Why Blog?

A major part of my research is about teachers engaging in reflective teaching. I believe that we could only achieve professional development if we are critical about our teaching. The topics and activities that I have lined up are exploratory in nature, for example, creating and maintaining your online journal, observation, discussion and action research can be carried out individually, thus promoting reflection, self-inquiry and self-evaluation. In the old days, teachers record their activities and reflections by keeping a notebook or a diary. Now, thanks to the Internet, writing your reflections is a whole lot easier. The first thing that you need to do is to create your weblog or blog for short. A blog is an online journal, a notepad for your thoughts, for scribbling down the activities that you plan to do, what you do, and what you have done. It would serve you good if you maintain your blogs regularly and you could do this by posting an entry once or twice a week. Daily entries would be ideal.

There are many blog providers online, but I prefer blogger.com because it is user friendly. I have a few favorite blog sites that I recommend you to visit. These are blogs created by teachers and I want you to take note of how they use it as a tool to help them in their teaching, learning and research [of their classroom].

Look at:

Renata Suzuki’s blog http://grankageva.blogspot.com/
Deivis Pothin’s blog http://deivispothin.blogspot.com/
Barbara Dieu’s blog http://beewebhead.blogspot.com/
My blog for this research http://buxiban.blogspot.com/

It’s your turn, Joy Chiu, April, Anna and those who will participate in my research, you need to create yourown blog. To do this, please go to http://www.blogger.com and create an account. Please try to remember your password.

A step-by-step procedure with screenshots [photos] are available here: http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/writing/blogs/how_to/index.htm

To Amei [or Mei] since you are already researching your classroom and have aldready created your blog, you DO NOT need to create another one.

Joy Chou, you need to create a new blog, because your blog that you have is for your research writing which is focused not focused on your teaching.

Those who will be attending Cambridge 2005 you definitely need to create a blog.

Once you have done so, could you please write back to the list and report to us your blog’s url.

Help me help you go through this process.

Happy blogging everyone!

Aiden