Blogging as Professional Learning

Day two of the CEGSA conference went very well – all sorts of interesting workshops and presentations.
A standout for me was a double act from Graham Wegner and Al Upton – both ICT facilitators from schools in the Adelaide area. Their presentation dealt with their experiences in using blogs – both personally and with teachers, focusing on the value of blogs as a professional learning tool.

I was particularly impressed with what Graeme had to say, and with the way he illustrated how his use of a blog had enabled him to become a part of a much wider and more diverse range of professional learning communities – communicating with people he’d never otherwise have had the opportunity to do so. He used a simple network map created in TouchGraph to illustrate the extent of these networks. I appreciated the thought Graham had put into getting his message across in such a clear and concise manner, thoughtfully reflecting on his own actions and decisions throughout the process of creating and maintaining his blog, and his approach to becoming an activie participant in the ‘blogosphere’. This sort of reflection can be noted in the entries he makes in his blog.

Graham has posted his network map, along with his powerpoint show and some other useful links and diagrams on his Teaching Generation Z blog.
Al Upton has also posted some useful references from this sesson on his Al Upton and the MiniLegends blog. Both of these are worth a look at to get some more understanding of the use of blogs from a practitioner point of view.