Weblogg-Ed

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"The survivors will not be defined by the lives they have led until now but by the lives that they will lead from now on." --Michael Berenbaum

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Comments by: YACCS

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Run

Is it me...
::

...or is there all of a sudden a lot of stuff happening around here??? Pat obviously has too much time on his hands, which is a good thing for all of us. Just think of the applications for this. Joe is fooling around with Manila and p-machine and God knows what else. (And rumor has it there's a new addition...) Sebastian is creating a weblog yearbook for goodness sakes. And Sarah (where's your picture???) is back from England where she's been doing some great work (this is worth the read) in spreading the word. Meanwhile I'm changing stinky diapers and fixing the roof. If I'd known I was going to be consumed by weblogs to this extent I probably would have forgone the wife the kids and the house and just thrown a cot in my office at school! (I'm reminded of Barbara Ganley when in reflecting on her class she says "wildly effective at stimulating and fueling discussions, the weblogs often seemed to be taking over our lives." Amen.)

I've come to the conclusion that for my own sanity, I need to remain focused on the classroom applications here, and leave the technology to someone else. There are so many good places to start, already, that I'm going to focus on the sales pitch and the construction more than the vehicle. I'm jealous that I can't do what some of you are doing in terms of Manila and open source and php etc. (I want to do it all.) I'll be more than happy to give feedback on your efforts.

I'm more drawn to what Karen McComas is doing with her computer literacy class which is just amazing, and if you haven't spent some time sifting through the layers of the site, you should. She's obviously one of the most organized people on the planet, and she's obviously thought out the design of the site to the smallest detail. I love how she gives each assignment a separate page for students to respond to. I like her own personal journal of the class as well. Great stuff. And I'm wondering how she uses Yahoo Groups to archive the class e-mails. It's a nice blend of technologies.

As I think about what I want to do this fall in my own classes, I see some great potentials, obviously. But I also keep bumping up against some nagging issues that are more K-12 specific that I thought I'd throw out to the group for some feedback. These are issues that I know I'm going to have to address at some point with my teachers and parents and administrators, so...

**Access: I'm fortunate to teach writing and journalism in a computer lab, and I teach in an area of the country where most families have computers and Internet at home, so this isn't a big issue. But my lit classes are not taught in a lab. And I do have some kids without access at home (even though they have access to the Internet from the library, other classrooms, etc). And I'm sure this is a bigger issue in many other schools, though I don't know how much. Is it fair to expect kids without access at home to do as much as kids that have it? What are some other access issues that might affect the way we use weblogs in our classrooms?

**Privacy: With Manila, there is a way to restrict weblogs to Intranet viewing only, which would assuage any concerns of privacy that my administrators might have. But that would preclude collaboration from outside, which is one of the most appealing features of this.

**Assessment: I'd be interested in a discussion of assessment related issues with weblog use. Writing itself can be assessed in traditional ways, but do we assess participation and discussion? How?

**Time: I teach in a nine week term, 84 minutes a day. Obviously, weblogs add a time element for reading and responding and updating that many teachers might find overwhelming. How do we manage the time aspect of this most effectively?

**Server issues Karen worried in one post that her students work on antville.com may have been lost. How can we make sure our work and our students' work doesn't evaporate into cyberspace.

I'm sure there are more...

posted by Will Richardson 6:40 AM Link

Monday, July 15, 2002

Links
Weblog Resources:
Weblogs Compendium*
Weblogs for Educators
Chris Lehmann
pMachine
Antville
UpSaid
History of Weblogs
Pitas (Blog Host)
Weblog Power
Pitas (Blog Host)
Moveable Type(Blog Host)
Weblogs as News
GreyMatter (Blog Host)
Weblogger(Blog Host)
Xanga(Blog Host)
Onclave
Weblog Articles
Swiss Army Website
Weblog Awards
Weblog Madness
Bloggar
Tinderbox
Targeted Serendipity

Weblogs I Read:
k-12 blogWrite
Pat Delaney
Sarah Lohnes
Joe Luft
Sebastian Fiedler
Seb's SOL Project
Terry ElLiot
David Walker
Educare
Greg Hanek
Ray Schroeder
Brian Fitzgerald
Chris Ashley
Stephen Downes
Lloyd Nebres
Schoolblogs.com
Peter Ford
SITech.
Rebecca's Pocket
Media Minded
Corante
Josh Marshall
Keep Trying
J.D. Lasica
Poynter Media Blog
News Trolls
Microcontent
Mark Bernstein
Kairosnews
Jay Cross

Weblogs in Schools/Best Practices:
Delano High School
Karen McComas
Barbara Ganley
Student Weblogs
Lincoln Pub. Schools
Beacon School
Dreamcatcher
Brit. Sch. of Amst.
Adv. Int. Class.
Coop. Reading Proj.
Kern County
Lloyd Nebres
SFEd Access
Centenary (La.)
I-Search (Pat)
Richard Stockton C
Emerson College
U. of Iowa
New School
Redwood City Library
Teachers LiveJournal
Internet Journalism
Esperero Canyon
EP
Dan Mitchell

Weblogs/Journalism:
Disaster Weblogs
Dan Bricklin
Weblogs & News
Blogging as J
Cyberjournalist
Media Weblogs
Glenn Fleischman
E&P Weblog Bandwagon
Journal. Pivot Points
Medill Sch. of J.
Weblogs & News

Weblogs/Teaching:
Online Discussions
Online Classroom
Weblogs as Community

Weblogs/Literature:
Dreamcatcher

Manila Related:
My Caxton Manila
Pat's Newspaper
Themes
Manila Home
Pat on Discussions
U. of S. Aust.
Hector's Tutorial
Bryan Bell
Ken Dow
RSC Space
Kern
Lincoln Tutorials

©2001/2 Will Richardson