Doing it a bit differently - teaching with blogs

Many teachers will tell you that they don't have time to blog, on top of everything else that they do.
But these have missed the point that blogging isn't just spruking on the street corner, hoping others will listen. It can be a useful classroom tool as well.

My first blog, also named You Are Never Alone, was a company blog for Education.au limited, and existed Spetember 2006 until earlier this year when it was "turned off". The aim was to run a commentary on educational issues and to promote company services like edna.  

I created my first personal blog, Smik's Learning Space, nearly 4 years ago, as a space where I could park materials for workshops that I was conducting. That blog now duplicates my Posterous posts via an RSS feed. From that starting point I went on to create another personal blog at beginning of 2008, geared to my interest in crime fiction.

One of the things that I'm really convinced of is the capacity of a blog to allow the writer some creative reflective space. You are also writing for a critical audience, and that influences the content. Now that is true whether you are a classrom teacher or a student. The second purpose of the blog might be the one I originally had for Smik's Learning Space - a place where you can deposit content for others to use, as in a teacher providing materials for a class.

Teachers might want to consider whether in fact they need two blog spaces - one for personal exploration and reflection and being part of the educational community, and one for use by their students to collect links and work.
And then of course, there would be the matter of having students create blogs for themselves. Writing a daily blog can create the same cathartic effect for your students, providing a reflective space, writing for a purpose knowing they have an audience (and responding to other student's blogs'), and developing a variety of literacy skills.

So here are some more blogs for you to explore:

• Start with this post on The Edublogger
• Here are some teacher librarian blogs:
  • http://ehss3.edublogs.org/
  • http://www.facebook.com/?ref=hp#!/tigslibrary
  • http://campusrc.edublogs.org/
  • www.shcmslibrary.edublogs.org
  • www.mclibrary11.wordpress.com
  • http://caclibrary.blogspot.com/
  • http://library.scotch.vic.edu.au/blog/
  • http://blogs.cccc.vic.edu.au/informationservices/
  • http://bacirc.edublogs.org/
• and some teacher blogs that I follow
  • Edubeacon
  • Open Educator
  • On an e-Journey with Generation Y
  • Betchablog

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