Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Open Source Blogging Session and Other Early NECC Reflections

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Pretty amazing that the 40 computers in my open source session at 8:30 were claimed by 7:45 and that a good 150 people (if not more) crammed into the room by the start time. (The photo was taken at about 8:15.) And even more amazing that the Internet connection basically went dead but I think the presentation went pretty well anyway. I’d guess about 40% of the people raised hands when I asked how many were bloggers or used blogs. And some really good questions saved me from tap dancing too much.

But what was really amazing was that totally unannounced, the superintendent at my own kids’ school up in New Jersey showed up. (And Laura, if you’re reading this, it was great of you to come.)

The Blogger’s Cafe has been the place to hang this morning, and yes, it’s official…”we” have “arrived.” At least on the surface. Maybe David has already done it but I wonder how many Read/Write Web sessions there are going this year. Must be close to if not over 100. And “2.0” is everywhere on the exhibit floor, where I did my annual 30-minute walk just to see all the stuff I wouldn’t buy. (A couple of exceptions, but once again, if you totaled up all the money being spent on displays and schwag and the carbon footprint for getting it all here, you could easily buy a laptop for every kid in the country who needs one. And I’m sorry, but from the “let’s see how much junk we can give away that will end up in a landfill” category, Best Buy needs to be outlawed next year. This sound eerily familiar to a post I wrote last year, I think.)

Not to be cynical, (just can’t shake it) I’ve been wondering (and having great discussion with Cafe-ers) about just what station we have “arrived” at, however. It’s feeling like “I Can Blogville” which I guess is somewhere on the route to “I Can Help My Students Build Their Own Learning Communitiesville” or something like that. At the Google booth, I watched a line 10 deep snake up to take a turn at trying out Blogger. One after another, the Google guide showed people how to post. One after another, you could see the “Gosh, that was easy!” reaction. It was pretty cool just lurking, watching it. But again, I wonder to what extent that will somehow lead to an understanding of what changes in a network, where the real power is.

It’s not in the publishing. But I guess we have to get there first.

At any rate, if anyone from the session is reading, thanks so much for coming…would love to hear what your reactions are, and welcome to the blogosphere.

You’re halfway there.

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Meeting Up at NECC

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Now that was an EdBlogger Meetup.

About 40 people or so showed up to the Rock Bottom last night to share stories and ideas about their use of blogs in their personal practice and in their schools, and to just do what is the most fun about coming to conferences like this: say hello, place the face with the blog, and get to know each other a bit. I got to cross quite a few more names off of my blogging life list this week, among them Jeff Utecht all the way from Shanghai, Terry Friedman all the way from the UK, Mark Wagner from just up the road, Alfred Thompson from New Hampshire, Karl Fisch from Colorado, and others. David Jakes, Steve Hargadon, David Warlick, Tony Vincent, and Tom Hoffman all made appearances, and despite the all male-ness of that list, I’m happy to report that there were just as many blogging women (like Courtney Peagler and Kathy Schrock) sharing their stories as there were men.

The cool thing is that hardly anyone was lamenting the obstacles or the roadblocks. This was a group of really energized people who just wanted to get together and share their, um…energy for the tools. And I think this year more than any other, there is a lot of energy coming out of NECC. A lot more of the “I need to figure this out” vibe. After my presentation today, I had a conversation with a teacher from a private school in Texas and she said something along the lines of “I’ve just been having my eyes opened the last couple of days and I have a lot of catching up to do when I get home.” Lots of people were feeling that, I think.

To me, the whole “School 2.0” vision from the Department of Ed is the big news, or at least potentially the big news. I’m going to be really interested in seeing the progression of the thinking over the next couple of months as they get more and more feedback from educators.

All in all, a great few days in San Diego. So much so that I actually heard a couple people throwing out the idea of a new, separate conference just for educators wanting to really get into the whole Read/Write Web conversation. Now THAT would be a meetup…

(BTW, if you were at Rock Bottom last night, go add a link to your blog on the meetup page.)

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Blogging and Writing

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Mark Bernstein, Phil Wolff, Nathan Edelman and Pat are a part of a panel on the importance of Web logs with writing, and it’s spurring some pretty good threads dealing with the issues of implementation, privacy, plagiarism, etc. One obvious issue that I’m noticing is the difference between personal blogging and educational blogging, especially on the K-12 level. A lot of us use Web logs with our students, but how many of us really have students that are “blogging” in the essential sense? In fact, the question may even be can our students really “blog” at all given the limitations imposed by school districts and the fears of teachers and administrators? I’m not discounting the worth of using Web logs to teach writing (and other things), but I guess the distinction to remember is that we’re really not teaching blogging. My issue is that I’d love to teach blogging…

Mark Bernstein thinks that blogging is going to evolve in to something very different from what it is now: “This is the way we did it for a couple of years when we didn’t have a clue.”
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