It seems like there is a regular stream of articles, often on blogs, talking about blogging going away. Or changing for the worse. Or other negative comments. But I find that there is a real place for blogging. I think this is especially true for educators. Blogs allow for a lot more detail and nuance than most other social media outlets. They also allow for people to build on each other’s words, ideas, projects, and thoughts.
Take for example a recent string on blogs I followed. Via Twitter I stumbled across an interesting post by Rob Underwood called Code Syntax Compared. I wrote a small post (Code in Different Languages) that added two more pieces of sample code but also brought up the subject of static typing and dynamic typing. The comments led to more discussion. This discussion brought up the value of learning different languages and the importance of learning the idiomatic ways of these languages.
Mike Zamansky who was one of the commenters on my post wrote his own follow up post (Teaching Coding - getting beyond superficial syntax). There is some conversation in the comments there as well.
So here we have a string of three posts – all related – all building on the conversation – all linking to each other as well.
This is blogging that works. It is idea sharing, conversation and educators learning from each other. Pretty awesome stuff if you ask me. Now I ask you, shouldn’t you be blogging too? Take a look at Doug Peterson’s take on teacher blogging at Your teacher blog.
I’d love to add more blogs to my Computer Science Education Blog Roll How about yours?
I wish more would (and hope Rob picks it back up).
ReplyDeleteOne thing that gets me is that, at least in my case, when there is discussion, it end up on Facebook.
The last couple of posts I've made that have resulted in discussion ended up having most of the discussion on Facebook which is too much of a silo.
One post had some discussion among my alums and friends, another in my high school group, and a bit in a cs related group. All isolated and not visible to the public to add to the discussion.
Silos is my biggest problem with Facebook. Like you I see many comments and discussions just on Facebook and wish they were on the blog for more to see and respond to.
ReplyDelete