I’ve been blogging off and on for a few years now at https://davidwees.com. Actually I have 3 blogs right now that I maintain infrequently right now, my MET program has me too busy to focus on my own blogs. I don’t really find the process difficult, the hardest part is coming up with material to talk about, and then taking the time to write it down.
I have a personal blog, which was intended to be for family members to read, and has mostly been replaced by a photo gallery website. It seems my family members want to see the pictures more than they want to read me discuss the pictures. Hrmmph!
The blog I have put the most amount of effort into is my programming blog. I’ve probably got about 100 posts on this blog, all related to various programming projects I’ve undertaken over the past 4 years. It’s also my most widely read blog, with maybe 20-30 people reading an entry each day. I actually started this blog as a way of both drumming up some business for myself (people who search for solutions to problems might see my examples, etc… I’ve probably gotten 10-12 jobs through my blog so far, all part-time). I also wanted a way to keep track of what I’ve done because to be honest, I forget! It’s a lot of different stuff.
I started an educational blog about the same time I started looking for work for this coming year. I found a job, and I’ve been pretty busy, so this blog is on hold until September. Once I start work again, I’ll probably try and update it fairly regularly, because I want a record of what I’ve tried with my students.
When I was looking at the top 100 educational blogs, the first surprise was that one of those blogs is an acquaintance of mine I met online. It was pretty neat to see his name in the “spotlights” so to speak, and so I took another look at his blog. Pretty cool tech blog, although more focused on technology rather than education.
Blogging is a pretty cool thing to do in education because it takes all of us as educators out of our classrooms and lets us show off what we do. So often educators get so little credit for being good at their jobs, having a place to showcase one’s talents can be very rewarding. As well, other educators become better as we begin to develop institutional memories about our profession. This can only lead to good things.
