Yesterday was our blog's first birthday and we have been reflecting on what we have learned in our year of blogging. During our first year of blogging, we have...
- become more reflective of our teaching and think of the "why" behind everything we do in the classroom so we can explain the purpose to others in our posts.
- learned how having an audience increases writing motivation. For example, we can track our stats and see how many hits our blog gets on a daily basis and on a post by post basis. It's exciting when we can see that people are reading our posts.
- realized how much comments mean to bloggers after we experienced receiving them for our posts.
- entered the world of twitter. Other aspects of our lives may have suffered from our participation on twitter, but it has been an incredible way to connect with other educators and find articles, resources, and new ways of thinking.
- noticed that writing posts has gotten easier. When we first started posting, the orange publish button was intimidating and even scary. It still is, but less so. :)
- noticed that people like pictures. The posts with images are generally more popular than the purely black and white ones.
- realized that the posts you think are amazing are not necessarily the ones that are the most popular. Sometimes a post that you whip off takes off and sometimes a post that took forever to write captures little attention in the world of blogging.
- become stronger thinkers and recorders of our work.
- been reading more consistently because of the commitment to post about our reading on Mondays.
- realized that we find writing ideas from classrooms, books, twitter conversations, articles, students, each other, and other bloggers.
For those of you who are considering a blog, we recommend trying it. There's no commitment--no blood, money, or pain involved-- and there is a world ready to read, think, reflect, encourage and learn with you. Happy birthday to our blog!
Happy Blogging Birthday! Reflective practice is at the heart of what I do in my own classroom. It is key to growth and development (in teaching, in art, in everything really). Kudos to you both for reflecting publicly. So glad to have "met" you in the Slice of Life community.
ReplyDeleteHappy blog birthday. Look at all you have shared in one year!! I enjoyed your list of what you have learned about blogging since beginning. It is nice when it gets a little easier to hit the publish button though I think we'd agree there are certain posts that still cause us to pause before we press. It has been fun collaborating and learning with you across the year. Looking forward to another year of blogging.
ReplyDeleteCathy
Congratulations to you both!
ReplyDeleteI've just recently started blogging for the Slice of Life 2013 Challenge and have already found that many of the rewards of blogging hold true for me, too.
Thank you for the encouragement to continue to learn and grow through blogging!