Blogs & Me

I am working within a PLC at school looking at Blogging. For any of you, like me, who had no knowledge of this acronym it stands for "Professional Learning Communities". We are a little group of enthusiastic teachers who are interested in the possibilities of blogging in the classroom.Personally, one thing I love is the diverse blogging knowledge in the group. We are not a group of blogging evangelistic. We are a group of blogging adventurers, wandering along unknown paths, to find our own blogging reality.There are plenty of websites telling us why we need to blog,  Forbes gave us a 9 reason list from improving job prospects to consuming less and creating more (though I am not sure this is strictly the case as I end up consuming more, as I read around the topics I blog about) and the Huffington Post gave us a list of 10 ideas including building a professional network.However, I know that I need to come up with my own set of reasons. From my own life experiences I know I will not maintain anything unless I truly believe it is worthwhile. Anything less and I will pay it lip-service but I will not commit fully. So here are my reasons for blogging (both personally and with pupils)Clarify ThoughtsI am a bit of a scatterbrain and I have come to realise, over many years, that knowledge & thoughts consolidated in one area helps me to process the information. To be honest I mostly blog about the technology I am using and the technological integration of my colleagues. When I write about this I find that my thoughts on the subject have been clarified by the end of the post. This particular post is a great example. It has been started and written in many different directions and may change still! However, by the end I would have clarified my thoughts and come to more concrete conclusions.I firmly believe that the pupils go through a clarification process. I have watched them tacle a question and then look frustrated, annoyed and then final intent as they reach a point when they can see a clear path through.One-Stop-ShopI see my personal blog as a blog -come -portfolio. I love the pages aspects because you can use them to develop more static information. You consolidate all your help videos, worksheets, professional videos...to one place where they can be used by others and where you can easily access them.  I use this feature predominately with my school blog as I wanted to develop a one-stop-shop for staff to visit if they need help, guidance or inspiration.Pupils are looking at this too. As blogging is growing within my community it is seen as an excellent way to develop an eportfolio of your years at school. I would probably argue that you need separate ones. One for your early years at school and one to showcase ideas, work, media that you want to show to potential universities and employers. I think it is amazing to have one weblink  that would allow access to all that information. There is plenty written about this, I like this Edutopia page which gives specific examples of how to make a good portfolio.Develop my VoiceWell this may be a little bit cheesy but it is important. Whilst struggling to write my first ever blog post I was constantly thinking that it need to sound more professional, more academic, more "teacherie". I felt that I needed to produce a piece that would be read and wondered at. I wanted my piece to be good - and was left feeling that is wasn't!. As I wrote more and more posts I realised that I had something to say and that my writing style was mine. Under duress I can write an essay with the best of them, however this is not me. I am a more informal chatty kind of person. Gaining confidence in blog writing has allowed me to embrace this writing style and enjoy expressing my thoughts rather than worrying about my style.I have seen this in some of the blogs pupils have written. Pupils who do not always have something to say in class have produced detailed posts that not only expressed their ideas but also their personality.This pupil can have plenty to say in class when asked but I love this excellent piece on charities.    Writing for a purposeI have found that pupils written work is very different when they write in the blog arena. I think some of this comes from having a potential audience, from anywhere in the world. Also they maintain their own site, so it is their property and I think this makes it a special place. I also think that I produce more open questions when creating them for blog posts - I ask more of the pupils and they in-return produce better written work.Here I have added example questions and two further blogs. The first one is a grade 9 pupil and the other a grade 10.

 WorldWide AudienceSo this ties nicely into the final point. There is the potential (albeit slim) that your musings will be read by someone outside your social circle. It will be read by someone who happened upon it on the web! This is quite a thought and can inspire many of us to do better! You can help the kids out by using twitter and #comments4kids and then a friendly twitter person will comment on their blogs. This is key, because we all like comments, just seeing them pop up and knowing someone has read your thoughts and took the time to write back to you. Totally inspiring!So these are must current ramblings on blogs and blogs in my teaching!