Blogging: do I tell?

A blogging friend asked on his blog, recently, if his readers similarly employed by an educational institution tell their places of work that they have a blog. The poll results on his site are quite split for all choices between openness and secrecy.

I voted that I do tell my place of work that I blog, and that several of my work colleagues do check it out and let me know when I’ve written something useful – one even posts comments (or sends private email responses) on my personal blog, which is always unexpected but rather cool. I promote my blogging to them because I want them to have a go at blogging for themselves, and to see them try it out with their (eager) students – it helps that I am one of the coordinators of several Departmentally-run, professional, educational online projects, and am used to supporting teacher learning. I’m leading by example, I guess.

I don’t usually directly name the place of work here, but anyone with Google can join the dots easily. I do like to keep my posts positive and constructive on my professional learning blog, so if I’m ever critical about anything, I always emphasise the steps I’m taking to resolve the problem.

It’s hard to predict how many of our students will be using Web 2.0 tools in their privates lives over the next few years, and I think it’s important that teachers are savvy and prepared about “the next wave”, whatever it turns out to be.