About Us « BlackBeltBlogger

About Us

Black Belt Blogger is part of the Time4Writing.com and Time4Learning.com family. Our service is online education for children. This blogging course, our first venture into grown-up education, sprang from a fortuituous combination of a great teacher and some people who wanted to learn...

The Black Belt Blogger prototype course was developed by BBM (Black Belt Mama) in 2008, an educational techy person (john) who happened to be a blogger himself, and Kris, who pulled it all together (updated 12/09). Black Belt Blogger teaches students how to write an interesting blog and build a community of readers.

About Black Belt Mama (Black Belt Blogger Instructor)

"Most karate moms just do the commute; this one is working towards her black belt."

I am a ~~30-something~~ forever 29 year old work at home Mom. I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English Writing, Creative Nonfiction. I worked for a small literary journal as an Assistant Editor, at Clinique cosmetics (because the pay was better), at a graphic design firm, and as a high school English teacher before having my first daughter and deciding to stay at home. A few years later, I started my first blog "Black Belt Mama."

One day I got an email asking me, "Why is your blog so engaging? Why is mine so much the opposite." I took a look at his blog, emailed him a response, and was then cajoled into teaching this course. It's been exciting to watch students take the course and create amazing blogs.

The First Student

I was looking around the internet, wondering why my blog wasn't attracting traffic. I had blogged faithfully for months. While I had plenty of "surfers," I had not earned a group of repeat visitors, a community. I started wondering why my blog was a dud while other blogs fared so much better. At one point, I emailed "BBM," whose blog I had been following, and asked her point blank: "Why does your blog succeed in attracting loyal readers and mine doesn't?"

Her answer was direct, analytical and rang true. I was thrilled and crestfallen all at the same time. I tried to hire her as my editor. Then, when it was clear that I needed more help than just some editing, I asked her if she would teach a course on the topic. She agreed. It's a great course. We are now offering it to you. It's a lot more fun blogging when you have readers reacting to your writing.

About Black Belt Blogging

This Blog Writing course is providing by Time4Learning, a small online education company started in 2003. Our primary offering is an online curriculum for children from preschool through middle school, for after-school, summer school and homeschooling. Time4Learning is launching Time4Writing, a teacher-led online writing course for 4th-12th graders, in the Spring of 2008. The Black Belt Blogging course is our first course targeting adults. It is an eight week teacher-guided course that teaches one how to build a blog, create interesting content, and build readership.

About Time4Learning

Time4Learning is an integrated curriculum teaching language arts, math, science, and social studies from PreSchool to eighth grade. Here are some links to find information by grade:

Stop by and learn about their language arts and math curriculum.

RECOMMENDED SITES

Black Belt Blogger

What makes a blog worth reading?
This blog is part of our ongoing research and discussion of this question.

The First Writing Course for Bloggers!
This eight week online course teaches you to write a blog that engages your readers.

You'll learn to apply time-proven story-telling and narration techniques to blogging.

getting started blogging

Black Belt Quotes

"I never thought about blogging this way, which is why my blog was so boring. I'm getting real traffic now!"

I loved this course! In the first two weeks, I totally changed my approach to my blog, both to make it more interesting to my readers, and for reasons of personal safety... I recommend it highly..."