Why Should Teachers Blog?

Why would teachers want to blog is the weekly question posted by professor, Dennis Dunleavy, in Education Technology 534. As future teachers, it is essential that we reflect on this question and answer for ourselves the benefits and limitations to blogging.

Blogging can be beneficial to many constituents in the school community, including teachers, students, parents, and colleagues, while incurring few drawbacks. David Warlick, in his article, “Blog Rules,” points out that teachers blog in different capacities either as independent teacher bloggers, professional teacher bloggers, and instructional teacher bloggers. Each of these blogging capacities generates different guidelines for the user and their content; however, all forms of teacher blogging have multiple benefits for the teachers, students, and parents. Teacher blogging can provide productive communication between the classroom and home, enhance student educational experiences by providing resources online (study guides, assessment reminders, assignments, review or enhancement activities), and promote exemplary student achievement through postings.

Additional benefits to both teachers and students include the use of blogs as tools for reflection, enhancement to literacy, and peer-to-peer communication. While surfing the web in an attempt to answer the posted question, I encountered many teachers that used blogs as a tool to reflect on their teaching. As this blogger illustrates, reflection is an essential ingredient to improving one’s craft. Teachers also use blogs as an enhancement to literacy. In the article, The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom, the author David Huffaker states, “Weblogs provide an excellent opportunity for educators to advance literacy through storytelling and dialogue. Storytelling and literacy are the foundation of language development, and more so, the foundation of learning.” Furthermore, both teachers and students can use blogs as an effective peer-to-peer communication tool, establishing true professional learning communities.

There are only a few limitations to teacher’s partaking in the educational endeavor of blogging. First of all, as Warlick points out, there are legal ramifications to blogging that a teacher must understand prior to posting. Additionally, teachers, especially those in elementary grades, must be aware of safety concerns for their students. Perhaps a closed blog where only invited guest may join might best serve K-12 teachers. Unfortunately, as many of us in Ed Tech 534 have discovered, blogging takes time, and often teachers do not have the time dedicated to maintaining a blog. Furthermore, established school or district software packages such as powerschool, blackbaud, edline, or gradequick duplicate many of the benefits to blogging -- improved communication, posting of assignments, and assessment reminders.

Although there are limitations for k-12 teachers using blogs as an educational tool, the benefits far out weigh any drawbacks. By using blogs, teachers can improve communication between the classroom and home, enhance the educational experience of the students, improve literacy through read/write blogs, and build professional learning communities among students and colleagues.