Blogging challenges for 2017

This New Year’s thrust list is definitely including some blogging challenges. I'm calling this list a thrust list, in contrast to the common expression "New year's resolutions", I´ll use the word "thrust" because its meaning is more suitable for what I have in mind. A thrust is a propulsive force caused by a jet or rocket engine and that is exactly what I have in mind. I included in the list a number of things I already do, things that somehow need a renewed motivation. Blogging is one of them.

I began the year looking for blogging challenges to reignite an old blog that I have. There were two motivating incidents. Firstly, browsing my Twitter feed I found a Tweet inviting to join the #edublogsclub challenge, Secondly, I was asked to promote strategies for documenting school activities among teachers. These two motivating incidents seemed to be made one for another, I was presented with the chance to unite two objectives into a more comprehensive one. It was a straight forward decision to design a PD to help teachers begin and sustain documentation activities by regularly blogging. This idea is by far not something new in the education world, but it seemed promising given some personal and professional circumstances.

The first motivation thrust mentioned above has already produced some forward motion. I enrolled to take part in the one-year long challenge of blogging every week about a specific prompt. Prompts are out every Tuesday and participants are supposed to compose a post, publish it and share it with the blogging community. Once the post is published, the permalink to access it should be posted as a comment in each respective Ronnie’s (from Edublogs) original post. I’ll take the sharing of the link a couple of steps further, I intend to share the link in my Twitter account using related hashtags and as an update in my Facebook account. I expect to reignite this two SM accounts too.

The second motivation thrust mentioned above, to create a PD opportunity at the school where I work, needs a little more planning time. I expect to get it going by mid-February. For starters, I´m planning a 10 post challenge for beginners. This will be only to help beginners to learn how to use the blogging platform (still in the process of selecting one). After the 10 posts challenge for beginners is finished, participants will have to choose what to their opinion significant milestones are in the learning process of their students and document those milestones. This overall goal is intended as a bias to stimulate teaching practices reflections, as a mean to improve quality standards in the classroom.

The next challenge is to begin planning how to put these ideas ahead.