Research suggests that blogging can enhance education as being a reflective practice, it helps you reflect at your own experiences and improve the way you work. It offers us opportunities to expand our knowledge.

The purpose of the post is to encourage more teachers to give blogging a go. It does not matter what your role is in a school, there will be people who are interested in your unique experiences as a teacher and suggestions on how to be more effective. Teachers are not always masters of the internet, but through blogging you can learn more about how to cater your writing for different audiences, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), HTML coding, and web design. 

Blogging holds a lot of potential  as a supplement for teaching. It can prove to be an excellent method to encourage students to harness the power of the internet, collaborate and share what they have learned. Being a blogger as a teacher you can be a part of the teacher-blogger community. This means you have the pleasure of exchanging ideas and meeting teachers and leaders in education. 

Blogging will definitely enable you to be a more effective teacher and be a channel of expressing yourself! 

Here are some great tips to kickstart your blogging journey as teacher!

• Start a conversation. Write on something you want to talk about or a topic you would like to explore with the class and then build up a collection over time. Don't worry about who will read it, over time you will be amazed with the response and engagement your blog receives. 

• Have a plan. Think about how regularly you would want to post blogs. You can even request students from your class to write a guest post as a way to share what they learned that week. A good idea is also to invite other teachers to add their input towards your blog with their idea and even articles.

• Technical aspect. Blog sites are very easy to navigate and you can add extra features as you go along. Engage the reader with images, videos links and fonts. This can be images from your own classroom or images using third-party websites. 

• Keywords. Another great tip is to tag keywords in each blog.This will especially help your students to search ideas or specifics topics later. You can also build creative and fun keywords together with your classroom. 

• Word Limit. Try and Keep your posts on under 1,500 words. Many people will skim read, so it is essential that your blogs are concise and factual. This also makes it easier for your students to stay attentive and engage with your blogs.  

• Add hyperlinks. Linking your texts to other blogs and webpages you refer makes your blog more interesting. It is good engage to with other people blogging on similar topics as you, for mutual support and cross-referencing.

• Self-promote. Don’t be afraid to talk about our blog to your colleagues, students and family. Twitter is also a great way to get your blog noticed by a bigger audience. For most successful bloggers, Twitter and blogging are inextricably linked.

• Your blog is unique! Don’t feel that what you write will be boring or ordinary. Remember, that if you writing about your experience in teaching, you will be amazed at how many people are interested.  For example, talk about your experiences when ideas and challenges were presented in a class during one of your lessons!

• Start blogging now. No need to waste time waiting or doubting in yourself when you could be blogging. You won’t regret it, so start today!