The Fear of Blogging
This blog is turning into “What Will Richardson/David Warlick Said,” but when folks have good ideas, I have to recognize them and hopefully expand those ideas.
Anyway, Richardson had a great post today about the difficulty of blogging. He states:
While the successes are many and impressive, a good number of people still find the thought of publishing to an audience, even a relatively small, private audience of like-minded souls, to be too daunting. It’s just way outside their comfort zone, and they just believe that their contributions would either not be relevant, interesting or useful.
He goes on to get at the core of the argument:
…no matter how you slice it, blogging is a risk. And it’s a risk not just because you are putting yourself out there for the world, but because unlike many other types of writing that we do, it’s unfinished. At least that’s the way it feels for me. I don’t KNOW very much for certain. But blogging isn’t about what I know as much as it’s about what I think I know, and I find that to be a crucial distinction.
I think this has been an issue for me. I talk and talk in training sessions and classroom visits about the wonders for blogging. However, when it comes to my own professional blogging, it’s sporadic at best. On the other hand, when I blog about my non-professional interests, I find it to be easy. I’m afraid someone with way more expertise will come along and completely wipe out my ideas about education. It can be very intimidating.
Even if you’re not blogging professionally or with your students, the web can be a menacing audience. It’s what keeps us from blogging, starting wikis, writing WebQuests, or updating our websites. How do we get over that fear?
I know that reading other blogs has always helped spark ideas. Today (and yesterday) on this blog is no different. It’s helping me to blog by accessing my own personal learning network (PLN) through RSS feeds and Twitter. Now, if I could just come up with a few of my own ideas…
(Image “Blogging for Dummies” by Somewhat Frank.)
How We Teach Technology
I often read David Warlick’s 2¢ Worth blog in between planning, scheduling, and going on classroom visits. The other day, Warlick posted on the topic of methods for learning technology versus approaches. Teaching students the method of using technology is like giving them the steps in which to complete a task. On the other hand, students use technology every day by employing an approach that encourages them to test things out, explore, use some basic patterns found in other types of software, etc.
Warlick contends (or the guy he cites, Garr Reynolds) that by teaching systematic processes to our students, we limit their creativity and motivation for using technology. I couldn’t agree more. This is why I often avoid step-by-step instructions when introducing new software. I have found that most of the teachers I work with learn the software better when they work through it. If I can facilitate that learning through experience, then my teachers are more likely to make their own connections with the software.
This all goes along with eMINTS’ promotion of inquiry-based teaching methods. Your students are naturally inquisitive enough to figure out their own ways to make the technology work for them. We just have to facilitate that learning by providing experiences that encourage exploration.
___
Since I’m into citing other people’s work today, another daily read for me is Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed. Richardson ,like many in the ed-tech world, loves the work of Clay Shirky, an expert in the networks of Web 2.0. Anyway, Richardson quoted Shirky for his “quote of the day”…
I’m just so impatient with the argument that the world should be slowed down to help people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on. It’s in part because I grew up in a generation that benefited enormously from not doing that. Right? The baby boomers, when we were young, we had zero, zero patience for the idea that people who are in their fifties in the ’70s and ’80s should somehow be shielded from cultural changes because somehow the stuff that we were doing was upsetting them. So, now it’s our turn and we ought to just suck it up.
Teachers who have signed on for eMINTS training are not sitting back while the rest of the world moves ahead. You have chosen to update your skill set and to prepare students with 21st century skills. Good for you for making such a commitment to your students.
