Both Doug Peterson (https://dougpete.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/10-years-ago-2/) and Mike Zamansky (https://cestlaz.github.io/post/10-years-blogging/) posted to their blogs about blogs from ten years ago. It was pretty interesting. Mike did some analysis of his blogging rates over the months and years. I took a look at my blog posts from ten years ago. I was posting on two sites back then. One a Microsoft owned platform which was my main blogging site at the time. I was cross posting some things to this site as well. Ten years ago this time of year I was posting about projects involving random variables, talking about Monte Carlo simulations, and roulette and slot machines.
Rather than look at ten years ago or do some sort of data analysis of the last ten years (complicated by two blogging sites) I thought I would look at this time as far back as I could. So 14 years ago at the MSDN site I posted a rather aspirational look at The Future of K-12 Blogging I wasn’t even close in terms of prediction.
I think more teachers and administrators are blogging. We’re not seeing anything like the expansion of computer science teacher blogs I was hoping for. I like to think I made a good case for it and that it is still a good case.
Every computer science teacher should have a regularly updated blog. Actually I would like to see every teacher have a blog but for the short term I will settle for computer science teachers blogging. There are several reasons for this.
- We need to build a community of practice in CS education. We need computer science teachers, who are generally alone in their building, communicating with their peers, sharing ideas, and supporting each other.
- The technology aware teachers need to set an example for the rest of the teachers. If they don’t use technology why should a social studies teacher?
- Most importantly, blogging is a wonderful way to share information with your students and their parents. Post links to extra resources along with a recap of a recent lecture. Give students an opportunity to comment on a current assignment or a recent test question. Expand the discussion and the learning outside the bell delimitated world of the classroom. Teach!
I'm really grateful to the CS educators who are blogging though. Mike Zamansky, Garth Flint, Doug Bergman, and Mark Guzdial have been particularly helpful to me learning and thinking. There are others listed at my Computer Science Education blog roll.
1 comment:
And one of the big ones for me seems to have died. Microsoft Computer Science Teachers Network seems to have reached a following in the tens, maybe fives. Bummer. For CS teachers blogs are critical for ideas. Many CS teachers are the only CS teacher in the school. PD opportunities are limited. A local support network is not there. Math teachers have very active organizations like the NCTM. The CSTA is just not up to that level by a long shot. CS teacher blogs fill the gap for me. Thanks to all the CS teacher bloggers out there.
Post a Comment