Developing as a Blogger
Of late I have been reflecting more on my learning and applying it to my practices via this blog. I set it up a couple of years ago but had been sporadic in adding entries to it. My motivation for having a blog was to try to encourage me to reflect of on my teaching practice more regularly. I guess in theory it was good but although it gave me an avenue to think about my teaching it didn't really encourage more writing. I also felt a bit uncomfortable putting my ideas out there to the big wide world, which is kind of the purpose of a blog!
With the Mindlab course, though, I'm going out of my comfort zone in all kinds of ways, and sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly is one of them. I have been making regular updates after each session, focusing on the aspect of the class that I found interesting and can apply to myself, my students or my school. I have found this a useful avenue to make me think about and clarify the ideas from the course rather than forgetting about them as soon as the sessions finish.
As an English teacher I'm always encouraging my students to write and I've experimented (unsuccessfully up to this point) with getting my students to blog. I wanted them to work on expressing their ideas clearly for a potential audience, having read the findings of the Maniakalani clusters work with blogging. Schools in the cluster found that students' literacy improved through blogging because they had to express ideas succinctly and be entertaining in order to engage their readers. (http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Snapshots-of-Learning/Blogger). I thought blogging would be a great way for them to build a portfolio of their learning and writing. I also liked the challenge it would provide some students, as well as perhaps building their confidence.
So if I could see the benefit of blogging for my students, why not apply the same rationale to my own learning experience. Like students, I need to be aware of an audience and how I express my ideas to them. Hopefully by developing my own blogging style and habit, I'll be better set to encourage my students in their own reflective practices.
As part of the blogging process I've started to be more conscious of who might actually read this. This isn't a forum to promote a certain way of doing things, and I'm not trying to be a trailblazer. Probably the people who will find what I have to say remotely interesting are those going through the same processes as me. As such I've really put myself out there and connected my blog to Google+, so that all my entries are automatically promoted on my profile. I'm guessing that most readers are those also doing Mindlab.
It's been daunting looking at the growing numbers of people reading what I have to say, but isn't that, after all, one of the primary purposes of blogging?
With the Mindlab course, though, I'm going out of my comfort zone in all kinds of ways, and sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly is one of them. I have been making regular updates after each session, focusing on the aspect of the class that I found interesting and can apply to myself, my students or my school. I have found this a useful avenue to make me think about and clarify the ideas from the course rather than forgetting about them as soon as the sessions finish.
As an English teacher I'm always encouraging my students to write and I've experimented (unsuccessfully up to this point) with getting my students to blog. I wanted them to work on expressing their ideas clearly for a potential audience, having read the findings of the Maniakalani clusters work with blogging. Schools in the cluster found that students' literacy improved through blogging because they had to express ideas succinctly and be entertaining in order to engage their readers. (http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Snapshots-of-Learning/Blogger). I thought blogging would be a great way for them to build a portfolio of their learning and writing. I also liked the challenge it would provide some students, as well as perhaps building their confidence.
So if I could see the benefit of blogging for my students, why not apply the same rationale to my own learning experience. Like students, I need to be aware of an audience and how I express my ideas to them. Hopefully by developing my own blogging style and habit, I'll be better set to encourage my students in their own reflective practices.
As part of the blogging process I've started to be more conscious of who might actually read this. This isn't a forum to promote a certain way of doing things, and I'm not trying to be a trailblazer. Probably the people who will find what I have to say remotely interesting are those going through the same processes as me. As such I've really put myself out there and connected my blog to Google+, so that all my entries are automatically promoted on my profile. I'm guessing that most readers are those also doing Mindlab.
It's been daunting looking at the growing numbers of people reading what I have to say, but isn't that, after all, one of the primary purposes of blogging?
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