My Final Blogger Post... ::From this point on, you can find my ramblings on weblogs in ed at weblogg-ed.com. The bumpy switch over to Manila is complete, and so this will most likely be my last post to this Blogger site. Sniff. It served me well.
posted by Will Richardson10:41 AM Link
Friday, August 09, 2002
Greetings from Middlebury ::Some brief observations on my great visit to Middlebury:
The CET setup is very cool, and the whole place has a lot of energy. They are doing some interesting things beyond mere old weblogs that really push the envelope of the new technologies. Sounded and felt like a very neat place to be right now.
I was really impressed by the commitment that the school is making to weblogs. Ten teachers will be using weblogs next year including Eric Davis, who is the Secretary of the College and a real weblog proponent. His weblog/course on September 11 is definitely a "Best Practice". And Barbara seemed amazed by how the weblogs changed her Writing Across the Arts class. (BTW, I really liked the way she used the home page to reflect on her own experiences in the class.) And Hector shared a lot of his ideas about how to integrate and expand the role of weblogs. They and Sarah (who went above and beyond in arranging and organizing my time there) helped to really confirm what I've been thinking about all of this, and in a large way to validate the time and effort I'm spending. (I can't wait for the day when I have some weblogging colleagues to share my enthusiasm with down here!)
At any rate, it was a great experience, and I think it's time we start talking seriously about getting a "Blogvention" together somewhere. There is nothing like meeting and talking and sharing ideas (although weblogs come a close second!)
posted by Will Richardson6:16 PM Link
Thursday, August 08, 2002
Just an idea... ::As I was laying awake before dawn this morning listening to the Vermont rain pound on the roof of our tent, I had this crazy vision of using rss feeds to create a separate site where all the teacher portfolio entires were collected, or all the class entries by students were automatically posted. I need to ask Sarah tomorrow more about the rss-ability of these sites and how that all works. That would just be another cool way to sell this, as a way to offer one-stop shopping for teachers or supervisors or whatever.
posted by Will Richardson6:15 PM Link
Paul Allison's summer reading journal ::An interesting model of what can be done with reading weblogs...we just discussed reading schedule for the new book in the Lit class and I have the vision of the kids keeping reading journals like this online. I have eight in-class support kids first quarter, so it will be interesting to see at what level they have access and to what level they adopt the idea. I'm thinking that for some of them it might be a cool kind of jolt...publishing, getting some response. Might be a motivator for them.
Of course, if all the kids had their reading logs online, what would prevent all of them from just reading each other's and stealing ideas? (They would do that???) I'm such a cynic...
A couple more peaceful days left in Bellows Falls, then on to Middlebury to meet Sarah and friends; home Wednesday.
I-search via Pat. ::Don't think that I had this piece of Pat's I-search linked before. This is a great example of weblogs at work in schools and in the classroom.
posted by Will Richardson6:14 PM Link
Some parameters for online discussions ::"Given that the entire class is involved in a discussion, all ability levels are working together. The most able students have a chance to share their knowledge and talk to each other while less able students are able to read these ideas and formulate their own ideas based on the additional wisdom of others. The level of performance for all students, not just the less able, will rise due to influence from more capable peers." More here.
posted by Will Richardson6:13 PM Link
Manila Template Configuration ::Found this comment from David about templates:
"Any site can be turned into a theme. Also a programmer with server access could write a newsite callback that set these configuration preferences."
If I'm reading that correctly, it sounds like I can do what I want to...set the configurations beforehand. Now I'm wondering if I can set up departments and the e-z edit buttons on the nav bar beforehand too.
posted by Will Richardson5:32 AM Link
The End is Near... ::Thanks to some help from some new friends, I crossed a Manila threshold this morning. Here's where I'm at with my new Manila site, and I have to say, I am loving the potential. Some of the best parts...the easy "filing" of material in departments with easy call back from the nav bar (which took me a while to figure out, but I got it...), the easy use of pics, the interface, the website building ability. This is very cool. Please come and tell me what you think. I still have a questions post which you may have to scroll to get to. The end of my Blogger site is near...
Pat is right about using Manila Newbies as a place to get questions answered, but it doesn't look like there's a lot of action on the boards. I didn't even really know how to ask for what I wanted until I "got" the whole macro concept this morning. Talk about an "a-ha" moment!
Now don't get me wrong...I'm not saying Manila is a piece of cake. I'm praying that some of the stuff that I've done is template-able, if you know what I mean, so I can copy it for teachers without having them or me do all these configurations. But I do feel like I can start to speak the language a bit now...I'm pumped!
Manila it is... ::Ok...I'm running Manila off our server and have started a personal site here. The first page is a list of questions that I'd love if anyone can help me with. Unfortunately, one of them deals with why there is no discuss link at the bottom of the post, so please post answers here. Thanks.
posted by Will Richardson10:29 AM Link
Weblogging Cornhuskers ::Thanks to Ken for pointing me to Brian Fitzgerald, who looks like he's got all of the Lincoln, NE schools on Manila. He's even created a couple of teacher/school themes to play with. And his district has some Manila tutorials (and here and here) and tips and tricks page. I'm going to try to find out the extent of weblog use in his district, but it looks like it might be another sample that we can use to show the potential.
More and more, I think Manila is going to be my choice. Now that I'm seeing that things can be made a bit more intuitive, I feel like I'm getting more focused on the implementation part. Joe is going with p-machine, so maybe we can share our pilot stories. (Digital Cousins Part 2?) And now, after looking at Lincoln, I find my brain really going toward the whole km piece that Manila can do on a schoolwide basis. It is more than a weblogging tool...another reason to move this way, I think.
Gone campin'... ::...and in the chaos of five families and 15 kids eating burnt hot dogs and soggy graham crackers, I'll be thinking about my own Part 2 to Terry's Part 1: "If the choice to embrace a weblog was just my personal one, then I would not scruple so. But if I, as a teacher, make the choice for others, then I'd better damn well better know why it's a good choice." It's a point very beautifully said, and it reminds me of the many times I said to my teacher/students this week not to create lessons or projects to accomodate the technology, but to think about how the technology can improve what they already do. And that's the only reason to choose weblogs, because they enhance and improve what we and our students already do, the writing and thinking and communication and collaboration. And because they then give us a vehicle to improve other parts of our teaching, our communication with peers, with parents, with administrators, with professionals and mentors. And because they can build community. (Aren't we all witness to that?) Terry is right to nail down the "why weblogs?" question. It is the first step, and I'm looking forward to his answer.
And then the other piece, the best tool. Seb says I may be on the verge of "finally blow[ing] my mind", and Joe is ready to arrange an intervention to a Bloganon meeting on my behalf. I know my search for a kinder, gentler, more classroom friendly system has some people shaking their heads. But I just think that someone can do it without too much effort, and I'm starting think that someone may be Seb. His experiment has already made a huge leap in Manila for me just in being able to edit the nav bar more easily. And now Pat and others (Hey Pat, don't you have a plane to catch???) are throwing out their dream tweaks, which if we keep doing it and Seb keeps working it and we find some way to make his time worthwhile may just lead to a Manila template that we can standardize for teachers and students and put an end to this nutty search I'm on. I just feel like if we can get it pretty much right today, we'll have a lot easier time "selling" it tomorrow. Not perfect...Pat is right when he says that we need a bunch of early adopters to push this thing and show us all what can be done. But the tool can evolve as those of us who are self-motivated enough push it, and those in that much larger pool of "please-teach-me-how-to-use-it-but-don't-expect-me-to-develop-it" types (and their students) reap the benefits of an easy, useful piece of software.
At any rate, it'll be something to think about in the few quiet moments of my back to the woods weekend.
posted by Will Richardson10:11 AM Link
Friday, July 26, 2002
What's a boy to do? ::Ok. If I wasn't totally dazed and confused about all of this before, I'm over the edge today. This is my weblog life as I know it: I love Blogger, I've always loved Blogger, but I've outgrown it. I need more. Surveying the teacher-weblogging landscape, I see Manila seems to be the thrilla, but the more I get into it and after yesterday's difficulties, it seems more like a gorilla. (BTW, thank you to Terry and Seb for commiserating and David for the help.) P-machine, on the other hand, is clean and and pretty easy (and my tech guy says their tech support is, and I quote, "friggin awesome!"). I'm going to play more today. But then I get an e-mail from Karen this morning espousing Antville, and, oh my God! In literally seven minutes, I did this. What I'm loving is built-in commenting and separate comment pages (just like (sigh) MetaFilter!), picture uploads, e-z collaboration with defined permissions, sound and video upload, a pretty clean interface. Downside of course is the remote hosting, but you can download the software and make it work locally. (More fluids for my tech guy!) At the very least, it signals the absolute end of Blogger in my classroom. Glad I still got six weeks before school starts!
Joe seems to have made his decision to go with p-machine. I need to roll up my sleeves and play some more with it. As Sebastian says "Manila is not an impressive show case of human centered design." He and David (in his comment here yesterday) suggest that Manila can be tweaked for ease of use, and if I am going to use it this fall, I'm going to need to think hard about what that basic template needs to look like. I know I want students/teachers to be able to post news items, stories, pictures and gems, that I want them to be able to receive comments, to work collaboratively, to set permissions, and to add links to the navigation bar. But what else? And what about the bugginess that I experienced yesterday?
I'm going to dive into p-machine for a couple of hours today and put it through it's paces. If anyone wants to join me, just click on the chat button at left.
posted by Will Richardson7:00 AM Link
Thursday, July 25, 2002
Manila Gorilla ::Posting from class, Manila discussion finished, "students" playing. Basically, the coolest thing about it is the ability to build a Web site, have ongoing discussions, and maintain a weblog all in one place. The downside is that it's a bit erratic, at least from what we just experienced, and just not intuitive. Can anyone tell me why we would have to refresh every screen within the site to get it to note the changes we made? Why in some text boxes it suddenly changes html into gobbledeegook that shows up in the post? Why "edit this post" buttons appear in spots where we shouldn't be allowed to edit? Why some of the templates are missing "recent discussion" links? Why I can't delete news items? And more to come, I'm sure. The other impression I'm getting is that it's just a lot to remember to make changes to the config in terms of the way discussions are set up, or news items, or e-mail notifications etc. Should I add members or let them join? Do I set permissions beforehand or after? Is there anyway to set up a template where all of the appropriate configurations are already made so students/teachers don't have to go all that hassle?...Makes me tired, and stirs up all those original feelings I've had about it from the start, that it's harder than it looks to "get right" (yet, I know it can be done.)
So I'm trying to play with p-machine which just seems more fluid and easier to make work at it's most basic level. I just want simple, I swear, 'cause even low levels of frustration will drive people away.
posted by Will Richardson10:42 AM Link
Workshop Day 1 Complete ::Think I may be hitting the weblog wall, so to speak. Six hours of weblog info, theory and Blogger is a lot, and Manila on tap for tomorrow. I was interested to see what the reactions were going to be, and for the most part they were positive. The theory is easy to get to, and the sales pitch goes down pretty easy when discussing real life collaboration and content management. And as I've said before, a lot of the issues that plague others don't reside here.
But there were some bumps with Blogger in terms of being able to figure out how to do the basics, some lost posts, some frustration. To be honest, I'm a little worried about Manila tomorrow since I'm not as at ease with it and it's a step up. (Anyone want to edit/test the Manila part of my outline to make sure I'm on the right track?) I know it's going to take me some time to be as fluent with it as Karen; just hoping to be able to help them set up the basics.
I think I'll have some of those early adopters that Pat refers to here at this school this year. If nothing else, I'm going to get in front of 100 teachers and show them what they can do and get them thinking. We can support them pretty well, but I'm gonna have to get some training on Manila somewhere because much like Sebastian, I too am struggling with taking the software and customizing it for my needs. (How about the online Ken Dow course?) Too bad NWP won't step up and develop what we need...what exactly do we need anyway?
posted by Will Richardson12:20 PM Link
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Posting from Class ::In the midst of my Weblogs in Education workshop and we're blogging away...pretty cool. If anyone wants to look at the course outline (and give me some feedback) I would really appreciate it.
posted by Will Richardson7:40 AM Link
Random Sightings ::Craig Jensen:"Even though the courses that I would have been teaching were related to bookbinding and book and library conservation, I felt that a weblog, maintained over the course of a graduate students educational career, would evolve into an invaluable component of their portfolio/resumé upon graduation."
Jim McGee:"If, however, you believe that an education should be preparing people to cope, and thrive, in the world after/outside school, then we'd better be talking about personal knowledge management strategies and learning how to learn."
Access ::I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I'm kinda figuring out that while access and hosting is pretty much a non issue at my school, it's a big issue with a lot of schools. And I'm wondering if there might not be a way that we could help take the lead in that area. I know we have tons of server space. (I have a 60G server dedicated just to my yearbook...and I know I could get a grant...) But before I go making promises I can't keep, I need some data on what hosting weblogs for other schools might entail. I ran about 50 weblogs last year through Blogger but all hosted locally, and my IT person says they used about 5 meg of space. Not too hard to do the math here to figure out that we could probably host a slew of these puppies, especially in the early stages. But it can't be that easy. If we used Manila, would schools have to buy the license at least? If we used p-machine? How many could we create? What are the issues with using pitas and blogger and schoolblogs that make them a less effective choice? (I think I know the answer here, but I'd be interested to hear from the rest...) What are the other concerns?
Depending on what the answers are, maybe my school can "step up" as Peter suggests. Worth talking about at least.
Terry is back (Yay!) and asking those same questions. But his description of most of his students as having at best intermittent Internet access at home goes to the other obvious problem here. Word I get in some parts is that some states are starting to develop online content for their students, which means that they have to have access. But what do you do with the kids that don't? Obviously, that's a tougher question.
posted by Will Richardson6:08 AM Link
Zen Moment ::I've been feeling need to take a step back and breathe, just sit for a moment and survey the landscape at it zooms by.
Interesting, isn't it, how this community grows. Back in December, for me it was just Peter, Pat, Terry and Sarah. Now there's Joe who is been OD-ing on this, and Sebastian, Ken, Karen, David, Charlie Lowe at Fla. State, Barbara and the rest of Middlebury. And now Greg from Indiana U, and soon others. Seems like slowly but surely we're kinda finding each other and challenging each other in very stimulating ways (at least for me.)
I also want to remember to feel the rush of all this intellectual challenge. For me, at least, this has brought me to a very cool place and forced me to do more writing and thinking about my teaching than I have in many years. Easy to get swept up by it.
And I want to remember to bow to the gods of good fortune that have provided me the opportunity to go with it.
From The Little Zen Companion: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
Ok, moment over...Greg feels that my idea yesterday might have a negative impact in the classroom in terms of asking them to "prove each other wrong by challenging either the information or the source" of their individual research. I may not have been clear in what my brain was thinking. (I do that a lot...get lost in the inspiration.) I'm not sure that "teacher-instigated, required conflict" is quite what I was aiming at. More, I'm thinking that students need to be shown the merits of not just accepting as truth the first thing they find. If part of the process was for collaborators to find other points of view, present them all to the group, and then collectively come to some conclusions as to what the "truth" may actually be, it would show them the benefits of looking at more than one side of the issue. Weblogs would be a great way to watch that process happen.
In another post, Greg linked to some excellent sites on alternative assessments, which is a whole 'nother part of this discussion for me. (I need to start another weblog...yeah, right.) In an e-mail, he writes "I think what a blog might bring is the longitudinal record of the process for a student, and would allow them to become more reflective about where they were then and where they are heading now. It would also allow others to see that, too. Some instructors can see this as they might have a student in different classes thru the few years the student is at that school. But to get students to start looking at themselves and their own learning efforts would be a huge leap forward, imho." Certainly resonates here. And the assessment question has already come up regarding my proposal.
Greg also writes "We all gotta help each other, at this point. And yes, once you enjoy the blog kool-aid, you start seeing all sorts of possible uses for them. :-)" Amen.
Joe is struggling with access issues and ways to build the idea for weblogs: "I felt the need to pull my head out of the clouds today after conversations with several teachers here in NYC who don't even have access to a server for hosting any type of web-based materials for class - from a simple class website to a blog." Did I mention I feel lucky? But I need to remember that this place is not reality for a lot of other teachers out there. This is going to take some time, which is a good thing, I think.
Finally, Chris responds to Pat's surprise when his workshop members loved the Blackboard demo. Basically, he says it'll pass: "And in the end what they really wanted was a writing, authoring, dissemination tool for themselves and their students. Something like a weblog. But they don't know that's what they want, because it's hard to describe, and you have to use it to know what it is, and it's totally unlike any of those other courseware apps out there that people have been oohing and aahing over for many years now, but somehow the oohing and aahing dies down after people use them." I'll keep this in mind as I formulate my pitch...
posted by Will Richardson7:33 AM Link
Friday, July 19, 2002
Online Research Literacy/Webog Idea ::This article in the Washington Post does a great job of capturing the changing nature of students doing research. (Via Tenreasonswhy.) A quote: "But they [students] also value information-gathering over deliberation, breadth over depth, and other people's arguments over their own. This has educators worried."
We struggle with this mightily, and I am constantly thinking about the implications that weblogs could have on student research. The collaboration potential for research is what really interests me. How might kids be better served by doing joint research with reflection in a shared space where they could work out their ideas in the asynchronous, more thoughtful environment that Barbara alludes to? Certainly, collecting the information is important, but challenging the depth and reliability of that information is equally as important. We do a good job teaching the former, I think. We don't do so much with the latter, primarily because of the time element involved. Hypertext certainly facilitates a teacher's ability to check sources and the correctness of the information. But we don't have the time to really challenge those assumptions with additional research.
How about this...a collaborative research weblog where students are required to try to prove each other wrong by challenging either the information or the source, then come to consensus as to where truth lies, then write the essay or story? (They could each write it based on their collaborative efforts.) A reading of the weblog would (hopefully) show students actively engaged in not only collection but reflection on what they collected. Again, probably not a new idea, but how much easier could it be for the teacher to interact and assess the process in weblog format?
posted by Will Richardson7:05 PM Link
12:18:15 p.m.--go there and find link and some discussion about my site...written in French! Damn! Want to see what it says.
12:18:43 p.m.--Put the following into Alta Vista's Translator: "Bien sûr je ne suis pas le premier à tenter de relier Webblog et éducation... Voici donc une petite communauté Blog.. qui sait si c'est intéressant, cette communauté pourra se retrouver dans la colonne de gauche...C'est écrit en anglais... Hum... Dois-je commencer à transcrire mes pensées en langue de "Shakkessspeare"... That's is the question (elle est facile, non ?... il est tard... moi je trouve que c'est pas mal pour la première journée !)"
12:18:45 p.m.--Read this: "Of course I am not the first to try to connect Webblog and education... Here thus a small Blog. community. which knows if it is interesting, this community will be able to find itself in the left-hand column... It is written in English... Hum... Must I start to transcribe my thoughts in language of "Shakkessspeare"... Is That' S is the question (it easy, not?... it is... me late I find that it is not badly for the first day!)
Thank goodness for the tweakers... ::Pat and Sebastian are rolling up their sleeves to develop a kinder, gentler Manila. Sebastian says "Much can be done already. And if we pool our ideas and skills together we might be able to get some pressing issues resolved. I have already started to construct a list of Manila weaknesses and issues that really bug me in my design efforts. I think it is important to document and reflect on the reasons why these missing features are important. Then we could try to figure out what it takes to improve our design environment... " Not to revisit the whole discussion, but I guess this is what I was hoping we could do in terms of making it as teacher-friendly and relevant as possible. Manila wasn't developed for teachers. Pat and Sebastian and others (all with much more programming knowledge and skill than I) are trying to push it for classroom benefit. Certainly, the opportunities for this seem to be even greater with open source (btw, still looking forward for Joe's p-machine experiment...). Either way, I'm just really glad they are doing the work they're doing 'cause I know I couldn't do it. Whatever I can do to test and give feedback and ideas, I will.
On an unrelated topic, I've just been struck in the past couple of days by some weblog as healing type articles. The first, from Wired about Alzheimer's patients keeping weblogs as a way to slow down the disease (with this uplifting quote: "But a lifelong regimen of cognitive exercise, including journaling, may help delay AD's onset by up to 10 years -- long enough for many individuals to outlive it."), and another from Glenn Fleischmann who wants to set up free blogging space for those with serious illnesses and their families. What cool ideas.
posted by Will Richardson8:54 AM Link
News Flashes... ::#1--Will buys Manila! (Where do I get my membership card?)
#2--School Gets Will's Pitch; Pilot Weblog Program in the Offing! Here's the plan: This fall, I'm going to "recruit" 10 freshmen to take part in a Weblog Portfolio independent study which with any luck will start them on the road to a four-year exit portfolio of their best work and a companion reflective learning journal all in the form of a personal weblog. Included in the process will be two student mentors, a teacher mentor, a parent, a community member, and an outside "professional" relevant to the student's main interests. Tentatively, students will receive two credits per year (and next year, if all goes well, the independent study will turn into an actual course), and will recieve two additional credits when they present their portfolios to a yet to be determine panel at the end of their senior years. (Joe, do you think a phone call is imminent???) I AM VERY PSYCHED! But there are many questions and logistical issues to sort out, which I need to do in the next few weeks. Help! Much, much more on this later...
#3--Will Gets Readers! Now look, I'm not one to put a lot of stock in log numbers, but supposedly this site got 84 looks yesterday from unique visitors (not earth shattering, I know, but still makes me think even harder about what I write...a good thing.) Now I only know of about 10-15 other teachers who are doing this stuff, so if you're reading this and you're thinking about using weblogs in your classroom, for godness sakes, speak up! Make yourself known! Join the community. These people are pretty cool and smart and energetic and some pretty exciting stuff is afoot. The more people we have in the conversation, the better!
posted by Will Richardson7:03 AM Link
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
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.
Hey...how'd he do that? ::Sebastian's new page is really well done from a design standpoint.And now we can all thank him for putting faces with names! (That was a shock, Sebastian, until I realized it probably wasn't THAT hard to find that picture...)
posted by Will Richardson4:22 AM Link
Saturday, July 13, 2002
Student Publishing with Weblogs ::Joe asks "Does the public nature of a weblog inhibit the types of things that students will publish there?" As a writing/journalism teacher for 18 years, there's no doubt in my mind that publication changes the way students think and write. When kids know they have an audience, they write with more care and depth. But that audience has always been constructed, and with rare exception, authors never find out how readers react to their stories or to their thoughts in writing except in artificial, teacher directed ways. Sure, I've used small group feedback exercises, and I've had students read to the class. But this pre-publication "audience" is not the way true audiences work. Once you publish something, you can't take it back and revise it for meaning or correctness.
For instance, I have no idea who will read this (maybe no one). But the fact that someone might dramatically changes the way I write. And yes, it does inhibit me in some way. Even in other more personal weblogs that I have created, the chance that someone, somewhere will read what I write inhibits me from dumping my true feelings as I do in my paper journals which are hidden away in secret places. But those inhibitions are not a bad thing from a teaching standpoint. Getting students to understand that their thoughts or opinions, while emotionally held, must be organized and readable and defensable can only be helped by giving them a potentially huge and anonymous Internet audience.
One change that I would like to effect in my students' weblogs this year is to get them an even wider audience, to have them collaborate with professionals or classes from other schools or community members. I can guarantee you that if I put a letter in the local paper looking for mentors to help kids with their writing by interacting online in their weblogs, I would get a flood of responses. How about getting parents involved in the process, too? They can become more active participants in the learning of their kids, and that might be the most important potential here of all...I know as a parent, I would love to be able to take a look at what my child is learning and thinking by accessing his/her weblog. And to be able to contribute to that thinking and learning in some way would be even better. What a cool concept...
posted by Will Richardson8:47 AM Link
Friday, July 12, 2002
Chatting with Pat ::During a BlogChat last night, Pat made a nice analogy of the difference between Web pages and weblogs. He's alluded to it before, but last night he made it clearer, and it makes sense. Pat sees creating Web pages as "paper making" whereas weblogs are "writing on paper". It's a great point. When I think about how I typically would use paper in the classroom, it's very similar to the way I want to use weblogs...to go paperless. "Websites have to be as easily available as paper," Pat says, and the way that's coming to fruition is the weblog.
But think of that...what a great pitch that is to get classroom teachers interested in this! The biggest obstacle to taking teaching online has always been the creation and publication of content. I've taught scores of teachers how to use the Internet. I've taught hundreds of kids dozens of teachers how to make web sites. Yet, only three or four teachers in our faculty of 250 have a web presence. And it's all because it's hard to do (unless you are loving the technology like I do). But now...
Your students can publish online for all of your class to read and respond to, and those responses take place with the writing itself. (No more copying of essays and poems and whatever.) Your students can create Web sites that chronicle not only their work but their thinking. You can watch groups of your students collaborate, debate, and create. You can see your students work from classes before yours. Your class can have an online space where you can manage work and point to relevant information for deeper study. And best of all...you don't need to learn Front Page, HTML, FTP, IP, or any other of those scary acronyms that keep people from using the Internet!
And let's face it, we're all in sales. Whether it's course content to our kids or teaching methodology to our peers, the whole idea is to sell them the idea that what we are imparting will make their lives richer, easier, more meaningful, more fun, etc. So I've been thinking a lot about that, about how to "sell" this concept to my teachers. And it always comes down to "it's E-Z!" You don't have to be a techie to do this. You can even teach your students to do this. It can even be fun.
But Pat also got me thinking about the teacher weblog carcasses that I'm already finding. (Since schoolblogs is obviously the biggest provider of space to teachers, I'd love to know how many of their weblogs are consistently updated, or for how long the weblogs are being used.) I can't count the number of teacher weblogs I've seen that are nothing more than the "It Worked!" page in Manila...Maybe their the bottom third on the tech access ladder that Ken referred to earlier.
I'm going to keep my focus, however, on the possibilities. Just a few minutes ago I pitched this idea to my assistant superintendent: A pilot independent study for 10 freshmen next year to build, over the course of their high school careers, a weblog/portfolio that would serve not only as a publication vehicle for their best work, but a learning journal along the way. Picture this: each of the students gets 2 credits per year (equiv to about 1.5 hours of work per week). The space is collaborative in that each student has a teacher mentor, another student, a parent, a community member, and a professional mentor to view and give feedback and advice as the portfolio and journal grow. At the end of senior year, we throw a big party and present the portfolios as records of learning. The details are still a little fuzzy, but I can't imagine what something like that might do to give relevance to the idea of school as learning not just taking classes. And guess what...it would be EZ for everyone...in fact, after just one day with Manila, I know it would work.
And think about teacher development. We have a waiver at our school from traditional evaluation for tenured teachers. They have the option of peer coaching or portfolios. Either way, think of what weblogs could do for small groups of teachers collaborating, or departments, or...I just can't stop seeing the ways this could change what we do.
Also, reading Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook, and finding some really interesting observations. (If you haven't checked out her weblog, you should.) The implications for classroom use really aren't covered, but the aspects of hypertext and content that she brings up certainly apply to what we're doing. Here's a taste: "Webloggers invite participation in another way--they produce webloggers. Reading the thoughts of others like themselves, ordinary individuals suddenly understand that on the Web anyone can speak their piece, and readers become writers." And, as alluded to by Pat: "The Web enables continual publishing, in which updates can occur at any time; it is this aspect of the Web that weblogs can capitalize on." Not earth-shattering, but well put. As I read, however, I am struck by how different what we're thinking and talking about doing feels from the traditional form.
posted by Will Richardson5:52 AM Link
Thursday, July 11, 2002
Giving it a shot... ::...but not having much success, I'm afraid at least at 9:47 a.m. ET. I know I've said this before, but it just doesn't seem to be as inutitive as other software. I'll keep plugging, however, for the greater good...
posted by Will Richardson6:48 AM Link
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Taking the Manila Plunge ::Pat and Ken are offering some great support for a tentative plunge into Manila. Now that I actually was able to post to Pat's "newspaper" (way too cool), I'm thinking all sorts of creative things to do. And Ken has graciously offered some server space for my workshop people to test out Manilla. I was planning just a Blogger run through since I thought that's what they would probably be using. But the decision here is pretty much up to me, and now I'm thinking that I could have Manila up an running before school starts without too much trouble. I'm going to have a chat with my sys admin later today I think. A list of Manila questions will most likely follow.
posted by Will Richardson9:49 AM Link
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
Much to Think About... ::First, let me just say how cool it is that we're cranking up this whole discussion. Just for kicks, here's an attempt to respond to Pat and Peter and Sarah and Joe and the excellent discussion happening at KairosNews (definitely worth a read) all in one long post. There's so much being said that any attempts at assimilating them into one place will probably fail, but here goes.
I'm still going to suggest that we can do better than what we have, and that the time to do better is now. I absolutely dread the idea of teaching teachers one way and then having to teach them something else. I guess I have this fear that once we start down a path, it's going to be hard to turn back. Seems that's the way it happens here and elsewhere. So I'm putting pressure on myself to MAKE THE BEST CHOICE, and I just wish I had one of my own making. Pat and Peter and Sara are all Manila-ites...maybe they know best. (By the way, I'm hoping to make a pilgrimage to Middlebury in a few weeks to take a first hand look at all the great stuff they're doing.) And Pat is really putting it through its paces. But Blogger is SO easy...for teachers and students.
The considerations here are many: ease of use for teachers, server space and support, programming languages, reliability, volume, personalization, etc. Pat says "The issue isn't the blogWare! The issue is affordable, reliable, updatable hosting!" I wish I could see make it that easy for myself. Ken Tompkins at Richard Stockton College suggests portal software like p-machine to use with weblogging software like Manila for students. (Check out his PostNuke-created literature portal during daytime hours here). And then there is the issue of what teachers will adopt...Again, Pat says "It really isn't that hard to put up a page and start fiddling around with it for your own writing and teaching. Sure, to go beyond that stage, you need imagination, time, infrastructure and support. But those requirements have nothing to do with the tool." And Peter's experience is that "All teachers can do the weblog basics of writing, posting pictures and updating. This is the 'minimal amount of the environment' that the majority require at the moment. Some have progressed to using the discussion feature because it serves a particular project need that they have. Some are firing on all the 'tweaked' cylinders. Any progress or success however, has been due to the 'minimal' entry point which assured success and confidence." I'm starting to be swayed by their arguments and examples, although I still have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to teachers wanting to fiddle and play around. I hope Ken is right when he says "Our faculty used to be divided into three groups: (1) the group that would adopt/use any technology put before them, (2) the group that had to be convinced to adopt/use technology and (3) the group that wouldn't use technology if god commanded it. I used to spend enormous time on group 3 -- coaxing, demanding, tricking them into using technologies. Then I had a conversation with the VP of Academic Computing at Princeton. He urged me to ignore them on the grounds that they consumed too much time and would be replaced with group 1 & 2 members eventually."
I think Joe asks a good question when he writes "Is this simply the stage we happen to be in where this type of work is just too cutting edge or experimental for most educators?" I am still amazed at how few teachers know about it and use it.
And then there is the way we present the tool...Ken says: " I see portals as part of the blog experience (I understand that they are not really blogs) in that they introduce the student to the idea that organizing information for easy access is important, that ideas on content are everywhere and that a blog works best when it links their lives to the wider community, that current information is important, that it is a worthwhile work to find, summarize, filter, etc. information on the web so that it can be made available to others, say, on a blog." I really like the way he puts that.
My workshop is on in two weeks. This is great thinking and writing about how to best approach it. Thanks.
posted by Will Richardson9:05 AM Link
Monday, July 08, 2002
I Hate Pat... ::...I really do. If he keeps this up, I'm going to have to get serious about Manila. Yes, Pat, I'm impressed. Now, how about I tell you what I want and you build it for me??? Answer me this...just html, right? Can the different departments have different editors and permissions? Images work in each dept? Can you archive stuff in each dept?I'm assuming the reason I couldn't post a response is because I needed to register to the site, right? Also assuming the discussion page shows all comments in order? (This is still one issue with Manila that seems to give me fits...the discussion piece.) Thanks, Pat...seriously. I have much more to ask and to share tomorrow since road fatigue has officially set in.
posted by Will Richardson6:06 PM Link
Sunday, July 07, 2002
Frustrating! ::Been reading such good stuff from Pat and Peter and Joe, and I have much to say, but visiting at Lake Lanier in Ga. for a week has some pretty tempting diversions. Back in NJ tomorrow night I hope and then ready for a long post on Monday. Thanks for all of your efforts!
posted by Will Richardson8:48 AM Link
Saturday, July 06, 2002
Good Questions/My Rant ::Sarah says: I have to say that I agree with Pat D.'s comments on the subject: "...Manila had to be "tweaked" to do all the things I had it doing. Hmm - that's right. But then again, everything I do in a classroom has to be "tweaked." "Everyone's going to want to use the tool in a different way, according to their pedagogical goals, etc. People are always going to pick and choose amongst the feature set that a tool offers. Does the perfect tool exist, and is it worth spending the programming time and dollars to build your own?" True. I guess I'm seeing an opportunity for those of us who are not completely satisfied with what we use to help create something that's 95% effective instead of 80%. There will always be room for tweaking for the hard-core users among us. Not going to happen with the other 28 people in my department or 225 or so teachers at my school. It's different from tweaking the way you teach a class, which every good teacher has the skills to do. Very few good teachers have the skills to take a technology like weblogs and tweak it for their own purposes the way Pat and Sarah and Peter and I and the others have. So I have to say yes, it is worth the programming time and dollars to do it, because I really believe the technology won't be adopted by many good teachers who could use it well unless we do so.
Chris, who is gladly back writing, I think echoes these thoughts when he says: "My caution was that what Patrick was showing to the group gathered that evening within and among the many sites he is using is pushing what is mostly promised but not fully realized interoperable technology, and requires at this point a fair amount of manual tweaking, which is the result of a lot of skill, knowledge, and touch acquired over maybe a year and a half. While that's fine for advanced users, it's not going to be fine for these other groups new to this technology, especially if one expects to see results out of real work within a few months, and even more especially if there isn't better than adequate suport for the user, which means not only technical support but also support and advice for on-line communities about logistics, process, and appropriate applications." (See full post for context.)
And Sebastian weighs in (at least I've got people talking about it...) "What is missing are the "translators" the folks that understand enough of the technology and its limits AND education." (Again, see full post for context.) He's right, but what we have to do is bring those people together.
Here's one idea: maybe we should contact Pyra, and p-machine, and other developers, give them our criteria/wish list and see what they say. Certainly, the entrepreneurs out there wouldn't be blind to a huge potential market, and I don't think we're asking for all that much more than any one of these softwares already offer. It's crucial that we put our brains together and develop the criteria, which is the discussion I'm trying to start.
Look, Blogger didn't cost me any money. It didn't take any time to set up. I can teach it to my colleagues in minutes. It needs little support. It tweaks using html, which at its most basic level is pretty easy to learn. It runs on a regular old NT server or similar. Yes, it needs a commenting feature. It needs some column creation capability. It needs a few more things. But I have to tell you that when I think about buying Manila licenses and a Frontier server, or getting php and mySQL, or whatever else I need for those other platforms, I start losing interest. We're not normal here, gang! (Someone argue with me, please!) Let's start counting how many hours we've taken to learn and read and tweak and build. Then take maybe 1% of that number and you'll come close to the reality of what a normal classroom teacher will spend on it.
Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno...I just think now is the time to do it, while there are still a lot of people out there willing to have a go at it because they realize the market potential. Call me crazy.
Joe Luft is a classroom teacher from The Brooklyn International School who has taken the weblog dive. (You only have a very short time to come to your senses, Joe.) He says: "To make weblogs really work as a widely used educational tool and to really revolutionize classroom use of the web, we need a tool that makes it as painless as possible." I just don't think we've found it yet.
posted by Will Richardson3:42 PM Link
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
My List(s) ::Well, still hoping for some input here, but on the way to hot and humid Ga. (where I am watching the Kudzu eat steadily toward the house) I composed my list of what I'd like to see in an education-specific weblog software:
- A metafilter-like comment system that opens a new page for discussion with each post to the front page. Now I know that Manilla does this to a certain extent, but as I've said here before, I love the MF interface.
- An e-mail list update feature, so that people will know when changes are made to the page.
- A registration process to limit access (pretty standard, I know).
- Easy file uploads for graphics and such (much like what Blogger Pro offers).
- Easy linking of text (again, like Blogger).
- Multi-column use to create either a newspaper effect a la p-machine or to do side by side posts etc.
- Some type of table of contents feature that is organizable.
- Easy set up on servers and usable on whatever most schools currently run. (Just curious as to what percentage of schools are now networked with Internet servers.)
- Some type of local-run feature for privacy issues.
I also made a short list of ways that weblogs can be used in an educational setting. Some of these I have found examples for:
- Four-year perfromance portfolios
- Reader response logs
- Writing feedback logs
- Professional portfolios (which will be something I will be trying in my teacher portfolio seminars next year.)
- Departmental portfolios (wouldn't it be cool to do a Best Practices weblog by department or school?)
- Staff weblog for the discussion of schoolwide issues
- Community weblogs involving parents and residents
- Student newspapers, potentially for each class
- Learning journals
- Classroom management/homepages
- Student/mentor collaborations
- I-search projects
- Team problem solving
- Class/group magazine
- Content area portal (say Sports Talk) etc.
- News filters for particular content areas
- Book chats (group/class)
- Collaborations with professionals
I'm sure there are many more, and I would really like to grow this list as we move forward.
My school is on the verge of making some BIG decisions concerning technology and the direction we take in terms of using the Internet and network to facilitate communication, create community and make teachers jobs simpler. Our Director of Tech will be retiring in Feb., and I've been asked to be part of a discussion on where we go from here. We are very wired and have the technology in place. But what has been missing, I think, is a long-term vision of how to make the technology work more effectively for the classroom teacher. Most of our teachers use the Internet and the technology in very cursory ways. (The old 80% using 20% of the capabilities situation.) Most of those who run the Internet and the network are very skilled and supportive, but they have no right brains, and for the most part, they have no classroom experience. They can't make it practical, and they don't have the design sense to make it attractive and intuitive for both staff and community.
I guess I'm seeing this HUGE opportunity to do something with weblogs on a pretty large scale; it's a pretty unique situation, actually. I want to nail the research that I know I'll be presenting. That's why I'm looking for Best Practice ideas, and why I'm so interested in the idea of creating something just for schools.
Developing Education Specific Weblog Software--Comments Wanted! ::Got a great e-mail from Michael Brewster in Las Vegas who seems as if not more psyched about weblogs in schools than I, and he mentioned that he's getting some developer friends to create weblog software for his classes this fall (newspaper weblogs too!) It got me to thinking about the conversation that we've been having off an on in our "community" here about the plusses and minuses of Blogger and Manilla and p-machine and others. We all seem to like some aspects of what we use and dislike others. As Peter said at some point, we use what we use...the important thing is to get to it. And I agree to some point.
But what if WE created our own software, specific to education and to the classroom teacher? What if WE incorporated the best of all of what's out there for our specific purposes, with some room for tweaking to our individual needs and tastes? What if WE designed something easy to use, easy to implement (for the vast majority of schools that don't have the technical support or resources we have, which, let's face it, is probably what has brought most of us together in the first place...)?
I'm really interested to see what that education specific weblog software would look like. And WE are the ones to design it, the classroom teachers. I would venture to guess that Blogger or Manilla or whatever other program you want to name was not developed with solely the classroom teacher in mind. I think we should have at it.
So, I'm on the road for a couple of days, and I'll be hoping for a growing wish list of comments about what our dream software could do when I check in again. To keep it all together, I'll start with the first comment.
posted by Will Richardson10:20 AM Link
Friday, June 28, 2002
Upgrades! Upgrades! ::So I finally plunked down my $35 for Blogger Pro and even if I don't like it much more than Blogger Lite I still don't mind giving these guys my money. The one obvious omission is still a built in comment system. YACCS has been ok, but I want something a bit more Manilla.
Off to Georgia for a week or so, but should be able to post from time to time. Will be adding more elements as I go along.
posted by Will Richardson1:10 PM Link
Thursday, June 27, 2002
::Some really great ideas for journalism weblogs from Steve Outing at E&P including community weblogs, newspapers hosting local business weblogs, reporter and photographer weblogs, and group or department weblogs (say all the sports writers or crime reporters have their own). Would work in high school too, you know...
And an article from the Christian Science Monitor with some interesting sample weblogs. I like this comparison of webloggers to DJs: ""DJs play other people's songs all day long, but a great DJ teaches you something about the songs, introduces you to new music you might never have found on your own, and puts it all together in this seamless, intelligent way that only enhances the music." One cool idea I got while reading was a character weblog that my lit students could create for the protagonists in our books. What would Will in Lords of Discipline have to say? Could even double as a reader response tool.
I've just decided that we need to start collecting these great ideas...watch this space for a Call for Entries to the Weblogg-ed Compendium of great classroom uses for weblogs. We need to get these in one place. (Feel free to add some ideas right now if you like!)
And, another nice list of journalist webloggers and general resource sites.
(All of the above via Uber Blogs.)
Finally, another class weblog in action at Laura Shefler's site Dreamcatcher , which seems to be evolving into a collaboration with Peter's classes. I really admire those who can put new ideas to such good use...as I've said before, the ideas are easy for me, the implementation is tougher. Here's another great example of a Best Practice from Karen. More to come, I'm sure.
posted by Will Richardson6:45 PM Link
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
::Spent yesterday and will spend today manning the Nerdy Books booth at PC Expo in NYC (exhibiting with Smallbiztechnology). The show isn't great, but I'm going gaga over the new tablets that are showing up. The Microsoft demonstration of their new XP for tablets software was really incredible, and last night I was dreaming about what schools might be like someday with students carrying these around instead of real notebooks. I thought it was really interesting how they were talking about how hard they tried to replicate basic hand and arm movements that we all have with paper and pen. And it is almost just like using paper and pen. Except you can file it, send it, edit it, whatever, right from the tablet. The one I was using was the Acer flip-screen model...now I can't wait for Christmas. The other gadget that I love is the USB memory can. 16 MB about the size of a pack of gum that you can hang around your neck and just plug into any computer (with USB) as a drive. Easy, portable, very cool.
posted by Will Richardson3:41 AM Link
::Back from a couple of days in Nature...highlight was the way my kids played with our neighbor campers and the magnificent Bald Eagle that soared across Promised Land Lake. I wish Tess was old enough to understand the rarity of what she had witnessed. It was very cool to see one out East for once.
Lots more links to add to the mix (many of which I organized on the site today), and I know that I'm going to have to get a couple of days free here pretty soon to get this coallated. I really want to read from Day 1 and just collect all the links and highlights into a documnet and go from there.
First, via Sarah, Sebastian Fiedler has some interesting things to say about weblogs in education, and he seems to have a similar model of how they can be used. "Will is again very close to my own thinking. A 'metacognitive thought log' is an excellent description of what can also be achieved with a personal Webpublishing tool in an educational context (and no, I am not only talking about the institutionalized forms of education here). I believe, we could and should also talk about potentials for alternative assessment approaches in this area." I know I'm strange, but the thought of using a four-year weblog/portfolio as an exit requirement where kids not only chronicle their own work but their own thinking and then are asked to write about their experiences makes the hair on my neck stand up. That would be so cool! Not graded, per se, but just presented. Ah, to dream!
Sarah and her colleagues are also very generous to share their thoughts on using weblogs in the Creative Writing classroom, and I have to say again how impressed I was and am by what Barbara Ganley did in her classroom...amazing stuff, and definitely a best practice model.
::Some random thoughts and notes before we hit the woods for a few days:
Here's a cool site on Educational Technology which was pointed to by Kairosnews (a very substantive site on edu tech and weblogs) which I heard about in an e-mail from Charlie Lowe of Florida State University. I like the site, and it uses something called PostNuke which he seems to like because of it's wide ranging collaborative capabilities. (My discussion on software choices spurred him to write.) My brain is getting heavy from what is an ever-expanding menu of choices here. We're going to need some real tech minds to help us sort all of this out and make it easy, which again is THE most important thing for edu-blogging (I hate that term) to really find acceptance. (I'm always reminded that pretty is nice but not essential...ease of use, ease of use, ease of use...)
The other very cool contact comes from Janet Coulon at McGraw-Hill who wants to sit in on my workshop this summer! She's the executive producer for all Glencoe and SRA's Web sites. She's pestering her higher-ups that it's time for them to start doing something with weblogs, and she's looking for some help in explaining just what the potentials are here. The time is approaching for Chapter 1...who wants to help get this tome started?
posted by Will Richardson5:10 AM Link
Friday, June 21, 2002
::School's out! Now a summer with the kids...this one ought to be really interesting what with everything else going on. One day at a time.
From the They're out There; We Just Gotta Find 'Em Dept: Joe Luft of Brooklyn International School's comment on the previous post proves what I've been thinking, that there are more teachers out there using weblogs. We just have to connect with them. When Pat asks if I can come to SF, I'm thinking that while this summer may not be opportune, we should seriously think about some type of group event in the near future. As the technology gets more and more accessible, more and more teachers will sign on, and it would be great if we could organize into a real think tank/resource for all of this.
Another thing that kind of strikes me from Joe's note is his pointer to Chris Lehmann at the Beacon School (nice page, again!) and his php open source project to facilitate weblogs for schools. (His school newspaper system is too easy!) It goes back to what program or platform is best, and it's becoming more and more apparent that the answer is more about what's available to you and what shore you land on first rather than a "best" practice. (Remember Pat's history.) As much as this blows my socks off, I landed with Blogger first. It's going to take more time and effort than I can give it (I think) to switch, until someone does it for me.
posted by Will Richardson4:46 AM Link
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
::Ya know, I'm still wondering why our school can't have a homepage like this one. Shoot, my journalism kids could write cover articles and it would be another great way of getting published. Or the newspaper kids. Why does our homepage have to be such useless crud? Just another idea to add to the list. There is no reason why we can't start using the site as more of an informational, community building tool.
posted by Will Richardson5:59 AM Link
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
::Another cool sample site to check out that is part of Pat's program. Note all of the teacher weblogs linked at left. At some point I'm going to need to start sifting through all of this stuff and organizing for the summer and fall presentations I'm doing...
posted by Will Richardson4:50 AM Link
::Ken Tompkins at Richard Stockton College just down the road from here contacted Sarah and I about his use of weblogs. Looks very cool. I've added some of his links to the list. I'm intruigued by the annotations he includes on some sites...seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do. He's also done a lot with e-zines, which could be a cool application for journalism classes, collaborative fiction, for creative writing. One thing that seems easier to facilitate in Manilla is the creation of a website that goes into some depth on a topic (portfolio-like).
Very interesting to find more applications to play with. My English department better watch out...
School's out on Tuesday. Starting to feel sad as I say goodbye to some great future adults. Just a kind of melancholy about the end of what has been my best year of teaching, without doubt. For the first time, I'm in no hurry to leave. I want to keep chatting with Katie before school every morning, picking Mike's brain about music, and helping Leanna get through her not-as-traumatic-as-she-thinks-it-is life. This was a special, special bunch. I am going to miss them dearly.
posted by Will Richardson5:05 AM Link
Friday, June 14, 2002
::Always amazed at how quickly time can pass from here. Too much to do. But some more good news...contract settled! Thank God. None of us wanted that hanging over our heads for the summer.
I'm pretty impressed with the work Pat is doing. Much more steeped in analysis and theory than I (I admire people who can do that work...I'll blame my two toddlers again). Seriously, a part of me desperately wishes I was more into the planning, nuts and bolts, thinking designing stuff...it's a weakness in my teaching too, I know. My brain just works a different way, I guess, more dreamy, the "let's see how this works" method and then tweak and tune for the next time. No master plan.
But I gotta say, this is one of the coolest applications I have seen, and it's definitely going to be in my workshops this summer. I know it's a little elementary for high school, but the concept is the key. The log, the finished, hyperlinked product with pics...all very cool, very teachable, and very doable.
More and more I think that's what is drawing me to weblogs, in my own teaching and for our students. Just the ability to chronicle our thoughts, our learning. I know I've said all of this a dozen times, but it's the metacognitive stuff that I find so interesting, and I'm proving it here (which, as an aside, I continue to be very proud of...it's the most extended, thoughtful writing I've ever done.) What I have to do, I know, is do more of the Pat and Terry and Sarah thinking, to make sure I'm structuring it in a way that maximizes the learning potential for my kids.
posted by Will Richardson6:58 AM Link
The Journalism Education Association (JEA) accepted my conference proposal on "Weblogs in the Journalism Classroom" for Dallas in November! Very psyched. Now I've really got some work ahead in planning my fall J class to use as a model. And Pat, let's not forget some potential collaboration. I would love to show that off too.
posted by Will Richardson7:28 AM Link
Saturday, June 08, 2002
::A couple of more edu-bloggers have checked in, probably due to the Wired article. Bryan Alexander from Centenary in La. uses student weblogs in his Lit classes, which, since I have a section of Mod Am Lit in the Fall, might be a good model. I still wonder, and this is a conversation I would really like all of us to have either here or at k-12, is how to ask a class of 11/12 kids who don't meet in a lab and who may not all have access at home (even though they would have plenty of access around school) to keep weblogs about their reading. Just not sure about it, which is why I pretty much let the Media weblog slide on that issue. Yet I know that my journalism kids were active on it, and most if not all posted from home at some point. I really like the way Bryan not only asked his kids to talk about their own reading experience but also asked them to connect that reading to the outside world via Internet links. That connection is something I don't think a lot of kids make without some effort.
::Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of. Hey Sarah, at least I got a full quote in there! ;) Are thanks appropriate for steering him to me? (Or did I steer him to you?)
This quote bothers me a bit: "But efforts to get students to participate in classroom blogs have, for the most part, fallen flat." Not the case here, and he really doesn't give a lot of space to success stories. We all have some. Might be interesting to contact the UC Berkeley guys and at least ask to view the weblog if not possibly get some kid interaction. Pat, if you're reading, let's talk about same for next year.
posted by Will Richardson1:57 PM Link
::Ok, so I just spent an hour and a half trying to set up this RSS feed and I still don't know if I did it right because the code won't "validate" and I don't really get the whole deal at Newsisfree even though I know they mean to make my life simpler it just seems to make it more overwhelming when I realize how much there is to know and read and how little time I have for it when I have 45 essays staring me in the face and six seniors who are on the verge of not graduating (whose parents I have to call again, by the way) and I need a vacation really, really, badly.
posted by Will Richardson4:39 AM Link
::Was interviewed yesterday about weblogs in education by Noah Shachtman of Wired News . Cool. Looking forward to seeing what he writes. He told me the UC Berkeley is adding a weblogs component to their journalism degree...I'll need to look into that.
posted by Will Richardson5:00 AM Link
::Pat is pissed, and I don't blame him. But it happens everywhere, here too, only instead of laptops it's AstroTurf for a football field that was deemed unplayable by the state after we spent $250,000 to fix drainage problems (which obviously didn't) and forced our homecoming game to be played on our arch-rival's field. A quarter of our department is leaving this year (seven teachers, only one retirement) as they go to other schools for more money. Good teachers, too. Keepers. We've worked all year without a contract, yet we bleat like lambs at anything the board asks of us. They throw money at all sorts of extra-curricular stuff like it's play money, but when we ask for our measly 4%... We haven't had a budget pass in five years, and New Jersey has such a smart way of funding all of that stuff anyway.
And Terry's back and sounding surly too. "The need to make every click and pencil push count has never been more apparent. The need for blogs as a tool to be more 'efficient' has never been more necessary. I would like to show that weblogs can be thought of as schools both within and outside of schools." That last part is definitely worth exploring...
Maybe we're all just a bit tired.
Yesterday at the department meeting we started talking about curriculum changes, about the idea of moving toward a full-year junior year English basically so that we can make sure kids pass the HSPA. (One of the things I love about our school is the electives that we can offer, but I'm thinking we're about ready to kiss those suckers goodbye.) What it really is is an attempt to standardize instruction, reduce the need for staff as section sizes can be controlled, and dumb us down. Anyway, since the committee that had been exploring the ideas wanted to meet interested parties in the summer, I thought, "hey, perfect opportunity to start the department weblog." So I am, I think, going to try to crank it out before the end of the year. Might be a good time to investigate Blogger Pro with a separate account.
::How quickly a week passes...yearbooks got here on Thursday, and they look GREAT! I am so proud of my kids, and I'm already looking forward to seeing what we can do next year. Meetings with the new group tomorrow and Thursday, then we give them out on Friday and Monday. Finals start next week, graduation two weeks from tomorrow. We're pretty much done.
Things seem kind of slow all over. Summer has a way of doing that.
Pat has a pretty good list of potential uses for weblogs here. Am I ever going to get my act together on this? My schedule for next year has J1 classes during Qs 1, 3 and 4. (Newsblogs, here we come.) And I still wonder about ways to run weblogs with classes that aren't in computer labs. It just seems so much easier for kids to buy into the idea when they have easy access. I know that if I did it with my Mod Am and Media kids, if I assigned it, that they would get into it. Just didn't have the time or org to do it this Q. But what a cool idea to ask my Lit kids to carry on conversations about the text online for others to see. Or about outside reading. The ideas are easy, as always. It's the implementation that's the tough part.
posted by Will Richardson4:03 AM Link
::Another pretty good analysis of the weblog as journalism idea at ojr...As veteran journalist Murray Fromson put it at the University of Southern California's online journalism conference in March, "without newspapers and networks, who will cover a war in Afghanistan?"..."The end result is an understanding and depth that just is not possible in traditional one-direction journalism," Kuro5hin's Foster notes...Ultimately, the mainstream media will likely continue to cover enfranchised sources, and online media will continue to empower the disenfranchised while keeping the pros accountable by dinging them for every instance of superficial or careless reporting.
And Quill attempts to answer the unanswerable: What is a journalist? Good starting point for next year's classes, I'd say.
::Another pretty rah-rah report on weblogs as journalism from the Guardian. "With the internet, we can now, as Instapundit.com's Glenn Reynolds puts it, 'fact-check your ass'. But more than that: the audience can loudly proclaim just how fact-checked you are - an unleashing of the reader that Gillmor calls 'both scary and liberating' for the professional journalist."
posted by Will Richardson5:17 AM Link
Thursday, May 23, 2002
::Terry is a webdoggie and admits his secret desire to be "a total geek" with Radio. And I find it interesting/encouraging that he settled on Blogger for his student projects. (BTW, can you post from anywhere when using Radio, or does it have to be installed on the machine you are using?) Sarah weighs in for Manilla primarily for its community building aspects, and I agree with her that that is a huge hole in Blogger. I still come back to this, I know, but all I want is Metafilter, I swear. Give me a page where kids can make entry posts that automatically (much like Manilla here) start separate discussion pages for those posts. Kids can add comments easily, and those comments appear on the page quickly. So one of my journalists can post the lead to her story on the "front page", and then post the entire story for feedback on the "back page" where readers can then easily post thoughts and ideas. (I'm thinking Amazon here.) Or my essayists can do the same. Or my yearbook staff. Or I can throw out a topic for my media kids that they can jump to and argue about. It seems so easy...and I know my Manilla friends are going to say "WE CAN DO THAT!" But I have to tell you, Manilla just is not that easy. It's not. I "got" Metafilter first time. I still screw up with Manilla. Why is that?
And I'll say it again (tell me if I'm ranting...) EASE OF USE is the key more for teachers than kids. You know, we (Terry, Pat, Sarah, etc.) are really INTO this stuff. Let's not kid ourselves and think that everyone (anyone?) else is even going to care about what it looks like or whether or not we can feed news or update through e-mail or hold chats. If the tool is going to gain acceptance, it's going to have to be easy. Something where teachers a) see the potential benefits clearly (in my case, audience, feedback, publishing etc.) and b) can learn it and start using it in a couple of hours. Blogger takes literally five minutes to set up and use. There is little or no maintenance if all you are interested in is getting kids publishing and creating a forum for discussion (albeit less than perfect). You don't have to have a tech person configuring your computer or your server. You don't need to understand .ftp, .html (well, maybe just a little), .cgi, .rss, .mouse. It just works.
::Another journalist takes the weblogging plunge: "Since blogs also link to non-blog Web sites, they become a great filter for the overwhelming torrent of Web content. Regular visits to the blog of someone who is interested in the same stuff you are, or is just interesting themselves, can take you to pages that you may never have found on your own." Precisely. And just think of high school journalists with filtered interests of their own.
posted by Will Richardson5:54 AM Link
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
::Karen's post at BW has me thinking. She says "I just really want to know what happens when teachers are given access to a web that lets them focus on content, not design." Something there really resonates, and I think it is that idea of content, not design. When I do web projects, I focus a lot on design. In my Web Pages and Portfolios class, we talk about creating friendly spaces. We put a lot of time into how it looks. Same when I do my own stuff. I like the way this page looks. I like the colors, etc. No major tweaks from the original Blogger template, but still mine. But I know .html. I CAN tweak it, and I know most classroom teachers can't. They don't have the interest or the time. They don't want to negotiate servers or passwords or designs or all that stuff; they want to focus on content.
As I think about the motivation of the basic blogger, I think the content does come first. One of the reasons that Blogger has become so popular is because it is SO EASY. Fill in a form, click a few buttons, and your ideas and deepest darkest secrets are up there for the entire world to see. It's a powerful thing, that audience piece of it. When I first realized that people (however few) were reading my weblog, I got butterflies...really! And, I got a sense of purpose and desire to continue. I mean I know that I'm still mostly doing this for me, but I am starting to feel a part of a community of thinkers and writers and doers, and that audience is vital, however small it may be. Design and wide ranging capability is secondary. (It's like my wife (who, by the way, looks to be on the verge of signing a content contract with Gateway) says, the rule of 80/20: eighty percent of software users use 20 percent of the software, doesn't matter the package.)
The point here is that I just don't think the average classroom teacher is going to want to do more than a) easily create a space for his/her classroom and b) have students easily create space where they can, as Karen says, "publish, get and give feedback, and [use] as a 'home base' for a community to develop." So the question then becomes what is the best/easiest way to do this. (And this is a relevant question for me as I'm going to be doing a 2-day workshop this summer in weblogs.)
To me, the answer is Blogger, specifically Blogspot. It has its limitations, I know. But, can they publish? Yes. Get feedback? Well, with a little bit of setup, yes; kids can create a team (which I don't think is necessarily any easier to do in Manilla). Can they create a sense of community? Yes; my kids have proven that. Now I know there are ads to deal with, and it's not a perfect world. But IT IS EASY! And as someone who has a lot of experience training teachers on technology, that is paramount. Pat and Terry and I are into weblogs, but we're also to some extent into the technology. We like figuring out how to make it work and how to tweak it. The vast majority of teachers aren't. They just want it to work, and want it to be easy. And actually Blogger allows them to take that next step if they want and if they have the tech staff to make it happen. I admit, I don't know enough about Manilla and Radio to know for sure that it's not just as easy. But if my dealings with it are any indication...
::Peter Ford is back Blogging and reports on some cool activities. His kids did a newspaper which is pretty cool. It's pretty straightforward, and something that I think we could implement here without too much trouble. (I was looking into Blogger at the ways to incorporate a number of blogs on one page, which might be a way to set up a paper in sections, much like p-machine. More work for the summer.) I still want to incorporate that NY Times idea of interactivity with audience. (As long as they have a school e-mail.)
It seems like Radio has some great potential here, but what I really need is to get some exposure to it from a user standpoint. Again, maybe Pat or Terry would be up for a tutorial chat???
BTW, Blogger seems prepared for a major partnership statement that promises to make Blogger users very happy. I wonder...
posted by Will Richardson10:08 AM Link
Monday, May 20, 2002
::Trying out ways to "syndicate" with Blogger, though not quite in the traditional sense. What I was really hoping for was a way to set up a class site and have update notices automatically e-mailed to "subcribers". Spyonit seems to do that. The thinking here is to use it with my yearbook staff next year so that we can chat and get easy notification of updates. Since it's not going to be a class, I'm going to have to find ways to keep in touch with all 45 of them. It would make it a bunch easier if they were just e-mailed automatically when stuff was posted. K-management 101.
Spyonit is a pretty cool concept in that it'll do that for any page I register. Saves checking back to the site all the time. Yet if the kids want to participate, they can always get in there and do so.
Maybe one of my Manilla/Radio friends can tell me if this is similar to RSS...I think that is probably a bit more flexible. And I know Blogger Pro supports XML. Help!
posted by Will Richardson6:42 AM Link
::Added the link to the K-12 Blog Write site. Now just a matter of getting in there. Way too much going on...always it seems. And, I'm discovering, this aversion(?) to Manilla/Radio. Don't know whay exactly. It just doesn't seem that easy to navigate. I know the idea of threaded discussions is what I'd like to incorporate into my pages, but...just something about it that bothers me. I need to figure that out, and maybe if I start using it more, my qualms will be silenced (there's a thought!)
Edublogs are everywhere! Salvor Gissurardottir who is at a teacher's university in Iceland has been using weblogs with his grad students. He says "I teach at a teacher´s university in Iceland and have been using weblogs in all my courses for more than a year now. This semester I administer and teach a course with 28 students, it is at a graduate level and it is through distance education, we meet three times during the semester but otherwise it is distance. All students have webblogs and we also have several group weblogs. Here is one of the group weblogs (on the left border there are links to all the individual student weblogs and teacher weblogs)." Now if only I could read it. Still, Salvor is interested in joining the discussion with us.
::Back from the Rockies...just a whole new dimension in geography. Was really nice to get away for a few days and get geared up for the final push here.
Seems I missed a chat and that folks are getting together to start talking. Great! I'm looking forward to the discussion.
Seems corporations are finding out about weblogs. Here's another article from Wired. "Macromedia calls this "the blog strategy," and some see the company's moves as the start of a trend. These days, it's almost unfashionable for a self-respecting Webophile to not have his own blog; if Macromedia's effort is any indication, soon a tech company that doesn't embrace weblogs may seem equally dated." Still think there is some application of this on a school-wide or department wide basis.
posted by Will Richardson3:46 AM Link
Monday, May 13, 2002
::In response to my post about the teacher weblog, Pat says: "Question is, what's the point? I'd rather not do a repeat of SiT or Schooblogs, or the other sites that already do a superb job on far-reaching and general blog topics. I'd like it to be more concrete, in the way that a Writing Project teacher consultant's demonstration is concrete and useful and almost oppressively rooted in k-12 classroom practice. Sort of a "show, then tell," with commentary, feedback, critique, suggestion, and back and forth between the demonstrator and the audience."
I agree; it should be more concrete and rooted in practice. That's my one big complaint about those other sites...there's little in the way of roll up your sleeves, get to the guts discussion of what works, what doesn't. Nowhere have I found teachers giving each other specific feedback on what they are doing...mostly just vague observations. Hell, I'd love to see more collaboration. Feedback, critiques, suggestion, back and forth...that's what I want too.
(Note: I'm going to have to switch servers on the discussion site, which will be done next week.)
(Now one aside to Pat...try as I may, and I'm pretty adept technologically, I cannot figure out how to "discuss" your post on your site. I've registered and reregistered and still I'm dumbfounded as to how to post a message. And that goes for most Manilla weblogs. Why is it so freakin' counterintuitive???? Just wonderin'.)
posted by Will Richardson10:33 AM Link
Wednesday, May 08, 2002
::Time to do a new roundup of who's doing what edu-weblog-wise: (aside from the usual suspects)
Lloyd's Tech in Classroom pages with lots of student weblog links. Some of his kids even continued writing (links at bottom).
Found this workshop: “Weblogs for the Composition Classroom” Christopher Porter, U of North Carolina, Greensboro...someone else to contact?
Jim Stegman at the Finneytown School District looks like he's trying to get some teachers involved. But seems like a lot of starts and stops (which is pretty prevalent when looking at teacher weblogs...need to think about why that is aside from the time issue.)
Perhaps Dale Pike of UNC-Charlotte has some ideas to offer.
Pamela Wilkins at the South Seattle Community College Teaching and Learning Center has some input that might be worth following up on.
John Robb has some interesting ideas on the uses of weblogs as a K-managment tool in schools. I'm really liking the idea of kids creating and keeping through school.
Jason Nolan ad Edublog obviously has gotten some wheels turning, but I can't tell exactly how far he's gotten. Still, seems like a good resource.
Maybe there's a bit more happening than when I started this. Wouldn't it be cool to get us all together in a virtual space and see what happens? Terry wants to get the conversation going at my other site and I'm thinking once we do that, maybe we should start inviting some of these guests?
Gone to Colorado for the weekend, back on Monday. Thanks again, Terry and Pat for the kick in the pants.
posted by Will Richardson3:23 AM Link
