One of the purposes of my blogging has been to been to effect change. I’ve never for one minute thought that me putting my learning out there would shift major mountains but I did and still do think it could be used as model a different way of looking at how we document and develop the scope of documenting professional practice beyond the dreaded ring binder. I love blogs because there is much of an interactive element. I get an audience for my journey far beyond the walls of my school and physical confines of my city or even my country.
But that’s not to say I’ve not wondered on occasion if I should be putting my learning out there for all to see. It does mark me out as a freak in so far as I’m doing something a bit different Moreover it goes against the conventional social media advice given to student and beginning teachers from the powers that be. Where in general the feeling is that teachers should be locking down their social presence and even using a blog for professional purposes has bought up some interesting issues for me. Whether to blog anonymously has caused an enormous dilemma for me that I still haven’t resolved. You might notice I don’t use my full name, post student images nor directly name the school I work for on this blog. These decisions go back to my own set of guidelines I drew up for myself in the early days of blogging.
I never thought for a minute that my geekish tendencies might start to influence others. However a few weeks ago, I got an email asking if I was interested in having my name put forward as part of project on the ethics surrounding teachers’ use of social media. I felt hugely honoured to have been asked as I’m just a first year teacher. Although I might have been blogging for almost a decade but its really been since about June/July last year that I’ve reached any kind of significant audience so I did wonder if I was the right person to be taking part in a group.
Nevertheless the opportunity to help inform the thinking of this project was too good to pass up. I’m sure that there will be more posts as about this project in the upcoming months. But for now I’m pretty stoked to have been put forward and can only hope to make a worthwhile contribution worthy enough of all the awesome advice I’ve been getting from my fantabulous PLN.
This might not be a huge difference in the grand scheme of things and isn’t up there with finding a cure for cancer, bringing peace to the middle east or explaining why the Kardashians ten minutes of fame is not up. But this something I can do with my teaspoon.
Teaching the Teacher 