Learning About Blogs #1

Will Richardson’s blog “Weblog-ed” is focused on explaining the value of using the internet as an educational tool.  The blog has several tabs allowing for visitors to easily browse through the various elements Richardson wants people to see.  Some of this no doubt is for Richardson’s personal gain such as workshops he is able to give, while the bulk of the other tabs are great ways for visitors to learn about the web.  One tab I liked in particular is a large collection of educational blogs.  I was able to surf through it with little problem to expand where I can go to read interesting ideas in regards to education.  Until taking grad classes involving technology in class, I did not put a lot of interest into reading blogs outside of a few comedic ones; even then I did not read them often.  I plan on looking through several of these blogs, to see if I like any of them.  This makes finding blogs ridiculously easy for me.  His resources tab I am not fond of however.  It seems to be a wiki that after clicking on several links seems to be more of a mash of quick facts written down, so I’ll admit right now I cannot seem to enjoy it much. 

His tab “my stuff” is where he has archived all of his past blogs.  I read through several of them and liked them, one that stands out in particular is a blog in the sense that Richardson describes in his book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts: and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  In this post he combines ideas from varioussources to discuss how education will move away from standardization and posts links so the visitor can read his sources for themselves.  The blog does not just end there, as it is filled with responses to his proposition of school becoming individualized.  What I like is that the responses themselves are also well documented, where some of the posts respond with links of their own.  This combined with another post, where Richardson asks for advice in regards to a lesson plan, shows that the informational value for blogs goes beyond picking up handy tips from what the author posts.  The easiest reason for this is the fact that sources are posted by people responding back to the author, so one can link hop readily while following interesting trains of thought.  The second reason is that being an author of a blog gives you a wealth of people to go to when you’re in a professionally tight place and need someone else to lean on.  A friend of mine who is a grad school in education told me she believes that no teacher should feel like an island.  She meant that anyone in education should share and look to each other for help.  Having a blog opens you up to more educators then just the ones in your building or friends you may know from college. 

Richardson definitely practices what he preaches in his book that I mentioned.  His blogs are well laied out and many of them do have links to works that he is referencing.  I plan on returning to this blog when I have a lazy day and the luxury to just go where the links take me.  Hopefully they will yield interesting results for my professional development.