An IT blog is an information or discussion site published on the Internet consisting of informal, frequently personal blog-style text postings. Blogs are written by members or participants who contribute to a community or online project based on their expertise and experience in IT or similar fields. Posts are usually displayed in chronological order, with the latest post appearing at the top of the page, and so the earliest post at the bottom. You can also create your own individual blog, which has the added benefit of containing your most important achievements and discussions. But why should you consider starting an IT blog?
A blogging platform like WordPress makes it easy for anyone to begin an IT blog, by choosing a username and theme and then creating a number of posts to be published at regular intervals. As a teacher with a popular IT blog, I receive a lot of comments about topics I’ve chosen to write about. Many students ask me how they can make a difference by participating in an IT blog. I’ve seen students promote causes they believe in, join political clubs, and call for more teacher training or literacy initiatives. I’ve also met teachers who’ve discussed upcoming classroom testing, introduced alternative teaching approaches, discussed ways to raise student reading scores, and even provided resources for teachers using Common Core standards.
I’ve found that one of the best reasons to start an IT blog is that you can reach a very specific target audience. For example, I have a large number of female students in my Teach Me Tech class, and as a teacher of middle school girls, I want to be sure that I am providing the most up-to-date and practical information for them. My goal isn’t just to talk about tech, though. I love to talk about technology itself, but I think that there’s a certain subset of women (and men, for that matter) who respond positively to a teacher who is also tech-savvy. By communicating with this targeted group, I’m able to spark a genuine interest in them in the subject matter and in themselves. If I haven’t convinced you to start a tech blog, then I would hope that this may be the case!