On his self-named blog, Mathew K. Tabor posted his response to a quotation by David Warlick. Mr. Warlick suggested that administrators might ask prospective teachers what blogs they read and students in schools of education might ask their instructors a like question. In his post—Don’t Ask This Question, Part I (18 August 2007)—Mr. Tabor took exception to this question and argued that too many blogs about education are untrustworthy and he’d rather have educators who promote mastery of content.
There are two issues here – I’ll address in this article the insignificance of the blog medium given this context and in Part II the reasons why asking this question in this way is inappropriate.
Warlick’s question rests on the assumption that education blogs are a necessary and irreplaceable part of education curricula. Simply put, they aren’t.
I agree that there are too few good blogs related to education, but there are some. I think many are represented in the blogroll for Teach Effectively! I also agree with Mr. Tabor that instructors can (and should) teach to mastery; this is true whether the instructors read or write blogs.
Educators’ blogs can—and do—provide valuable content. To the extent that blogs are based on empirical data, go beyond case studies and personal opinion, they provide a valuable service. To the extent that blogs communicate news and other current developments in education, they can help readers be informed.
link to Mr. Tabor’s post and a link to Mr. Warlick’s original article that started Mr. Tabor on his response. Of course, I hope teachers (practicing and prospective), administrators, and others will find useful information on Teach Effectively!
I currently have 236 ed blogs in my RSS reader. This is obviously a small sample of the reported 50k edublogs out there, but it covers the range of maturity in education blogging.
There’s some good stuff out there in the blogosphere [I saw that our blogrolls have some common names, btw]. Even so, all “conversations” aren’t created equal – we simply can’t pretend that they are.
While I think David Warlick’s initial proposition might have been a little heavy-handed, what I took from it was that educators (not only teachers, but also uni professors, administrators, etc.) who read blogs demonstrate a self-motivated desire for professional development, as informal as it may be. Blogs written for teachers/admins by teachers/admins often tend to focus on the more practical applications of these issues, as opposed to theoretical discussions. Not that you don’t get that from keeping current with journals, etc., but access to blogs is a bit more open at the moment.
I agree with Matthew Tabor’s assertion that “all ‘conversations’ aren’t created equal”; however, I think that for the reflective professional (not just teachers), there’s always something to be learned when professional issues are discussed, even if it’s just affirmation in one’s own mind that what this blog or that blog suggests is dead wrong. One thing that blogs offer that professional journals don’t is an organic debate/discussion, as opposed to just one-way presentation. This comes in especially handy for teachers who have no strong mentoring support or collaborative culture at their respective teaching sites. Not every blogger can be a Will Richardson or a John Pederson, but I think most teachers have at least something to offer to this electronic teacher’s workroom (I never call it a “lounge”) called the edublogosphere.
I agree with Damian, that the way that I wrote it was a bit heavy-handed. As a result of this conversation, I probably wish that I has said, “Ask your professor if he (or she) reads any blogs, and if so, which ones.” The article actually came out of some tips that I got when I was in college (30+ years ago), to learn what your professors are reading. If you read it, then you know something about where they are coming from. Blogs would suite this well.
I will be writing a response to Matthew’s series, hopefully later on today. I’ve been on the road all week, and am a bit dazed right now.
Thanks for continuing the conversation…
– dave –
I was struck by the initial entries by Mr. Warlick and Mr. Tabor on their own sites, in part because the the beginning of the new semester was approaching rapidly and, in another part, because I am greatly concerned about teaching to mastery in my classes. With the comments posted here, the discussion turns a bit away from those ideas (which is O.K.), and I have the opportunity to comment on the comments:
O.K. This a fun conversation. I promise more on this this last item in a full-blown post soon. Back to class preparation….
its nice too know that we discussed about this.. nowadays we need to know what’s on in the blogs as using for teaching.. as me, as a future teacher, its really valued to teach in using blogs??? smomehow yes because we’re on computer age… and we need to know what’s inside the net or blogs…in other hand, no because it might to harm in our health and our pupils what’s in on the blogs or the computet rather… that’s all…thank you for the time…