6.2 Reflection
Candidates regularly evaluate and reflect on their professional practice and dispositions to improve and strengthen their ability to effectively model and facilitate technology-enhanced learning experiences. (PSC 6.2/ISTE 6c
Weebly Blog
Blogs often include ongoing, regularly updated narratives about one’s experiences in a certain field or about a topic. As a writer myself, I have often thought that blogs are a good way to write about things that interest me and to organize an argument that appeals to a certain audience. Buti never considered writing one myself. The blog on my Weebly portfolio site that contains reflections about each course has been one way to reiterate the learning I’ve done throughout the coursework. It is also a way to learn the technical skills of blogging and to increase my ethos as a blog writer.
While I did expect to produce reflections like this one in the coursework, I did not expect to enjoy the process of reflecting in blog form so much. After each course was finished, and sometimes after individual assignments were done in each course, I reflected on professional practice that was born out of that experience. Often, I discovered that I’d become aware of a disposition that I had not acquired yet or that I would need in my work as an instructional technology coach. Each post also included pictures or graphics of some kind that helped to tell the story of the experience. As I look back over those posts what I see is a long train of experience while I completed the coursework that has changed my current practice. The blog posts are about concepts that matter when dealing with other teachers or students: patience, endurance, inquisitiveness, and even risk.
The process of blogging not only taught me dispositional awareness for the job of coach, but it also taught me the actual skill of blogging. To write in a blog os to make public those transformations which I am most proud of of find most puzzling. It’s different than, say, a private journaling reflection or a personal essay. When written to a particular audience, a blog can express the concerns inherent to a profession and explore the way the writer dealt with those experiences. A sort of publicized exercise. I truly enjoyed this form of writing- so much so that I have considered the type of blog I’d like to start after the coursework is complete. I have instructed my students in blogging, and I find that, as opposed to the traditional, formal essay, the elemental organization of a blog post is far more engaging to students while no less rigorous of an exercise.
If I’d known in the beginning that I would grow to enjoy these blog posts, I might have posted more on the site. I did enjoy blogging weekly for the digital tools coursework. I learned from that experience that the blog can be a better assignment for students to learn writing and arrangement skills than is the traditional essay Enlgish teachers put so much emphasis on.
I have worked with other teachers in or department to increase the frequency with which we use blogs to instruct writing skills. Many teachers are finding that their students will engage with this form of writing well before they will be motivated to produce and essay on paper. Further, students are enjoying the publicity they receive from the well-written blogs they are producing. Teachers and students have discovered that the blog, as a form of healing or reflecting through writing, is truly a fresh, engaging way to express one’s self.
Blogs often include ongoing, regularly updated narratives about one’s experiences in a certain field or about a topic. As a writer myself, I have often thought that blogs are a good way to write about things that interest me and to organize an argument that appeals to a certain audience. Buti never considered writing one myself. The blog on my Weebly portfolio site that contains reflections about each course has been one way to reiterate the learning I’ve done throughout the coursework. It is also a way to learn the technical skills of blogging and to increase my ethos as a blog writer.
While I did expect to produce reflections like this one in the coursework, I did not expect to enjoy the process of reflecting in blog form so much. After each course was finished, and sometimes after individual assignments were done in each course, I reflected on professional practice that was born out of that experience. Often, I discovered that I’d become aware of a disposition that I had not acquired yet or that I would need in my work as an instructional technology coach. Each post also included pictures or graphics of some kind that helped to tell the story of the experience. As I look back over those posts what I see is a long train of experience while I completed the coursework that has changed my current practice. The blog posts are about concepts that matter when dealing with other teachers or students: patience, endurance, inquisitiveness, and even risk.
The process of blogging not only taught me dispositional awareness for the job of coach, but it also taught me the actual skill of blogging. To write in a blog os to make public those transformations which I am most proud of of find most puzzling. It’s different than, say, a private journaling reflection or a personal essay. When written to a particular audience, a blog can express the concerns inherent to a profession and explore the way the writer dealt with those experiences. A sort of publicized exercise. I truly enjoyed this form of writing- so much so that I have considered the type of blog I’d like to start after the coursework is complete. I have instructed my students in blogging, and I find that, as opposed to the traditional, formal essay, the elemental organization of a blog post is far more engaging to students while no less rigorous of an exercise.
If I’d known in the beginning that I would grow to enjoy these blog posts, I might have posted more on the site. I did enjoy blogging weekly for the digital tools coursework. I learned from that experience that the blog can be a better assignment for students to learn writing and arrangement skills than is the traditional essay Enlgish teachers put so much emphasis on.
I have worked with other teachers in or department to increase the frequency with which we use blogs to instruct writing skills. Many teachers are finding that their students will engage with this form of writing well before they will be motivated to produce and essay on paper. Further, students are enjoying the publicity they receive from the well-written blogs they are producing. Teachers and students have discovered that the blog, as a form of healing or reflecting through writing, is truly a fresh, engaging way to express one’s self.