Teaching and blogging

Blogging is something that is still new in Malaysia. In fact, bloggers do not have good reputation in this country. A blogger is always considered as someone that is unethical and rebellious. Bad highlights and misused of blogs for political platforms have really worsen the situation.
One of the questions that I would like to answer in my weblog is “Can a teacher become a blogger?” For me, blogging is not something that is totally strange to us as educators. As a teacher we are encouraged to keep records and journals of our daily teaching experiences. In our daily lesson plan itself, we are required to make a reflection of every lesson we taught. This instrument is vital in evaluating the effectiveness of each lesson.
Being reflective of our daily teaching experience is crucial because it will benefit us in the future. As a baby blogger, I always believe that my blog entries are precious journals that will help to encourage me in difficult time to come. Every success and failure in the classroom should be recorded so that it can become a source of reference in the future.
To make it clear, I am not suggesting that every teacher should become a blogger. We have our own ways of keeping record, such as writing diary, audio and video recording. As long as it can be a medium that helps you to reflect back to your lessons in class than you are doing the right thing. My personal experience has taught me that if we teachers do not take time to post-mortem our works in the class then we will not improve.
In a nutshell, teaching and blogging are two components that complement each other. Blogging can be a powerful tool that helps us to be a better teacher if we use it in the right way. So, the answer is YES, a teacher can also be a blogger. I’m proud to be a blogger myself.