TD&T116 Are you blogging about your D&T practice?

I'm struggling to find blogs by D&T teachers who are sharing how they plan and teach D&T. In this episode I talk about why I want to read D&T teachers' blogs and why we need to hear about teachers' practice. If you want to start a blog I give some tips for how to get going.

Episode transcript

Mentioned in this episode

David and Torben for D&T
Researching D&T
D&T Teacher education

My blogposts:

• Should I stay or should I go (from Twitter)?
• Research capacity and engagement in Design & Technology education
• How do we do race in D & T?

Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?

What do you think? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. 

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:57

Just before Christmas, I put to post out on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. And LinkedIn actually asking if anybody could recommend any blogs written by Design and Technology teachers who might have written about how they organise their curriculum in their department, and about how they think about which materials to teach and which materials not to teach. And what I noticed is that I didn't have many responses. Now, it might be very simply because I did this about five days before Christmas. And unlike me, people had much better things to be doing with their lives. And we're living, rather than still thinking about design and technology. I had a few responses, but maybe not as many, as I expected. Now, I'm putting this episode out in mid January. And there might have been more since then, as people come back to work. But it did get me thinking that I really struggled myself, which is why I put the posts out to find blogs written by D and T teachers about their practice. There's lots of chatter on social media on Facebook and search, people sharing projects, photographs of children's work and search, but actually trying to find some written pieces online that are more extended about yeah, as I said, how D and T tubes are structuring their curriculum or planning their units of work, schemes of work, and so on is actually really difficult. So it left me thinking about why why is that? And why do I think it's even a good idea that there should be those those places when there is social media, where people are writing things? Well, what the reason I was looking is because I'm just kind of curious about that. I'm curious about how people are structuring their curriculum. Because I've got my ideas that we talked about at Nottingham Trent, our concept of curriculum, I've done quite a few workshops, at the end of 2022, about them different ways of structuring the curriculum, what to think about when switching the curriculum, but you know, I don't teach anymore. So I want to know what's happening in practice and what people are thinking, what are the decisions that design decisions, if you like, that people are making when they're planning their curriculums, curricula in design and technology. I also think it's useful, so not touch us from my perspective, which is, you know, all about me, what I why I wanted it. And I think it's good for the design and technology community to have those sorts of things out. Online in a space where people can see them, they're not behind a paywall. They're not be you don't have to be in a particular group, you don't have to buy a magazine be a member of something that they're out there is because I think it then starts to build that community of thinking, I also think is the writer, it actually gives you space to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it and get some feedback, get comments, that's why I like I like blogs very often is because you've got that that comment space up on the bottom. It does take a little bit more thought than putting a post on social media. And I think that can be healthy, to kind of develop your thinking in something that you've sort of planned out on a Word document or in a notebook, and then edited it and put it put it out on the blog, I think taking some time to do that is really useful. And as I said, I think by allowing for comments, then, you know, the can be a development of what you're thinking people can question you can challenge and then also you can write another blog post later on about Well, I tried it like this, and this worked. And this didn't work. So it keeps a record as well for yourself, as well as your department about what you're doing. So that's why I think it's, it's good to do it. I mean, I've advocated in the past, about design and technology, teachers writing articles from magazines, I've run workshops on that as well. And I think that is also a good thing, writing for magazines, whether DNC practice, or future minds for clips. But it's kind of quite hard, but they just go through an editorial process which again is good thing, but if you do a blog, it's only you that has to edit it if you're doing on your own blog anyway. And some of those things are behind paywalls so if we want to develop thinking then doing it out in a in a blog space is one way of doing it. And again, I'm kind of go back to this idea about being surprised because I've I've looked around and some of my own thinking has developed about curriculum by reading blogs written by teachers, but not by the anti teachers but by teachers and other school subjects. And so I suppose that's what got me thinking about why why are Dan teachers doing it or not doing it? But anyway, those are my reasons why I think it's a good thing to do. And I'm trying to try to now present an argument they're about to persuade D and T teachers who are listening to get a blog started. So what could you do? How could you do it? Well, you could set up your own blog. I debated doing this when I redesigned my website. I mean, the web designer had some debate about me, right, setting up a blog when I do the podcast. So that's kind of my my Get Out of Jail. Free card is I decided that I'm already producing content in one particular way for one particular purpose or a particular purpose. But I think having one for your self about your design and technology practice is a good thing. You don't have to set yourself up to say I'm going to do one every week. But it could be that you're, you know, you've got a couple of things that you're developing in your department in your teaching anything I want to write about that. I want to capture what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking of doing it like that. Or you could do one for your department where your department shares ideas. If you're in a school where there's there's more than one d and t teacher. So for example, in a primary school, there might only be one of you. So you might think, well, actually, I'm part of a group of schools. And we might do one where we explore some of our thinking about our primary DNC curriculum or a secondary DNC crew together as a collective. One other way of doing is you could find an existing blog to write for, for example, Hilda Beaumont, and Torben steeds website takes guest blogs, I haven't asked them whether they're okay for me to talk about this, but I think I think they probably would be. And they take all sorts of things. And they're really interested, I think, in how we do design and technology. That'd be one place, you could email them and say, I'm thinking of doing a blog about this, would you be interested? Or those I mean, Matt's McLean oversee one which is aimed at people who are working with design and technology, student teachers. So it's not aimed at the student teachers. It's aimed at the people who are mentoring, tutoring, and teaching students, teachers. So you might think, well, actually, I've got a take on how we prepare, the next generation of design and technologies or something that I'm doing that I think is really exciting with my mentoring, and I want to write about it. So you can come and talk about that. Or you might be doing some research in design and technology and you want you want to talk about that. Or you might have read something, a piece of research, and you want to share your interpretation of that. And so you might approach the editorial board of the researching DNC website, and we have a blog on there. And you know, we're just kind of playing around with it. It's a new website, we're playing around with what we might put on there. But we're open to people who are doing research or are using research in their practice, to write about that. So you don't have to set one up, there's lots of different ways or you could go to other organisations that aren't design and technology focused, and write a piece about that. So as I'm on this train now of encouraging design and technology teachers to get writing blog posts, so that we have this community of knowledge, where we can have some debates about how we do curriculum, pedagogy, and so on, I think I need to give some tips about how to write a blog post. So I'm going to give you seven tips to follow is, first of all, is think about when writing the play the piece, I'd advise against doing anything longer than 1000 words, partly because then it becomes becomes too onerous for you as the writer. And also I think blog posts are really kind of a tiebreak read, and then they're not novels, they're not long thing pieces, you might you might do some that are longer. But I think if you're just setting up you just starting out 750 to 1000 words, kind of keeps it nice, nice and content. And then number two, think about why you're writing it, the second one, and who you want to read it. That's That's point two, it's got two points, why you're writing it and who you want to read it. So what's the what's the what's the nub of what you're writing the kind of kernel of it, that you're wanting to develop? And kind of do some thinking out loud in a blog post about it? And who's going to read it? So who's your audience? So if you're doing if your own blog, and you're wanting to build your dancy community, then you're doing it for people like yourself? If you're doing it on the research and Danti one, then yes, you're doing it for people in design and technology, but you're doing it for those who design technology who are interested in research, and how that might inform their practice. So that's, that's tip number two. And then number three, talk about what you know, write about what you know what you're doing, and explain why you do it. It doesn't have to be some deep meaningful piece in terms of your thinking of something new. And I do this quite a lot from the podcast, I think, oh, I need to do some reading about this before I can talk about and I think well now I'm going to talk about it, about what I know and be upfront about that. I know this at the moment So when you're writing a blog post, I be thinking more. What do we do in our department, for example, to when we have when we have new students in the in the first year, you know, year sevens have secondary? What do we what do we do? How do we do it? Why do we do it like that? You could write a piece piece about that. And you might write a piece about well, do we rotate the pupils around the department and do different materials? How do we decide? Why do we do it like that? What's the pros and cons, you might with my a piece. So number three is write about what you know, don't try and talk about something that you're not confident about. Then number four, this kind of relates number three, don't try and put too many things into one post. It's something that that we kind of all can be guilty of, when we're writing something that we think you know, it's gonna be read externally. Because you kind of got to put lots and lots of things in because otherwise people won't be interested. But actually, that the skill of writing something that gives you an overview or something deep about a topic is keeping it on, on that one topic not not going off in multiple tangents. If you find you're doing that, then split it up and write it as two posts or three posts. Number five, this kind of goes back to the reader. What are you going to give to the reader for them to take away? When they finish their tea break? What are they going to keep thinking about or mulling over? What might they comment on that you've that you've written about? They might come back and go? Well, you know, you said you do rotations like that, and the teachers don't rotate? Well, I think this is a problem with doing that. And we've done it like this, you know that you kind of want to challenge their thinking, maybe, you know, give something to them to go away and read it might be a link, it might be a link to a video or something like that. But it also might be some food for thought you might ask some questions, then number six. So that's kind of at the end of it. And number six is about the start of it open with a bold statement, get your reader in capture them, or ask them a question. Okay, how what's going to make people want to read what you've written. And then number seven, we would normally if we're writing, you know, a book chapter like I do, or an article, we have paragraphs and normally have around 250 words, that's really difficult to read on the blog post, you know, on the screen, people can be probably reading this on their mobile phones. So keep the paragraph shorter than normal. And think about adding bullet points, that kind of visually breaks it down and helps helps the reader. So there's my seven top tips, there are others. But those are just some that I think would get you started if you're thinking around blogging, and I'd really would encourage selfishly because I need teachers to be writing about different things to kind of challenge my thinking, because it's been so long since I was teaching. But I also think it adds to the community for design and technology that were questioning what we're doing. And then the third reason I think is it also shows people outside design and technology that we do think about what we're doing, and D and T and we don't just accept things and run with things because that's the way we've always done it. So I think it's I think it's really powerful to do it. I've added some links in the in the show notes to some of the blogs that I've mentioned. I've also added some posts that I've written for different sites, you can kind of see my style, they aren't perfect. But I know that when I'm writing, or learning to write in a new way that I learn about that by looking at other examples and critiquing them and taking them apart and going oh, they structured it like that, or they didn't like that. Or this is another vendor that I like that. So I've put those out there not to say that they're great, but just to give you some food for thought. So if you do end up blogging, do let me know. I'm happy to promote and share. I might even want a comments. And it'd be good to see what the NT teams are doing, why they're doing it like they're doing and to kind of build up that community of chat in a way that people can share their ideas and develop that thinking. So finally, if you listen to the last episode, you'll have heard me shamelessly plugging the latest edition of the debates in design and technology book. If you want to be in with a chance of listening to a copy, you have to listen back to that episode, Episode 115. And he must do that before the 28th of February 2023. If you want to be in with a chance of winning that a copy of the book