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Some Educational Blogs

After starting to think about what I could do with blogging I decided to research some educational blogs that are highly recommended by some top education resources as well as look at other AP Psychology teacher's blogs to understand more about how they use them in their own classes. While this will not relate to my future career goals of designing distance learning programs in higher education, this will be incredibly relevant for me right now as I transition to teaching high school online- and I will be teaching high school in some way, shape, or form in the fall for the new school year.

I found that Education Week (https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/blogs/index.html) was a great resource for general education blogs because it breaks them down it to specific topics. There is a section for educating specific populations, technology, politics, and more. The one that I enjoyed the most on this site was Rules for Engagement (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rulesforengagement/) which discusses the mental health of students and how their personal lives affect their performance in school. This incredibly relevant for us right now as our students are faced with a pandemic and struggles that they have not had to manage before.

TurnItIn and Teach.com both had very similar lists of "must follow" educational blogs for teachers, and one of them listed was Edutopia (https://www.edutopia.org/) and I was amazed! I have followed Edutopia for years on Twitter, I love their articles and resources, and ideas- but I had no idea that this was considered a BLOG! My mind is blown, I could actually be contributing and writing for Edutopia. Now, I feel like I have been slacking in my "teacher duties" since I have not been producing content like all of these other amazing teachers.

Finally, the AP Psychology teacher blogs. This is where I really started to feel guilty about my teaching skills amidst this pandemic. This teacher, Mr. Canton, http://cantorsappsychologyblog.blogspot.com/ has an active countdown clock on his blog for his students to countdown to our AP Exam! We have a school website, and we use Google Classroom. I have told myself that I have done an amazing job outlining resources for my students and keeping them informed, but in looking at these blogs I see that having a blog would actually give me a LOT more control over the information I am posting for my students and the way it is displayed. I love Google Classroom, it is incredibly intuitive but I am determined now to explore how I can have a blog as my "home base" or class website and link it to Google Classroom for assignments.

If this is just a preview of some of the tools and ideas I will gain in this course (EME 6414) I am beyond thrilled, and we are really taking it at a perfect time considering the current state of affairs.

Comments

  1. LeahMay 13, 2020 at 1:58 PM

    Hi JFoxx, I think it's wonderful that you did your own research on educational blogs to see what they're all about. I can see how the information would be very helpful to you as you design your online high school classes. Have you been using any other sort of interactive applications other than Google Classroom? I'm so happy that I'm no longer teaching and don't have to deal with the pandemic and educating students, but it still interests me to see what teachers are using to remote teach. I had a blog when I was teaching and found it very useful for the parents. I was teaching elementary school so the students didn't really use the blog too often. I imagine that a blog would be very useful during the pandemic to a group of high school students though. Good luck and have fun with it if you decide to create one!

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  2. IlvermonyMay 16, 2020 at 7:42 PM

    Thank You for sharing your experience with educational blogs! Reading your post, I realized that I have been using educational blogs for a very long time for my learning as well as for my students. I find them to be easy to understand for students. However, I am also a little apprehensive about them because I consider blog posts to be opinionated. I agree that many of the bloggers perform detailed research before posting on their blogs, but I do find some of the blogs can be very subjective. As someone from Science transitioned to social science, I still struggle with the balance between objectivity and subjectivity.

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  3. KendylMay 17, 2020 at 6:22 PM

    I am so thankful that you have shared these resources from your research! I had a similar idea in starting out to look into some of the mechanics of blogs like voice, construction and content as I have never been a blogger nor really followed any blogs. I did not have the forethought to look into specifically education-based blogs, though, and find this extremely helpful. I will have to look into each of these further.

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