Reviewing Blogs for Teachers!

Hello again everyone! First off, this is not a blog where all you will read are sentences that look like this "We will exploit customer-driven action plans through the collaborative process." or They dis-aggregate top-down living documents via self-reflection." This is a blog about teacher blogs. My aim is to make this a one stop for those looking for quality informative blogs.

PART I

Whats a blog?

Well a blog is not full of those above quoted sentences that is for sure. A blog is a short form, laid back form of communication but with a  specific goal. Usually, the goal is to inform or educate but can be as varied as to entertain and or to scare like the various underground scary story blogs do out there.

Advantages of a blog:

• short
• to the point
• easy to read
• full of information
• interactive

Disadvantages of a blog:

• some may be too informal
• information may may be inaccurate\
• no control over conversation in comments

As one can see above, there are more advantages to blogs than they are disadvantages however, that does not mean that you should always read from blogs. Sometimes, you may need the most accurate and well researched information you could find in which case you are better off looking elsewhere for that information.

Blogs can be used for work organizations. How?

They can be created by a workshop facilitator at a school district to have explanations to the context that was shared. An organization could then use that to have others post on the blog and respond to it to share ideas ans insights about what was discussed in the blog. A new idea at the workplace can spread like wild fire through the workplace if the blog poster shares it well and all the employees have a some access to a social media account in order to see the blog. 

Although blogs have been around for some time and are continuing to take up more and more space in social media networks, blogs can be highly beneficial for teachers at an educational organization. Since teachers are always seeking new ways to reach their students and administrators are contantly looking at novel ways to increase student performance, blogs are a good way to track the data and the progrress of an initiative. For instance, lets say teacher A wants to help teacher B who needs help in questioning skills. Teacher A can create a blog that writes down some of the creative questions she came up with during her lesson planning. Then teacher B can read Teacher A's blog and recieve help in questioning. She can also comment on the blog with questions or opinions. Blogging is also important as it is an online resource that can be made available throuhout the entire organization. In this case the organization can learn and grow together.

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PART II

GradHacker

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/02/26/educators-should-not-be-armed-their-classrooms-opinion 

The blog site is used by teachers who post other posts of education related articles and integrating new technologies. Blogs are posted on a weekly basis. There is one blog that is about using Twitter effectively in the classroom. It started by extolling Twitter for classroom use before articulating how it can be used well in the classroom. Another blog within the site is about how teachers should not be armed with firearms in schools. The former relates to the audience by helping teachers implement technology in the classroom and the latter by giving an opinion about a frightening event that happened at a public school. Audience members are making comments and asking questions in most blog posts. Level of engagement is high. Most comments advance the dialogue. Most blogs have a brief description of the poster and usually they are professors or graduate students. With regards to a posters or readers reputation, one post can change your perception among the public depending on how many people the blog has reached. An example is the "teachers shouldn't be armed" post, a commentator wrote something dismissive about the professor who made the post. 

Dashe & Thomson

eLearning Blog

https://www.dashe.com/blog/learning-retention-2/musings-on-memory-engineering-to-aid-learning-retention/

This blog site is used by trainers of organizations of at least people who are interested in learning about training or facilitating. Blogs are posted on a bi monthly basis here. One blog is about using memory engineering to help in learning retention. The blogger states that it is better for a training program to have follow ups and reminders of what was learned implemented into any training programs. This can be done by simply sending your team a reminder email or as sophisticated as creating a blog post about what was learned. Another blog had 10 steps as to why your training may be ineffective at your organization. The latter blog post is relevant to administrators in a school building who want to have effective workshop training for their teachers and the former blog post is relevant to those administrators or coach teacher facilitators who are failing in a certain area of training. This blog's level of engagement is low. There are not many blog posts with comments attached to them. At the end of each blog there is a detailed summary of the qualifications of the blog author. Posters seem to be highly qualified with a mix of professors in the related fields and consultants. While the reputation of the blog authors may be high, with such few blog posts the reputation of the blog itself may be diminished. People want to be a part of an active learning community not one that is seemingly stagnant. 

WordPress

Julian Stodd's Learning Blog

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/category/social-learning/

This blog site is primarily a blog site about social learning. Blogs here are posted every two months with the last blog in the summer of 2017. One blog post spoke about how one could learn to become a social leader. A social leader, according to the post, is someone who is active on social media and conducts workshops at a regular basis with an active presence online. Another blog post was about co-creation and how it is beneficial to have communities within an organization work together to create something while simultaneously citing the difficulty in making that happen effortlessly. The latter post relates to administrators or teachers in a school district who want to improve their leadership skills with social learning and the former post is aimed towards administrators of a school district who want to increase their collaboration within their organization. Level of engagement is medium with each blog post receiving between 5-9 responses. The responses include questions and ideas that move the dialogue forward as well. The two area this blog suffers in is in credibility and reliability. The author is the same for all blogs in this site. The issue is not in what is being presented but it is difficult to verify the authors expertise in the subject. It has minimal explanation of his expertise in the area. The content and topics are popular concepts and with the amount of responses it seems as though the content will only increase the reputation of the author although it may be difficult to verify credibility. 

eLearning Industry

Social Learning

https://elearningindustry.com/subjects/elearning-concepts/social-learning

This blog site contains content geared at showing ways to implement social learning into your organizations and even school districts. Blog posts are made 2-3 times a week with the latest post on Feb. 17th 2018. One blog post called Using Twitter As A Learning Tool had 5 ways to use Twitter as a learning tool. It exampled them in 5 easy steps. Another blog post entitled, "7 Ways To Save Your Learning Program Using Social Media", contained methods to use social media effectively in any learning program. Both blog posts are relevant to teachers in that they are geared towards finding ways to increase engagement and effectiveness using the tool in the classroom. Credibility is difficult to gauge as some blog posts do not contain any information on the the author besides their name and the date of publication. However, since the content is of high value, the reputation among educators is high as evident by the comments with many comments exhibiting praise aimed towards the author of the post. eLearning Industry is also pretty well known which helps its reputation.

Blogger.com

The new social learning blog

http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com/

Finally this blog site contains content geared at implementing social media tools in innovative ways into organizations for training and learning. Blog posts are roughly every month with the latest on February 19th, 2018. One blog calls for using 1 second videos to blend learning into a lesson. It states that perhaps the teacher can record something that may be relevant to the teacher and create a 1 second video to project to the class. Another blog post speaks about the authors personal experience with using messaging apps at work and for social learning. It speaks about which apps are best to use with social learning and the workplace. The former post is more relevant to teachers because they may want to get new ideas for their lesson plans. The latter post is relevant to teachers and administrators because they may want to perform a workshop with this blog post as a reminder email for the staff to read. Level of engagement in this blog site is low. The most recent blogs do not have any comments even though the blog site is updated fairly frequently. Credibility here is low as it is difficult to find any information about the author. Reputation however is medium since there are no comments but the blog posts are substantial and substantive however it is not well known either.

PART III

So whats the best thing a new teacher or administrator should do when it comes to blogs? Find a blog that is easy to read and that the information is related to the content you are interested in. 

START by searching for a blog. You'll know its a blog when you see the main page has multiple articles listed which are clickable. Usually you can click the blog and which will let you comment at the bottom of the article or simply read the comments of other readers. To follow a blog, simply click the social media link you want to include. Most blogs have the most popular ones like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Select blogs that have writing styles you like. Some blogs are monitored by an administrator and an author has to get approved by the administrator before the article is posted. Many on WordPress are like this.

Well, I hope this wordy blog was helpful! Please feel free to leave any questions or suggestions! Until next time!