As the year ends, I am republishing the Opinion Drive-thru's seven most viewed posts of 2013. This is #3.
As part of our preparation for the ADE Institute in Austin, TX, this week we’ve been asked to do “some deep thinking” about our passions and practice as relate to educational technology. One of the projects relates to some matter we consider that we are best at teaching, inspiring, leading, etc.
As part of our preparation for the ADE Institute in Austin, TX, this week we’ve been asked to do “some deep thinking” about our passions and practice as relate to educational technology. One of the projects relates to some matter we consider that we are best at teaching, inspiring, leading, etc.
This has given me more anxiety than you might imagine, because when it comes to technology, I think I am pretty good or decent at a lot of things. And some of the best ways I teach or for that matter, administrate don’t necessarily spotlight technology.
Then strangely, I had the urge to write a blog post about this dilemma . . . . At which point I realized that
the blog itself was probably one of my “best things”.
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| 2009 ADE "Baker Zone" movie |
Now, this is not to say that I write the best blog by any means. My posts are too long. They don’t invite much conversation. Too often they involve my own pre-occupations or simply “brag” about some activity at school that pleases me.
But I have been posting like clock work at least two times a week for going on five years. This in itself is not much to crow about, but the discipline of doing this has really focused my mind on ed tech and caused me to be self conscious about what I am reading, planning, and doing.
The Drive-thru serves as a great bulletin board for my students’ accomplishments. But writing regularly actually helps to instigate and refine the design of the activities that led to the student success.
Blogging here and at the school IT page is an exercise in transparency, but it also sets the bar higher for me, when I write about ideas that have hatched or events in progress.
I think this is even more important for Larry Baker the administrator than Larry Baker the classroom teacher. As Lucy Grey has pointed out, the Drive-thru and the IT Blog have serve as a means for documenting my school's ambitious undertaking of Mercy 2.0.
My readership has grown significantly, and it allows me to extend whatever educational leadership I have to offer beyond Mercy and the university course I teach.
I think this is even more important for Larry Baker the administrator than Larry Baker the classroom teacher. As Lucy Grey has pointed out, the Drive-thru and the IT Blog have serve as a means for documenting my school's ambitious undertaking of Mercy 2.0.
My readership has grown significantly, and it allows me to extend whatever educational leadership I have to offer beyond Mercy and the university course I teach.
Blogging is not exactly new or fancy or exciting. But for me, it is a “best thing”.
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