Which format to choose for your reflective entries

When you start to consider which format you want to do your reflectins in, I would suggest you consider blogging first. This article listing some benefits of blogging was published in 2015, but I think many of the points it makes are still valid. Blogging indeed helps us to refine our writing skills, it helps us to build our professional network and share our knowledge.

As indicated in the assessment description, your learning portfolio doesn't necessarily need to be a blog. It could be that you already blog about other topics and you want to try something new this time around. You are free to do vlogging or even hand in your reflective entries as written offline documents.

You can't of course talk in a vlog or write in a blog the same way you could in a private essay that's going to be seen just by your assessors, but there lies the beauty of it. When you publishing content online, you are at the same time pushing yourself to practice as you preach to behave online. 

What I find interesting is that people don’t read blogs the way they did ten years ago. Tamal Anwar Chowdhury raises also many interesting ideas in that post, and to be fair, without his blog I would not know about those. Of course, for many of us, Twitter might be an obvious choice, and it is true that in everyday life microblogging might be easier and quicker. But when it is time to share our deeper reflections, we need a platform that supports that. And even today, blogging seems to be one of the best choices. That article lists many similar tips for writing to what I have written to you about in my 'How to write a good blog post' and 'Reflecting publicly or privately' posts. Hopefully, the world of blogging is an inspiring one and you choose to give it a go. 

Alright, if I'll do blogging, which platform should I use? 

You might guess that there is no simple answer to "what is the best blogging platform" to use for your reflective entries. Some of you might want to stick with the one you already know, and some want to try a new one. For some of you, this might be the first time you ever blog. 

Which is the best platform for you as always depends on the context and content. It is good to keep in mind that you might have also different requirements when you are choosing blogging platforms for class use. While there are numerous free and easy-to-use blogging platforms available, here are some of the most popular platforms to help you to make that decision now that you'll be writing some reflective entries about your own learning journey.

Blogger - A free blog publishing tool from Google. You can set up as many blogs as you want, and right from your Google account. If you choose Blogger reading the XXx post might be healful to get started. 

WordPress - This offers two options, so you'll need to choose between the fully hosted WordPress.com and the self-hosted version, WordPress.org. The fully hosted version is definitely the easiest one to start with. 

Weebly - Many teachers have chosen Weebly for creating free classroom websites, student e-portfolios, and websites for assigned projects. You can also make blogs with it, even if Blogger and WordPress might be more commonly used.

WIX - If you choose this to be your publishing platform you could start from their A Complete Guide to Blogging in 2020 -page. 

Substack - This tool was originally created for newsletters, but it can actually help you to create a publication that combines a personal website, blog, and email newsletter or podcast. This would be a good tool to create an online audience you really want to connect with if that is your true goal!  

There are many other tools and platforms in addition to those listed above. Most of the blogging platforms are similar enough that once you have learned to use one, you know how to use the others. 

If you are new to blogging I would strongly recommend you try it out. 

If you are starting from scratch here is an introduction from Dr. David Parsons.

References:

Byrne, R. (2016, February 19) 7 Blogging Platforms for Teachers Compared and Ranked. https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/02/7-blogging-platforms-for-teachers.html
Chowdhury, T. A. (2020, May 11). Should I Blog in 2020? is Blogging Dead? https://blogkori.com/state-of-blogging 
Dekmezian, G. (2015, September 23). Why Do People Blog? The Benefits of Blogging. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-do-people-blog-the-be_b_8178624 
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.) Vlog. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vlog 

EDIT: Substack part added on 1.5.2023

Reflecting publicly or privately?

These reflective entries provide a view of your personal learning journey. Since you will be reflecting upon your professional practice, you have to keep your students and members of your community in mind. Perhaps you should write about the topics in a manner that does not give away their identity? What I tend to give as a guideline is that you shouldn't write anything you couldn't yell out on a bus.

When it comes to thinking of whether to make it public or not, I would ask why would you want to keep your learning journey and thoughts to yourself? Learning to write about your personal learning journey in a way that can help others can make the impact so much bigger. Even if you get just one person who finds your blog 2 years after you have written it, it might offer them the exact support they are after.

Should I blog anonymously?

Anonymous blogging allows some people to be more honest than they might be if their real names were attached. You might have noticed that writing under a different name or alias allows some people to express different aspects of their personality, including parts that may not be appropriate to show at other times. But if there is no need to be anonymous, why would you? I would also like to remind you that staying anonymous online might be much harder than you think. 

Having said that, you can also just hand in a (word/pdf) document of your learning tasks if you desire to do so. But if you make the effort to raise the discussion openly, we would certainly appreciate that.

As Ryan Merkley, the Chief Executive Officer of Creative Commons, suggests collaboration, sharing, and co-operation are in our nature. This is yet another opportunity to embrace that!

Could this help me to develop my professional online identity?

Thinking beyond our personal benefit is at the core of why we share, and I would suggest that maybe it is at the core of why we are teachers? Sharing pays itself forward also in reputation and it rewards us with good feelings and personal gratification. Sharing also contributes to our individual identity — how we want to see ourselves, and be seen, in the world. 

These critical reflections are going to be quite short, so why not make them such that help you to create an interesting professional online identity? You get to show how you have the courage to share your deep and evaluative thinking; that you are not afraid to openly reflect to become better at what you do.

Which privacy settings should I consider?

When creating a blog, there are settings you can change that affect how private or public your blog becomes. Different blogging platforms provide different privacy setting options. Perhaps you want to restrict if the search engines can find it. This is something you can many times choose in the "Settings" section. Just bear in mind, that bear in mind that even if you restrict that, anyone can add links to your blog from their pages.   

You want to keep in mind that allowing comments, and showing the date of your posts are something that defines a blog. Those features differentiate a blog from a static website. 

Some of you might want to limit your blog's readers so that only those invited by emails can view it. The "Settings" section has many times features that you can do this with. For example, in Blogger you can change your 'Reader access' from 'Public' to 'Private to authors', or 'Custom Readers' that you can add manually to your blog. For some, this is a good way to start their blogging journey, and after a while, they might realise they are actually ready to public it to the world. 

Even if you make your blog public it likely takes a long time before you get any readers. It takes a while before search engine bots scan it, and if you want people to read your blog you need to let them know it exists! 

If you still have some burning questions relating to blogging, remember to post those here as comments or use our Slack channel to get more help from your peers. Enjoy the ride!  

References:

EFF. (2005, April 6). How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else). https://www.eff.org/wp/blog-safely

Merkley. R. (2016, January 12). We Need To Talk About Sharing. https://creativecommons.org/2016/01/12/where-are-we/

How to write a good blog post?

When making public posts about your reflective learning journey, it is crucial to consider your audience. I tried to sum up here some tips that could help you while writing your reflective blogs. 

Keep it as a draft until you are ready to post

Writing a short, interesting, and cohesive blog post takes time. You are likely to write way more than what your readers are wanting to read, so editing is usually required. Many bloggers choose to draft their posts in Google Doc/Word before bringing them to the blogging platform to be published. If you choose to do this, keep in mind that copy-pasting straight brings all the styling with it, so use a "paste as plain text" option.  

Quality is more important than quantity

You might ask yourself what type of blog post you would rather read yourself? This is your chance to create some meaningful content on the internet. People tend to read things that are worth their time. We want useful, moving, noteworthy, unique, relevant, inspiring, and well thought out content. We want to read or view things that help us to improve some aspect of our lives.

Shorter posts are also best for generating discussion but need to be at least 250 words long to be searched by the search engines. Jeff Goins, like many others, claims that 400-600 words long is a good length. The reason I'm referring to him is that his thoughts line up well with ours, your reflective entries while studying at The Mind Lab should be kept short too. 

Remember to acknowledge your sources and position yourself within your writing

Remember the people who are the subject of your reflections, as well as the intended audience of your posts. These posts are about you, but you might be referring to people close to you. Remember to be respectful, and make sure that you write anonymously if needed. If you want to acknowledge them, make sure to ask their permission. And when you talk about your own thoughts, feelings, and insights you have gained, make it clear that those really are your own reflections. 

When you keep your readers in mind, you should help them to differentiate which parts are your own ideas and which are someone else's. Also, help them to find more information about your sources by acknowledging them accordingly. As you might have noticed I haven't been sticking to APA referencing in detail, but my referencing is hopefully clear enough. 

Even if while blogging hyperlinking is enough, I strongly recommend adding full references to the end. This helps your readers to find your sources even if the link URL's change. 

Make your posts scannable - for humans and search engines

Since we scan through the content, editing is essential. By we I mean mainly us humans, but Search Engine bots are scanning through your content too. Bots have been taught to respect the same things as we humans do. If you are not yet familiar with how search engines work, I would suggest you read this article by Google. After that, you might for example realise, how important and useful proper hyperlinking really is. 

Jeff Goins talks also about scanning in that informative blog post of his, and he suggests that sticking to a topic, and having clear titles and subheadings helps too. I most certainly agree. Writing an easily scannable article means again that you write for your readers, not just for yourself. Also bear in mind the possibility that your readers might be using mobile devices or screen reading software. Your audience might be wider than you think, and the  

References
Goins, J. (2015). How to Write Scannable Content for Your Blog. http://goinswriter.com/write-scannable-content/ 
Google. (2016). How Google Search Works - Search Console Help. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en 
Make Use Of. (2019, December 16). 5 Ways to Strip Formatting When You Copy and Paste Text. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-strip-formatting-copy-paste-text/ 

UPDATE 6/11/2020: Naturally, we humans learn and make mistakes. Instead of editing your old posts, we should comment on them or make new ones. If you do make changes to your post, a good practice is to have a changelog (like this) at the end of the post. Keep in mind that you most definitely shouldn't edit your posts as a response to comments - instead, you should add your own counter-comments. That is the essence of blogging!

Getting comments on your blog posts

 Once you start blogging you might realise quite quickly that even if the analytics show that you’ve had some visitors on your pages, they haven’t left you any comments. Is it because our online life is just getting too busy? Do we just scan and through and cannot afford the time to stop, think, and comment? Or has it actually been the way we have behaved as long as the internet has existed? 

Of course, my heading already gave away the fact that I think there are ways you can get more comments on your blog posts, regardless of whether it is one about your passion for puppets, how to cook the perfect egg or reflections on your professional practice. Making the headings match the content is a good start! These are my 5 suggestions and I’d be delighted for you to post your comments if you agree or want to share some other good tips.

Tip 1: Write in a manner that provokes discussion

You might have realised what I did just there, at the end of the previous section. I provoked you to comment. When blogging, keep in mind that even if your posts are self-reflective, you are writing for other people. Those scannability tips that I wrote about in How to Write a Good Blog post are a good place to start. 

If comments from your readers are what you are after, maybe you should check if your blog post leaves any room for discussion? One good strategy could be to keep in mind all those tricks on how you lead and provoke a good and ambiguous learning discussion in your class or staffroom. Creating that online does not differ that much, or does it?

Tip 2: Check that the commenting feature is on, to begin with

Make sure that leaving a comment is possible for your readers. Many bloggers are arguing against calling your page a blog unless comments are enabled. As well as making sure that the comments are enabled, note that some features allow or even require the writer of the blog to approve new comments before they appear. Keep in mind that having a comment approval feature on for no reason might just slow it down. Aim to keep it as simple and easy as possible for readers to make comments. You can always turn comment approval back on if needed.

Tip 3: Respond to comments on your own blog posts

One good way of generating comments is to be consistent in answering them. As suggested at the end of my earlier post, it is crucial not to edit your blog posts after you’ve published them. By welcoming even divergent opinions and responding to all of the comments you get, while not touching your original post, you showcase to the world how to be a true lifelong learner. 

Tip 4: Learn to share and advertise your content

Once your new blog post is published you need to find that inner advertiser queen within. The one that believes in her message and adds provocative summaries and discussion starters when sharing the links to her posts with her online whānau. 

It might even be a good idea to find those people who are ready to scratch your back if you scratch theirs. You need to share and create links to your content, especially if your goal is to get a high page rank and a wide audience in Google. You might also want to refresh your knowledge on how Google crawls through websites via links. And if you get more curious about all this, sharing the simple wonder of how Google actually works with your students might create an interesting learning inquiry topic? 

Tip 5: Be the change you want to see in others

Remember to be the Mahatma Gandhi of the blogging world, by making sure that when you visit an interesting blog written by someone else, you also read through the comments and leave a new comment that feeds forward. Maybe even include a link to your own blog to get them to reciprocate? 

By having a quick glance in the mirror, you might remember to acknowledge that commenting with your own name is just as vulnerable an act as writing a blog post in the first place. Remember to cherish those courageous acts both ways. Respecting and sharing our life long learning journeys make them so much more meaningful.

I hope you found this post useful. I must admit I am truly excited to see how many comments I’ll get. What other tips do you have for how to get comments on your blog post? 

References:
Arthur, C. (2006, July 20). What is the 1% rule?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection2
Gaudeul, A & Peroni, C. (2010). Reciprocal attention and norm of reciprocity in blogging networks. Economics Bulletin. 30 (3): 2230-2248. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/32565/1/623739348.pdf 
Google. (2010). How Search Works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs 
Google. (n.d.). Manage your comments. https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/187141?hl=en
Google. (2017). The Internet: How Search Works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVV_93mBfSU

Saving a PDF copy of your blog posts

Assessment criteria state that you'll have to upload a saved copy of your blog posts to the Mind Lab portal. This means you'll need to save them as a document.

As a blog’s content can be modified, we need to have an archive of your blog at the time it is submitted for assessment. For this reason, we suggest that you save them as PDF files by using your browser's print function, or use tools such as BlogBooker (http://www.blogbooker.com/) or PrintFriendly (https://www.printfriendly.com/). 

Printing page as a PDF with your Browser

Most web browsers have an option to save a web page as a PDF. Most students choose this option since it is really straight forward and easy. 

Here is how you save a page as a PDF with Chrome:
- Open one of your posts in Chrome, then press Ctrl+P (or Command-P) to open the Print dialog 
- Change the destination printer to “Save as PDF”
- Click the “Print” button and the webpage will download as a PDF document.
- Then do the same thing with other posts, and submit those as separate PDFs to the portal. 

Printfriendly

If you have not tried Printfriendly, here is a brief 'How-to guide':
- Open the Printfriendly -website
- Copy and paste your blog address to the box entitled 'Copy and Paste a URL'
- Click 'print preview'

The tool will convert your blog to PDF preview mode. You can then click 'PDF' and 'Download your PDF' to download the file to your computer. This tool is quite easy to use and quick in generating the PDF file with good quality images from your blog. However, the hidden content of any blog post needs to be open so that the tool can read it to print.

BlogBooker

If you use BlogBooker, you have to export your blog content and bring it into BlogBooker to convert it to PDF. There are instructions on the BlogBooker website on how to export your blog content, depending on which blog you are using (e.g. Blogger or WordPress.) Unfortunately, Weebly and Wix are currently not supported by this service, though that feature may be added in the future. 

In addition to submitting your archived blog, please remember also to include the link to your live blog or send us (dcl@themindlab.com) the invitation to view it (if it is set as a private blog).