Wrap-up: a summary of other students' blogs

     Education blogging, in my words, means sharing your ideas about education on a blog. The number of education bloggers is increasing daily. I think that education blogging is a great way to share your thoughts about education and a great way to network with teachers across the country. According to the K-12 Educational Technology Handbook, blogging is a great way to reflect on your lessons and discuss resources. Learning from other teachers can help improve your teaching practices and you can learn new ideas to implement in your classroom. I believe that without an outlet to share your ideas, best classroom practices would not be implemented or discussed.

Teacher with students engaged in discussion.

 One of the topics my peers discussed was standardized testing. This topic was written about by Maggie Kirkland, Brooke Duff, and Emeline Golden. Maggie brings up the fact about how colleges went test optional during the coronavirus pandemic. She also brought up how she could have received more financial aid if she had applied test optional. Emeline states in her blog that it can be hard to find support in schools to increase your ACT score. She talked about that she came from a school district that did not place much emphasis on testing. Brooke brought up the argument about how standardized testing is graded the same for all students. I agree with her point of not liking the idea of students' knowledge being determined by one test score. I believe that students are not defined by one test score. I also learned about flipped classrooms. Maggie's blog discusses how flipped classrooms can cause more work before class. The final idea I learned about was mental health in school. Lara's blog mentions how mental health was not a priority when she went to school. I believe that schools need better mental health services, especially for teachers.

    Although my experience blogging has been short, I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I will continue to use blogging as a platform for communication with my students. I will also encourage my students to use blogging as a way of communicating their thoughts about a lesson. Without this platform, I never would have learned my classmates’ thoughts on educational topics. I learned so much through this experience, and I will never take it for granted.