Week 3 - Blogging for PLCs

All teachers and specialists in my school participate in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Other school districts may call it Professional Learning Networks. In these meetings, we get to know each other, pick a goal or standard to focus on, and work on this goal together throughout the school year by sharing ideas and student data. This school year was my first time participating in a PLC (why Head Start teachers were not included in the past is another story...) and it was a wonderful experience. It was great hearing what my colleagues do in their classrooms, and being a relatively new teacher, I learned plenty of tried and true methods.

In researching other ways that I can utilize my classroom blog with my students, I came across this post on Edutopia. The author writes:

"Blogs offer a level of interactivity in real time that was never present in the print media form of education journals. Readers may comment directly to the author with questions, critiques, or reflections on the post. They can also refer the author to other posts which share views that strengthen or question the post's position. All of this makes any post an interactive exercise as opposed to a stagnant presentation of a single writer's view."

It got me thinking about my PLC group... All of us agree that we need more time to come together to share our voices. Although we usually meet in PLCs every Friday, most of the hour and a half that we have is spent talking about what went well during the week and what didn't. We all know that we are supposed to dedicate that time to working on our goal (in this case, phonics and rhyming), but it is often hard to focus on one area when all other areas also need improving. Since we are already stretched for time, why not blog during the week to continue our teacher dialog so that PLC Fridays can solely be for PLC goals? A blog could even reduce the amount of staff meetings we have in a month, thus increasing our planning time.

I also think having an online collaborative space for teachers would really help the whole school community come together. My school will be undergoing changes (again) next school year with a new principal and some new colleagues so it might even lessen some of the anxiety that many of us are feeling.

UPDATE: I attended a school improvement meeting today (6/23/14) and I briefly shared this idea with my team. The assistant principal kind of made fun of me because I am constantly talking about my classroom blog and how I think every teacher should have one. Which is fine -- I am not averse to teasing. It seemed to me, though, that an online collaborative tool could be widely accepted by our staff. Perhaps not a blog, but something like Google Docs, where everyone can add what they like at a designated time and it can be seen in real time. I am excited about this prospect and am hoping the dialog continues!

Week 2: Going Paperless

Our discussion last week on blogs really got me thinking... I believe it was Melanie who mentioned to me that her school is going paperless and I thought, What a fantastic idea! Announcements and calendars of upcoming events can be posted on the school website and teachers can have a blog page to post their weekly newsletters. It is very green and can save schools tons of money. We did discuss the issue that some families don't have internet access at home, but sending home a few hardcopies is better than sending hundreds. I have also noticed at my school that a new generation of parents are coming in, and they are becoming more interested in the Web and mobile technology.

How innovative would it be if every school in a given school district was able to do this? As recommended in our readings, there should be a designated webmaster to tackle such an endeavor. Such a position would be ideal for me since I really enjoy blogging. I am hoping that, in the future, my school district will go paperless and that I would have the opportunity to be the webmaster of my school.

Week 1: Setting Up A New Blog

I am not new to Blogger. I first toyed with writing a blog during my undergrad years. I played around with the templates -- which was fun -- but eventually realized that I needed to decide on a subject before even starting. I ended up scrapping the idea. Then last fall, when I needed to create a classroom website for one of our EDTC classes, I thought about a blog that would serve as a communication tool and classroom portal for students and families. The blog has been an excellent addition to the family involvement piece of my job, and I think it has made a difference in developing my students' kindergarten readiness. I went through numerous design changes because I was never fully satisfied with what Blogger has available. So through Google searches, I taught myself how to add social media buttons and other gadgets, and how to create a unique header. Many of the features I added were downloaded for free from the Web.

For this assignment, I wanted to challenge myself by finding a pre-made template and learning how to upload it. There are thousands of free templates on btemplates.com that are very well-designed. The site also teaches first-time users how to install a template into Blogger and it is very simple. However, since I don't know how to code HTML, I didn't know how to edit some of my chosen templates to my liking. After much trial and error, I finally settled on this one (simple layout without too many buttons). After removing some unnecessary features, I viewed the final product, and to my surprise, the clouds in the header were moving! I have no idea how the designer did that, but it is really cool! I encourage you all to look for free templates if blogging is in your future. I think it's amazing that web designers create these templates for the general public. It makes blogging so much more accessible and easy for everyone!

I also checked out a post about choosing a good blog name before getting started, only because I am terrible at naming anything.

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