one fell swoop, you can notify them of the blog’s existence and invite them to receive automatic emails of everything you post. (If you are using WordPress, you can find the tools on your Dashboard — just look for the “users” button and then “invite new.”)
If you’re feeling ambitious, you may want to invite everyone in your contacts list.
Today we’ve got new technologies. (Image downloaded from Tumblr.)
And if you’ve decided to “go for the gold,” and to use your blogging efforts to full affect, you can generate a wide audience. The following tips can help:
And they can help us spread the word. (Image downloaded from Toastmasters.)
You can load notifications to your personal page in Facebook, or you can set up a Fan page for your blog. You’ll need the Fan page if you want to enable visitors (to a WordPress blog) to click “like.” Keep in mind that only people who have “liked” your page will see posts you stream to that Facebook page. As a result, I chose to stream posts to my own personal Facebook page which has far more “friends.” (And, thus, I’ve not yet made good use of my Fan page.)
Jonathan Kennedy (the spouse of a Fulbright) clued me into the value of using Facebook “likes” to tag businesses and organizations you want to become more involved with in your new Fulbright home. I subsequently realized that I could increase interest in my blog by posting links on the Facebook pages of those businesses and organizations when I mention them in a post.
WIth today’s Internet you are always “On Air.” (Image from National Publicist.)
There are many good sources of help on line. For instance, WikiHow has a post about using social media to create interest in your blog. It recommends (and explains how) to:
Regarding search engine optimization, WikiHow discusses:
In signing out, I’ll mention one last, critical point about Fulbright blogging:
It goes without saying that in everything you do as a Fulbright, and particularly on the on the Internet, you’re a cultural envoy. Your job as a Fulbright is to facilitate and grow cultural understanding and respect. That means, of course, that you need to consider what you post from multiple perspectives and stay positive in what you post about your hosts.
Flimerz explains “you can draw viewers by connecting with your audience.” (Image from Flimerz.)
Anil Dash provides “A Blog About Making Culture.” (Image from Anil’s blog site.)
An image downloaded from Blogging Help.
This is the third of a four-part series on blogging. The full set includes:
Blogging can be a daunting task. Fortunately, it’s not too hard to get your self on track to a successful — and rewarding — Fulbright-blogging career. You can lay a strong foundation by considering: what niche your work can fill, what voice you will develop, what look and feel your site will have, and how you can get the most intellectual payback out of your own work. This blog discusses how.
Niche / Topic
Is there some subject you love to tell others about — or a unique perspective you can offer the world? (As your dissertation advisors would have said: is there a hole in the on-line knowledge base that you can help fill?)
If you’re a Fulbright, you likely have a specific area of expertise that you can help others understand!
There is a group of blog-writing Fulbrighters in Ireland this year. We all started by saying we’d describe our year-long experience. That alone is something of a niche… but being event more specific can give a blog more ump. We all sensed that and we each defined some sort of focus: design and photography (for me), language prowess (for Amanda Burnhard), and family growth (for the McDonald family).
An important consideration in defining your niche is that the straightforward diary approach necessitates posting a good deal of personal information (that is, if it is to intrigue a soul). So, when you think about it, you may decided you are more comfortable blogging about the subject you are teaching or studying during your Fulbright.
Know that if you’re teaching as a Fulbright, you’re already practicing the art of explaining ideas to a new audience. Why not break it down a little farther still, and post some intriguing concepts in a way that a general audience can understand?
If you’re researching as a Fulbright, this experience can help you learn to write in more interesting ways.
A cartoon about blogging, posted on the blog Ghost Stories and Haunted Places.
In case you’re still puzzled about how to find your niche, the ETSY Blog Team recommends these simple steps:
Voice / Tone
It’s important to identify who your audience is likely to be so you can work to engage them. For me, knowing who I am talking “to” helps make the writing more fun. And, as The Blog Maven rightly asserts, “If you sit down to write a post and you leave your personality at the door, you’re selling yourself – and your readers – short.” I completely agree!
Note that your audience may grow and change over time (your blog’s stats feature can help you determine if it’s changing). That’s much of the fun of being a Fulbright. In the past couple months I’ve run into dozens of people — both in Dublin and at home — who have read my blog and want to know more about some topic or other that I introduced on it. As I said before: that helps me know I’m doing my (cultural-exchange) job!
By blogging regularly, adjusting your tone and pace, and determining what you and your audience most enjoy, you’ll find your own blogging voice. Will you, for instance, “speak” slowly and precisely or quickly and casually on your blog?
Tony Teegarden posted the following helpful advice, saying If you want loyal readers:
Some benefits of a unique voice are:
Look / Format
Once you have determined your tone and favored subject matter, you can chose a blog template to match. Some template are designed for words — others for video, photography, or visual portfolios. This is your opportunity to coordinate the look, feel, and content of your site. I felt lucky to find a weathered looking template in green and blue that reflected the title I’d chosen, Ireland by Chance.
Old fashioned travel diary posted on Bill Sharp’s blog.
Get More Mileage
Clearly, as a Fulbright, you’re an extremely busy person! You’ve got to find ways to get the most mileage possible from your time. I reiterate: You simply must get more out of this task than just meeting CIEE’s expectation that you build a blog.
It’s too good an opportunity to waste!
Please take the time to ask yourself upfront: What do you want to learn?
I wanted to learn about writing for a popular audience. I also wanted to share what I’d be seeing, doing, and thinking with family and friends. I wanted to have a colorful record of my adventures — and perhaps a legacy of sorts.
Other Fulbrigters are at work creating their won legacies. One is using her Irish blog to practice their language skills and another to record her family’s development….
Amanda Burnhard‘s blog is called From Montague to Galway: A Blog about Our Year in Ireland, Studying the Irish Language. It gives her a venue to practice writing in the Irish language. She posts everything in Irish and then, below that, in English.
Amanda’s blogging helps her connect to the people she’s meeting in Galway. It also helps people back home understand her experiences living abroad. But more importantly — in the big scheme of things — Amanda and her husband Jonathan are helping preserve use of Irish language and knowledge of traditional music. Amanda’s blog thus represents a contribution to humanity’s knowledge base about the Irish-speaking parts of Western Ireland. How cool is that?
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Anatomical drawing of hearts and blood vessels from Quaderni di Anatomia vol 2; folio 3v” (Image downloaded from Art Prints on Demand.)
Another interesting thing we can learn from Amanda (the Fulbright) and Jonathan (her husband) is how to use a team approach. Jonathan is active on Facebook and he brings their Fulbright-related experiences to that venue. Amanda has chosen a more reflective working environment. She limits her social media activity to the blog. (Incidentally, Amanda posted a blog about staying at my apartment while I was out of town before Christmas, and an earlier entry that included a photo of Dave and me.)
Scott and Christine MacDonald developed yet another approach. Christine (the spouse of a Fulbright) is the one blogging about their Fulbright experience. Her blog is called A Year in Ireland. Christine’s blog provides a glimpse of what it is like to bring a family along on the Fulbright journey — something Fulbright Ireland encourages and endeavors to support.
In parting, I’d like to note that Leonardo da Vinci made regular practice of journaling. What an incredible legacy he left us in his journals!
So let us proceed boldly in our blogging adventures, my Fulbright friends, in hope that journaling will help us create a better world and inspire others to do the same.
A page from Leonardo da Vinci’s journal (downloaded from Ashley Foden’s blog).
I’m excited to welcome new visitors from Africa.
I’m happy to report that people from three different countries in Africa have found their way to this blog in the past few days.
It appears that some places in the world are more difficult to reach via blog than others: the region around China, the Sahara, and Greenland are still missing from my map. Perhaps that says something about the distribution of population (Greenland and parts of Africa), resources and Internet access (parts of Africa and China), and restricted freedom of information (China)?
In any case, I’ve enjoyed sharing ideas with my African friends ever since my first visit to Tanzania (in 2003). Since then I’ve returned to Tanzania and visited South Africa and Tunisia (all with students) as well.
A highlight of my life experience has been the Fulbright program I conducted in Tanzania in 2005, though I am still working to make sense of many things I saw and experienced.
This is a flier for the Fulbright-Hays program I conducted on behalf of Hampton University and the US Department of Education. (I wrote a grant proposal that was accepted, and I served as Principle Investigator of the grant and also as director of the program.) In the group photo, I’m standing second from the right. Many people in this photo are my friends on Facebook still today.
Ireland by Chance 