The practice of blogging is increasingly becoming popular among the educators and why not as blogging is undoubtedly a powerful tool to express one’s ideas, views, and information to the large pool of audience.
Similarly, educators are making the best use of blogging to share their ideas on pedagogy and new age learning process and obtain feedback on the same. The other pertinent point to note is that through regular blogging educators attain stamina and witness steady growth in their profession over time. They are also able to address problem-solving solutions publicly and magnify classroom learning experience of the students.
To flip the coin, taking the present world into context, the educators must not only just recommend good tools, have theoretical knowledge on EdTech tools or remain up-to-date on new tools. What’s more important for the instructors is to have a first-hand operational experience on technology. It will help them understand the benefits of each tool better and assist them to recommend students as per their requirement. So, when teachers make use of blogging regularly, they know the in and out of this tool and can guide students as they start blogging for an educational purpose. The same point is emphasized, in the video mentioned below.
Let’s take a look as to why educators must start blogging today to improve their career graph and most importantly enjoy their profession.
1. Share, Reflect and Publish
Educators today no more work in a closed environment and their reach is not just confined within the ambit of their institution. They also need to know how up-to date they are in thought process, how relevant is successful projects in the global sphere of teaching by sharing it with other educators across the globe.
Alongside sharing they are also in need of some guidance from the best thinkers or discuss their teaching philosophy with other educators with the help of blogging.
For those educators who are researching on pedagogical process, blogging is a way by which they can throw a light on the research findings and help other educators with the information.
2. Be a Digital Citizen
By becoming proficient with technology, the teachers are no doubt empowering their knowledge but at the same time they are also establishing a digital presence. When they start blogging, they are actually producing information and leaving a positive digital footprint (Know more on digital footprint here). The teachers are living in an amazing age where they have ample opportunities and they just need to tap those to show their unique point of view about anything say teaching and its models.
3. Get Connected to a Large Professional Community
In a huge connected world that we live in, the teachers can convert their blogging space into their own professional development area. They could build their own Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) by sharing blogs and ideas online to see what others comment on it. This way, it would enahnace their professional development by successfully engaging with audience and building their own Personal Learning Network or Environment (PLN or PLE). Professional communities do not just comprise local teachers but teachers from all over the world who would also share their success stories, strategies, advice and lessons.
4. Strengthen Collaboration Ability
Blogging can be help each colleagues to come up with ideas, collaborate them together and write to inspire change and grow together. It would also allow each of the educators to spend more time on how to model good learning practices, create meaningful real time experience and sharpen their writing skills. It is also an outlet for personal reflection as before writing they would have to focus on their teaching, the concepts they are focusing on and how their students would learn and how they could improve their teaching practices. Many things which one just imagines gets much profound as they sit to pen it down and reflect an insight to it.
5. Build up library of content & Resource
In the process of exchanging ideas, a teacher is also concurrently building his/her portfolio as they are building a library of content and resources to share it with others. This could further be used to share with other teachers who are teaching in the same grade level by curating the topic or arranging the best resources. Whatever be it, the educator is continuously growing and sharing their rich portfolio with many.
Thus an educator need not have to be a great teacher to start blogging but become one after starting to blog and interact, learn and improvise on their skills. If you as an educator is practicing blogging, what is your personal experience? Please share with us your experience to help teachers get into the practice of blogging extensively.
For a brief introduction and guidance as to how educators could move about with blogging, please view the video mentioned below.
