Beth Swantz's List: Blogging

• growing” their own blog
• engaging in writing that is personally relevant.
• Blogging is a process, a conversation
• blooming flower
• they should think about what they want their blog to represent at the end of the year.
• a body of work.
• the steps they need to take in order to create the right environment for their blogs.
• Where will I find nourishment as a thinker and researcher?
• I want the students to learn that blogging is about initiating and sustaining conversations
• online resources that will help them learn more about their chosen topics.
• “Who will you interact with and learn from?” This is how they begin to build their networks.
• I want them to think about the kinds of habits that, in their opinion, will be necessary to accomplish their goals.

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• personal voice
• My own blog in our class blogosphere has always been used to post updates, assignments, commentary on student work, and words of encouragement. For years, it was called “The Language Arts Blog,” or “Mr. Glogowski’s Blog” or something equally official and unimaginative. The name of my blog has always reflected my one-dimensional presence in the community – the voice of a teacher. I don’t think my students ever perceived it as a blog – a place where the author shares his thoughts, ideas, or experiences and engages in meaning-making. It was a place that my students would visit regularly to read their latest assignment or download a rubric. I don’t think they ever learned anything from my own blog. They learned from the instructional conversations that I engaged with them on their own blogs, but certainly not from my own blog in the class blogosphere. It has always been an uninspiring place, a kind of online bulletin board.
• related to the curriculum.
• This year, I want to move beyond blogging only about course-related topics. I want my students to see what I am interested in, what makes me mad, what fascinates me, what I write like when I write as someone other than Mr.Glogowski, the Language Arts teacher. In short, I want to be myself and am beginning to take small steps towards this goal.
• I started by giving my blog a different name. The titles I used before were too official, too limiting, too school-like. They were institutional and impersonal. This year, the title of my blog is “…looking at things for a long time.” It comes from a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, which, in its entirety, reads: “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.” I chose it because I feel that it represents who I am as a person and a teacher. I chose it because I believe that the habit Van Gogh recommends in this quote is something that I want my students to develop as well. I want them to be critical, attentive readers and thinkers. I want them to take the time to achieve that “deeper understanding.”
• So, fairly soon, my students will see that I am more than my role as a Language Arts teacher suggests
• They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in social justice, foreign affairs, and human rights. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in photography and who collects old books and maps. They will get many glimpses into my life. I hope that they will understand that what makes a community is a network of human beings who have the freedom to be who they truly are and whose richness enhances the value of the community they inhabit.
• If education is essentially a social process, then the teacher needs to be part of the learning community, not only as its facilitator but also as one of its members
• a teacher’s blog needs to be a personal space

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