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Happy Blogiversary to Me! (blogging metatheory)

Submitted by dr. b. on Sun, 08/14/2005 - 10:38am. My Teacherly Self | Not Just Another Angry Negro | Research and Writing | This Is What a Feminist Looks Like
As cheesy as it is it's true. Today is my blogiversary and Dr. B.'s Blog and I are celebrating our 4th!

4 years ago I started my first official blog. 2 years before that on October 10, 1999 I started blogging before blogging was cool. I was a fesh faced grad student keeping a writing journal online (with a webcam) to track progress of my dissertation writing.

Lately, there's been discussion on one of the professional listserv of whether or not teachers who use blogs should blog...my answer is hell yeah. I may be biased, but I think that we can't effective teach with a technology unless we know how it works mechanically, theoretically, and pedagogically.

We teach by example, they learn by practice. The two of those things together make the answer to the question "Do we have to blog with our students?" a resounding "hell yeah!"

No offense to anyone, but more and more it feels like folks wanna do things in the classroom in order to be cool without thinking it through, fully theorizing, or even necessarily knowing what they are doing. It is for that reason that I continue to mentor incoming GTAs year after year. I want them to know why they do what they do so that they can do it well.

Hell I've wasted plenty of time playing with new technologies that I thought had pedagogical value before I chucked them out. You gotta play with it yourself before you spring it on students. You gotta know that it will work for you . Just because it worked for everyone else damn sho' don't mean it'll work for you. We have to realize that all teachers are not the same.

:slowly puts the soapbox back under the desk

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

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Happy Blogiversary

Submitted by Mary Godwin on Thu, 08/18/2005 - 12:13am.
It took me a while to get in, but this was the post that inspired me, so I'm backtracking to wish you a happy blogiversary from my position just a bit behind the ball. best atcha! -mg
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You teachers who actually kno

Submitted by senioritis on Fri, 08/26/2005 - 9:27am.
You teachers who actually know what you're doing with technology are an inspiration to the rest of us. As one who has very definitely charged into the classroom enthusiastic about a technology (yes, blogs) that I didn't know enough about and bungled pretty spectacularly, I wince at your words here. They're too true! Will that keep me from again charging ahead without sufficient knowledge? Alas, no :) But I'll try not to! And: happy blogiversary, indeed. Four years? You're a pioneer.
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Pffft! You know what you are

Submitted by dr. b. on Tue, 08/30/2005 - 9:00am.
Pffft! You know what you are doing! This definitely does not include folks who are working along with the students. The thread on techrhet was someone who had never blogged before and had no intention of ever doing so, not even with the students. With "bleeding edge" technologies we often learn right along with our students!
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