The great folks at the Music Educator’s Network have issued a challenge:
In light of this I invite every reader to join me in my challenge to myself: I WILL BLOG! I will write at least one post per month. With each school year comes new ideas, new challenges, and a new ‘to do’ list. Won’t you join me in harnessing the power of a blogging community of music educators?
I KNOW this is a great idea. If nothing else, writing clarifies thought and expands your thinking pattern(s). Blogging will do that and so much more for you and your students. Since I started blogging a year ago, I have had almost 100,000 unique hits at mustech.net and over 200 hundred discussion points with people on this blog. I’ve grown tremendously from those conversations and it has sparked further curiosity… In my opinion it’s a win-win for everyone involved in the process. Yes, many times people do not agree with me about a topic but isn’t that the point of an open discussion?
From reading and COMMENTING in others blogs, I’ve become more “in tune” and “out of the box” in my own thinking about music, edcuation and other topics. Blogging truly is the start of something great for us and our profession. The first generation of music, technology and education blogs have laid the groundwork, let’s have the 2nd and third generations “grow and multiply”!
Here are links to places you can get your own FREE BLOG and that I also recommend:
- http://www.blogger.com [google’s blogging software]
- http://www.wordpress.com [my favorite!]
- http://www.livejournal.com [great free blog]
- http://www.typepad.com [great free blog]
- http://www.musiced.net [join other music educators with blogs]
Do you need help starting your own blog or encouragement? Let me know by leaving a comment here or contacting us with our contact page, we’ll be glad to help!!! :)
Wow, I haven’t been here in a while but I’m really loving the new look! I agree it can be difficult to maintain a blog especially if you have various responsibilities pulling you in every direction – work, family, etc. So far I’ve been able to post regularly on my music education website but I also write for other websites and have other blogs as well which I haven’t been updating regularly.
Just want to add to your list of free blogs – http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/journal/, I love the look of their blogs and it’s easy to use too.
Have a great weekend!
I’m right on board! Keep it up!
Espie,
Thank you for the “look” comment. I mean to change my tag line “It’s all that” but it was an inside joke between me an my students so I’ll leave it up for another week or so…
I’ve not actually looked at bravenet.com’s journal software until you mentioned it… At first glance it looks great! They have a lot of other great freebies too!
Thanks for your continued support!
Stan,
http://gluedtothestring.blogspot.com/ is a great blog! I wish you the greatest success! Keep at it!
J. Pisano
Thanks for mentioning the blog post and The Music Educators Network http://musiced.net. We’re actually a non profit organization with one of the services being free blog and web hosting for music educators. We currently have the wordpress multiuser platform installed on our server so for people who want to set up a bunch of class blogs or work collaboratively with others it’s a cinch. James Frankel has been doing some great work with his students with the system. He has links on his blog to some of the class projects he’s working on that are worth taking a look at. We’ve also provided people with the ability to maintain online digital portfolio systems in the past but are focusing on blog services now that so many schools use blackboard or other commercial-type systems. We’re always looking for feedback from people who wish to blog and need help starting. Thanks again for getting the info about various free hosting options to people. Keep up the great work on your blog and hope you have an excellent start to the new school year.
Yes indeed, blogging is good for you! Glad I found this site. And if you are working in music education then the power of web tools is the greatest resource since…..the invention of the piano! I’m not a prolific blogger but I have a long rss feed and I learn so much from that I’m excited about a ning network for my institution also – if you haven’t come across these, try http://classroom20.ning.com for starters.
[…] students. Invite the local cable company to broadcast your event on the local cable channel. Start a blog about your program and classes. Make sure there is a section in the school paper about the music dept. and invite the other […]
[…] he writes well and is a “deep” thinker. He took up the challenge from our post “Music Education Blogging: A Challenge!” and has come out “guns a’blazing!”. He has written a number of posts already […]