Teachers and Blogging

I was following Kevin Washburn’s Clerestory e-mail and he talked about George Couros, a district administrator and former principal, and technology integrator who encourages his teaching staff to blog as part of their professional development.  George Couros encourages his teachers to blog as part of their “authentic reflection on their teaching.”  After reading his blog, I have to say I have a new level of understanding and appreciation for blogging.  As I started this process for a class assignment, I was not quite sure what I would talk about that might be significant to anyone else.  But Mr. Couros raises an interesting point.  Blogging is a perfect way for teachers to share all of the really great things they are doing in their classrooms.  As they reflect on their classroom activities, they spend time critically evaluating their practice.  They also provide an opportunity for someone else to benefit from their experiences.  He describes this transparent learning community where we share and learn from each other.  How cool is that.  And we don’t even have to leave our desks, or spend thousands of dollars on one day in-service trainings.

And, I just want you to know that I am very proud of myself for learning how to place a link in my blog, by myself.

Following the tweets…

As I try to grow in my knowledge of tweets, and feeds, and blogs I realize how easy it is to get pulled into all of the knowledge that is shared out there.  I followed a NAEYC tweet to an article on full day kindergarten in Chicago.  That led to a link to the Education Week blog that had a very interesting article by Nirvi Shah on the U.S. Department of Education’s finalized regulations that address how to work with infants and toddlers with disabilities (my dissertation is on early intervention).  I still need to learn how to embed the links to the articles and tweets, but as my technology knowledge grows, my ability to share the information that I find will also grow.

Just getting started…

This is one of those times in my life as a student that I secretly love (being in a state of cognitive dissonance), but at the same time find very frustrating.  I am trying to add a calendar to my blog page.  I am still trying.  I tried to reset the header picture to something I really liked, but it wouldn’t crop it correctly.

As educators, we need to remember that this is often how our students feel as they are faced with challenges.  Do we give them the time to work through those challenges?  That for me is the dilemma with this learning cuve, not having all of the time that I would like to have to explore and learn.  It is times like these that we look to those who have gone before, and seek advice from those who can bridge the gap between what we know and what we would like to know.