How do I blog thee? Let me count the ways...

Wesley

Fryer

and Miguel

Guhlin

have both ‘tagged’ me to discuss how I blog, think about blogging,

create my blog posts, etc. I’m usually happy to play along, so here goes…

Like everyone else, I blog on stuff that crosses my radar screen. My ideas

might come from electronic sources such as blogs, web sites, podcasts, etc. or

they might come from more traditional print resources. I probably

tap into some literature sources that most other edubloggers don’t. For example,

I not only live in the educational blogosphere but I also live in the world of

educational leadership academia, research, and practice. Accordingly, I’m

reading educational administrator practitioner magazines and research journals, attending conferences,

listening to academic presentations, staying in touch with all of the major

educational leadership and educational research associations, and so on. Good

print and/or local resources can be excellent idea generators for blog posts and

go beyond the same education blogs that we all read.

Sometimes I’ll see something that someone else did and feel that I can add

some value to it rather than just post about it. My recent modifications of Karl

Fisch’s Did You Know? video

and Christian

Long’s Future of Learning manifesto

are examples of this. So is the aggregation

of various quotes from the blogosphere

that I did last September. When I’m

‘adding value’ to something it’s because I need it in a different format for my

own teaching or presentation purposes, not because the original is

inferior.

Finally, I try to be somewhat intentional and proactive about what I blog

rather than just being reactive. For example, my two series last fall on blogging

for administrators

and gaming,

cognition, and education

were both planned well in advance of the actual

blog posts occurring. I like to identify areas of need for administrators and

other educators and then try to create resources that I think will help them. I

am a strong believer that we

need to be creating resources for educators to help them in their jobs

, not

just pontificating.

So there it is: nothing earth-shattering. I think the key is to write

passionately about stuff that interests you. If it fires you up, it will fire

others up too and they will find you and stay with you. Remember that you don’t

always need to come up with ‘original content.’ Adding a new perspective to

others’ content

or making interesting connections across others’ content also

works quite well. Don’t forget to use all of the tools at your disposal to

publicize your blog: Technorati tags, Feedburner tools, frequent comments on

others’ posts, creative post titles, trackbacks, blogrolls, begging, etc. It all helps.

P.S. Be sure to visit the two links to Higher Edison in the last paragraph above. Good, thought-provoking stuff…