What Should Teachers Blog About? - Technology Evangelist

A few weeks ago, I posted about why teachers should have blogs. But I didn't really get into what they should blog about.

I'm out of school and don't have kids, so take my opinion for what it's worth. Contribute any suggestions you have to the comments below.

I tried to think about what I'd like to hear about if I was a parent. Here's what came to mind:

1. Daily Wrap-ups for Parents. At the end of each school day, publish a quick blog post with three things that were talked about during the day that I can ask my child about. This would help me be a more involved parent and have a better understanding of what my child is learning day to day.

2. Additional Reading for Students. Create a section for students where they can find more information about subjects that were discussed in class. There must be more content than was covered in class that's worth mentioning. It's a great way to point motivated students to additional resources where they can dig deeper into the subject.

3. Test Calendar. Publish an online test calendar. Help parents understand when their children may need a bit more sleep, and help them plan time away from class for orthodontics and other school conflicts.

The beauty of this is it would only take a few minutes a day, but would greatly increase the communications between teachers, parents, and students. And it could be done for free using popular blogging platforms like Blogger.

If I was a parent of a student, I'd subscribe to my children's teacher's blog's RSS feeds and feel much more informed about their education while I'm at work. In the ideal world, teachers would have this online by 3:30pm so I'd surely have it in my RSS feed before I left work and would have time to think about it on my commute home.

Blogging scales. Fast and simply communications with your entire audience allows everyone to become more involved with little additional effort.

I'm a technology teacher/coordinator at a private school on the east coast. While we have both an external web site for the school and an intranet, the general feeling amongst teachers at the school is that we don't need to open another avenue for parent-teacher contact, which would inevitably increase our already heavy work load! It's hard enough to get the older teachers comfortable with using basic computing features, never mind burdening them with a daily blog. :-)

Posting a daily blog by 3:30.....is this assuming that no teachers have their own children to attend to?

"we don't need to open another avenue for parent-teacher contact" is an interesting way to look at things. I wonder how many businesses would survive working under the same customer service environment?

lloveouray, the time assumes school has been out before that time. Obviously, schedules vary.

James, you're absolutely correct about the time commitment and technology challenges at play here. I'd like to see something like this receive more attention than it appears to receive today.

Comments

1. Posted by: James on May 16, 2007 5:38 PM:

I think this might be the difficult part: "In the ideal world, teachers would have this online by 3:30pm..." I teach at the elementary level and know first hand that how crazy our schedules can be. Although this would only take a few minutes for someone like me, it might take longer for teachers less accustomed to blogs and posting. The other issue is that teachers often have meetings after the students go home. These include faculty meetings, various committee meetings, special education meetings for students, and parent conferences. It's a task to get everything squeezed into the day. Again, I think this is possible, but only after teachers get more comfortable with these types of communication tools. Thanks for your article...

Required fields marked with: *
Name*:

Email Address*:

URL:
Remember personal info?

Comments*:

HTML Tags you can use in your posts:
<b>Bold</b> = Bold
<i>Italicized</i> = Italicized
<a href="http://www.othersite.com">Link to Other Site</a> = Link to Other Site

Please keep comments on-topic. Contact authors or other commenters
directly for off-topic conversations.

Notify me of future comments via e-mail

Technology Evangelist Digest - Free Newsletter

Sign up for the free Technology Evangelist Digest to receive daily updates, editorials, and practical advice on emerging technology trends in hardware, software, webware, marketing and beyond.

Technology Evangelist Digest will keep you up to date on the technology trends that will help make you more productive and efficient both in business and your personal life.

Let's face it: If you made it to this line, you must have found something valuable on this page, right? Think about how cool it would be to have something free and interesting to read every day from Technology Evangelist by signing up today.

1. Fill in your email below,
2. Then click on the confirmation email you receive.
3. That's it. Your first Technology Evangelist Digest will arrive within 24 hours.