First impression of Blogging

My first thoughts at using a blog. I am not a great writer, in fact I am not a good writer. This has turned me off to the concept of blogging for a long time.

I have had a social media presence online with services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for a few years now, but I have not put myself out there in terms of delivering much content. I have mostly been a consumer of content.

As I have started investigating the use of Weblogs I have become intrigued as to the possibilities that exist for use in the classroom. The biggest thing that has stood out to me is the concept of reading more then you write. In order to be able to write well you need to read.  This sounds like DEAPR to me, Design, Encode, Assemble, Publish, and Refine. We have to develop an idea encode our thoughts into writing in order to assemble a coherent message that can be published and then revised.  You can't do that unless you able to digest and decode writings produced by others.  You need an example. By blogging we are doing this while working on improving literacy in written text, digital text, and possibly other medias like graphics, video, even oral. The possibilities are quite amazing yet extremely frightening.

This has caught my attention, along with the other obvious benefits like thoughtful analysis, synthesis of ideas, and purposeful writing. I searched online for possible school friendly blog hosting sites that were not blocked by district filters. Oddly enough Tumblr was not blocked, which was unexpected . I did eventually stumble across kidblog.com and set up a teacher account. I plan to set up a demo class and have found a teacher that is willing to allow me to give some of their students an opportunity to experience analytically thinking and purposeful writing in a weblog environment. It makes sense to me to attempt this experiment while we are working on it in class so that I can use the collective ideas of our cohort. I am excited about this possibility, even though I have some worry about how many of teachers will react to this suggestion. I will periodically report on how the experiment goes.