blog advice
- Think about whether you want your blog be public or private. You may want to see if your school or district has any policies about it. Since this is usually a huge question for someone starting out, we've compiled various perspectives on this page. Similarly, you may want to think about the pros and cons for posting student work. Some bloggers just show student work. Some bloggers have asked students permission to post their work. Others will rewrite the work (if it's about student mistakes). However, most just don't show student work at all, but talk generally about it.
- Be professional, regardless of whether you're public or private. Don't knock your colleague or talk about a difficult student. Assume all your kids, their parents, and your colleagues are going to be reading this. That isn't to say you can only write about the successes, but make sure you are keeping it classy with a c (not with a k).
- Don't obsess about your site stats and getting readers. It takes time and happens naturally! You can use twitter to promote your posts, and you can link to your posts in the comments of others blogs if it is relevant! At the beginning, blog for yourself -- to archive your lessons and whether they worked or not, your attempts to keeping an effective classroom, your failures and successes, and random ideas for the future. Blog for yourself.
- Try to almost always include a picture in your posts, and come up with a title that explains the crux of the post. Most people read posts in Google Reader, and are scrolling through a whole bunch at a time. For some reason, pictures seem to get people to read. Also, for someone scrolling, having a descriptive title is key.
- If you are blogging about a worksheet or activity, and are sharing it, you can actually embed a PDF of the worksheet on your blog (see example here, and instructions for embedding here). But if you do this, also upload and include the .doc file also, so someone can download and edit it and use it in their own classes! Sharing is caring!
- Don't blog because you feel like you ought to blog. Blog because you feel like it, because you want to use the process to think about something, because you feel like pushing yourself. If you're not in the mood, don't. Why waste your free time doing something you don't want to do? Do it when you're inspired, or excited to share something.
An exception: you can sometimes reinvigorate your teaching, when you feel like you're in a rut, by forcing yourself to blog about something. An upcoming lesson, a worksheet you made, something.