What, Me Blog?
Venturing into the virtual world of blogging (and Twitter) as a scholar, academic, or teacher/professor requires you to address a few foundational questions. Here are some of those decisions with examples from a variety of blogs addressing my field of education:
- Blogging allows the blogger to create a public persona. What persona do you want to present to the public? Some in education highlight their roles as teachers while others highlight their scholarship—some, of course, blend those roles. Katie Osgood, @KatieOsgood_, maintains a passionate blog, emphasizing her persona as a teacher. Nancy Flanagan, @nancyflanagan, blogging at Teacher/Education Week, speaks as a veteran teacher in her blogs. Julian Vasquez Heilig’s popular and high-quality blog is primarily scholarly work made accessible and strongly political (@ProfessorJVH). Examples of administrators blogging include Carol Burris, @carolburris, and Peter DeWitt, @PeterMDeWitt.
- Part of that persona creation includes an important blogging decision: Will you blog under your name or anonymously? Two bloggers who have debated this issue on Twitter are Jersey Jazzman, @jerseyjazzman, (pro-anonymous and primarily a blogger addressing statistics and research while also being strongly political) and Jose Vilson, @TheJLV (an