Education Needs Reflective Educators
In blogging for education reform, Shelly Terrell and I have collaborated together on an initiative we believe represents what education needs, bloggers for education! The project is Blog 4 Edu (The Blogging for Education project), a Twitter account (@Blog4Edu), wiki, and Facebook page to help support bloggers, blogging projects, and blogging challenges. Our vision is to persuade as many educational stakeholders worldwide to blog as possible.
Why Blog 4 Edu?
We suggest that blogging and social media are two of the main components of improving education worldwide. This won’t fix everything in education but through blogging we can open the conversation to the possibilities. When we blog we open the conversation to all education stakeholders (the public, parents, students, administrators, and educators). We automatically get an audience for our message even if it initially consists of one. Eventually, we share our message and reach someone who joins the conversation of how to improve education worldwide. This conversation continues for as long as we participate in the conversation.
Supporting Each Other
Teachers can choose to make a difference in their classrooms each day so why don’t many choose to inspire a passion for learning within their students? Many teachers don’t feel supported. Somewhere along the way their vision of reaching their students became blurred by the restraints of standardized tests, burdens from administration, parental complaints, and lack of support. Several educators also don’t reflect or run ideas with other educators about improving their practice. We lose so many great teachers because we fail to support them. After they lose their initial vision they also begin to lose their passion.
Blogging can be difficult at first, so we decided to start Blog 4 Edu to support, encourage and inspire edubloggers. Blog 4 Edu is meant to provide that support through commenting, sharing blogging resources, inspiring posting through blogging challenges, and providing bloggers with several projects to collaborate on. We won’t be initiating these projects. Instead, we will be sharing the ones many educators have already started and hope to inspire a collaborative spirit and enthusiasm for participating. Often educators come up with innovative ideas that die because of a lack of support and participation. With over 50,000 educators in our various social networks, there are plenty of participants but the word just doesn’t get spread. We hope to help spread that word.
Spreading the Word
Through blogging students and teachers exemplify what works in education. Blogging is a great way to share what is happening in every classroom. Transparency is very important to education transformation. The general public and parents need to see what we are doing in our classrooms. Through blogs we can share videos, share why we believe in our instructional practices, and share our humanity. We share our successes and failures and for parents and the public to read our raw reflections reminds them we are not superheroes, we are passionate individuals wanting to improve the world by inspiring children to love to learn. Transformation starts in the classroom but builds through the spreading of our message. Blogging is a great way to share what is happening in every classroom. Moreover, educators can also get other educational stakeholders on board by sharing their successes. Let’s spread the word and passion and make it contagious.
Reflection
Every passionate teacher should be a lifelong learner. Learning and reflecting will inspire and motivate teachers. Blogging is a wonderful tool for educators to reflect on their practices and grow professionally and personally. Through reflection we are able to improve on our instructional methods.
Ending Thoughts
We both believe that something must be done. We can’t just sit down and wait for other people to do something. We decided the way to best exemplify education transformation was through collaborating on this blog post and on this project. By the way, Shelly is located in Germany and I am located in Argentina. We met on Twitter about 4 months ago and came up with Blog 4 Edu yesterday. This is the power of collaboration! This is how we believe transformation will happen!
Find out more about this exciting project:
- Blog 4 Edu Wiki
- Twitter account (@Blog4Edu)
- Blog 4 Edu Facebook page
This post has been cross-posted by Shelly Terrell at Teacher Boot Camp
About a Teacher 
What a great initiative ladies!!! Unite and act for reform eh? Congratulations on your new adventure. Count on me for support and anything else you might need 🙂
Me too!!
Thank you so much Ceci! We really appreciate your support and kind words! We’re really excited about the project!
David, Ceci! Thanks for the help! We seriously appreciate it!
Fantastic idea! I’ll be sending you my monthly MyEC writing challenges. This month the English language learners (adults) are writing their 7 Secrets.
Wow Tara! Thanks so much! We appreciate your support! Your writing challenge sounds great! We’ll be adding it to our wiki! Thanks for sharing it!
This looks like a great project! I’ve really benefitted from finding some wonderful blogs over the last few months and I think it’s a fantastic idea for you two to promote and support educational blogging in this way.
Add me to the list of people willing to support, help and contribute. 🙂
Thank you David! We seriously appreciate your support, help and encouragement. We have also learned and benefited from other blogs that’s why we decided to start this project.
Thanks again! Love having you in my PLN! Go San Lorenzo ;)!
I love that you both are doing this! I am willing to support and help you both in any way that I can!
Thank you so much Kelly! It really means a lot! You’re awesome! Thanks again!
Yea for you!! I have benefited tremendously from reading reflective blogs. It has certainly become a major component of my ongoing learning. I still haven’t managed to make the leap myself though – seems to take so much time just to keep up on my classroom blog and Twitter. I will look to this project for some motivation to take that next step. Thanks!
Thanks so much Julie! I agree, I have also benefited a lot from reading and commenting on other blogs. It has also inspired me to start my own blog. We’ll love to have you on board! Looking forward to reading your new blog soon! Thanks again!
I could not agree with this posting anymore! I had taught for four years and started to feel unsupported and that blurring of my vision occurring. But last summer I decided to finally get active on Twitter and maintain my own blog. Since then I have been renewed in my educational spirit and have been cranking out new ideas and lessons. It has really opened me to a world of support and ideas that I never new existed.
This is a great cause and I am excited to see its ripples across the world of education!
Thanks for your comment and sharing your story Justin! Blogging can be really enriching and inspiring. So glad to hear about your successful story!
Thank you joining Blog4Edu’s team too! I’m really excited about Blog4Edu too!
Great initiative! I think blogging has become a vital tool in education. Right now I am on the student side of keeping a blog, and I have learned so much through blogging and I have made connections with exemplary teachers like you. I can not wait to use blogging in my future classroom to enhance the learning process for my students!
Thanks Laura! Blogging is so important. It’s a really powerful reflection tool. I learn a lot through blogging too. I wish I had the opportunity to blog when I was a student too. Blogging as a student or teacher is wonderful. I’ll check out your blog now. Please, let me know if I can be of any help! Thanks again!
success for you
Thanks! I really appreciate it!
How inspiring! This is a great initiative of you two, to set the stage for teachers to learn and share through collaboration.