- An educator can write their thoughts on a topic, issue, or struggle and solicit feedback from colleagues.
- A principal can write a weekly or monthly blog to offer casual reflections and thoughts on how the school year is progressing, how the students have been working hard, etc.
- A teacher can give students a piece of literature, mathematics, history, science to analyze and students can leave public feedback.
- Students can manage their own blogs. Teachers can give students a critical writing assignment and students must write on their personal blog. Teachers can also make a requirement to comment on 5 other students blogs as part of their "grade".
- Students, teachers, administrators can find thought provoking blogs to challenge their paradigms.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Top 5 Ways an Educator Can Use a Blog
I've been asked to offer some ideas on how educators might use a blog, here are my top 5.
Action Research, It's More Than a Feeling
Some individuals are born with artistic talent, and those of us who are not "artistic" are acutely aware of our creative deficiency. For decades, individuals have relied on the "art" of teaching to inspire and mold our world's young minds into capable vessels to change the world.
We are now in the age of high stakes testing, with increased accountability for public schools around the nation. School administrators can no longer count on hiring the best "artists" to make masterpieces, but are now looking to recruit carefully calculated artists that have the natural ability to "paint", but with a meticulous scientific left-brain approach to excellence.
If you haven't figured out my analogy yet and simply want me to get to the point, here it goes:
Now, more than ever, our nation's future are in need of administrators in schools and in districts that are actively researching and making changes based upon data. "It's More Than a Feeling!" In years past, perceptive leaders would "feel" programs weren't meeting the needs of students, or teachers would get the impression students weren't mastering the content as they should, but never truly having real evidence backing up that feeling.
Action research is the part of the solution to this "making decisions on how we feel" problem. By making common based assessments within professional learning communities, teachers will be able to answer the question with confidence, did they master the concept, how well did they master the concept, and how might I, the teacher, instruct the students next time so they will have a better mastery of the concept? Isn't that what teaching is all about anyway?
More details to come on this topic later, but in the meantime, I suggest picking up a book titled The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction by Sean Cain and Mike Laird to read about "Cain's Foundation Trinity" that tips the iceberg of the action research topic.
We are now in the age of high stakes testing, with increased accountability for public schools around the nation. School administrators can no longer count on hiring the best "artists" to make masterpieces, but are now looking to recruit carefully calculated artists that have the natural ability to "paint", but with a meticulous scientific left-brain approach to excellence.
If you haven't figured out my analogy yet and simply want me to get to the point, here it goes:
Now, more than ever, our nation's future are in need of administrators in schools and in districts that are actively researching and making changes based upon data. "It's More Than a Feeling!" In years past, perceptive leaders would "feel" programs weren't meeting the needs of students, or teachers would get the impression students weren't mastering the content as they should, but never truly having real evidence backing up that feeling.
Action research is the part of the solution to this "making decisions on how we feel" problem. By making common based assessments within professional learning communities, teachers will be able to answer the question with confidence, did they master the concept, how well did they master the concept, and how might I, the teacher, instruct the students next time so they will have a better mastery of the concept? Isn't that what teaching is all about anyway?
More details to come on this topic later, but in the meantime, I suggest picking up a book titled The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction by Sean Cain and Mike Laird to read about "Cain's Foundation Trinity" that tips the iceberg of the action research topic.
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