Blogging for Trainee Teachers

I am on a mission and this is my rallying cry. 

I want to get trainee teachers blogging; writing and reading posts. I do not want them to suffer the 'Tumble weed effect' where they write posts that sit in the ether, all alone, unseen and un-cared for. I want them to have a vibrant experience where they have that ‘authentic audience’. I want them to see what their peers and other teachers are doing and from that gain a sense of 'Community of Practice'. I want them to develop a habit of reflecting on their practice and sharing this as part of developing their professional practice and identity. I want dialogue. Not least I hope that writing these posts will help them to find their voice and hone their academic writing skills.

There a number of other reasons, related to their professional practice, that makes me think that it is important that trainee teachers blog. Blogs are becoming part of our lives and these trainees will need to teach digital literacy skills to their pupils. Skills around the functional and critical processes of blogging and reading blogs. If they are not comfortable with the mechanics of blogging and the requirements of blogging they will struggle as a teacher to offer these opportunities to their pupils.

Blogging is implicit in elements of the national curriculum for example the

The aims of the computing curriculum include

• are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology

At Key Stage 2 it explicitly includes internet services

• select, use and combine a variety of software (including internet services) on a range of digital devices to design and create a range of programs, systems and content that accomplish given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information

Many primary schools are already blogging and there are a number of well established initiatives in primary schools to encourage blogging such as

Quadblogging

100 Word Challenge  

Hopefully I have made my case for encouraging trainee teachers to blog.  As Initial Teacher Education Institutes many of us already encourage our students to blog and have blogging as part of our assessment process. 

My intention is that we develop something informal that supports and enhances what we already do. Ideally once we have set it up it will be sustainable, with students taking the initiative to maintain it. The last thing that we need is adding to our workload.

Here are my proposals

Blogging Tetrads

I would like to set up groups of students, probably 4 in a group, who then join with groups of students from 3 other institutions. Over time frame of up to a month one of the groups will blog and the other three groups will comment on their posts. The following month a different group will blog with the others commenting and so on.  

Animated Presentation of Blogging Tetrads

This way students share their experiences with other students. Commenting will help them to develop a dialogue and from this their professional network.

Collection of trainee blogs
Another idea that developed whilst I was seeking people’s opinion about this was to set up something similar to Staffrm a sort of Staffrm for trainees …. Traineerm? The reason I suggest this rather than encouraging students to join Staffrm was I that I was concerned that the trainees may find blogging to an audience of teachers intimidating.

I would like to get going with this ready for a start in September 2015

Would you and your institute be interested in being involved?

Do you have ideas about how we could improve this?

Do you have skills that can help to make this happen?

Please could you indicate your thoughts via comments and complete this Google form so that I can collect your contact details.

John Dewey: "We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience."

Image: CC https://flic.kr/p/BrAid