Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent
The newspaper thus far is doing just what I wanted it to do. The kids are involved in gathering news, making decisions about content, and publishing. Pretty cool! Aside from some connection problems yesterday, the process has been pretty fluid. It was quite a bit of preparation, but now that it’s up and running, it’s pretty low maintenance.
I’ll be like Pat…if you check it out, please leave a supportive comment…I know my students would appreciate it.
Our Ed Tech committee meets again today to further discuss a new classroom model for technology. We’ve spent the past month talking with and surveying staff members about how they use technology now, what they think they might need in the future, and what they see as the most effective use of the technology we currently have. Today, we present those findings.
From where I sit, this is going to be a longer process than most on the committee think. For one thing, I think we may be asking the wrong questions at this point. When I had my 20 minutes with the English Dept., and during my personal talks with teachers, I mostly got blank stares when I asked “What do you think you are going to need? What do you want to be able to do?” The sense I got was most teachers don’t know how to answer that question, because most don’t know what they COULD do. They don’t know what’s out there. How are they supposed to tell us how technology might improve their teaching if they don’t understand or know the potentials of the technology?
The process I’ve been thinking about is this: First, let’s do some research into what technologies are available at this point. What are other schools doing? Where does the technology seem to be headed? What are the costs of those technologies? Are they feasible here? Second, think about the ways we see technology helping us become better at what we do? Again, how are other schools answering that question? What are our weaknesses? What does the current research show? Third, let’s see create a menu of possiblities, give some basic information about what is available and what can be done with it, and let people think and talk about what might work best in their own practice. This would at least help people make informed decisions about the “model” classroom.” Fourth, talk about design and implementation.
I just don’t think asking teachers what they do now and what they’d like to do in the future is the logical approach. What other informed decisions do we make in our lives without first researching and understanding what’s out there? We don’t decide simply based on what we do and know now. That’s what it feels like we are aksing teachers to do.
The complexity of this question is enormous. Teachers have differing comfort levels with technology to begin with. Some courses lend themselves to technology and innovation more than others. Some rooms are more appropriate than others. Teachers need training. We need to clarify a budget. We are all pressed for time…and on and on. But it all has to start with a clearer picture of what the possibilities are.
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Tried to take the next step with an rss reader but a couple of issues have arisen. First, any of the local readers such as Amphetadesk and Newzfeed won’t work through the firewall we have here at school. Second, while I can get them to work with this site since it’s “inside”, every student site that I tried to set up with a feed came back with an error that said something was wrong in a particular line of text from the page. Strange. It would be a time-saver to have my journalism kids’ Web logs fed to one aggregator. Just don’t know why it’s turning out to be so difficult.
Hence, the goal of this blog is to be a Socratic exploration of the pros and cons of a possible alternate approach. Namely, implementing the new Bryant web presence via weblog software.
Very interesting read from a parent on a school tech committee trying to decide whether or not Web log as school website might not be a better answer. He imagines parents able to subscribe via rss to different weblogs within the school (imagine getting the news and assignments for each of your kids classes each day aggregated into one page or e-mail!), online discussions accross the school community and more.
I love finding thinking like this…his personal observations and thoughts through the Web log teach me about my own thinking. Where could you find this type of content pre-Blogger?
Great writing too…here’s a gem of an entry:
Of course a blogware-based Bryant website could still fail. There are cultural issues here – if teachers and administrators simply don’t really need to disseminate timely information online, or if even a much-decreased level of required effort still is too much for overworked, underpaid educators, if more parental kibbitzing is more of a negative than a positive, and/or if there really aren’t enough connected Bryant parents then it just doesn’t matter. But – if that turns out to be the forordained outcome, then (assuming we’re going to have any Bryant website at all) setting up up some blogware and slapping on a Bryant theme is likely to be orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than any other solution. So in other words, Bryant-via-blogware is definitely the right implementation architecture if it results in a vibrant, living web presence but it’s probably still the right approach even if it doesn’t!
Will be watching and perhaps interacting in this most interesting process.
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Sebastian is cranking on our version of a newspaper site. Feedback please!
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Sarah posts some provocative notes from Educause that are worth the time to work through. Some of the highlights for me, the idea of a school portfolio (which could be accomplished with a weblog), the idea of collaborative web projects that students do on their own time, and ITech at Lafayette, which is just up the road from me. Also here and here.
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Always nice to see the word getting out! And a nice plug for this site at Syllabus. But what do you think about “Blogging is well ensconced in the education community.”??? Not quite…check out this thread at Kairos.
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I guess I’m gonna have to think of another way to get my journalists doing some newslogging some other way since Pat says the template won’t be ready until much later…Anyone out there know how to do a simple site like this in Manila? Pat says I could cut and paste altmuslim, but how do I do that? Ah, learning curves.
Back from camping…why is it I keep forgetting how hard it is to camp with two toddlers???
Brian Fitzgerald gets to the “why weblogs” question as he prepares for an upcoming seminar. Here’s a quote:
“I think that it has to do with the real nature of weblogs, the focus on content. Web pages typically require a lot of thought regarding the form of the page before content can begin to be put into it. There are also considerations such as site architecture and depth that always need to be addressed. This is much more than most people want to deal with. It’s more than I, a web developer, want to deal with. People have often asked me if I have a web page and I have always responded that I simply don’t have time or cause to have my own. They are a lot of work. Weblogs (getting back to the topic) however get all of the form issues out of the way at the very beginning, wether you design it yourself or choose a provided “theme”, and allow you to spend the rest of your time posting true content to your webpage.”
A good point, especially when giving kids the “paper” for Internet publishing, right Pat?
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David says that he can’t get an RSS feed from my site. Frustrating thing is I have no clue how to fix it. I’ve turned on the syndication feature, but I guess I need to do more. Anyone have ideas?
I’ve been trying to put it off, but I think I’m going to have roll up my sleeves and get into the newsfeed side to this. Pat has been experimenting as has David (who led me to amphetaDesk). The potential here boggles my simple mind; here I am again at the start of the journey feeling muddled. It certainly would be cool to figure out how I could get feeds from all my kidweblogs as they were posted. Anyone? Anyone at all?
We’ve started a discussion at our school with the intent to “to revisit our current classroom model for instructional technology, and to begin to develop some recommendations for a new model that will use technology in more effective ways.” (Here’s the weblog, of course.) It’s a pretty big undertaking considering the extent to which we are already infused with technology (I think it might be easier if we were starting from scratch) and the diverse abilities and philosophies of our staff concerning integrating it into our curriculum.
A survey that we took a couple of years ago showed a pretty proficient level of understanding and use of technology by staff for personal use, but a less than satisfactory ability to use those skills with students. One thing that may be preventing that is the current configuration of our standard classrooms, each of which have six computers. When the Blue Ribbon School assessor was here last year, he noted that in 55 observations in standard classrooms, only once did he see the computers being used for classroom instruction. (Despite that, we did receive the award.) Obviously, that is a problem. With class sizes averaging over 20, six computers become more of a logistical headache than tools for instruction.
The debate yesterday centered around how best to gather information that will drive our decisions about the model. At first, we talked about analyzing the data from the old survey more in depth, or resurveying the staff to get new data on their skill level. But we soon realized that the only way to truly do a needs assessment for teachers was not to ask them what they know so much as ask them HOW they do use or would use what they know. What would they need to effectively put their knowledge to use in their teaching?
I think this is the crucial albeit extremely complex question that many schools fail to answer. Sure, we can provide the hardware, we can even provide the training. But there remains a large disconnect between the potential and the reality when it comes to actually using technology to improve teaching and learning. (And by the way, we had that debate too, with one person saying that he has yet to see a study that proves using technology improves learning. Bring back chalk!)
It’s going to be interesting to see what the data shows. We already see it as being discipline specific, that there really is no such thing as a standard classroom for all subjects. (Obviously, there probably is no such thing as a standard English or Science classroom either, but we can probably get closer to that ideal at least.) And to be honest, I am awed by this challenge. There are so many determiners in the equation. Should be a eye-opening process.
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My journalism kids’ weblogs are now linked at the class home page… still having some issues with kids understanding the process (it is a bit more complex than Blogger). But I’m being patient, telling them that by the end of the week everyone should be comfortable. We’ll see.
Today, for the first time, I did feel compelled to articulate the Why Weblogs? case to them. What I realized is that it’s a different “argument” from the one we educators keep debating and creating. They don’t much care about the collaborative nature of the weblog; they can do that without it. Nor does the concept of audience REALLY have meaning to them (at least not until some “audience” starts giving some real response). And Pat’s eloquent “digital paper” analogy would fly equally high over their heads, I think. So what did I resort to? I gave them the standard “Because you’re going to need to know how to do this in the real world” speech. After spending a year clarifying my own pedagogical philosophy about this stuff, it felt a little bit like I was copping out. I mean really, that’s the speech we always give when we don’t have any other, right?
And it’s not that I don’t think I can justify it anyway. KM and collaboration and communication over the Internet is the way of the future…I don’t doubt that for a second. I guess I just wish I could have made more of my own meaning clear to them without thinking it would be lost on them. Sigh.
So as the huge first week avalanche begins to ebb, I’m hoping to get back to more careful reading of all the weblogs I’ve been missing lately. Vague memories of blogventions and newspaper templates need more of my attention, I think.
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Some days you just have to revert back to what got ya’ here, paper and pen, chalkboard and chalk, talk and more talk…phone was ringing as I walked into my Journalism class…I’m primed to give them their weblog baptism, to set off on our kewl technological adventure…BUT, on the phone is Ed, my tech guy…”No weblogs today!” he half-chuckles, and I say “Wha?”…see, we’ve been trying to fix this gems issue, and Sarah offers her tech guru (who fixed a similar problem) to help…he e-mails instructions…Ed goes through the steps, entire weblog system blows up, Ed calls me, I get pale…(gets it back an hour later after resetting the configs which he got from tape backup)…Plan B…set up their e-mail accounts…kids try to login to the e-mail client, only half are able to…other half get “access denied”…back on phone to other tech gurus; they’re stumped…Plan C…visit some other weblogs to get the idea of what’s up…you guessed it, connections die…turn off computers…Plan D…pull history of journalism lecture from deep recesses of brain and feel lucky that it didn’t happen in my other class where there was not even a Plan B…Ah, but tomorrow is another day!
I’m amazed at how different I feel about bringing weblogs to my students this year, primarily because of the difference Manila brings in terms of layers and conversations. I’m really wondering what this is all going to look like nine weeks from now. Did I bite off more than I could chew? Did my students take as easily to Manila as to Blogger? Did I figure out how to get gems working? (I still haven’t, much to my chagrin.) Will the teachers begin to see the benefits? (The Bees site has them talking…) Did my collaborations with Barbara live up to our expecations? Did the parents of my students watch our portfolios grow? Did my ed tech group see the potential? (One member of the group actually posted today!) Did I get the newspaper template from Pat? (And if not, did “Plan B” work?) Did I get to start a weblog for my department? Will I get the teacher portfolio template finished? Will Tess make it through her first day of kindergarten tomorrow? (The most important question of all.)
Even though I feel like I got a grip, I also feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. That’s what makes it so fun.
(Via Pat.) Interesting process for inquiry that can easily be accomplished using Manila. Can use as a framework for research.
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One week left…too many things to do. It’s 6:30 a.m. and I’m already at school, the only one here no doubt. Tied up with yearbook kids all day today. Meetings all day Friday and Tuesday. Slow connection at home precludes any real work on templates or sites over the weekend. And my list is loooonnnggg…Still waiting to hear from Pat about the newspaper template, so that’s kind of on hold (unless of course Joe wants to share his p-machine template which I think he said he got working at some point)…trying to get a weblog/reader study guide site set up for my lit kids to use with our new book The Secret Life of Bees (highly recommended, by the way) and later, Lords of Discipline…trying to figure out the best way to set up my individual logs in journalism since I haven’t been able to get the callback scripts for the template (everyone is too busy these days!)…thinking about the professional portfolio template, the class template, the independent study portfolio/weblog template…hmmm…is there a pattern here? I’ve got weblog fever in a bad way, and I know JUST enough about making them work to make them dangerously intriguing. Should be an interesting few days (and late nights).
Spent the day in a workshop with Charlotte Danielson talking about professional evaluation and what comprises good teaching. It’s really a very straightforward, very logical framework that we’re hoping will make our teacher evaluation programs more consistent across the disciplines. I got a chance to show her my teacher portfolio/weblog idea, and we discussed the portfolio idea at length in the large group. There is no doubt that our administration realizes the benefit of portfolios, so now my job is to convince them that the weblog is a perfect km system to build and revise artifacts of professional development with reflection.
We talked about how portfolios are pretty much done in a vacuum, with only the teacher, potentially a mentor, and a supervisor getting the chance to see the work. Online portfolio/weblogs would allow a much wider audience for feedback and collaboration and publication. It would be easy to manage. It would be fairly easy to create and update. If I can get the gems aspect of Manila going, it could host all sorts of artifacts. I’m almost more excited by the potential here than in the classroom, perhaps because I know everyone has the access necessary to make it work. Now, of course, I have to get crankin’ on my own portfolio! The list grows…
BTW, does anyone out there know how to add a background to a Manila template? I hate being a newbie! (UPDATE: Ken T. set me straight. Nice to have helpful techie friends!)
A quick search for “weblogs” on ESchool News, Techlearning.com , ITTE, and The Journal, all supposed leading publications in the field of educational technology, comes up with…you guessed it…ZERO responses. I still can’t believe more people haven’t caught on to this.
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I’ve got to figure out how I am going to limit the ability of students not in my classes to create new weblogs. I’m sure at some point word will get out that we now have this weblog feature…I don’t want to worry about finding inappropriate content on our site. Membership is a similar issue…I want to limit it to just the students in my class.
Ken Dow says (at ManilaNewbies): “If you want to strictly control who joins your site, your can turn off Membership to hide the Members box and disable the automated sign up. Then only you can add Members using the Admin page. Remember to bookmark the login page before you try this, or you won’t be able to log in!” Is that the only way to do it, I wonder? That would mean that the teacher would have to put in the addresses and passwords, right? And would the teacher have to create all the sites as well? Any ideas???
Pretty interesting article about the impact on weblogs…highlights a student’s personal use in the lead. I like this quote: “[weblogs are] helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment.” I’m thinking that can be true in the classroom as well, empowering teachers and students to articulate and develop ideas and reflections. Other snippets:
(See Joe’s comment, which was also lost…)
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