Blogging - Writing for Who?

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What's the Big Deal About Blogs?

Blogs in Plain English from Common Craft describes blogs as websites that are organized by individual posts. Each post is like a news story and the blog becomes a collection of these posts. As I am beginning to write down my thoughts and ideas for this week's topic, I am truly excited and looking forward to the readings on blogs and RSS feeds. Here are two topics that I knew nothing about and above that, was quite fearful of. The thought of writing my own blog posts - preposterous. I am not a writer, nor am I a risk taker when it comes to my writing. But here I have been, for the past three months, sharing my views on web 2.0 tools with the world. (Okay, really just my class, but that has been enough) It has been difficult finding my writing voice. After our many class discussions, I realized that I write for an audience of one - Joanne. I know that she will read my work and assess it, so that has been my goal.

When blogging first began, it was considered a web log or an online diary, but blogging has become much more than that. It is now a place to share and exchange ideas on any number of topics. It is a place to show the world what you are made of (or not) and divulge your thoughts and feelings about what you are passionate about. We have discussed in our class about how so many of us are afraid to put our thoughts in a public forum for others to read and how difficult it has been to find our "blogging voice".

As I work through this week's assignment I am quite excited about this topic. I couldn't quite figure out why this blog post was different for me but I think it's because here is something I am more familiar with. No, I didn't really have any experience with blogs before this course, but for the past three months I have been posting to my blog on a regualr basis and reading other blogs regularly. And on the odd occasion, I have even made a comment. For many of our topics I have found that a week has hardly been enough time to get your head around what it was all about let alone actually try it out. Here is one that we have been trying out - for three months. That gives me a feeling of comfort and a sense that I know a little bit about this topic.

As I began to learn about blogs in the beginning of this course, I found it difficult to find interesting and relevant blogs to follow. There were a couple that I was aware of like Blue Skunk Blog and Joyce Valenza's blog but I was unaware of such treasures as Stephen's Lighthouse and Talking Smartboards and Much More. I now find it easier to find other blogs and often many are linked or recommended within a blog site to other worthwhile blogs. Checking out the winners of this years Edublogs I discovered was a very valuable tool in finding relevant educational blogs.

Personally
I have already mentioned this year how we plan to do some traveling next year. We have finally decided that I will be taking a leave of absence in September. In the fall I will work on the last two courses for my teacher-librarianship program. Next winter, we will home school our daughter, who will then be nine, and we plan to travel throughout South America for two months. Throughout our trip I envision us maintaining a blog where we post once a week about where we have been, what we have done and seen. I already have an idea that as a family we will each take turns writing - a week at a time. I imagine the opportunity this will give our daughter as she tells her perspective of our trip. My hope is that our friends, family, staff and our daughter's class will follow us in our adventure. Perhaps they will leave comments and we can have an ongoing dialogue. When I return to work the following September, with this journey behind us, perhaps this will then give me the courage to try blogging at my school.

There are so many great reasons why to blog.
-to share ones thoughts/ideas on their passion
-to share information about a trip while traveling (if they have access to the Internet)
-a way to express yourself
-you are a writer and want to share your writing with a larger community
-a space to showcase videos or photos

Professionally
Blogging? It's Elementary Dear Watson! is a very intersting article with some great ideas on how to blog with younger students. If I were a classroom teacher I would be very interested in incorporating blogs into my teaching. It lists some blogging websites that are available and easy to use, especially with younger students such as Blogmeister and KidzBlog. Another one to add to this might be ClassPress.

In this article Jackson describes blogs, as being "a highly effective way to help students to become better writers. Research has long shown that students write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet." (Jackson, 2005)

While reading the article Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library's Services by Darlene Fichter I thought about how a blog could be used for my school library. Blogs are not widely used in our district (actually I am not aware of any) and so I am hesitant to have a library website or blog because I feel that it won't be used. (That also might be an excuse for me not trying.) This article did not provide me with any examples of blogs in elementary schools and so I went looking elsewhere. I discovered a wiki called School Libraries and from there found an excellent blog called Voices From the Inglenook. This looks like a great blog by the teacher-librarian at that school. One of the reasons I like this blog is because I like her style - her voice. She appears to know who she is writing for and that comes out clearly in her posts.

Why Should Librarians Use Webblogs?
Greg Schwartz on WebJunction lists six reasons why librarians should blog and why they should care about blogging. As I read through this blog, I wonder to myself, could I do this too? Am I courageaus enough to give this a try?

-writing a blog keeps you current
-blogs are advocacy tools
-blogs build community
-you are uniqe (Haven't we all been saying that?)
-do it for you
-because it's easy. (I love this last one - it alleviates any excuses)

Why Should Librarians Care About Blogging?
-to provide up to date information on community events ( in my case, any school or library events such as our upcoming book fair)
-to provide library news
-to provide information on new resources
-promoting library services

Godin, in this video by Seth Godin and Tom Peters explains why blogging is important, even if no one is reading your blog.



There is laughter from the audience when Godin expresses his idea that it is not important that anyone reads our blogs. He says that it is all about the humility that comes with writing your blog and the metacognition of thinking about what you are going to say that is important. When I read Joanne's comments about our posts on Twitter, I think that's us. Not a lot of people have been reading our blogs, but we have improved anyway. Our writing and our ideas have progressed and we are less fearful of expressing our thoughts and ideas. So maybe Godin has a point, that is it not so much as to who reads our blogs but the simple fact that we are writing and expressing our thoughts and ideas.

There were many great sites listed in this week's trailfire and one I would like to mention is Kim Cofino's blog - Always Learning. A grade four class has come up with a set of Student Blogging Guidelines to use when blogging. These guidlelines would be useful for any class and I will be sure to use them if I ever have the opportunity to blog with some of my students.

RSS News Feed (Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary)
To really take advantage of following blogs or have people follow your blog, you need to have a news aggregator or an RSS feed. This seems complicated at first, but like most technology, once you get into it, it works pretty slick. For my RSS feed, I use Google Reader, as "you can access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection." (Richardson, 2009, p. 73) No special software is needed. After having used Google Reader for some time now, I found the video RSS in Plain English from Common Craft described it perfectly.

With blogs and RSS feeds, you can have one (blogs) without the other (RSS feed) but why would you? Before RSS feeds, "if you had 20 websites you liked, you had to visit all 20 of them just to find out if anything new had been posted. Enter RSS, or “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS is a way of publishing a stream, or “feed,” of online content that makes it easier for the public to subscribe to it." (Carvin, 2006)

Conclusion
Will I continue to blog? Perhaps not right away but I think it will be a part of our travels next year for sure. And I might, if I come across ideas that I want to share with others post them on my blog or I may choose Twitter instead because then I know that someone will actually see them. I am much more comfortable here than when we first started. That first two weeks I did everything I could possibly do until I had no choice but to start my first blog. It was not my most comfortable moment. I have grown quite a bit since then.

I will continue to weed out and find new blogs to follow. The use of Google Reader on my iGoogle page has been an invaluable resource. I have passed on links to websites to numerous teachers and tech support people in our district thanks to the blogs that I follow.

Sources
Carvin, A. (2006). RSS Feeds: Making your favorite websites come to you. Retreived from http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2006/09/rss_feeds_making_your_favorite.html

Cofino, K. (2009). Student blogging guidelines. Retrieved from http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/09/06/student-blogging-guidelines/

Commom Craft. (2010). Blogs in plain English. Retrieved from http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs

Common Craft. (2010). RSS in Plain English. Retrieved from http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

Google Reader. (2010) Retrieved from https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?hl=en&nui=1&service=reader&continue=http://www.google.com/reader

Jackson, L. (2005). Blogging? it's elementary, my dear Watson! Education world. Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml

NCTE Inbox. (2008). RSS: bringing what's new to you. Retrieved from http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/06/rss-bringing-whats-new-to-you.html

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Crowin Press: Thousand Oaks, California.

School Libraries. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=School_libraries

Schwartz, G. (2008). Blogs for libraries. Retrieved from http://www.webjunction.org/social-software/articles/content/430713

YouTube. (2009). Seth Godin & Tom Peters on blogging. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=livzJTIWlmY&feature=player_embedded

Voices from Inglenook. (2010). Retrieved from http://csslibrary.wordpress.com/link to article on RSS feeds http://www.llrx.com/features/rssforlibrarians.htm