Why I Blog.

Over a month ago, Julie over at School of Blog tagged me to respond this question. The short answer is either just because or I don’t know. I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. Some days I contemplate retiring it or deleting it altogether. Other days I wish I had more time to add to it. I can have a string of 10 posts in a week or have just a couple posts in a three month window. Sometimes I feel it is self indulgent, other times it gives me a place to rant, share, and enjoy successes.

So I guess this list is going to reflect the reasons why I don’t delete it. Why I continue on…

1. I like a space to call my own. I am constantly thinking about new ideas and events in my everyday professional life. I have lots of fires going, this is the one place I can be a teacher, educational technologist, web designer, consultant, geek, and family guy. I can say and do what I want. Within reason of course. When I started, I decided to use my real name so I have significant limits about what I say and how I say some things.
2. The community. As classroom teachers we are often isolated from one another. Blogging has given me access to a community of teachers and educational technologists far greater then I could have imagined. I’ve watched first year teachers mature into experienced teachers. I saw the early ideas of blogging blossum into what we have today.
3. Sharing. Since I started teaching, I’ve made a point of sharing anything I could. Here I can not only share ideas, experiences, and specific resources, I can also talk about them. Within the community we can have a conversation about an idea or a topic.
4. Writing practice. I have always struggled with writing. Since graduating college in 1994, there have been fewer and fewer reasons to actually write. Now that the MA is finally done, I need the excuse. Blogging gives me a chance to put together coherent thoughts (mostly), defend positions, and simply type out what I’m thinking at the time.
5. Practicing what I preach. I have been lucky enough to be involved in technology staff development since I started teaching. In the last couple years, the influx of Web 2.0 technologies has influenced my interests and has transformed my teaching. Keeping a blog helps me experience what I encourage others to do. I do see the value.

OK, after thinking about it some more, it looks like I do like this thing. It has been saved once again.

I’m not going to tag anyone since I waited so long to finally do it, but if you would like to think about this questions, please consider yourself tagged.