We held our first Blogging Club for teachers at my school yesterday and I would say that it was a resounding success. Of course I would say that because I am facilitating the group, but seriously it was great to see so many enthusiastic, open-minded teachers eager to learn about something new.
If you are one of the teachers who was there yesterday, and you are reading this post, welcome! Reading blogs is one of the first steps to entering the conversation and moving forward on your journey. In the spirit of reflective learning, I want to use this post and the subsequent ones I write about this process to be a place where I reflect on the process of working with teachers who want to use more technology. I am a firm believer that we learn best, when we can articulate our style, our successes, and most importantly our failures. I also want to use this series of posts to document what we are doing as a means to share the journey with other teachers, at other schools who may be interested in a similar project.
What we did:
In an effort to use as many useful tools as we can, beyond just blogs, I created a Google Doc as a place to take collective notes on our meeting. I am finding that Google Docs are a great tool for constructing meaning by its users. I could have easily passed out or shared the answers to some of the questions we discussed on a hand out or powerpoint, but I feel it is important to have stakeholders gather their thoughts and ideas and collaborate to come up with a shared response.
I created an outline on the document and encouraged participants to take notes as we talked. This was a bit new and unusual for some, and it was natural to want to read what was happening on the document. I think after a while it will get easier.
Here is some of what was there:
Why did you sign up for this blogging project?What are you hoping to get out of it?
- A renewed interest in blogging
- Have difficulties sometimes trying to figure out what to write about.
- never blogged before – want to learn/experiment!
- To develop a class blog and perhaps a professional blog
- To have a space for discussion points that are generated in class but because of time-constraints we cannot fully develop them.
- Community
- Communication
- who is the audience?
Two words on this list make me very happy: Community and Communication. We are on the right track!
Here was the agenda:
- Have a general conversation about why people blog.
- Different types of blogs: class, personal, professional.
- Different blogging platforms
- Start a blog
- Talk about design and features
It was great to see how these initial questions raised much bigger and more philosophical questions. I didn’t want to start with such a big scope, but it was encouraging to see the interest. Some of the major raised questions were about:
- Time constraints
- Safety
- Online Identity
- Publishing something while your learning (Things not being perfect)
There were other concerns, but these were the few that come to mind. I do not want to address these issues in this post, but rather hope that we can tackle each one in the coming weeks.
I think one mistake I made was that I only used my blogs and general way of doing things as examples, and people may have been a bit shocked by the amount of time I spend on my online presence. I want to ensure teachers who are in our group that I may be a bit of an anomaly. There is no expectation for teachers to have four blogs and spend a few hours a night posting to your blogs. Each individual will find a comfort zone and work from there. So please do not think that we are all trying to race to some kind of blogging ideal. We are here to start where you as an individual teacher feel comfortable and slowly move at your pace till you feel confident to move forward.
Interesting to see how much more cautious and nervous teachers can be about learning than their students. As teachers we tend to be more dubious and want to move very slowly and cautiously while we learn, but then we expect our students to be enthusiastic learners who are always working at the class pace rather than their own. Something to keep in mind: Each learner starts in a different place and needs their own pace. Do we do that in our classrooms, or are we trying to get through curriculum?
Next week we will look at a variety of other blogs to a sense of the diversity in style and content. Here is a list you may want to start exploring before next week:
always learning
Intrepid Teacher
Tip of the Iceberg
Learning on the Job
Mr. C’s Class Blog
Everyone has to start somewhere
Beyond Digital
The History Ninja
Teach With Video
Mrs. Utility Player
We went on to discuss the different types of blogs that teachers could have: Class, Personal, and Professional. Based on this Google Doc Survey I sent out prior to the meeting it looks like we will have a variety of different blog styles within our group, which is fantastic.
In closing we spent some time looking at various platforms, mainly: Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, and Edublogs. The expectation is that teachers will have a clear idea of what sort of blog they want to start and which platform will be best for them. Next week, we will create blogs and begin looking, I mean writing about, what we learn.
I am thinking about proposing that no matter what kind of blog teachers create, they also create a reflective blog for the purpose of this club. So they/you too can have a place to write about the various videos we will watch, the posts we will read, and the conversations we will have.
What do you think teachers? How is it going so far? Don’t be shy leave a comment and let the conversations begin. For those of you wondering about time, this post took me 17 minutes to write, 10 minutes to edit. Please do not judge lest there be typos or grammatical faux pas. (Spelling?)
Hey Jabiz! Great post! Thanks for sharing. Sounds like things are going well and I really like your organized, thorough approach.
One thought off the top of my head – it might be really difficult and intimidating to maintain 2 blogs — one for beginning and one for reflecting — when you’re new to this stuff. I currently manage 3 blogs, but in the beginning 1 was hard enough (it still is! my main one has been dormant for many months… eep).
See how the participants feel… maybe they’re more ambitious than me? I am not sure. But I don’t see any reason why that main blog can’t also be the place for reflection.. ?
Just some thoughts..
Great point. I am just thinking if someone is creating a blog for say, Early Years parent communication, then they may not have a place to reflect on what we are discussing every week.
Your point is well made and I am curious how participants respond. I guess the question is, “Are blogs for broadcasting info to parents and students, Class Blogs, the same as reflective spaces?
Should they be?
I don’t think they should be. I’m encouraging my lot to blog for themselves first, to get the feel of it, to see what they can and can’t do before trying to create spaces for parents or students. This way they can feel secure making mistakes, learning as they go and reflecting on the process with other newbie bloggers. Once they feel they are ready, then they can create a blog that is more polished from the beginning to interact with parents and/or students.
Great post. Thanks for sharing this. I like the breakdown of the reason for using the google doc. I like that outline idea- not wide open, but plenty of freedom to participate and interact.
I like the list of blogs and the fact that you frame blogging as conversation. I’m bringing someone in to my 7th grade via skype and the mini-lesson is literally titled “blogging as conversation.”
I am going to share this with them too.
Thanks!
Hey Jabiz,
Thanks for the update. I am anxious to get started, and have written a few posts in a word document, because the issue for me is which platform would work best. As I want mine to be a class blog, I would like one that can only be accessed by the people I want to see it. Any suggestions?
I will send you an email soon.
Jane was walking down the stairs with me after our mind-boggling first session, and she was telling me more about Jabiz the blogger. Apparently you are one of the most prolifically read bloggers on the net. Trying to remember back today, Jane said that some students in America were doing a project to find out as much information about a blogger as they could – you, in this instance. They found out an incredible amount of detail about your life through reading your blogs. As you were telling us, none of it was stuff that you wanted to keep secret, and you are happy to live a “goldfish bowl” life. I salute you Jabiz, keep inspiring us to be open-minded communicators.
Wow! Thanks for the kind words Marion. The reality however is that I have built a small following of loyal and incredibly insightful and helpful educators who help me learn. I have done this through years of hard work and persistence. While the allure of Edtech fame is alluring it is not why most of us get in the game.
We blog and share and open ourselves up, so that we can allow others in to help us. I don’t think the expectation should be to live “Goldfish Bowl” lives as not many people are comfortable with that. But I do think that sharing some of our thoughts and practices can help us be more reflective and improve our daily professional and personal lives.
I am an English teacher, so in short I believe in writing as a means to growth. As for inspiration, thanks again, but let;s find out where your starting point is and where you want to go, and as a group we will all help each other move forward.
Thank you for coming, being committed, and reading this post. Can’t wait till you have a blog, so I can read your thoughts as well.
ha ha! so i got me a wordpress blog site (correct terminology?) going – sat down for a 10 min experiment and wrote for much longer – even managed to embed a video (a jack kerouac reading of ‘On the Road’). I’m sure will only be of interest to two or three people in my life – but was easy, fun, cathartic and i’m feeling – dare i say it …..intrepid!
Thanks for opening the door
That is fantastic. The secret to technology the way I see it, is making the time to figure it out on your own. It is nice to have someone who can help you when you get stuck, but you only really get it, when you have spent 45 minutes “learning” how to do it on your own. Feels great huh? Embedding that video. It is all that easy.
Can’t wait to read your post because Jack Kerouac definitely interests me. See our community just got that much closer, now that we know we have that in common:
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…”
Jabiz, thanks for spearheading this. Looking forward to getting my class blog going so you (and the rest of my class parents) can see your kid in action.
I appreciate your passion for using blogs as a means to communicate.
Learning, still.
Adele
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