~ Beyond Blogging ~ Teacher ~ Students ~ Classrooms ~

Note: This blog post is a presentation I’m sharing today for educators at the Teachers for Global Classrooms Symposium in Washington DC. If you are not here with us, you may still enjoy learning about how I’ve used blogging to globalize my teaching.  In order to see the full content of the post, please click through to the accompanying pages.

Welcome to InnovationOnEarth.com. I started this blog back in February, with the intent to use it to help students at my school, Innovation Academy, see themselves as part of a global community. I chose the name, Innovation on Earth, because I also hope to innovate in the field of global education.  And somehow, 4 countries and 112 posts later, I am a blogger. I’ve gotten over 27,000 page views and over 920 comments. Statistics show that my blog has been viewed in 93 countries.

But it’s not about the numbers. This blog has become something bigger for me.  I blog because I love creating, storytelling, and photography.  I blog because learning about other cultures continually amazes me and I can never wait another second longer than necessary to share this with others. I blog because of the look on my students’ faces when they feel connected and inspired.

I’m no expert. In fact, I’ve never taken a single course in anything computer-related. However, when I went back and looked at my ridiculous number of posts over the past 6 months, I realized that I can’t wait another second to share with all of you the lessons I’ve learned about using a blog to inspire.  I hope you’ll consider “going beyond” with your own blog, using it in each of these 3 ways:

• Teacher as Model: Blogging to model global competencies
• Students as Participants: Blogging to get students actively engaged
• Classrooms as Connected: Blogging to enrich the global community