Blogs a teachers best friend

           Ok, I admit it, I am a blogging addict.  Next to Pinterest, I love to read others' blogs.  When you are a blog addict it is easy to lose yourself for hours and end up far from your original link.  Blogs are a powerful way to link to other people that are doing the same thing as you.  In my personal life, I link with other mothers, crafters, gardeners and quilters.  In my future professional life, I see how I can benefit from reaching out to other educators and teachers that teach at the elementary level.  Why spend hours re-inventing the wheel if someone else had the work already done or great hints on how to engage your students in the curriculum.  I love the world of teaching because teachers love to help and share ideas that work in the classroom.

            There is a lot of buzz in the blog world about student driven teaching.  There is a shift in the old way of direct teaching and teachers are really talking about ways to capture their student’s attention and have them invested in their own learning.  I know, here in Alberta, there is a push for change as well as working toward Inspiring Education, which will help us prepare our students for the ever changing world and the challenges they will face.  I am excited to be coming into education during this time of change.  Alberta isn’t the only one that is facing these changes; the blogs I read took me all over the United States, different Canadian provinces and even to the United Kingdom.  All are talking about this change and many are focusing on engagement of students as well as technology. 

            Learning is messy blog focuses on technology and talks a lot about how schools are reluctant at times to adapt to new technology and use the resources that are available, ie, Wiki, Pinterest, twitter, Facebook, blogs.  There is a real fear for some schools to open up these available networks and allow teachers and students to use them.   Brian Crosby is the author of this blog and has been an upper elementary teacher for over 30 years.  He now facilitates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and helps administrators realize the importance of using technology in their schools.  He is part of the high hopes project which is open to all teachers to participate in.  In April/May of this year, they will be sending weather balloons 30,000 feet into the air and streaming data and student experiments back to classrooms.  They want anyone who wants to participate to have their students write what is their ‘high hope’ for education.  Blogs like this are exciting to me because someone else is doing the work and putting the weather balloons in the air but my class could participate, observe and do projects based on the data they produce.  Blogs make the world a smaller place and accessible right here in Medicine Hat.

            It is so tough to narrow my focus to only three blogs.  I really enjoyed Michael Smiths The Principals page blog.  Each entry was short and sweet (I need to learn from this, I tend to be long winded), and humorous.  He tackles real issues such as bullying and how he is finding it is an overused word.  Sometimes things just happen, life is unfair and things go wrong.  Often he finds, as the principal, that when unfair things happen the parents and students claim bullying but really it’s just life. Sometimes things aren’t fair.  He also spoke of the fact that we over worry both as parents and educators.  We need to sometimes just sit back and let things happen.  I really like his view point and enjoyed each of his posts that I read. 

            The flipped classroom blog was also very interesting.  I watched several of the videos they had prepared for teaching what a flipped classroom is.  I have to go back to this website as I still have many questions about what this classroom would look like.  I found it really interesting and there are a lot of people talking about the benefits of flipping your classroom.  A flipped classroom is where you do the lectures and lessons at home and then come to class to do your homework or the actual engagement of the subject.  As with anything this new and radical, there are lots of concerns and they address these very well with a series of short video clips.  If you are involved in education in any way, I recommend giving this blog a read.

            I have found so much information in my readings of the suggested blogs in the last few days my mind is swimming with more questions.  Each blog is hosted by educators and they are looking at how to improve their craft and help their students.  The desire is to have emotionally intelligent students and move away from standardized testing.  Many also deal with the struggle of finding credible information in using technology and how to we educate our students to be great digital citizens.  There is a concern about the lack of free play and studies show that it is leading to depression in our young students. 

            Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis) is a great teacher blog.  One thing I noticed about this site as well as many of the blogs is all the advertisements.  The adverts are a big distraction and I found some of the blogs, especially the really popular ones, more difficult to navigate because of all the promotional adverts.  Cool Cat blog talked about close reading and explored activities that you can do with your students.  It is a program that is promoted by snap learning and you can buy worksheets from them that your students can actually mark up and practice close learning with.  It is handy because, of course, we don’t want our students writing in their textbooks; especially here in Canada as they aren’t personally owned; they are re-used.  Again, I don’t like the number of product promotions I see but this is the reality of being a popular blogger today.

            Cool cat blog talked about how we are the lead learner as the teacher and we set the tone and level of excitement in our classroom.  So we need to step it up, set goals and try something new this week.  If we are excited as the lead learner our students will be too!  I really liked her post about classroom authors and how we can create books collaboratively with students from all over the world.  Also, I loved her suggestion for thinglink which makes pictures interactive and cardkiwi which allows students to make their own flash cards!  She uses technology and apps to inspire teachers to think differently and get excited about their lessons.  I was so inspired to read her many suggestions and could lose myself for hours in this website. 

            I am just beginning my discovery of education blogs and already feel like I have learned so much from my fellow bloggers.  I encourage all educators to get blogging!  It’s a fun and easy way to stay linked to other educators and start dabbling in new ideas and technology!