Creating a Blog

You would think that this post, Creating a Blog would have been earlier on this month. I didn't even think about the fact that I was learning something while I was writing my last two posts. I remember sitting in class when we were told our final assignment would be our choice. My professor gave us a list of ideas and I immediately chose to write a blog. A wonderful teacher in this faculty once told me "work smarter not harder". I definitely had this playing in the back of my mind when creating a blog. I figured, the more experience I gain now writing a blog, the easier it will be when I have my own classroom. My reason for blogging is simple. Blogs are such an important tool for education and are useful for teachers, parents and students. Blogs are great for creativity, reflection, learning from others and connecting with many people from all over the world. Teachers can use blogs to update information from the classroom so parents are always in the know of what their children are doing, homework assignments, or other classroom/ school events. They can link resources such as online articles, helpful tips, and educational sites to who ever follows the blog. Although this post is about writing a blog, I think that other aspects of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype are also beneficial in education. I know many teachers who have their students write weekly blogs and use 'kid friendly' twitter accounts as a way to monitor and observe what their students are learning. These various types of social media also help teachers, and parents, learn more about the interests, likes and dislikes or their students/children.

Back to writing this blog...  After choosing to create a blog for this class I logged on to a website thinking it would be really easy and guide me step-by-step through it. Wow, was I wrong. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to set up this stupid blog. All I could do was create a blogging address. After hours (literally, hours) of trying, I gave up. Story of my technological life. I went to class the next morning very frustrated and asked my professor for help. When I told him which site I was using, he suggested that I delete that blog immediately and try using Google Blogger. Right away I logged on to the classroom computer, and did as he suggested. I deleted the blog and opened a new one on blogger. Holy Batman was this much easier. As soon as I set up an account (name, password, etc...) there were directions neatly labelled on how to create a blog. I set up this blog within 10 minutes (that's probably exaggerating). It was so easy to find a design and format this blog, that I began my first post right away. As you may have read, the first post was all about my hatred for computers. Given time, and with every post, I become more confident in my blogging skills. That's something I never thought I would say.