Green Leaves are Green

Ok, so for right now I created this blog just to learn about WordPress, so don’t expect anything cool just yet (except frequent theme and layout changes).  I don’t know if I want to blog to students, to teachers like so many other edubloggers, or if a teacher’s blog can or should have multiple audiences.  Should I be blogging at all?  All I know is the internet is like a room filled with people shouting: Probably, no one will hear you, but you don’t want to say anything you wouldn’t want on the 6 o’clock news, because if they do hear you, they might start shouting about it too.  So I’m treading lightly for now.

I guess what this comes down to is the philosophical dilemma about what a teacher’s role is as a public figure.  How much of their personal life/ opinions should they reveal?  I never comment on my political or spiritual beliefs around students because whether anyone believes it or not, the opinions of a teacher can have a powerful impact on shaping the opinions of their students.  I want to give my students the intellectual skills they need to form their own opinions, not indoctrinate them with my own.  Should my reflections on teaching be in plain view?

The internet is a powerful community for sharing ideas and learning from others.  I have benefited greatly from the contributions of others in the edublogosphere (adopt me Dan Meyer, etc.).  I feel like I should be giving back. I created this website mostly for the ease of posting my calendar online for my students, due to limitations with how Edline deals with the css my Planbook software generates (no offense Edline).  However, now that I have a website I want to use it for something.

I try to avoid using technology for technology’s sake, so I want to get this right.  Despite having the technological skill to do a lot of things, I have been holding back pondering the philosophical rationale.  I have used wikispaces to create great collaborative workspaces for my extra curriculars.  This has been an excellent experience.  I started a twitter account as a means of following edubloggers and others, and I’ve mostly been lurking, and recently posting links to things that are interesting and related to my teaching/extra curriculars.  Copy/pasta is okay sometimes, but what does this say about me as a person in society?  Am I observer or participant?  Does my lack of online presence mean I don’t have anything to say, am afraid to say it, too self-conscious or too modest to say it, or that I’m just too busy?  The internet is cluttered with people who have little of actual substance to say.  I don’t want to add to that mess.

How many different online identities does a single person need?  One for each hat he or she wears in life? Or each interest he or she has?  That’s a lot of profiles to manage.  Yet as a publication, no one’s going to want to read something as nebulous as the diversity of my interests, or will they?  Should I pick an audience, and stick to it or post to anyone interested in whatever I have to say.  I also have a camera.  Would tossing in the occasional photo give the blog a personal flavor, or distract from the general message, and add clutter.  Or should each of my interests have a separate blog?  A separate domain?  Or should I even bother with any of this?

I started off writing this, just because I wanted to change my Hello World post, and ended up with this rant.  Maybe I do have something to say, but I want do it right.  I’d greatly appreciate any responses to the any of the questions I’ve posed.  Let me know what you think, and what you’re experiences are.  Thanks!

Tags: Philosophy of Teaching, Philosophy of Technology

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Philosophy of Teaching, Philosophy of Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.