Following on the heels of Audrey Watters’ public posting, I too decided to make my response to Alice Bell’s edublogger survey.

Blog URL: LessonCast.org/author/Katrina and katrinastevensblog.wordpress.com/

What do you blog about?  I enjoy blogging about education issues, including discussions about reform movements, issues facing teachers and administrators, the importance of STEM education, the need to redesign professional development to make it more job-embedded and tied to improving student outcomes, a need to shift to a transdisciplinary approach to learning, and perhaps most often, the importance of educators being at the font line of developing educational technologies that support our work with students.

Are you paid to blog? No, I blog because I enjoy it, and feel that more educators need to participate in the larger conversations about education. It also ensures that I take the time to reflect on

What do you do professionally (other than blog)? I work in the central office of a large school district, primarily working on literacy across the content areas. I am also the community developer for LessonCast Learning.

How long have you been blogging at this site? I started blogging less than a year ago, and wonder why I did not blog previous to that. Blogging has lifted me into a different world, one that is more expansive.

Do you write in other platforms? (e.g. in a print magazine?) I used to write in more print forms, but not for years.

Can you remember why you started blogging? I felt teachers didn’t have a voice in the education reform conversations, and wanted to share what I was learning over the past year. There was a moment when I was listening to non-educators at the forefront of educational reform and I realized the issue was not that many of these groups did not know how to scale good teaching—they actually did not recognize what makes good teaching. I wanted to add authenticity to the conversation.

What keeps you blogging?  Articles, events or conversations will people will trigger ideas. I also often blog about events and conferences I attend as a way to reflect and share what I’m learning.  Now that I am no longer in the classroom directly, blogging helps feed my need to share

Do you have any idea of the size or character if your audience? How? Generally over a thousand people access my blog, but not sure how many read each entry. I often assume far fewer people are reading my blogs than really are, so I am continually surprised when someone will make a comment about a blog that makes me realize he or she has been silently following me. Of course, there are my loyal followers, who I appreciate!

What’s your attitude to/ relationship with people who comment on your blog? The first few folks who interacted with my blogs were colleagues interested in similar issues, people I knew from face-to-face relationships. Over time I have come to interact with many people I have met through social media. At a recent ASCD conference, I was able to meet in person people I met through my blogs, which was wonderful.

Do you feel as if you fit into any particular community, network or genre of blogging? (e.g. schools, science, education, museums, technology) My blogging community involves largely two groups—those in the edtech community and those on the front lines of education. My goal is to have more people from both groups talking to one another.

If so, what does that community give you?  My online community continues to challenge my thinking, provides me access to immediate information about relevant issues, and sustains me when I grow disheartened.

What do you think are the advantages of blogging? As a less structured form, blogging allows flexibility to respond more formally and more informally, depending on the subject. When I am tweeting at a conference, for example, sometimes I want to respond more thoughtfully in a longer post. Blogging makes that possible, and then I can tweet it out. A blog can begin a conversation among folks invested in similar issues. Because it’s a more immediate form, there isn’t the same pressure to make sure it’s perfect and has gone through multiple revisions before publication, which means the conversations can be more timely.

Do you tell people you know offline that you’re a blogger? (e.g. your grandmother, your boss)  Though rarely mention that I blog when at work, many of my colleagues, friends and family know that I do because I post links on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Is there anything else you want to tell me about I haven’t asked? I am proud that I encouraged several principal friends of mine to blog as well!