Benefits of Educational Blogging

Educational blogging is simply what it sounds like, a blog in which there is an educational purpose. Specifically, I have been looking at and creating an educational blog solely based around the field of education. Educational blogs promote self-expression, while also allowing the blogger and readers to dive deeper into general themes. Furthermore, the biggest reason for educational blogging is to share and reflect upon new thoughts and ideas that you could not have conceived yourself. An example of an educational blog that I loved looking over was Lisa Nielson’s “The Innovative Educator”. She describes her personal experience about how she disliked school and how she strives to stop that from happening to her current and future students. One of my favorite sections in her blog was “Passion-Driven Learning”, which describes practical tools to not only engage students and allow them to enjoy learning, but also gives teacher’s examples on how to develop this passion. Educational blogs should be present to educate and encourage teachers to develop and process new ideas that they could have trouble creating on their own. 

Graphic depicting a person working on a computer.

When looking at blogs that were created by my classmates, Makenzi Dougherty’s blog post about class size jumped out at me. I read over her post and wholeheartedly agreed with her over the benefits of small class sizes. In her blog post, she spoke about the average class size in Tennessee being 20.7 and it made me think about personal knowledge I have of an elementary school in Knox County. My mother works within one of the county's elementary schools and learned that the kindergarten currently has 20 children in each of their classrooms. Many of these teachers are overwhelmed and upset by these class sizes because they feel that they cannot adequately teach and learn about their students because of the large number that they have under their care. I also loved when Makenzi spoke about smaller class sizes leading to more time for small group work and discussion. When bigger class sizes are implemented, you lose so much ability to work one-on-one with students and assess where they are and how they can be best assisted. Another blog post I enjoyed reading was Kate Shelton’s post on standardized testing. She spoke of her negative experiences with it because she was never the best test taker. I dealt with that experience in my own schooling. I was also okay at taking tests, but I never fully did as well as I thought I should have. Standardized testing also added additional stress during my years in school. The final blog post that I enjoyed was Kalee Hampton’s post about parental involvement in elementary education. She discussed the crucial importance of having parents participate in their child’s education. It not only decreases disruptive behaviors, but also increases a student’s chance of being successful within the class. 

I think that educational blogging is so useful for learning new information, but also for exploring one’s own thoughts and feelings towards different topics within the educational world. In my last few weeks blogging, I have thought deeper on topics like technology integration and classroom management in a way that I would not have if I was not blogging. I think it is a super useful tool for information. Additionally, I think it would be really fun to create a class blog showcasing fun activities that we complete or any amazing work that my future students create.