I'm amazed at the activity on TeachingEnglish right now. I can see comments being added on the site, literally popping up in front of my eyes - someone from Turkey one minute, Israel the next... so it continues! If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to our second Blogathon, for teachers of English in Turkey, Russia, Israel, Croatia, and Armenia.

I had an email from Sirin, the tireless brains behind this event. She asked if I'd like to write a motivating post to add to the blogathon, but added that she knew I was busy, so there was no pressure. I realised when I read it though that that it's exactly the same situation that everyone's in: the participants are busy, I can see lots of them writing entries late at night or early in the morning, at the weekend... And they're the ones who are motivating each other. If you're involved in the blogathon, I take my hat off to the time you're devoting to this event, and the amount of ideas and thoughts you're sharing right now!

I've spent a long time working in teacher development, and in recent years there's been a huge increase in the range of new courses and technologies available for teachers to turn to. Yet if I ask teachers what helps them most in their work (or think about what I find most useful) the most common answer is sharing ideas with colleagues. 

If you're involved in the blogathon, whether you're trying a new activity, getting support with how to deal with certain students, or just re-evaluating your approach in the classroom, you're doing just that: sharing ideas with colleagues. Blogs - like other social media - have effectively made your staffroom bigger than ever before. I hope you feel like your staffroom has grown over the last week, and will continue to do so for the rest of the blogathon, and maybe even after it's all over!