Teacher's Blogs for Education

What is it that I love most about blogs? Through blogs, I learn about technology, politics, current events, software development, living, and marketing. Blogs give me timely information and opinion, and they put me in touch with experts who can get their information published and delivered to me quickly and inexpensively.

What I love most about blogs is that they are a form of education for me. People are sharing knowledge for free.

It's only natural to use them more directly in education: Teacher-hosted blogs, for the students.

They can supplement classroom teaching. Teacher's blogs can tie the classroom learning to current events and can reference other teacher's blogs to share or reuse knowledge. Teachers can communicate assignments and deadlines to students. Teachers can open up discussions with students, keeping them engaged beyond the limits of the school day.

Teachers can also keep parents engaged by opening up lines of communication about the happenings in the classroom with the parents in a more timely fashion, on a more regular basis.

Thanks to John Jantsch for pointing out a small handful of teacher's blogs and for stoking this thought in my head.

However, I am actually disappointed in the blogs that he points out. Most of them aren't very educational. One appears to be a place for the teacher to post about assignments. Another points to interesting things that are somewhat educational. The rest of them are simply teachers talking about their lives (pictures of their kid, whining about bad kids and neglectful parents and school systems, pointers to random things on the Internet that interest them, but aren't educational.)

What I'd love to see are teachers that are passionate about what they teach -- sharing that passion with their students and using blogs as a teaching tool. That is where the great potential is.

What do you think? Leave a comment and, if you know of a teacher blog that is truly educational, leave a comment with the URL.