Yikes! I haven’t blogged for over a month. Time to get back into the groove. Though I haven’t been posting, I have been doing a lot of reading and commenting.
Favourite Blogs
All of the blogs in my reader are great, but with over 200 unread posts, there are a few that I ALWAYS stay up to date on. In alphabetical order they are Drape’s Takes, dy/dan, Hurrican Maine, and Practical Theory. Combined, these people are challenging me to reconsider how I teach and how I use technology.
Lately Louise Maine (Hurricane Maine) and Dan Myer (dy/dan) have been really influential. Louise posts great stuff about what she is doing with her biology students. She is a queen of the wiki and does engaging project based learning with her students. This post of Louise’s is a particular favourite of mine. Louise inspires me to share what I do and make the learning meaningful for my students. Dan Myer writes great posts and asks the questions that need asking. His dy/av video series this summer was amazing. At the beginning of September he posted his entire Geometry curriculum on-line, complete with his slides in PPT and other formats. Add to that he’s a fan of The Wire and The Office–what more could you want?! A recent post of his that has caused me to get it into gear was this one where he lamented the lack of Web 2.0 technology that is transforming math instruction. It made me realize how few blogs in my feed reader are by subject specialists sharing what has worked for them in their practice.
Time To Kick It Up A Notch
The influence of the four bloggers that I mentioned above has caused me to re-evaluate what I’ve been posting here. A lot of what I post is about my experience with blogging and with the technology. I think this is to be expected from a new blogger. This is a way to reflect on what I’ve been learning. As I near my one year blog anniversary though, it is time to kick it up a notch. This weekend I probably put in 3 hours preparing a resource for a 45 minute class!?!! Add to that it was for a mixed grade class (gr 4 – 7), where I will see the grade 4s for 2 more years, which means I can’t use it again for 3 years. This is not being efficient!!! However… if I share what I did so that others can use it, well, then the time investment was worth it. I will post on this lesson soon.
How ‘Bout You?
If you blog, are you content with the focus of your blog? Or are you like me, re-assessing what you do. Love to hear from you!
