Blogging for teachers
Benefits of blogging
Reflective practice – thinking about what you do, why you it, how you do it and whether it works.
Ideas sharing – you’ve probably got some ideas that no one has ever heard of. It’s a shame to see those ideas go to waste.
An end of professional isolation – if you’re in a large department, syndicate, kindy, then you probably don’t know what this means. If you’re sole-charge you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Dangers of blogging
Extremely rarely, you get a nasty comment. In 2005, my wife and I were on missionary service. We had a comment on our blog that said that we were terrible parents etc etc. I was a little disappointed, but I simply deleted it. Easy.
Putting too much of yourself online. I don’t release my personal details: contact, place of work, where I live etc. And I restrict facebook friends to people I know (not workmates). Twitter and linkedin are the best ways to tell people about your blog.
Where to start
This is a hobby horse of mine. I hate blogger/blogspot. I don’t like its comment system and the way it doesn’t (easily) support mobile. WordPress.com is much prettier and fixes these problems. There’s a much better post about this here.