Journalism Idea: Give them each a story and have them create a page that lists and analyzes as many diverse sources that cover both sides of the story as possible. Make it a part of their beats. Maybe make it the beginning of their beats.
posted by Will Richardson4:04 AM Link
So much to be thinking and writing about. So much to organize in my life. Sometimes I don't even know where to start. Wondering where I have come this year...how have I evolved. .
School is good for the most part. Yearbook is going to be killer, I know. Yet I worry about the inevitable mistakes. Need to read and reread. Patience and perserverence. This blog is good, too, yet I am ambivalent about it. A great resource, storehouse of the things that interest me. But to what end? For me? Maybe, but I struggle with the disorganization, or the inability to organize it. The need for many, many logs at once. And I want them now...same old lack of patience issues. Implementation. Know what I want, can see it working. But the set up would take too long, just like learning the guitar, or framing, or whatever. Maybe that could be my practice for 02, one of my goals. To get it set up. Lord knows I should have a lot of time to experiment from April on. Focus on that? And keep it readable? Private log fro private thoughts. Public log for professional/commentary. Make it public? Again, steal from those who do it well...Rebecca. Should flow chart her site. Should just allow mine to develop as it will...Zen about it...do more of this. Get in the habit of dumping. Get back to spirit.
Some things I'd like to do next year: 1. Play more with my kids, yell less...Priority #1. I will have time for the other stuff, but they will never be this again. Don't waste it. Learn to find joy in it. Love them more peacefully. 2. Find God...made some inroads this year, though not much. Do more. Do less. Go to church more. Be active. Find God in simple gestures. Done for others. 3. Do more for others. Must do this with kids. After 9/11, clearly the world is a different place and needs action from every one of us. Find habitat or others that need our help and do something. 4. Write, create, learn...weblogs have me juiced...go with it. Make a plan. Work on it. Focus and make it happen. Figure out a way to make it work for me. It can. It will if I demand it. 5. Perservere. 6. Breathe fresh air. Move body more. 7. Read more, watch less. Always. 8. Create...guitar, write, art, whatever. 9.
posted by Will Richardson4:59 AM Link
...My take on blogging and schools is this: Blogs will one day give parents and teachers ---and especially students--- a truly useful and community-oriented tool for expressing/sharing education concerns, ideas and happenings, etc. School-based weblogs represent [to me] the real-life fulfillment of what PTA meetings of days-gone-by once strived to be... but in a very fun, easy-to-use, organized and interactive way. The sooner the better
Thinking again about organization...I really think the best way to do this is to post journalism and media to one blog, school and education stuff to another, personal thoughts to another. So many links, I just don't know how people keep track of this stuff.
posted by Will Richardson5:31 AM Link
Some weblogging resources: GreyLogs.com - Official GreyMatter Webhosting and Resource Site. and Blog which is a web logging software that you can download and run on your own machine. I think it requires that you have it on any computer you might use to post which makes it a bit less convenient than Blogger which since it's on the web is available from anywhere. But at least you don't have to worry about the service being down.
posted by Will Richardson5:18 AM Link
A good day! Didn't think Metafilter was taking new subscribers, but was able to sign up via Metatalk. Made my first post even! Fun. Now if I could just find the $2,200 I need for my new transmission...
posted by Will Richardson9:26 AM Link
Another example of how hard it is to get the real story when it takes place on the other side of the world. Actually, what if it happens on this side of the world? What's not in the news
Well, it made me think that our press is in lockstep with the government, and that we're not hearing what the rest of the world is hearing, and it makes us so much less able to understand why there are so many people around the world that hate us. If we can't cover the results of the U.S. bombing campaign, if we can't hear that the United States is stopping food aid from getting to people who are starving and cold, then we're not getting the real story and the U.S. people will continue to think that the United States have liberated the people of Afghanistan and they're all overjoyed with us.
What I think I need to remember is the middle ground...not many are going to use the Internet as much as I do in my teaching. Yet there are some valuable ways that any teacher can incorporate some of these tools into their information collecting plans. There has to be a Plan A, a Plan B, and a Plan C. And we have to sell it. The problem is that we're still going about it piecemeal. All these different applications being built out separately.
posted by Will Richardson9:00 AM Link
Media: Some hefty readings in the effects of technology. Might be some resources for media.Social Criticism Review Still need to set up a better system of cataloging all this stuff.
posted by Will Richardson3:43 AM Link
Journalism Idea Whatever "beat" the kids have in their weblogs, they *must* include links and analysis of foreign sources. Think more about how to get them to pick an idea they'll really want to follow and learn about. Got to get them juiced to follow it, but don't want them all doing skateboarding, etc.
posted by Will Richardson4:00 AM Link
Interesting piece on the one-sidedness of the information journalism has produced since Sept 11.Where Internet promises remain unfulfilled - Tech News - CNET.com "Despite the convenience the Internet has brought us, if people want the whole story, they're still going to have to dig. What's sad is that a public that's used to being spoon-fed its information is hardly likely to get out its virtual shovel." That's why connecting people to sites from around the world is so important.
posted by Will Richardson3:56 AM Link
Ok, I think I have the blogging thing down with Blog This and Newsblogger and all that. The resources are definitely there. Now the big key is how to organize. There is so much information. How does one keep it all together? That's one thing I kind of like about diaryland in the way that the posts can be shrunk just to titles. Easier to wade through. Too bad there's no way to drag and drop the posts into various folders to sift through later. I guess right now is to think of each blog as a file drawer, but the problem is the filing inside the drawer.
posted by Will Richardson3:51 AM Link
Idea: In journalism, what if I gave them all a "beat" and they used their blogs to keep up with what was going on with links, analysis, and commentary? PO!
posted by Will Richardson1:55 PM Link
Still amazed at how little I'm finding about using these in the classroom. Looks like only a dozen or so sites, few of them high school. I keep thinking about the feedback potential, the news gathering/note taking/knowledge management applications. There has to be some way to make it more organized without making it more work. It's one thing to use it for a work repository like what I'm doing in web class. And actually, for that purpose, diaryland is better than blogger because of the indexing feature. In order to generate a list of work in blogger they'd have to know html. That's why the one prof set them up with both. But the idea for a class weblog and possibly individual weblogs where they track what they do and read and learn...that would be cool. A place to take notes?
And then I keep thinking about how cool it would be for a teacher's site...I need to make a mock up of this. A weblog with the comment feature running in the middle (more like metafilter than snorland) with Intranet type info surrounding it. One stop shopping.
posted by Will Richardson1:16 PM Link
An interesting discussion of the use of a weblog in business.Telling A Story
But early indications are that getting everyone onto the same page -- literally -- really helps achieve focus, and more than repays the time and effort invested. I'm convinced, more than ever, of the value of weblogging as an important new form of business communication.
The big question is how to organize all of these posts and make them add up to something. I keep thinking separating them out is one way...maybe use an index blog as well. Need to find out some way to reduce the space between the posts.
posted by Will Richardson5:41 AM Link
If we are going to be stomping around the world wiping out terrorist cells from Kabul to Manila, we'd better make sure that we are the best country, and the best global citizens, we can be. Otherwise, we are going to lose the rest of the world.
“the very impediments to newsgathering and transmission in years past, the difficulty of composing the words — manual typewriters, setting type by hand — and delivering film, the time it took for stories to reach the street, the intervals between newscasts and paper deliveries all reinforced a process of deliberation and second thoughts that once were ingrained in the communications industry. Now,” it adds, “it is journalism on the fly. There is barely a moment for reflection.”
The single thing that startled me the most was the change in parents...The teachers simply do not have support from the parents in raising standards. My favorite quote in the book came from the principal when I was asking him about standards. He's quite desperate to raise standards. But he said, "Well, who's my constituency? Every parent says they want to raise standards, but the minute Johnny gets a C, suddenly they're not so hot about the idea."
I almost got this comment thing working...need to tweak it a bit. Maybe try it with web class? The only problem is keeping the comments appropriate. Snorland
posted by Will Richardson9:25 AM Link
Really frustrating couple of days, but finally got the IMC blog going (although it me with a tepid response) and got the Web class log going on our server too. Had a hell of a time with the Netscape issue but finally figure it out (it started working magically.)
So now I need a plan...I need separate blogs for: (1) personal rants, (2) general professional rants, (3) journalism ideas, (4) media ideas, (5) mod am, (6) web, then class blogs for (7) journalism, (8) adv. journalism, (9) media and whatever other classes I teach. I'm thinking that they can serve as running online notebooks. Esp. for the professional ones, I need to think about keywords, maybe adding to a left column as I create so I can search easily for ideas. Also, I need to use the Blog This! feature to not have to go in and out of editing all the time. And, I now I need to work on getting the comment feature to work. Whew...not too much to do! But I have until almost Feb to set it up. Need to think about building a template around a plain blog that I can use in some form for all of them.
posted by Will Richardson9:04 AM Link
Here's an idea: "Each school should have at least one teacher counsellor, as well as several student counsellors. Emotionally stressed teachers are not good teachers, and teaching can be a very emotionally stressful profession. Continuing education of teachers should be 'part of the job'. Each individual teacher should be teaching approximately four days a week and learning one day a week, which fits well with a varied curriculum." Metafilter | Comments on 12863
posted by Will Richardson3:43 AM Link
Interesting article about the growth of online education in Business Week. Seems like the idea is taking hold, but I wonder what the applications are for high school: Giving It the Old Online Try
"Nearly two years after the dot-com fizzle began, e-learning has emerged from the wreckage as one of the Internet's most useful applications."
Here's an interesting article from the NY Times on the policy of some journalists to throw neutrality out the window. Fox Portrays a War of Good and Evil, and Many Applaud So what do we call this, 'cause I doubt we call it journalism. Here's the telling quote:
"I don't believe that democracy and terrorism are relative things you can talk about, and I don't think there's any moral equivalence in those two positions." He added: "If that makes me a bad guy, tough luck. I'm still getting the ratings."
So here's what I'm thinking. Create a weblog for the IMC in GoLive. (Take a template from blogger and modify.) See if we can get it running on the school server. (Think positively.) Then see if there might be a way to incorporate into home page. Would look so much better than the one we have. Again, use GoLive to create around it. Get it working on our server. Maybe do one for the English Dept? For staff? HCEA site? So many possibilities.
posted by Will Richardson5:32 PM Link
Just realized what a cool little note taking tool the BlogThis button is. Why didn't it occur to me earlier that I don't need to post from Blogger at all...I can do it right here. Much easier...more on the fly. I need to think through this idea of creating separate blogs for separate topics and then just posting from here to each one. That would seem to be the best answer because then I can keep track of notes/ideas. And the best part is that the URL is automatically included for future reference.
posted by Will Richardson4:31 AM Link