Erin’s Educational Technology Journey

My initial reaction to the ETEC 565 Toolkit information of there being over 400,000 educational blogs was “wow”. That’s a huge number of writers, writing for a purpose and for an audience. I assume this number is growing exponentially by the month and I wonder how many languages are represented in the number of 400,000.

My first experience with blogging was through MET. I designed a blog in ETEC 511, through KeepToolkit (http://www.cfkeep.org/static/index.html). However, I found it tricky to update and upload artifacts and files. In ETEC 565, I was introduced to WordPress. I found it much easier to use, and I decided to stay here!

Explore: I visited the following blogs

·         http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/ Jo McLeay is a M.Ed student who focuses on English teaching, literature and knowledge communities. She has posted a good podcast on learning communities coming together to make a difference through volunteering and a T.E.D. video featuring a P.E. teacher who uses blogging in his courses.

·         http://rachelboyd.blogspot.com/ Rachel Boyd has embedded videos that are educational and relevant to my teaching environment. In addition, she has simple explanations for many Web 2.0 tools: Twitter, Blogs in Plain English

·         http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/ A great blog created by Scott McLeod, an expert on technology integration in the K-12 environment.

·         http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2009/05/carnival-of-education-week-224.html The “blog carnival” includes links and threads to issues and technology integration in K-12 education.

Contribute: In addition to my 565 blog, I created a “rough” MET educational portfolio using WordPress to replace my KeepToolkit version. It can be found at http://eringillespie.wordpress.com/, but it is a work in progress! The skills I learn in 565 are used within the same week on my blog. I have found blogging to be time consuming. There is a potential audience for my posts, and I take my time expressing myself. I want to maintain an atmosphere of a professional-MET student-lifelong learner, and this involves rephrasing, spell-checking, including references (when required) and avoiding slang.

As an example, I’ve actually completed several Toolkit activities, but I save them as a document in Word. The reason is simple: I want to double check that the reflection reads well and I want to add to it. I know I can edit posts, but perhaps a visitor won’t return to my blog and will instead see a less structured post.

Reflection: I would like to investigate why I don’t “love” blogging. I recognize it as a communications tool and an educational tool, but I don’t feel like it is an artistic release or an enjoyable activity. I feel guilty for stating that, but it is true. For some background information, I never really enjoyed writing classes in elementary school and chose art and drama over writing in high school. I guess that’s what the “private posts” function in blogs are for.