Two Types of Educational Bloggers….At This Point
So a quick observation. I have two types of educational bloggers in my blogroll. The first are those teachers that share their teaching lives in vivid detail on a regular basis. They describe the triumphs and the miseries of teaching. Sarah Puglisi’s A Day in the Life is one of my favorites. I have recently been adding some NYC based teacher bloggers like Nancy Brodsky’s Se Hace Camino Al Andar and will continue to add these local bloggers, as PlansForUs would love to hear their points of view in person.
The other type is the “technology in teaching” bloggers who advocate innovative ways to apply technology within the classroom. While they may be facing similar situations in the classroom, they choose to write about how technology can affect the classroom.
PlansForUs sits at the nexus of these two groups. We are trying to integrate technology into teachers lives by making that technology synch with the demands that are being described by the teaching life bloggers.
Please check out the blogroll, there is some good stuff.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:12 am
Strikes me that dividing up the entire landscape of education-related bloggers (aka “edu-bloggers”) into only (2) two camps seems to limit the myriad of nuances found within certain blogs and across the spectrum.
Yes, certainly there are those that blog specifically about their daily classroom experiences in rich, vivid, nearly 3D texture. And yes, there are those who are technology advocates who may or may not be classroom teachers as they blog. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed from reading a wide range of blogs, this only scratches at the surface of the folks that willingly (or by association, perhaps) fall into the education camp and “happen to blog”.
For what it’s worth, I’d take a step back and see a wider array of patterns forming. Otherwise, only 2 silos will appear — as they must in any industry who happen to have bloggers forming en masse: a) those that talk just about the day-to-day of their profession and b) those who talk about technology having an impact on the profession. Certainly there are lawyers, VC’s, journalists, media folks, stay-at-home moms, etc, who “happen to blog” who extend beyond 2 such camps. Same with education.
Just a thought as I consider the long-range plans for PlansForUs sitting at the “nexus” of any potential stakeholder group (i.e. potential “clients”). From a business plan/execution vantage point, it seems fair to divide the mix into 2 manageable groups. From a more global standpoint, however, the 2 uniforms lose value the moment you dive beneath the surface over time.
Best of luck with the development of your firm/apps/offerings.
Cheers,
Christian
August 15th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Christian,
Interesting that you commented, given the fact that you cannot be defined by either of these categories. I cannot argue that categories generally do not accurately portray the true depth and nuance of edu-blogging and blogging in general. In fact categories always fail as descriptors in the face of a much more nuanced reality.
That said, these categorizations lend a certain order to how one makes sense of the various bloggers out there. What is particularly interesting to me is how how bloggers generally network within their own. Looking at the blogroll of a 21st Century Collaborative and a NYC Educator, you see very little crossover and yet dive into those various blogrolls and their is quite a bit of crossover.
The larger point is that with the advent of blogging we are able to access an amazing array of different perspectives that contribute to both personal and universal understandings. It’s an amazing development for society as a whole.
At some point I would love for you and your wife to join PlansForUs. It’s an online word processor and social network that makes sharing lesson plans and teaching experiences simple. All of your content is licensed through a Creative Commons license.
We hope to engage with the entire teaching community and send a significant portion of our profits back into the teaching ecosystem through DonorsChoose, Teach for America and other worthy organizations. There is no doubt, that there is a lot of competition in the space. We are counting on simplicity and clarity of purpose to be the values that set PlansForUs apart.
Thanks for your comment and your fantastic blog.
Regards,
Tyler