I think, therefore I blog

There seems to be a growing divide between teachers who share their content, and teachers who don't. In a recent blog post, I gave seven reasons why teachers should blog. It was subsequently expanded to 10 good reasons by the contributions from readers - which is actually an eleventh reason why teachers should blog - you get back such great comments, suggestions, arguments and advice, it would be crazy not to share your content. I followed that post up with another highlighting some of the reasons teachers don't blog. Again, there were interesting comments from those who read but don't write, offering further reasons why teachers don't share their content. 


Blogging for me has many clear benefits for professionals. Putting your ideas 'out there' as a public performance can be risky, but also very rewarding. The comments alone are worth the risk, but even if no-one else reads or comments on your blog, you still get the chance to clarify your thoughts in your own mind, and as you write, they become even clearer.

Perhaps the prime practical reason teachers don't share their content is time pressure. Most teachers are passionate about education, but can't stand the idea of even more work added to their load. For some, blogging and other content generation is just extra work. But let's be frank - all teachers create content on a regular basis including lesson plans, assessment tools, learning and teaching resources and new ideas for plenaries, starters or revision. It would be another small step, with very little extra effort, to share these resources through some social media tool. This leads on to another objection - many teachers feel they don't have the skills or the confidence to share their ideas and content once they have them.

The seemingly impenetrable jungle of social media tools, the strange and quirky names, the alien concepts of content sharing are all quite daunting to the average teacher. Again, in reality, many social media tools are quick and easy to use, and don't cost anything in terms of hard cash. If you like using post-its and getting kids to comment during lessons, then Wallwisher is the ideal tool. If you wish to find out who else is bookmarking the same websites as you, then Delicious fits the bill. Want to keep an archive of all your note-taking? Evernote is a great tool for that purpose. For sheer crazy visual inventiveness, try Blabberize - you'll laugh your socks off. There are many blogging tools available - the one you are currently reading is Blogger, but Wordpress and Posterous are just as simple to use. There are so many tools for so many teacherly jobs, making life easier and more organised, so that you can get on with the daily task of shaping young minds. You have plenty of thoughts and ideas that would benefit the rest of the education community. So why don't you share them?

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I think, therefore I blog by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.