Connected Educator Month - #Blogsync

We all have something to say...

I love that I can use my blog to share my views and to reflect on many things.  My blog is a wonderful tool that I use to look back on my posts.  It enables me to reflect constantly on my past and current thinking.  It shows how my thinking has changed and what I have learned [or not!] 

On day #2 of Connected Educator month, I watch the launch video for #blogsync and as a blogger, I found this session and tips on blogging to be very useful.

Chris Waugh mentioned that he's noticed that people who write blogs are sometimes a little bit afraid of the process, and I can't agree with him more.  I sometimes find it quite frightening to lay bear my thoughts.  But then he also mentioned that if you have a blog and you decide to write on a topic, it is completely yours, you curate it and decide on the tone and content. Yay!

With blogsync you just have the opportunity of more people taking notice, in particular people who might be thinking of the same things than you are.

We were invited to join http://blogsync.edutronic.net/ and connect to a blogging community. Yes! That would be my next step.

Thoughts from Karen Melhuish Spencer and Chris Waugh:

- Use the 'connectedness' of the internet to make what we do in the classroom real and authentic to the students.  It is also for us [as educators] to connect with the wider world as most of us work in schools settings where we're isolated from our colleagues most of the time.

- Cracking open of what's happening within the four walls in your school is incredibly powerful  - that making visible. Especially if you're teaching in a quite traditional model school where it is you and your classroom and your learners and people rarely see what you are doing. Blogging can then sometimes be the only window that you offer on your practice and that shared, collaborative conversation can come through something like blogsync. It helps make our profession visible through the stories of the practitioners

What is blog sync?
- Blogsync is for educators who is looking for something deeper and more critical in terms of reflective writing and connecting to each other around that reflective writing.
- Some of the benefits are, you can expand your thinking and the reading of and responding to each other's blogs leads to a depth in discussion.
- This is also a way for people to express their personal view, but also to do it in a form that allows for wider discussion

Topics for this month:

Week One: 1 October - 10 October:
'What it means to be a connected educator' - my learning life online, and how being connected has affected my work in education.

Week Two: 13 October - 17 October:
'Diversity and inclusive practice' - What does this look like for us as Educators? For us as learners?

Week Three: 20 October - 31 October:
'Leadership in schools' - Modern leadership? Leading change? Leading with moral imperative?

Week Four: 27 October - 31 October:
'Student agency and voice' - Making students' contribution meaningful, giving it agency


Tips for writers?
- One of the most powerful things a blogger can do is write from personal experience. Yes Chris, I agree,  it does take a little bit to get comfortable with!
Bloggers who write from their own, experience in the classroom or experience as learners themselves, are often the ones who attracts the most interest.
- Be confident that your own personal experience is interesting to people and that you're personal take on something is valuable.
- You don't have to regard yourself as an expert on to the topics chosen.
- Be confident and comfortable with your own view
- Don't write too much at a time.
- Tell your story in a medium that works for you (Use just words or use them in combination with pictures)

~ To Blog is To Share, To connect, To create, To inspire - Anonymous ~