July 1, 2005
Guidelines for Posting
A few guiding thoughts for the Prospect Center weblog:
What might a Prospect weblog entry be about?
On this weblog we hope to explore a range of topics related to education, from
classroom ideas to requests for advice to links to relevant sites to stories
about everyday classroom events and reflections about teaching. We hope to
generate a conversation, to hear from others at different schools, to offer
support and suggestions and solace, and to keep our voices clear and powerful.
As for length, entries may be long or short, relatively informal or longer and
more contemplative, posted when you feel like it.
How might I write about sensitive topics or describe problematic events or
situations involving students and teaching?
The ethics surrounding blogging are, as you might expect, hotly contested and
debated at length. You may have heard about bloggers being fired for sharing
inappropriate details about students, colleagues, administrators, or
institutional policies. So, while blogs afford conversational conditions and a
sense of comfort in a tight-knit network of interested readers and writers, you
should approach problematic events or situations involving students,
administrators, and teaching with the same sense of professionalism and decorum
that guides you in your personal conversations about such things. It could be
risky, therefore, to write about others in such a way that they might, upon
discovering what you've written, feel uncomfortable, falsely represented, or
unfairly depicted.
- Would someone be surprised to find it?
- Would you be comfortable sharing these same views with everyone associated with your professional life?
- And does your written account contribute to the spirit of inquiry and collegiality that pervades this collective venture?
Who reads the weblog and why?
Weblogs attract many casual readers, from those who stumble serendipitously onto
an entry through a search engine inquiry to those specifically seeking
information about Prospect Center. Attention and involvement from readers varies
in relationship to the rhythms of posting; as blogs achieve a certain pace for
entries and as readers come to view a weblog as a source of engaging
interchanges or regular insights (whether through exciting links or personal
narratives), the number of readers is likely to grow. Reading other weblogs and
actively linking to other sites tends to expand the reach of a weblog; on the
other hand, infrequent posting will have the opposite effect.
Posted by Prospect Center at July 1, 2005 10:00 AM