And so we come toward the end of another quarter in my teacher training, and I set out once more to recap my experience of the past few months in the blogoverse. Blogosphere? No. Blogoverse.
This quarter I think I’ve done two main things to enhance my blogging: I’ve been more authentic, and I’ve been more brief. I believe that in previous quarters, I’ve tended far too much to long-windedness, and nobody wants to wrassle with a text-wall – especially when a good portion of my readers are my fellow classmates, and none of them has the time. 😉 As for the authenticity thing: I’ve been blogging more often about things which are close to my heart, and I’ve been connecting those things with broader contexts; this is probably the best example. Also I’ve been putting a lot more of my actual teaching practice out there for public review – for instance, this.
These elements, I believe, make my writing more concrete, more relatable, and more interesting. Please let me know whether you agree. Which is another thing I think I’ve done well this quarter: putting questions out into the blogoverse.
As for contributing to other bloggers’ thinking: good examples here, where I connected ideas from a blog on the concept of an “ask me anything” machine to ideas about early literacy development; and here, where I asked some questions, and made some suggestions, about an English lesson, with a special view toward what to focus on when teaching a piece of literature you may not be familiar with, or may not even like. I’m glad, in hindsight, of the requirement this quarter that we comment on each other’s blogs; it’s good to see conversations emerge, conversations which in many cases (in my experience) have carried over into the actual classroom.
I think my single biggest take-away from this quarter’s work with technology and connectivity as aids in teaching would be the familiarity I am continuing to develop with these tools. I’ve been steadily incorporating my Twitter- and WordPress-capable devices into my daily patterns – keeping my phone handy to Tweet something I heard on the radio, for instance, or keeping my Nexus tablet in my coat-pocket to start tapping out a blog on a thought I just had. Additionally, taking time to actually look at my Twitter and WordPress feeds is sort of a new thing for me; I’ll continue to work on that. After all, like I said, it’s supposed to be a conversation – not just me shouting into a barrel.
Anyway, thanks for reading; trust me, there’s more to come.
Ten Thousand Small Steps 