I am no longer, as of October 2008 working as a class teacher at Sandaig, so have moved this blog to another server. If you want to comment on this post, pleas search for it there.

25 02 06 blogvangelists

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Peter Ford, who I am looking forward to meeting at Communicate.06, has an interesting post Why I am not a blogvangelist… talking about Terry Freedman's post Blogvangelism, podvangelism and wikivangelism: why?

The blogvangelist preaches his or her blogging Sermon on the Mount, inspiring great faith for educational revival but quickly moving on to the next group of willing listeners.

… And the teacher is left with a blog or two, a few reams of digital paper and a digital pen - the educational equivalent of a few loaves and fishes - and is expected to improve the lot of the audience-starved masses in the classroom. Unfortunately blogs are just tools and have no transforming power in themselves.
and
I don’t think the term ‘blogvangelism’ adequately reflects the creative slog that is required from teachers to make blogs an effective tool in schools.

As a teacher I have to agree with that one. I especially like slog.
I'd used blogs ( johnjohnston.pitas.com and Bad Poet) for a while before I used blogs in the classroom. When I started teaching with blogs I was fairly confident in using the system, posting, creating templates etc. I could talk pupils through the process without having to think and fix things without worry.
For a lot of teachers blogs (if they have heard of them) are just one more thing, there has been a huge number of initiatives in teaching in the last few years all proclaiming great things. Blogs are also one more ICT thing, there has probably been more progress in teacher's ict skills than many other areas of teaching, but quite a few folk are ready for a wee ict rest rather than a further effort.
One more thing becomes particularly stressful when it is delivered for an evangelist, especially one who quickly moving on.
IMO we need extended support for introducing new tech (or new anything), we need time and time costs money. We could probably do with a little more flexibility in the curriculum to allow us to relax and have fun as we learn too.
Maybe if teacher's had a bit more playtime they would not need to be evangelised?

technorati tags

Hi John, have you senn Google Video and Making the News? I know you like free resources! There are links on my blog: http://creativeict.typepad.com/my_weblog..
John Sutton (Email) (URL) - 01 03 06 - 10:01

john,
Thanks, you are in my feedreader so I am a regular reader, I’ve added these to my del.icio.us links, ‘Making the News’ the news looks especially interesting, I’ll be trying to check it out.
John (Email) (URL) - 01 03 06 - 21:29

Playtime… absolutely. I don’t know how many times I’ve complained about authorities/schools spending loads-a-money on some tech, but failing to give teachers the time they need to play with it so they can work out the teach (to borrow a phrase from Ewan).
David Muir (Email) (URL) - 10 03 06 - 22:12



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I am no longer, as of October 2008 working as a class teacher at Sandaig, so have moved this blog to another server. If you want to comment on this post, pleas search for it at: http://www.johnjohnston.info/blog.