When we were asked to write a blog post that reflected on someone else’s educational blog, or ‘edublog’
I will admit I was less than enthused.
Not that I didn't see the value of this assignment, I did, but because
my stress was high and my available time was low. That all being said, I found a really cool
blog for Biology teachers! Before I
found the one I liked I spent awhile searching through personal blogs by Bio
teachers, some of them were alright but on the whole I didn't see them as
terribly useful to me.
The blog that I ended up enjoying the most was
kabt.org. KABT (Kansas Association of
Biology Teachers) is an especially helpful blog because it is meant to be
collaborative not just reflective as many of the personal blogs that I found
were. Many posts on this site were in
reference to changes in curriculum, successes and failures of experiments, and
ideas for potential field trips.
One of my favorite posts was clearly in response to the apprehension
around the new AP Biology curricula. In this
new curriculum there are many more laboratories that students are expected to
get through and have a thorough understanding of in order to do well on the AP
test. Teachers had been concerned about
having enough time to do these labs and get through the content that is
expected of them. This post showed this
teachers experience with her students after the first semester with the new
curriculum. She indicates that the labs
are helping her students to understand content without excessive lecture time,
and they are gaining both valuable lab skills and valuable thinking skills.
For me kabt.org is the kind of edublog I see myself visiting
and utilizing in the future because its emphasis is more on collaboration then
on self-reflection. I think that a blog
like this could be used to inspire new ideas for my classroom as well as get advice
from veterans about what does and does not work.
I'm glad you found a blog you like, and one that provides the sort of experience that you can use in your own practice. It's nice to know that blogs can serve as a practical forum as well as a personal outlet.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit here that I decided to check out a blog from a former MAC student, a blog that clearly started out in 504. I had opes of seeing where that student had gone with their blog since they graduated. The first post was on Trayvon Martin and race in America. Not directly related to pedagogy, but it seemed a promising start.
Sadly, the first entry on education (dated July of 2012) was a farewell letter to education, in somewhat bitter tones. This person left a school in NYC, and though it seemed that they'd made a good run of it, there was also a sense that they'd quit on their students. The decision was clearly not an easy one for them, but they had chosen to leave education entirely.
Ouch.
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteI think it's really interesting that you found a collaborative blog. Does this mean multiple teachers blog on it and it's sort of a discussion base? I like that they talk about the curriculum and their apprehensions about changes in it might change their effectiveness as a teacher. I wonder if there is a math blog like this. It would be really neat if all the schools did collaborative blogs within their departments to share their thoughts and questions about their subject. We should start something like this when we are all doing our student teaching, to share insights that we can in our different classrooms with our mentor teachers. I think this would be helpful, because we will each only get a slight glimpse of the teaching world through our experience, so it would be great to hear about what everyone else is going through. It would also be a good way to keep in touch with each other, since we will be seeing each other less than we do now. Just something to think about :)
Morgan
It's interesting that we had different approaches to finding edublogs. It sounds like you looked directly for teachers in your discipline while I kind of just looked at a few different ones. The blog that caught my eye was actually a science teacher but reflected more on issues going on in the education world in general.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm thinking about going back and looking for ELA teachers that specifically discuss things going on in their classrooms. Although, it was interesting to see the different perspectives on these larger social and theoretical issues that we've been talking about.
Michael, the blogs that I read seemed optimistic but frustrated about the changes being made to education. None seemed quite as bitter as the one that you read.