I’m glad that James pointed you out during today’s Masterclass and that you asked the question about teachers needing to blog, to understand blogging before they go about putting blogs into their classrooms. And I know that my fuzzy-five-a.m. head didn’t answer you very well. So now that it’s 12 hours later, I’ll try again.

I agree. Absolutely. In principle. But I also think that it is okay for a teacher to blog alongside the students for a while, in a pilot project sort of way to try things out within the group situation before winging off onto his/her own blog–as long as the teacher is blogging in some way with the group, as long as the teacher is reading blogs and thinking about them. But you’re right, it is much better if the teacher has been trying out the feel of blogging before she pulls them into the classroom.

I actually didn’t fire up my own professional blog, bgblogging, until the spring of 2004, and yet I had started blogging with and in my classes in the fall of 2001 by keeping a side-blog related directly to the course only, called bgdaily or bgnotes. And yes, I stumbled a few times along the way because I hadn’t embraced my own “real” blogging practice first. But I learned a whole lot from those mistakes, and I think I came to bgblogging when I was really ready to say something, to try to contribute to the wider conversation, and when my students asked me why I didn’t keep my own blog. Duh. I’m a real example, I guess, of “do what I say and not what I do”!

I still am raising questions re the predominance of ‘Add a comment’, ‘Be the first’ and ‘Comments (0)’ at the end of so many posts. Should it even be a concern that so many blogs aren’t attracting comments? Perhaps it’s enough to accept that blogs (and individual posts therin) serve a variety of purposes. Some seek/’require’ response and dialogue. Others are a record or reflection. More still are multifaceted etc

BTW good comments re IWBs. I’m not agin them. I think they are part of the process as we move toward personalised interactive and individual tools for each student. For the analogy I could just as easily have used data projectors. I encourage educators to get blogs in the class and computer rooms (and as part of teacher good practice) asap seeking their potential as a learning and communcation tool in a variety of ways NOW. This of course includes and supports Graham’s comments re reading other blogs, investing time, developing skills, networking, thinking/acting globally etc Cheers, Al

Whiteboards are becoming a bit of a fad here too and I like to remind people about a victorian era classroom and get them to make the comparison with an interactive WB. Some of the practices I see are not much different – real ‘sage on the stage’ stuff. In other cases they can be powerful facilitators of learning. It all depends on how they are used. They CAN just be a way of making average teaching a whole lot more expensive to run!

I wish you well Thomas as you consider using blogs in the classroom and dare advise you not to ‘hang back’ too much while the ‘background work and practice’ takes place before using it with the learning you’ll help facilitate.

The Sufi saying via Terry is timeless (actually I suppose it isn’t:) and reminds me of the one where someone ill-informed (read ‘pickpocket’) can’t even see the Holy Man (‘forest’) for the trees.

Thanks Karen. I feel better living and blogging in Adelaide. It’s also quite empowering to know that my blogging ‘diet’ and perspective (a great analogy) could be seen as exotic to (or even just contain some tasty tidbits for) others.

Greg ‘the perpetual challenge is to get people to respond and contribute so it becomes a conversation and interactive rather than one-way’ Carroll is right-on-the-mark as well. So often I see visitor’s maps celebrating the number of global visits to a variety of blogs. Blog stats are held high and credibility claimed. Might they reflect reading/scanning/reflecting? Is that really the point? ‘I’m writing but is anyone reading?’ has been raised before. What are the implications for us as educators? How can we discern the relevance placed on this by our students? My kids seem to get a huge kick out of seeing themselves and their thoughts published on our blog.

I think we need to delve more into this aspect of multifaceted blogging. Perhaps for our CEGSA presentation we can also consider the transformation of a read only web to read/write still lacks the other ‘R’ = ‘Respond’. [I’d claim these 3 R’s as original but reckon they aren’t and would love to see further discussion regarding them] I occasionally comment on others’ blogs but still spend literally hours most nights after school reading/writing and responding. Getting the balance right is the thing for me. In the classroom my kids are doing this increasingly right now. [check out their early attempts at http://alupton.wordpress.com/2006/05/30/leeroy-jenkins/ ] Working with the kids and exploring the potential of blogs better informs me as an educator. This in turn I share with other educators. Gently I hope there will be a transition to this dialogue happening more within and beyond a South Australian blogosphere.

Graham, I always enjoy your thoughts as an educational blogger and contributions to blogging as professional learning. I think the balance we provide has great value. “You may as well write your thoughts up in a Word document” leads me to agree that it certainly is beneficial to be a reader of blogs. Many would say imperative.
To further our discussion and presentation please allow me to insert IWB language for that of blogging in a quote from your post …

“In summary, until you become aware of the power of a real audience that can potentially come with aN INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD, you won’t be able to harness that power effectively for your students and INTERACTIVE WHITBOARDING runs the danger of becoming a short term gimmick.”

How do we go about becoming aware of this power?

I think there is a strong argument for educators (including leaders) developing their blogging skills and getting them happening at the same time in the classrooms enhancing the opportunity for students to connect with their learning.

It’s a great debate and learning curve. I’m glad we’re on the same journey.
Cheers, Al

One of the seminal moments for me as an immigrant to the UK was to see fruit from my home country (South Africa) on the “exotic fruits” stand in the stores. What was also weird was that only some of the fruits appeared there: physalis, pineapple, papaya, mango, granadilla (passionfruit), litchi. Apples, oranges, pears, plums and bananas were together with the “normal” stuff. So what is the criterion for exotic? Some of the stuff you do will be normal to us, but some of it will be way out there. And the dividing line will differ from person to person.

That’s the beauty of blogging your experience – you never know what someone else is going to find valuable.

One of the best ways to annoy me is to come up to me in mid-conversation wth someone about the benefits of blogging and drop this line,” Blogging. You’ve obviously got a lot of spare time.” Blog On……