When I first started blogging, I did it to learn what it was about. I've written before that I felt it was important for me to know what I was talking about if I had any plans on blogging with students. Like most new bloggers, finding an audience is tough. Whatever your reasons for blogging, you at least want someone to read your writing. My first comment came from Mister Teacher, who writes a rather entertaining blog, Learn Me Good. I've read his blog for a while and I'm pretty sure he subscribes to mine. He teachers third grade, the grade I used to teach, so I can relate to some of the stuff he writes about.

Anyway, he was given a blogging award recently and as part of the award, was supposed to pass it along to seven of his favorites. I was very surprised to find out that he felt my blog was worthy of this award.



I'm glad someone enjoys my blog enough to feel I'm deserving of this award. I don't want that point to be lost, but I do wonder what this award is for.

I tried to find out the origin of this award or see what it really means. I searched back several people to find some information on it, but couldn't. I checked the person who gave the award to Mister Teacher and the person before and the person before. I went back about 5 or 6 people, but couldn't find what this award meant. I believe the people who have been passing it on are doing so because they feel some of the blogs they read are good. I'm not saying I'm skeptical by any means of this award, but I just wonder who started it. It certainly isn't an award like EduBlogs Best Of...., but I don't think people write blogs to get awards. It's certainly not my goal. Whether many people "vote" for an award like EduBlog Awards, or just one, like the award I got, it's a bonus. Needless to say, it's cool that at least one person thinks my blog isn't too shabby!

I'm not going to pass this award on to anyone else. There are a lot of great blogs I read - check my Blogroll if you're looking for good ones. As far as I'm concerned, they're all worthy.


UPDATE: Just found out this information about this award. Like I thought, not a real award, but it doesn't change my thoughts that any award given to a blog/blogger by someone else does have some importance.

Do blogs have a place in schools? I think so and so do others. Although, we do need to be careful how we use them to take full advantage. I recently had a sixth grade teacher come to me, as the library media specialist, to see if you we could start a blog with her students. Now, regardless of whether or not you feel this is a good idea, we came across an obstacle - our IT department.

Our tech director, who I feel is extremely out of touch with reality and what works in schools, has had almost all blog sites blocked by SurfWatch. This is the software our district has in place to block our students and staff from accessing certain sites. One of the media specialists in the district asked if some blog sites could be unlocked so he could have access for a class he's taken. Our wise IT director reviewed his policy and has allowed this media specialist, and all media specialists in our district to now have access to all blog sites. Sounds pretty good, huh? Well, there's still a small group of people without access - THE TEACHERS!! I'm not commenting anymore.

Now, I found a blog site that isn't blocked and we have begun to set up our students on the site and in the next couple of weeks will be figuring out how to take advantage of this tool. We have enlisted a couple of tech savvy sixth graders to play around with the site to see how it works, how to add entries, make comments, and generally navigate around. It is our hope that they will then be able to teach their classmates.

Are you or is anyone in your school using blogs with your students? I'd be interested in learning how.

After spending too many hours over the previous few days reading familiar blogs and discovering new ones, I've come to the conclusion that I think I have a problem. Now, I'm not admitting it yet, and that's usually the first step to getting help, but I think I'm headed down the wrong path.

I started a blog a month or so ago just to give it a try and learn more about Web 2.0 technology. Being the technology "guru" in my building and the man in charge of using technology with the students, I figured I better know how to use it. Man, was that a mistake, in a good way. My blog started as a way of just writing about some of my thoughts, mostly useless information for whoever or nobody to read. I have a couple of people who I think read my stuff on a regular basis, and perhaps it will grow into something more. To me, that would be a double edged sword. While becoming more "known" in the educational blog world would be extremely cool and flattering, I wonder if the result would also mean more time spent blogging. At this point, I'm not sure if I have the time, but I think I might give it a go and see what happens. I guess I better start writing entertaining/thoughtful/valuable stuff.

I started out reading mainly with education-related blogs, which I have found very entertaining, relaxing, and thought provoking (congrats to the "Thinking Blog" winners out there). While there are thousands of blogs (many of which I'm sure are great) that I haven't discovered yet, I have found a few that I enjoy and will continue to visit on a regular basis. Over the past few days, I've discovered several more and have added them to my list of fairly regular reads. Today, I've discovered a whole to world of blogs that is going to be both very valuable and of course, time consuming.....library blogs. Being a librarian, I suppose I should keep up with the books part of my job. I'm sure the sites I've discovered today will lead me to more good blogs, which again, will be good and bad.

Here's the question for the serious bloggers out there - How do you find the time to keep up on your reading and blogging? Do you have more than 24 hours in your day? Do you not do anything else to do? Are you kidless outside of the school day? I would appreciate any suggestions as to how to balance the blog world with the rest of the real world!