Saturday 15 March 2008

Blogs as a teacher's reflective diary

Are you

  • a new teacher?

  • on a teacher training course?

  • an experienced teacher starting a new project?
If so why not consider keeping your own reflective diary in blog form. Not sure what a blog is? Well you are looking at one now. Watch this 3 minute video to find out more in plain English.

Why use a blog?
Well, it is an easy space to organise your thoughts. You don't need to let anyone have the link if you don't want to, but it might be a useful thing to share between a group of peers or for mentors or the teacher trainers to check regularly. It could be a way, of others offering support within the college, to tap in easily to help you with issues you are facing in teaching.

Building a community
Once a few teachers start to use this as a way of reflecting it could be a powerful tool to share how they are feeling about or coping with the pressures of teaching in the first year, how new teaching strategies they tried in the class actually worked (or didn't) or how they are finding studying on teacher training courses alongside work. Teachers often feel they are the only ones facing certain issues. The use of blogs may help them to see that others are also having similar problems, concerns and eureka moments. The blog will offer a way of sharing your experiences with others.

Creating a blog
Watch a video tutorial here on setting up a Blogger account.



Follow this link to create your first blog or contact an ILT trainer via email or by leaving a comment here, to organise an introduction to blogging session.

Blogging in the classroom
If you don't want to use it for your own refelctive practice then consider your students using it. Here are some video clips to get you started.

This video clip explains one teacher's view on blogs from University of Padua 2 minutes.

Blogging in the classroom 5 minutes

CNN World report Blogging in the classroom 2 minutes

Please comment (just below this article) if you have anything to add or discuss about it and / or use the poll at the top of the page to let me know if it was useful to you. It will help to improve future tips. There will be more on building student communities in a future post.

1 comment:

AnneS said...

I'm not one for personally blogging but I think the potential of the blog for teacher support and teacher training is definitely something to be explored, particularly given the restricted time we have to meet and share ideas these days. Having had a brief look at Wendy's, I'm going to try it out with a group of brand new teachers. I may yet become a blogger.