Unlike certain of my family members, I don’t sleep with my phone. That saves me from the onerous task of turning the sound down or off if you leave it in your bedroom. I can’t imagine a smartphone disrupting a good sleep.
A couple of days ago, I installed the Twitter client and told it to give off “Chirps” when a notification comes from Twitter. That’s about how deeply I dug into it for the moment. For the most part, I get a chirp every now and again and I take a look at it when I can.
Today, I’m going through my morning learning routine. Doing some reading and sharing some of the best reads to Twitter in case others might be interested.
Then, I read this article. “7 Real Ways Blogging Can Make You A Better Teacher And Learner” from FractusLearning. It was one of the better articles about the rationale for blogging that I’ve read in a while so I read it twice, shared it, and then moved on.
Holy Cow!
Within about 30 seconds, my phone was going nuts chirping. Was something broken on it?
It turns out that I didn’t dig deep enough with this new Twitter client. In addition to getting a notification every time my name is mentioned, it gives a notification for every retweet or every time someone adds the message to their favourites. The article seemed to really resonate with folks.
The seven “Real Ways” are:
- Idea Generation
- Community Building
- Motivation and Inspiration
- ….
You’ll have to go to the article and read the rest as well as the details that are fleshed out for each. I just read it again. It’s a really good article. It reminded me so much of a presentation about reflective teaching that my friend Philip and I gave at a CSTA Conference a couple of years ago. (He called it the Doug and Pony show…)
The challenge from the author is to consider creating a blog personally, for your class, or for your school.
It’s not a big leap to take those seven ways and use them as rationale for students to be blogging.
The thing to keep in mind is that you’re blogging – not creating the next big epic novel or research paper. It’s such a powerful tool and is easily done. In addition to the seven ways itemized in the article, it’s a very tangible way of showing to yourself (and others if you care to) that you’re continuously learning and growing. What more could a professional want?
The sad thing is that those who were retweeting and favouriting the original article or those of you who read this post already get the power of blogging or micro-blogging.
My challenge to you would be to share the original article to at least seven people in your school who haven’t got on board yet. It’s just a matter of forwarding the link or sharing it in your school’s online communal learning space. Your school does have one, right?
If it matters to you, your learning network may expand. More importantly, theirs may use this as a kickstart to get theirs rolling.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.