Lost my blogging mojo.....

I am so convinced of blogging's power to make me a better educator. Blogging is the most powerful tool for reflection. When I craft a post for my professional blog, there are enormous benefits for me and in turn, my learners.

•  Blogging makes my thoughts and beliefs about teaching and learning clearer and helps me see what I need to do to improve my practice. 
• Feedback from others is enormously beneficial and the quality of the conversation has real impact on what happens in our classroom.
• Blogging makes me a better writer and writing teacher. Sharing my personal blogging experiences with my students has had real impact on their view of blogging as a useful learning tool. 

And there's always the possibility that what I share on my blog might benefit someone else. I really do believe in sharing and collaborating but I often have that nagging thought, "Who would want to read this when the interwebs are full of the blogs of truly phenomenal teachers, contemplating deep philosophical ideas about learning and doing incredible things in their learning spaces?" 

But then my growth mindset voice kicks in...... my posts are not of the quality of those rockstar teachers YET! 

And so I persevere, not because I'll ever be a rockstar teacher but because I blog for me; I blog because of the benefits I get from sharing and being part of a PLN. I blog because I encourage my students to create content to give back to our online community, not just take.  

But recently, I lost my blogging mojo. I hugely missed the benefits of blogging but couldn't bring myself to blog about anything.

I had lots of questions about the purpose of my blog but the biggest was this........... 

What is the role of my school in my blog? Where does my school end and Bridget start? Are we too heavily entwined meaning my blog has simply become a collection of recounts of things that happen at my school?

Over the weekend, I read two posts from two of my favourite bloggers; posts that cemented my ideas about MY purpose for blogging. 

The first was from Stephanie Thompson. Stephanie is the most incredible teacher and when my class first started blogging in 2013 (yes we were fairly late to the party!) I was teamed in an amazing quad which included Stephanie and her class for Aotearoa Quadblogging. 

Stephanie's great post is here; Is online sharing about the journey or the destination?

It reminded me that blogging is about sharing the ups and downs of life in our classrooms. It is not about having all the answers and its value is in the conversation it inspires. Yes, I've experimented with writing posts that sound like I think I have all the answers but I can assure you I don't! 

Another post that reminded me of the value of sharing was this one from the amazing Silvia Tolisano of Langwitches. 

Reflection about Anne Frank

What struck me most was the idea that even the most mundane things should be documented. I can do that! 

And then she shared the link to this oldie but goodie.......

So thanks to these two amazing bloggers, I'm going to get back on that blogging wagon.....here we go......

Making Class Blogs Authentic- a cry for help!

Today's post is a cry for help of sorts. I am hoping that all you blogging gurus will read this and weigh in.

We've had a class blog for two years now. Starting 8C Happenings in 2013 was so exciting. Our learners were completely and utterly on board and practically fought each other to get blogposts up. We formed many connections and spent lots of time reading other blogs and writing comments. We took part in International and Aotearoa Quadblogging and other projects including the Global Read Aloud. In 2014, we did a Unit of Inquiry around digital citizenship and sharing in online spaces. The unit was called "Straight to the Blog" a title which was kind of a sad in- joke between those of us old enough to remember the "straight to the poolroom" quote from that classic piece of Australian cinema, The Castle. We got all classes in our team blogging and making global connections. We even started a New Zealand-wide kids' book chat on twitter via our blog. I had endless enthusiasm for blogging as a class.

This year, I've got to be honest, I don't seem to be able to rekindle that fire! I am not sure why this is but I think its because our blog has really become a sequence of recounts. There seems to be an absence of the higher level thinking that my girls are so great at. We are documenting the events that punctuate life in our classroom but I have this question in my head that I just can't shake. 

So what?

I need to think back to my original learning intentions when we started our blog. I had three goals for 8C Happenings. 

a) Document life in the classroom for our whanau

b) Flatten the classroom walls so we could connect with and learn alongside others

c) Develop our skills in writing in online spaces and maintaining an engaging blog

We are certainly working on Purpose A but I'm not sure parents and family members are reading it. When I surveyed parents via google form last year, I got a lot of mixed responses. Most loved it and checked that they would hate to see us abandon the blog but many confessed that rarely read it, even when I emailed out links. Hmmmmmm......how do I address this? How do you encourage parents to engage with your class blog? Any suggestions? 

Purpose B is the one that I believe provides the greatest rewards and I always feel the greatest enthusiasm for blogging when we are right in the thick of connecting and forming relationships with classes around New Zealand and the world. I am deeply committed to giving constructive comments with wild abandon as a class; giving others feedback and helping others learn if we can. Our greatest challenge is time. I am wondering if the best way to give real impetus to commenting is to incorporate blog reading into our reading programme. I wonder if there is some way to bring blogs into the 40 Book Challenge? How do you make time for reading and commenting on blogs in your classroom? Is it timetabled? A Must-Do? Homework? 

Purpose C brings in those ideas around blog management. My learners are good writers and can create posts with visual elements with independence. The challenge for me is to hand some of the initiative needed for blogging over to them. I don't want Liz (my co-teacher) and I to be the ones who initiate every post. The girls will blog at the drop of a hat if we ask them to but we need a better system for getting them to take charge. Do we need a job list around this? A daily reporter? A photographer? A videographer?  A tweeter? Should a small team be blogging every day or just when there is a special event? (I am pretty sure I know your answer to this!) How do we get our posts out there for others to read? And how do we create posts that make others want to comment? 

As you can see, I have highlighted my questions. I am really hoping to hear about the systems you have around blogging in your classroom. Our goal is that our blog will be more authentic and chronicle our thinking and learning, not just the "big ticket" events.  I'm really hoping that this blog and your feedback will help recapture my blogging mojo! 

Thanks in advance! 

   

   

Evaluating our blog- what are our next steps?

Keeping a class blog has been transformative for me as an educator. Creating 8C Happenings was part of my PLD in 2013 so I was something of a late bloomer in the blogging field. At Selwyn House, we've maintained blogs for years but they were private blogs through Ultranet and I desperately wanted for us to become connected beyond our school community.  I could not have foreseen how transformative keeping a blog would be for my learners and myself as a teacher. As the first public blogger at our school, I outlined three enormous benefits of keeping a blog for my colleagues in this short clip. Excuse the cheesy grins......and the somewhat startlingly thick kiwi accent. Who knew I had an accent?! ;)


This year began with all four classes in our Year 7 and 8 team committed to keeping class blogs. This has been a great experience and I think one of the reasons blogging has been so successful amongst our team is that we started blogs as part of the action in our Straight to the Blog Unit of Inquiry; expecting teachers to find time to learn about blogging in busy schedules on top of everything else might not have been so effective.

So 8C Happenings has been rocking along, tickety boo. We have over 40,000 page views and have made some really powerful connections but recently I have been reflecting a lot on what our next steps are as bloggers. Are we really using our blog to its full potential or is it at risk of simply becoming a digital noticeboard?

Then on Monday evening, Danielle Myburgh tweeted this:
 

Evaluate your class blog rubric - would love your thoughts. Doc enabled for commenting! https://t.co/hL3JpIXg5X #edtech #byotchat
— Danielle Myburgh (@MissDtheTeacher) May 26, 2014

I was so excited when I saw the blogging rubric she had created. Embarrassingly, it had never occurred to me to evaluate our entire blog as a whole. We'd evaluated plenty of individual blogposts but never our blog in its entirety. I was keen to get started. So on Tuesday morning, we abandoned our writing programme and the girls split into six small groups with each group taking one aspect of the rubric to assess.

One thing I do know about my learners is that they are HARD on themselves. We're working on that! But I was surprised by some of their comments about our blog. 5/6 groups gave 8C Happenings Multi-Structural.

I thought this was particularly harsh in the Participating and Commenting section as the girls are generally great at taking part and leaving quality comments. Also, they have contributed in Quadblogging twice this year and made a very positive contribution. As a say, we are working on not looking at things from a deficit mindset! But on the whole, their assessments were astute and reflective.

Where are our Quadblogging Buddies? 

The girls identified some next steps for each category and the one that stood out for me the most was that they want (and to be fair, deserve) to have more ownership of posting to the class blog. They are desperate to get their hands on that Blogger password instead of sharing their google docs with me so I can post for them. Fair enough!

Next steps as identified by 8C:
Visual Impact- Ensure images enhance our learning rather than just looking pretty
Student-Centred- Post our blogposts straight into Blogger rather than sending to Mrs C-M to put them up
Multi-Media- Create more video content
Digital Citizenship- Be more familiar with the 9 Aspects of Digital Citizenship
Participating and Contributing- Use emoji in our comments (!)
Academic Contribution- Design our own learning tasks which we then share on the blog


After reflecting on these next steps, I let the girls take charge of this week's posts. There was a common theme from the small groups regarding a desire to have more video on the blog so there has been a lot of time spent in the past couple of days filming imovies the girls believe will be interesting to our blog readers. These obviously take a lot longer to prepare than making a quick Photopeach; next week, expect an onslaught of stimulating posts about our learning at Selwyn House! These posts are entirely driven by the girls and will be uploaded by the girls themselves.

GULP...... ;)

Encouraging independence with multi-media

Thanks so much Danielle, for inspiring me to evaluate where we are heading with the class blog. Your rubric is fantastic and has encouraged me to give control to my learners....... again? This is becoming a habit! 

On being a risk-taker.....

As a PYP teacher, the need to encourage growth through taking risks is always in the forefront of my mind. We constantly talk with our students about what being a risk-taker looks and feels like and the personal development and benefits we can experience when are brave and push ourselves out of our comfort zone.

From http://www.startofhappiness.com/ 

I've been blogging with my class for a while now and while I have toyed with the idea of starting a professional blog on numerous occasions, I've never had the courage to take this step. I've been terrified to put myself out there for critique by peers who I admire and look up to. I'm incredibly anxious about opening myself up to scrutiny by educators whose opinions I value and whose expertise I am inspired by.  I am not sure why I feel this way as I am a prolific reader of educational blogs and have always had a deep admiration for those who blog about their experiences as educators, teachers who care deeply enough about the difference they are making for their students to seek feedback from other teachers or to share their expertise. I have found their musings to be so helpful. So I'm not sure why putting my thoughts and reflections out there is so terrifying.

Perhaps it is because I don't consider myself to have all the answers; sometimes I don't consider myself to have ANY of the answers! But I certainly have a lot of questions, questions that I'd love to mull over with other educators.

I was fortunate enough to attend the GAFE Summit, South in April. Kimberley Hall talked about Virtuous Circles and I realised that I while I was doing three of the steps, I was definitely not creating content.

A Virtuous Circle shared by Kimberley Hall at the Gafe Summit. 

Claire Amos's and Steve Mouldey's #hackyrclass project was the final push I needed to start documenting my challenges and celebrations as a teacher.

So today I am being a risk-taker. I'm putting myself out there, dipping my toes into the blogosphere so to speak.  Wish me luck!