Came Clean - I’m Coming Out!
January 21, 2008 by Kate Olson
Breaking news! My posts this past weekend - Professional Suicide and Hiding Behind My Blog - drew a lot of attention to the issue of educators blogging and how this is viewed by administrators/employers. Well, the attention also brought much advice from seasoned bloggers, most notably Vicki Davis of The Cool Cat Teacher Blog, but also including many really valued members of my PLN. Some came via comments on my blog, some through tweets, and some via email. Vicki tweeted about my post and then wrote her own about the issue. I was inspired by many of the comments on both posts and decided (after contacting Vicki about her post and with the help of my wonderful mentors, including Ellen Paxton of Teacher Talk) to go talk to my principal this morning.
Now, to some/most of you, this may have been a no-brainer or not even considered, but I’m really great at analyzing things to death, so I had a lot of thinking to do before bringing it up today. I had to struggle with what I’d do if my administrator said she WASN’T ok with me blogging publicly and in any relation to our school - how tough am I? How strong are my beliefs on this issue? Well, I decided that my beliefs about not blogging anonymously are strong enough that the issue needed to be addressed. Vicki’s constant use of the phrase “professionalism in blogging” made me realize that this WASN’T a choice - it had to be done, and soon. Especially with all the attention my angst-ridden posts were getting! So, how’d it go?
As usual, my worries were completely and utterly unfounded. My principal is a visionary in education and treated me like the professional I am - it’s understood that I won’t compromise the confidentiality of our students or the integrity of our district and I’m now free to blog under my full name without the fear that it will somehow come back to haunt me in the future. I was chomping at the bit to write this post immediately, but was at school - this is my own project that I do on my own time. I respect that and had to wait until I was off contract time. So, I’m finally updating the saga, and actually, the saga’s over for me! I feel so much better about what I’m doing here and look forward to being able to connect on an authentic level with my readers and others in the blogosphere.
Unfortunately, I know that my case isn’t necessarily the norm. There may be administrators out there who aren’t as open-minded as mine and I honestly can’t tell anyone what the right thing to do is for any particular situation. For instance, what’s the course of action if your district already has a no-blogging mandate in place? I’m in no place to tell you to go against that! I had an easy time of it and knew my principal would most likely be accepting based on her stance on student blogging and other uses of 2.0 tools - and she was. I’m hoping she’s reading this right now, as a matter of fact! For all the new or fearful bloggers out there, I’d suggest working your PLN to find a mentor - mine have been invaluable to me and I wouldn’t be writing this right now if it weren’t for them. Thanks to all who offered advice this past weekend, especially those who actually posted comments, it means a lot to me.
So, blog on………….and you can find my real name and Twitter ID on my About and Contact Me pages!
(Image from Jade Zoe Ziandra)
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I’m glad your principal was supportive. I’m staring at a research study on elementary pre-service teachers’ use of Facebook & Myspace. It is related to this conversation about professionalism. I’ll post on it and let you know it is available.
What a happy ending. I too am always very aware that I am blogging as a professional. It means that there are some things that I would like to blog about that I can’t. But, for the most part, there is still a lot to talk about. I appreciate you bringing up this issue and dealing with it head on.
Thanks for being part of my personal learning network.
-Liz
That is fantastic news Kate!
It was important that you bought out this conversation so that people could share their thoughts to explain the pros and cons; then provide their guidance of how to approach the situation. I’m glad you had a positive outcome and have decided to blog under your own name.
Now that this is settle - I was wondering
what are the chances of changing your blog title back to Kate 2.0? Will be interested to hear yours and others thoughts. But I really LOVED Kate 2.0 as a blog name — different, uniquely you and easy to remember. I love the series Jake 2.0, so Kate 2.0 sticks in my mind.
Eric -
Please keep us posted on that research study, it’s definitely something that needs to be discussed with new teachers. I’ll be looking forward to hearing about it!
Liz -
Well, I’m glad you’re a part of my network as well! I find that I have to put a lot more thought into my posts, but that’s a good thing. It really makes me focus on the positive - I KNOW I’ve heard of research done along the line of how complaining makes you feel worse (or something along that line) and so this really just makes me put any negativity on the back burner.
Sue -
I’m still thinking about the name. I really liked Kate 2.0 as well, so maybe it’ll be coming back. Glad to get the vote for it! I’ve never heard of Jake 2.0, but either I’m just out of the loop or it’s non-US?
I’m really glad I went the route that I did, it makes me much more excited about blogging.
Kate Olson
Can’t believe you’ve never heard of Jake 2.0. It’s an American TV series where he gets contaminated by nanotechnology and becomes this super human with strength and ability to interface with technology. Looks like you have some TV viewing homework.
I am so proud of you! This is wonderful! I’ve just blogged about it and look forward to our “little project.” Great job!
Kudos to your principal!! Wow! You are lucky to work for a visionary.
Hello Kate,
I have been following this story over the week without knowing who the author was. Only just starting my own blog this month, as well as Twitter, I have also been doing a lot of thinking. In the last week I have ‘pulled back’ a little so that I could give my thinking some ‘room’. You raised an issue that I think helped me develop my own purpose and reasons for blogging. What has also become even more clear now is, not only do we, as teachers need the time to reflect and engage in conversations, but so do our students. The power of reflection as a learning tool in my opinion is huge. Blogging allows this to happen.
Now, back to that other project from last week!
Helen
Congratulations from another teaching-female-on-her-twenties-blogger. I feel the outcome of your issue is a great contribution to the merge of the higher education institutions and the Web 2.0 I (and others, I hope) desire.
I myself have not still talked to my principal about my blog but assume that he will have absolutely no problem with it, as I am the “official” web expert in my Faculty and he is fairly interested in the issue right now. Your posts encourage me to talk to him as soon as possible.
What’s more, I’ve just also finished a project for my master’s degree about how to use Web 2.0 apps to enhance higher education, upon request of my project director. I strongly think that the merge between Web 2.0 and higher education (as I said before) will soon be a demand from the students coming to university.
So, along with my “I’m a blogger” declaration, I will probably hand a proposal to encourage other teachers blogging as well. I think it would dramatically improve our institutions image both for students and for other universities or researchers. We must keep the conversation alive, and I feel this should be an explicit commitment of ours as academics.
Keep writing, Kate!
[...] Kate habló con sus superiores y resultó que sus miedos eran completamente infundados, así que dejó de escribir anónimamente. Recibió apoyo de otros profesores bloggers como Vicki A. Davis que también aprovechó la [...]