Blogs - An Introduction

Why should we or our students blog?

Professional Development

One of the greatest appeals of blogging for teachers is membership in a greater community of educators. Pick a subject area, grade level, or area of interest. Google it "+blog" and you are bound to discover a number of people writing about the topic. Reading those blogs is a good way to start seeing how blogging works; adding your own blog to the conversation will deepen your understanding of both how the tool works and the topic you are studying.

This process of reading, reflecting, and writing is what blogs are all about. Unlike traditional professioanl development, which usually lasts a day or two and provides little in the way of follow up, this self-directed PD is ongoing and includes a community of fellow learners.

Students Blogging

Reading, reflecting (perhaps call this critical thinking), and writing. This process envelops almost all academic activities. Blogging takes this fundamental educational practice and develops it in some key ways:

• Audience - Blogs provide students with a global audience. While the teacher is still involved, she is no longer the only, or even primary, audience for the students' writings.
• Voice - Blogs encourage students to develop their own, personal voices tailored to be suitable to purpose and audience.
• Clarity - If the audience can't understand what the student is saying, they will respond. Students learn quickly to state their opinions clearly and to write cleanly. Anything else will be poorly received.
• The X Factor - Anecdotally, most students, most of the time, find blogging a more compelling way to communicating their ideas. They simply seem to want to write more using blogs instead of paper and pen.

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