We were discussing communication and organization at a staff leadership meeting just before school started this year. At one point, somebody (not me) suggested we have a staff blog in order to help improve and promote those areas. Needless to say, my ears perked up. I've got a few blogs of my own, in addition to my contributions here at LeaderTalk. I casually mentioned that I was familiar with blogging, and could probably put something together that would work for us. That made me an expert, so I was hired.
As soon as I got home that evening, I registered a domain name for us, got some hosting, and downloaded the latest version of WordPress. I got everything connected, and in about 15 minutes we had ourselves a blog. I was excited about this. I got our Leadership team to get a few posts up, and just this week we launched it to the rest of the staff. We're officially a blogging school.
Quite a few of my staff have read blogs, but hardly any of them have left comments or actually have a blog of their own. Their interest level has really grown just in the last few days. They are really taking a look at it and starting to contact me for a username and password so they can get involved. One of them, who had never left a comment before, did so on our new blog. She said she was nervous to actually do that first one, and would need to work up the courage to create her own post. It will be interesting to see how their posts go from "Hi there I'm really glad to be here" to something of deeper meaning. This blog will eventually become our own, and will ultimately tell the story of our staff this year. I'm really looking forward to that kind of growth. We're still a ways from learning how to use a Reader, although I have left instructions up for that as a page. Baby steps, though. This is fun to watch.
Rick, this is fun news. Maybe some ideas from other staffs that are blogging will help yours. See, for example:
www.lewiselementary.org/notes
http://mabryonline.org/blogs
I've been using this video to great effect to help educators understand the power of RSS and aggregators:
http://commoncraft.com/rss_show
Posted by: Scott McLeod | September 15, 2007 at 07:33 AM
I started a staff blog this year too! We are using it as a scribe blog to record our faculty meetings, discussions and PD. It seems to be going pretty well with each weeks scribe naming a new scribe for the following week.
I am curious if you have made your staff blog public. I am thinking of going that route. One reason is so that i can follow it with an RSS feed ..but the other reason is that i think it will help us devlop our voice.
Posted by: Barbara | September 15, 2007 at 07:47 PM
I'll follow up a little later with a url for you to check out. For now, though, we'll keep it in-house until they get a little more comfortable with having their stuff out in public. I'll definitely let you know, though. Thanks for the positive feedback.
Posted by: Rick | September 15, 2007 at 11:12 PM
It is exciting news!
How can we, as educators, teach and lead students into the future if we are not there ourselves. It is hard, though to make that first foray into the blogging world and trying to find your voice.
Knowing that others will be reading what you write is a little scary to say the least. Taking baby steps is the way to do it and an inviting environment is key.
Good luck!
Posted by: Brad | September 16, 2007 at 08:35 AM
As a new blogger myself, I understand and can appreciate what many teachers are feeling about blogging and technology in general. You remind schools and teachers that we must be lifelong learners. I wish more schools would do what you are doing with your blog. Great stuff!
Posted by: Angela Maiers | September 16, 2007 at 03:28 PM