Module 1: Excellent Teacher Blogs

As a teacher, I often find myself looking for new ideas and ways to motivate my students. However, this quest for information did not usually go much further than colleagues in my building or friends of mine that are teachers. However, my Learning Technologies class at McDaniel College has opened my eyes to a new way to find out about new strategies and ideas through the world of blogging. Some of the blogs that I looked at include The Nerdy Teacher by Nicholas Provenzano, Ctrl Alt Teach by Catherine Horton Flippen, and Primary Tech by Katherine Morris.

The Nerdy Teacher posts new entries to his blog on an almost daily basis, and his material includes an eclectic mix of humor, reflections, and ideas for teachers. He is a teacher at the secondary level, which makes his ideas immediately relevant to me. Just reviewing the entries for the last few weeks, I came across a brilliant idea to provide students with an opportunity to work on a project of interest to them throughout the year. The entries 20% Time in My Classroom and Change Your Perspective highlight some of the challenges that must be addressed in order to give students a class period every Friday to work on a project that is of special interest to them and offers strategies that teachers can use to make the experience a success. In addition, his entry entitled Things I Will Not Be Missing in My Paperless Classroom opened my eyes to the potential of the use of Evernote in my own classroom, especially given the level of technology that I have available at my school. Just a few minutes on this blog gave me a lot of things to think about in terms of my own teaching strategies. Plus, all the folks that responded to the posts gave me some additional ideas to think about.

Ctrl Alt Teach is drenched in ideas for teachers that have a craving for technology integration, but it is not updated as regularly as the Nerdy Teacher. Catherine Horton Flippen is a high school teacher in Virginia, and she has a flair for creative uses of technology to support teaching and learning. She attends a variety of conferences so that she can keep her finger on the pulse of the latest technology innovations. One of her blog posts, It Exists: Interactive PowerPoint with Twitter, focuses on ways that you can take PowerPoint presentations from the days of old and make them much more engaging through the use of Twitter, which allows students to interact with the content throughout the presentation. Two other posts, Google Teacher Academy Chicago Application Video and 8 Ways to Introduce Second Life to Educators, highlight a variety of organizations and conference ideas for teachers that are looking for new ways and ideas to integrate technology into their classrooms and to facilitate their own professional development.

Primary Tech is also an amazing blog resource, and so many of the items that Katherine Morris has posted about over the last few weeks are directly related to topics that we have been learning about in this module. While it is not updated regularly (perhaps a post every 3 weeks), it offers a variety of articles about classroom blogging, as well as students and their digital footprints. One entry, 10 Tips for Introducing Blogging Into Your Classroom, provides teachers with useful strategies and ideas for implementing blogging as part of a class. In addition, Blogging and the Literacy Curriculum is an entry where the blogger reflects on her own experiences with bogging in the classroom, but also give readers some “food for thought” as they think about ways to implement blogging in their own classrooms. Last, but certainly not least, is the blog entry Teaching Children About Digital Footprints, which discusses ideas and provides links to resources that teachers can use to teach students about the importance of a positive digital footprint, which is often a difficult concept for many of our younger students to understand.

Interestingly, I only spent about 30 minutes or so looking at these blogs, yet the amount of ideas I took away was amazing. I am certain that I would not have thought about many of these ideas if I looked only within my existing professional networks. The best part about my blogging experience from a professional development angle is the fact that I was able to “combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction” (“Eide Neurolearning Blog”). Not only was I able to read the thoughts of others about integrating technology into education and other important teaching strategies, but I also had the option to ask clarifying questions or make comments based on the feedback and comments of others that read the blog entry. In addition, I think that blogging should be the focus of PD at the school level. In PGCPS, we use Edmodo, which allows us to interact with each other about a variety of issues, but our community is limited to people in the building. However, if we were to use WordPress or another blogging interface, we can create a learning community where teachers recognize students “as participants in a grand conversation rather than as passive consumers of education. They will expect their contributions to be incorporated, with attribution, into the subject matter” (Windham, p. 18). We owe it to our students to participate in professional development opportunities that elevate our ability to incorporate technology in our classrooms. If blogging fosters and supports divergent thinking and interaction as Fernette and Brock Eide suggest, how can teachers say no to refining their craft and giving students the ability to discuss a wide range of issues? (“Eide Neurolearning Blog”).