When applying for a position at St Luke’s prospective applicants are invited to read a role description. The second line usually reads… “As connected and networked learners teachers are required to nurture faith filled, curious children to become creative contributors and innovative problems solvers for a changing world.” Notice the first part of this sentence,
As connected and networked learners”
One way to ‘connect’ and ‘network’ is through blogging. Teachers at St Luke’s have recently undertaken the commitment to blog. Most teachers at St Luke’s have not blogged and are therefore understandably a little nervous about venturing into the unknown world of blogging.
As a means of support, our first step was to gather as a collegial group to reflect on the purpose of blogging. We referred to:
The resulting discussion confirmed…
“… our purpose for blogging is to reflect on our learning and growth by documenting our professional work.”
Our next step was to start a blog. WordPress was deemed the starting platform of choice but with the understanding teachers could choose their own platform. As such, working through the WordPress options teachers chose a name for their blog, used a simple theme to design their blog and selected plugin options. Teachers are now ready to honour the “Sharing Our Work” edict of Austin Kleon.
We anticipate the benefits of blogging will be that each one of us will:
- Think and write more clearly
- Connect with thought leaders
- Teach more purposefully
- Respond to positive and constructive feedback
Two interesting developments within 24 hours of this collective commitment to blog have been:
- one teacher deciding to use Instagram as their platform of choice. This immediately challenged the few experienced bloggers in the room who see Instagram as a microblogging platform at best. No doubt there will be learning for all seeing how ‘Insta’ can support reflection through documentation of professional work.
- Our first blog, In the Beginning, was written by Meg Stone and appeared within 6 hours of our workshop. Meg gets the prize for first post!
The remainder of the teachers have until 6 April.
Next steps? To see support staff blog as well so we can Put it in the Soup!
Regards
Greg
LEARN AND LEAD 
What a great example Greg. Apart from the metacognitive and PLN value of blogging if we expect our students to be digitally literate and utilise or create a range of multi-modal texts then we need to model the same usage. I look forward to dipping into the blogs from St Lukes. I do like George Couros’ blog at http://georgecouros.ca/blog/ as a great example of a professional learning blog. Also if later you are moving towards class/student blogs, Slvia Tosenthal has great resources in this area http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2014/06/11/blogging-in-the-classroom-resources-by-silvia-rosenthal-tolisano/#.WMo_1nR95E4
great information about networking etc.