Why I blog

In a conversation recently, a friend asked why I bother writing a blog.  His rationale was that since I didn’t receive any compensation for the task and it wasn’t part of my official job, why would I waste time each week writing new posts.  I took a few minutes to explain my rationale for blogging and thought it would be a great subject for this week’s post.

To me, blogging isn’t about what’s in my job description or what I’m paid to do.  It’s about thinking, learning and sharing.  And for that, I have received immeasurable compensation.  Here’s why:

1.  I need to write to learn.   I usually have a bunch of ideas swirling around my head.  Blogging forces me to connect my thoughts in a coherent way and make sense of the sometimes disparate concepts.  It’s not true for everyone, I’m sure.  But writing gives me the opportunity to solidify my thoughts and learn.   When I start writing a blog post, I usually have a general idea of the subject matter and some of the points I want to make.  After getting started, however, I may end up in an entirely different place because the writing process leads me to consider my thoughts in a new way.

2.  I need to write to become a better writer.  I wish I could learn to write by watching someone else write or by reading the written word on page.  Like most things, however, writing isn’t a spectator sport.   Blogging is a way for me to sit down each week and focus on writing.  It’s the same way that runners choose to run each day or musicians choose to practice regularly.  To be good at anything, we all must dedicate some time to develop necessary skills and hone our craft.  Some writers keep journals or join writing groups.  I blog.

3. I’m giving back.  In my mind, blogging is a service that I offer for the community.  Not that the world was suffering without my great wisdom or anything, but I think that I have a knowledge base that could help some of my colleagues, whether they’re at my institution or somewhere across the globe.   Blogging is a way of digitally volunteering.  By contributing new posts each week, I can help people learn new things about teaching and technology.  While this may sound odd to some people, blogging is a form of digital altruism, where individuals work, alone or in groups, to share their expertise or solve problems. The world is full of digital altruists.  Wikipedia and YouTube rely on them.  People share their expertise and knowledge base in all sorts of ways online.  My blog is how I choose to give back to the larger community.

4.  I’m having a dialogue with and learning from the world.   Blogging gives me the ability to have a larger discussion with people I’ve never met about subjects I find interesting.  At the time I’m writing this, over 31,000 visitors have read the 8 Blog with over 125 people stopping by today.  While I’ve submitted 154 posts so far (today’s post will be 155), I have gotten 180 comments on my posts from readers across the globe.  People have visited the blog from almost every state in the US and from over 100 different countries.  While I’ve been able to get a number of manuscripts published in national and international means, I have had very few people contact me or interact with me regarding those publications.  Blogging opens my work to an international dialogue.  As a learner, it’s been tremendously educational for me.

While I’ve shared my reasons for maintaining the 8 Blog, I also want this to be a motivational message for those of you who are thinking about blogging.  Are you looking for a creative outlet?  Do you want to open a dialogue with your colleagues or with total strangers?  Do you want to work on your writing skills and get feedback on your writing?  Blogging can be one way to accomplish this.  Anyone with an idea and some motivation can start blogging today.  Go forth, my friends, and blog.

Tips for new bloggers

I don’t get many requests for blog topics so when I received one recently, I was really motivated to comply.  A reader wrote in a comment:  “Do you have any tips for first-time blog writers?“  Rather than post a comment reply that might get lost in the blog ether, I thought I’d use the question as a prompt for this week’s post. Here are a few tips for the beginning bloggers.  If you’re an experienced blogger and want to share a few of your own, feel free.

1.  Don’t plant a garden if you don’t want to pull weeds.  In the springtime, many of friends have great plans to plant gardens. But as the summer rolls along and the weeds start to grow, they grow tired of the commitment and the work and end up ignoring their garden completely.  A blog can be the same way.  It’s a huge commitment and loads of people end up ignoring their blog despite having big plans at the onset.  Recent statistics from Blogger.com report that 65% of businesses that use blogs for PR purposes haven’t updated their blogs in over a year.  To develop a loyal readership, however, you need to write regularly.  It doesn’t have to be daily, but you have to work to maintain your blog “garden.”

2.  Develop a schedule that’s manageable for you.  Some bloggers amaze me.  Take Richard Byrne, who writes the blog Free Technology for Teachers.  He contributes several new posts almost EVERY day.  To maintain a successful blog, you don’t need to blog daily.  You just need to blog on some predictable pattern.  I contribute an original post once a week because I knew it was a schedule I could keep with the other commitments in my life (family, work, etc.).  Figure out what will work for you and stay on that schedule.  Plan it into your calendar so blogging takes a priority.

3.  Find your niche.  A friend of mine is an excellent writer but blogs about anything that strikes his fancy.  Some days, it’s about parenting.  Other days, it’s about cars or the beach or a concert he attended.  His blog is an accumulation of diverging streams of consciousness that can be difficult to follow.  While most people hold a variety of interests about which they could blog, a blogger needs to select one central theme so that people want to visit regularly.  It’s kind of like going to a restaurant and one day they’re serving sushi and another day they’re serving burritos.  Some folks will just avoid the inconsistency completely.  Offering quality posts around a consistent theme is critical for a successful blog.

4.  Keep your writing terse.  I often stumble across blogs that are like short dissertations.  While I appreciate the effort the blogger went through to write their lengthy posts, I am also pretty pragmatic when it comes to my readers.  I know most people will start to check out after a few hundred words so I try to keep my posts short.  While I don’t have a restrictive word limit, my internal alarm starts to sound when I reach around 500 words.

5.  Be social.  Read other people’s blogs and link to their posts.  Don’t be afraid to comment on their work.  The blogging community can be really friendly and supportive if you put yourself out there.

6.  If at first you don’t succeed…  I created several blogs before the 8 Blog.  Some survived a few weeks.  Others lasted a single post.  If you feel you have a blogger inside you, keep trying until it sticks.  Try changing blog themes, writing styles or writing schedules.

7.  Embrace the writing process.  Back in middle school, my English teacher forced us to write drafts and revise our work.  I thought the process was pointless at the time but I now realize that’s what good writers and good bloggers do.  At any given time, I have two or three different blog posts in draft that I’m revising and rewriting.  While I originally doubted the writing process, I now see firsthand its ability to help writers work on their craft.

Become a real microblogger with Tumblr

I’ve heard a lot of friends talking about the death of blogging lately.  Different media sources have claimed that Twitter has become the medium of choice for younger online writers and that the 140 character limit frees their creativity without overburdening them. While I am really excited about the growth of Twitter, especially amongst a younger population that had avoided the platform completely, there has been another growing movement that has almost gone unnoticed.  Tumblr is a blogging site that has been around for a while but has been gaining steam as the middle ground between traditional blogs and Twitter.  The New York Times recently reported that the site is signing up over 30,000 new users each day because it offers quick blogging without artificial character limits.  As the Telegraph writes about Tumblr,

“Weblogs? Been there, done that. Facebook? It’s full of kids. Twitter? That’s so 2006, darling. No, the smart thing to be doing online these days is tumblelogging, which is to weblogs what text messages are to email – short, to the point, and direct.“

So, what does Tumblr offer that other sites do not?  First off, the site is really intuitive and easy to use.  You can post content quickly without any real headaches.  The site also allows you to bring content from a variety of online sources and create almost a blogging collage.  Not into blogging?  Tumblr would be a great way to organize content you find online to create your own digital repository.  The really great part is that the site is free.

Used educationally, Tumblr would be a great way for teachers to communicate with parents.  If you’re a teacher, consider moving your classroom website onto Tumblr and I guarantee that it will save you tons of time and misery.  You can post content from your mobile devices and parents and students can access the content from their devices as well.  If you have a class Facebook or Twitter account, Tumbler easily integrates with those sites to allow cross-posting from its site. Looking at Tumblr from a student perspective, the site can be used as a reflective tool for students or as a way to keep track of students’ progress with larger projects.

Even though Tumblr is easy to use, I thought I’d include a tutorial to help get people started:

Celebrate the 8 and win?

Happy Birthday to the 8 Blog!  So, it has been a year since I started this blogging adventure and I wanted to mix things up a little to celebrate the 8′s birthday.  For the last year, I’ve been sharing ideas for how educators can build more social learning experiences into their classes.  I have introduced blogs, wikis, social networks, Google Docs and bunch of other tools that can make classrooms more collaborative environments for student learning.  Despite its meager beginning, the 8 Blog has been a real success.  Almost 3,000 visitors have checked out the blog in the last year and visitors have come from 27 different countries across the globe.  Even though I teach my students about the power of social media, I’ve honestly been very humbled by this entire experience.

But one of my original objectives with starting this blog was to foster conversations around teaching with technology.  While I’ve received a few emails from readers and a few people have commented on posts I’ve made, the online discourse has been limited.  Rather than post a new idea this week, I’m encouraging my readers to go to the 8 Blog and post a comment. You can share an idea for a future post or talk about a project you’ve developed with one of the tools I’ve featured.  You can respond to a comment from another reader or just say “Hello.”  Whatever participation you choose, stop by the 8 Blog and post a comment.  Next Monday, I’ll randomly select one person who has left a comment and send him or her a copy of Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts by Will Richardson.  It’s my way of thanking all of you for your loyal readership and support this last year.

Reflecting on Blogs and Blogging

For those of you who have been following the 8 Blog for the last 9 or 10 months, you know the power of this medium.  By offering weekly posts connected to teaching and learning with technology, it has been my hope that you’ve been able to learn new ways to incorporate more online collaboration in your classes and to integrate new technologies that promote student reflection and creativity.  Despite its meager beginnings, the 8 Blog has been read by over 1500 visitors from at least four different continents.  August was the busiest month ever on the 8 Blog with over 300 visitors. Pretty amazing stuff.

I share these statistics not to pat myself on the back or to boast.  Instead, I offer these data to demonstrate the reach of the blog format.  Blogging is a new medium that gives writers instant access to a world of possible readers.  Besides being an international forum for ideas, blogging can also be a tremendous tool for fostering reflection and higher order thinking.  Blogging gives writers a voice and offers them a space to work through beliefs, opinions and thoughts.  With all of its benefits, blogging has natural connections to our classes and to learning.  Could your students be blogging in your class?  Absolutely.  You could offer weekly blog prompts that have students reflect on the material they learned that week.  You could monitor their development throughout a course and see how their opinions and beliefs have changed.  I’ve used blogging with several classes and I find I get to know my students better by reading their blog posts.  I also get a better idea of the concepts I need to reteach or spend more time addressing instructionally.

If you’re new to blogging, you may be wondering how to get started.  While there a variety of different blogging tools out there, Blogger and WordPress are two of the easiest blogging sites to use with a class of students.  With both sites, you can add multiple authors and even set the blog so it’s only readable to the students in the class.  This helps create a private community where ideas can be shared without worrying about the “world of readers” I mentioned earlier.  If you’re using a Ning with your class, there is already a blogging feature within the site that works seamlessly with the rest of the network.

If you need some technical assistance setting things up, be sure to check out these resources.

Blogger Help Youtube Channel

WordPress Support

Educause Guide to Blogging