Here’s a new puzzle facing me on this fresh blog:

Am I allowed to refer to my professors by name?

The bigger issue is, what topics do I feel comfortable putting online? What’s fair game, what’s in season?

On my last blog, I was only blogging about specific lessons and how I saw my career progressing. I made it a rule to not mention any specific names, certainly not students, and to refrain from posting anything about my school that I wouldn’t want to email to all users. The result of this was that most of the issues and events that made me passionate and got my mind twirling stayed off of the blog. A bit of a conservative stance, but a safe one.

But with this fresh start on a new site, I want to expand my definition of what it means to have professionalism on a blog. There is so much more that I want to write about, so much more that I want to write to a level that I feel is “publishable”:

• I have lots of thoughts about what worked well, and what didn’t, at my former school, specifically on the institutional structure, the delivery of language instruction, and the MYP.
• I would like to see what response I will get if I respectfully and professionally approach my superiors at my new job and tell them that, with certain principles in place, I plan on blogging about my job.
• And now that I am poking around the world of academia, shouldn’t I be able to post ideas / responses to the work of my professors? After all, each professor here rings up thousands of hits on Google and has hundreds of citations on Google Scholar. My little blog would just be a drop in the bucket.

So to do all that, I must expand my definition of online professionalism. Where shall I start? With the guru, excuse me “Learner in Chief”, Will Richardson. Not to say I’m comparing myself to him – but I bet I can find a link or seven from there that will serve me just fine.

We’ll see what I come up with.

One Response to “What’s in season?”

1. On the Other Side of the Brain » Manifesto says:

   25 August 2009 at 14:48

   [...] In this first iteration of my attempt to define online professionalism I will simply expand on what I wrote earlier. [...]

   Reply