The latest from dougbelshaw.com/blog
- Google Apps (Education Edition) vs. Microsoft Live@Edu
- Things I Learned This Week – #30
- Weeknote #11
- One week until #GTAUK
- 3 things I need to maintain my productivity.
- Motivation comes from within.
- Intention vs. Effect
- You are what you habitually do.
- Is it time to get rid of secondary schools?
- Productivity: value your time
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3 Commitments for 2007
10 CommentsI’m not the UN so I don’t make resolutions. And I don’t make promises either: I have a poster on the wall in my classroom that reads ‘Losers make promises. Winners make commitments’. So here are three commitments that I’m making to you, my readers, at the beginning of 2007. You can hold me accountable to these at the end of the year… :p
1. Focus
It’s easy to get sucked in to some of the navel-gazing and petty debates and discussions that are part of the edublogosphere. At times during 2006 I strayed from my initial focus when setting up this blog: to share good practice and my thoughts on improving education. Sometimes my stimulus to post has been to increase the number of readers I have via my RSS feed and to get linked to by others. That’s going to stop in 2007. You can thank Michel de Montaigne’s Essays for that…
2. Transparency
Linked to the above point, readers of this – and any other blog for that matter – shouldn’t have to guess at the author’s intention or where they are coming from. It’s my aim to make this blog as transparent as possible, something Miguel Guhlin’s been posting intelligently about recently. You can read about who I am on my About page, comments (whilst spam-protected) appear straight on the blog, and you can get in touch with me in various ways via my Contact page. I also have a personal blog at dougbelshaw.com if you’re really interested in who I am and what I get up to… ;)
I am always interested in finding out new ways of approaching things and in collaborations. I will post about these on my blog and be upfront about my motivations for involving myself in groups and networks. I remain loyal to my original goal when becoming a teacher, to help change the education system for the 21st century.
3. Spreading the Word
Sometimes it feels like I’m preaching to the choir when I’m posting on this blog and that the subscribers this and other edublogs are one and the same group of people. In my posts for 2007 I will endeavour to make my blog posts more accessible for ‘newbies’ and encourage the people I meet both online and face-to-face to get started blogging and collaborating.
This is also a core aim of the fledgling NextGenTeachers group of which I am part and you will hopefully hear a lot more from in the coming year! :D
Photo credit: the letter i @ FlickrPublished on January 2, 2007 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
10 Responses to “3 Commitments for 2007”
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Eva Forbes said on January 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
I like your commitments for 2007 especialy the last one. I don't think that many bloggers have any idea how inaccessible they are. Many read more like a foreign language than English – which is all very well if your only target is geeks!
Eva Forbes -
Thanks Eva, glad you like them! I'm going to make things as straightforward as possible this year. There's a member of staff at my school who I'm going to have in mind when I post on my blog this year: if I don't think they'd get it I'm not going to post – at least that's the aim… :D
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On that last one there, I'm your target demo. I'm new. I've got traditional teaching more-or-less in a stranglehold but this, ahem, next-generation teaching leaves me cold. I'm looking for the FAQ, you know? The one-page Bible. As you and your next-gen cronies set yourself to evangelizing, just know you can't link us Warlick, can't link us to a 20-page list of Web 2.0 resources that includes Gmail and call that sufficient. Brevity is gonna be key. At least in my case.
I'll watching you kids. -
Quite a challenge there, Mr Meyer – I'll try my best! :p
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Doug, in the interest of transparency, are the NextGen folks all white folks? What female representation in your group, or minority for that matter?
<grin>
Let's see how long it takes before Chris freaks…hehe
BTW, the link to your personal blog is missing an "a" in "shw"
Wishing you well,
Miguel -
Thanks for pointing out the broken link, Miguel – now updated and works. :)
As for transparency r.e. racial and gender minorities, we're not setting out to artificially engineer a group just in the interests of political correctness. Have you any figures on the ratio of black/white/asian teachers in the edublogosphere? What about ratios of male/female blogs?
We're just looking for the next generation of innovative teachers. They could be from out of space, so long as they do a good job in the classroom and are making a difference! :D
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Doug: I like your list a lot, especially Number 1, which targets what is really important (to share good practice and my thoughts on improving education)-and I'll be interested in hearing the words of the NextGenTeacher. Avoiding the taffy pull that so often characterizes the blogosphere can be a challenge.
David -
David, thanks for your comment. There's a difficult tension when doing any type of writing for public consumption. You want to write things that are relevant and interesting and helpful on the one hand, but you also want to base it on your own interests and not pander to the view of the masses on the other.
I'll try my best… :s
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