I was really surprised with how many different education blogs there are out there. There were way more out there then I thought there would be, all you have to do is type "teacher's blog" into Google and you get millions of hits. There was also a very wide variety of blogs out there. You could find a blog on almost any topic ranging from high school art education to projects for a kindergarten class.
These sits can be helpful to teachers in many different ways. Since there are so many blogs out there you could find one that deals with whatever you want to look at. If you are having problems with classroom management you can find a blog to help with that. The only thing that I worry about is that none of the blogs are regulated by anyone so you have to be careful what information you take away from a blog because you never really know who wrote it. This is why when I was searching for blogs I stayed with ones that were from the websites that were linked in class so I knew that they were reputable. One of the most helpful things I think that education blogs can do is to keep you up to date on education policy issues. Education policy is always changing, and it is nice to see that there are lots of blogs out there that take the time to go through the policy changes, and put them in a format that you can understand. They also explain how the changes affect teaching. I also think that blogs can be used for troubleshooting problems. No matter what the problem is you can find a blog to help you make a good decision on how to fix the problem.
Here is the list of blogs that I looked at:
Education Policy Blog
educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com
Education Week-Bridging Differences
blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences
This Week in Education
scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/
The Teacher's Desk
http://www.theteachersdesk.com/
The blog that I chose to follow for the semester is The Teachers Desk. This is not really your standard blog, but more of a helpful website full of information. There are sections to help you with different parts of teaching, and there is also a section for teachers to post there own stories. The main thing that I liked about this blog was how many different helpful sections there were, and not just one author writing about one subject.
Sweet I am the first to comment on someones blog lol. Peter you wrote something that I think is a really good point, that there is no one regulating the blogs out there. We really need to make sure that the person writing the blog is a credible source. We also need to make sure that the tips we use are approprate for our future classrooms. Peter it is really cool reading your blog, you never fail to bring up a differnt point of view that I have not thought of.
ReplyDeletei think its great to have a blog about policies. I think as an educator we need to stay on top of what is going on in the educating world and make sure we are always giving our students the best.
ReplyDeletePeter-I agree with your concern about the amount of unregulated information found on educational blogs. Some of it can be very resourceful, while much of it is useless. I think it is important to find resources that can be valuable for each teacher individually as well as keep up to date on educational policy. Having a blog to keep you up to date with that would be very useful.
ReplyDeleteYou have a good point, saying that you never really know where the information is coming. If you consider how easy it was for us to make a blog, anybody can make one just as easy, and post information they know nothing about. However, being more optimistic, whether the author has teaching credentials or not, they may have some really good ideas that are worth considering.
ReplyDelete