Education Blogs | How to create & what to take care of ?

September 15, 2015 Blogging Guide,Technology,Writing Tips

Good education blogs have one thing in common: they are able to address their readers’ needs. In today’s setting, teachers, student and various scholars are taking advantage of what blogs have to offer. Blogs like these are portals to spark new ideas, innovation and solutions that teachers, professors and even parents can use to impart valuable information to children and students.

So what sets education blogs apart from ordinary blogs? Popular blogs are written by people with qualifying expertise. They are authored by professors, teachers, businessmen, school administrators and even lawyers and doctors. Overtime, these blogs will earn a huge follower base due to the useful (and free) information they provide. Here are some tips that will help you create a good academic blog worthy of interactive followers.

1. Keep your blog posts brief but solid. Make sure the ideas are relevant and set a central idea or argument. What’s the main idea of your blog post? A brief blog post will encourage your reader from reading your entire blog post. If a long post is inevitable, take time to provide an introduction and an overview about what they will encounter in your long post. You can enumerate or create bullet points to map the flow of information then add subheadings to keep your ideas organized.

2. Avoid plagiarizing. Quote your appropriate sources. An MLA style reference is acceptable but you may opt for numerical superscripts to avoid breaking the flow of ideas. You may then list your sources below. When citing anything online, link your source to it. The point of using secondary literature is to bolster or counter your idea; therefore, you should have a central idea in mind. Only quote something if you can comment on it.

3. Education blogs appear credible, but they don’t sound like dissertations. Consider the importance of attraction and keeping your audience interested and engaged. This doesn’t mean that you should include trivial gossips and controversies. Elicit their engagement by using a simpler language. If there are jargons, explain it.

4. Write a new blog post every 3-7 days. Given the substance of your blog, it is understood that you cannot blog daily. Nevertheless, keep yourself present by being dynamic. Writing education blogs require passion and commitment. Aim to be of help to someone’s academic progress. If you are sick or will be away for vacation, write a short post about it aimed to inform your readers.

5. Delve into current issues. You’re not limited to blogging about what’s current. Rather, aim to tackle current issues like educational reforms, bullying, new scientific breakthrough, etc. Educational blogs often have their own domain, so you should consider how your posts will attract people.

6. Be mindful of what you say. Calibrate the degree of controversy that you’re willing to be involved in. You shouldn’t be anonymous when writing education blogs.

7. Write your lectures as blog post. Teachers pour in a lot of effort to come up with a lecture. Given your expertise, you can later convert your lectures as a blog post to create valuable content.

8. Write advises. Do you have a PhD? Are you a professional? You can impart ideas such as how to write good thesis proposals, how to survive grad school, how is grad school different from undergrad college and tips on passing bar and board exams. With your experience, you have a lot of information to share.

Now that you have an idea what to write, here are some education blogs to inspire you.

Brian Cosby of www.learningismessy.com specializes in different ways of teaching students who have hard time learning. You see, you don’t need to have a professional license to be confident in blogging.

ProfHacker (www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker) is a blog dedicated to help educators use technology for teaching. Despite the technical nature of the blog, he accommodates his audience with easy to understand guides.

Online courses are popular portals of learning nowadays. Elearnspace (http://www.elearnspace.org/blog) provides rich resources that cover online courses and information about networking and technology. Life in Perpetual Beta (www.jarche.com/) imparts similar information but leans more on networking and learning philosophy.

Weslye Fryer of www.speedofcreativity.org imparts how technology can be a part of a classroom’s everyday setting. His teaching materials can be downloaded for free online.

If you have an educational blog, make sure to post in comments to inspire other readers.