Why Blog?

Do you see yourself blogging? Why or why not? What are the advantages of blogging? What are the possible hangups of blogging? Could you get 100% buy in? From staff? From community? What could a blog replace in your classroom?

I think blogging is a great way to communicate thoughts and information that are time-dependent. Unlike a static website, the fact that things posted a while ago "fall to the bottom" is acceptable or even good. The bad side of this chronological order is that it can be hard for users to find particular, specific information. Generally there are workarounds to this (links somewhere on the page to key posts, or something), but they have to be deployed thoughtfully or the blog gets weighted down by its own content.

I'm also concerned about accessibility issues. Of course there are people who may not have access to computers or phones to read the blog, and it's not fair to ignore them or leave them behind. Even with technology, people may access blogs in different ways. As I type this paragraph, I'm not sure what it will look like on different computers, browsers, phones, etc. For instance, I hit double return to get a paragraph break; will that look like a giant gap in some places?

On the other hand, things like newsletters have their own accessibility issues. Depending on middle school students to bring information home to their parents is stupid. Having open technology is interesting and fun for students and families, who generally love technology in other aspects of their lives. Maybe they will even be inspired to interact with it! Will 100% of students, families, and communities connect with it? Definitely not, because not all of them have access. But my experience so far is that more of them have access than we realize, and technology is the best way to reach families. This may be even more true as Google Translate and other apps help us communicate across language barriers.

A blog wouldn't exactly replace anything in my classroom. Right now, I post general information and interesting links to a weebly site (juliewright.weebly.com) and I think that static site is still the best for that purpose. On second thought, the constantly-updated homework assignment page would probably be better as a blog. Generally, what a blog would do is allow me to post thoughts that I might not want to distract from more essential information, and time-dependent information.