Blogging in Bermuda Redux

My Bermuda blogvangelism trip was certainly a treat in many ways, not the least of which was how much I learned. One thing that is so humbling about these Read/Write Web technologies is that despite knowing some of them very well, there is so much yet to explore and understand. And having the opportunity to give workshops to motivated and enthusiastic teachers like the ones at the Whitney Middle School give me an opportunity to learn from them, which is half if not most of the fun. I feel very fortunate.

It’s still a pretty amazing concept to most teachers that kids are creating and publishing in ways that really require us to rethink what we ask them to do. When they see it and hear it, I think a lot of teachers know instinctively that something important is happening, but I’m not sure most can process it in a 4-hour workshop. It’s overwhelming. New possibilities abound. That’s kind of what I got from them yesterday, a sense of “Oh my goodness…this is amazing…I need to think about this for awhile.” I’m betting that’s what most of them are doing…thinking, and maybe checking Bloglines, and maybe even blogging.

I’ve started thinking that my own blogvangelism should be more focused on just getting them to use the tools…forget about bringing them into the classroom for now. Blogs and RSS are professional development tools for teacher learning as much as anything else. And if the teachers at least understand the changes, they can teach and model the use of the tools more effectively.

So, now I’m back and trying to catch up on the 1,000s (literally) of links that I’ve aggregated, trying to figure out how to keep up with all of this stuff, and feeling like there is still way too much for my feeble brain to know and understand…