I know there is still a lot of time left, but when it’s September and I wake up and the Cubs are in first place, it’s good reason to digress from the standard topics and pay homage. I posted this picture earlier this summer but then lost it when my server crashed and I suffered through almost a month without this Web log space. But that, of course, is nothing compared to the suffering that’s been occuring on the North side for…how many years now?

I could tell you stories about 1969, about sending in contest entries to the Sun-Times in August picking the exact date and time the Cubs would clinch the pennant, only to watch them sink into the abyss in September. Ironically, I was going through some old stuff this weekend and pulled out an old “Cub Power” t-shirt from a moldy old box. Fittingly, it looked like it had been designed by someone on a bad acid trip, all sorts of psychadelic colors and designs. I washed it up and threw it on Tucker, and incredibly, it fit perfectly. Hmmmm…

Stuff like that always makes Cubs fans hope. There are never enough omens that this could be the year. I know many games are left to be played, but hey, it’s September. The Cubs are in first. At least there’s something right with the world…
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Some great RSS resources came across my Bloglines aggregator today, and it’s making me itch to get my school up to speed on the wonders of aggregation. First there’s TheFuss which is a wiki created by the learning object gurus north of the border who are without question way ahead of anyone else in thier thinking of how RSS might facilitate the distribution and sharing of learning objects. (And I have to tell you, when I think about how THAT might end up…sheesh. What an amazing vision.) And then there’s this cool experiment that shows away to combine a bunch of different feeds into a blogroll on a page. I’m sure there’s much more ahead.

Ironically the first call I got this morning was from a freshman English teacher who wanted to know how he could set up an e-mail list to send out homework assignments to parents…he’s been getting a lot of requests. I suggested he create a Web log and add the addresses to the notification list. That way he not only gets it online for reference and archiving, he also automatically notifies parents. Do I have to relate his reaction? Now the question is, do I broach RSS?

The possibilities here are almost limitless. If every teacher had an aggregator set up, he or she could be getting the relevant links from the tecHCentral site I’m building. And as we grow the Web log as Website, there would be more and more feeds to subscribe to. And if parents got the hang of it… I know, I’ve already dreamed this dream too many times to count. I’m just so impatient for it to become reality…and it will.

One of the most difficult aspects of this to nail down with all of these student sites about to come online is the balance between ownership of content and the safety of anonymity. Right now, I’m finding it to be a very gray area. We want our students to be recognized for the work they do, yet federal and state laws along with district policies restrict how much information we can provide about those students and their work. In addition, all of this means extra steps for teachers who have to check to see if their students have filled out forms and checked the right box, etc. While we’re talking no more than 15 minutes of extra work to make sure everyone is in compliance, the “legal” aspect of doing so takes away some of the fun of all of this, at least for me. Too bad we have to worry about that stuff at all.

It hit home the other day when I had to check off the NJ state form for how much info I would allow Tess’s school to publish about her on it’s Web site. I said yes to picture and name but nothing else. And I wondered if that was the “right” choice. I know this is all more acute for me now because unlike when it was just me and my sites, now it’s about 10 teachers and 150 kids with more on the way, and I know where they’ll be coming if something happens. Sure would be nice just having to deal with whether or not kids are learning and writing and reading better.

Today was the first day back for teachers, and it was pleasantly crazy. It’s strange not to be prepping for kids, but I have to admit that I’m not missing the stress that I always felt with planning and getting ready. I know there will be more than a few teachers here not sleeping well tonight, hyperventilating in the morning, and feeling like a train wreck at 2:30. Ah, the good old days…

The best part was the run of requests I had to help set up Manila sites, not only for teachers but for students. I’m going to guess that we’ll be running over 125 sites when the dust settles next week, which is more than I can have hoped for. I even managed to take Bryan Bell‘s Harvard theme and Hunterdon Centralize it. (I hope he doesn’t mind…what’s protocol on theme stealing by the way???) I’ve been thinking about whether I want to try to create some others…I might. I’m torn between giving teachers and students SOME control over the look of their sites and keeping a consistent look to the Website as we build it. A work in progress…

So, at any rate, I’m really psyched that the year has finally started and that our evolution to a Web logged environment is getting underway. Talk about nerves…I’ve offered a scintillating vision of life with blogs…now I have to make it a reality. But there’s nothing better than living on the edge a bit, pushing past where you think you can go. As Al says, “it’s about the adventure…” I hope this turns out to be an excellent one, indeed.

I’m not sure yet that I’ll be attending NCTE in San Francisco in November, but more and more I’m hoping I can. Pat, the true Web log sensei, is doing his typical yeoman’s job of making the most of the opportunity, setting up Manila training with Erin Clerico and Bryan Bell (both the best in the business) and then an all-day NCTE workshop later in the week. For even intermediate Manila users like me, the training session would be worth the trip. And even more, it would be great to get the opportunity to once again spend some time with fellow edubloggers.

Pat also raises some good questions about the formality of these meet ups:

Such a connecting of edBloggers was first mentioned more than a year ago as the edBlogger 2003 convention idea. But it’s not a convention anymore. It’s just one gathering, this one in San Francisco, hopefully more in any number of places during the year….To return to an old theme, blogs are just digital paper. What writer wants to attend a paper convention? OK, OK, a few: folks that are interested in the qualities of a particular kind of paper – its resiliency, its pliability, its longevity, its manufacture, its shipping and storage and distribution systems, etc.

I also like how he gives a rationale for attending NCTE and other discipline specific conventions for blogging purposes:

It follows on the notion of blogs and websites as simple digital paper, and of computer technology as, among other things, an increasingly user-friendly form of communication for teaching and learning. The more invisible that technology is, the more powerful it is. This is, in fact, the beauty of weblogs and content management systems. So I think it’s a good idea to root communities of tech users, of bloggers in this instance, in various disciplines other than technology. Why convene at tech and ed events? Hell, let’s people the actual content areas and pedagogies. Besides, funding to attend traditional conventions is easier to come by than for “blogging” events. Bloggers, as users of digital paper, can and should comfortably show up at conventions of English teachers and teachers of writing, at art education conventions, at science and math and dance and physical education and remedial reading and auto mechanics teacher conventions. edBloggers can, should and will be represented in all teaching disciplines.

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(True story, though I’ve left some of the details out because I don’t want to jinx what could be an amazing ending…)Just before we were leaving to come home from Assateague yesterday my wife struck up a conversation with the mother of a boy who had been building sand castles with my kids. It was a beautiful beach day…hot sun, chilly surf, warm breeze, happy kids. Doesn’t get much better than that, until this happens:

I walk over and join the conversation, and we’re talking about I don’t know what when my wife asks “so what does your husband do?” The woman answers “Oh, he’s a reporter for the (insert major American daily newspaper here.)” I’m impressed, and immediately mention (since I have no pride) that I’m looking for reporters to mentor my Journalism 2 students in their Web logs this fall. After the requisite clarification of what a Web log is, she says “I’m sure he’d love to do that. C’mon I’ll introduce you.” We’re walking up the beach, and I’m pretty excited that I might be getting another “real” reporter to teach my kids some “real” journalism when she just kind of nonchalantly says “yeah, I’m pretty proud of him since he just won a Pulitzer Prize last year…” I can’t remember too much clearly after this point. I get introduced to her husband, (a very nice guy, by the way,) manage to (I think) not say anything too stupid as we chat, give him the overview of the mentorship deal, and he says sure, just let him know. And he gives me his e-mail address and I walk away stunned.

Now aside from the personal thrill of getting to meet a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, this is just another example of how Web logs can facilitate collaboration. I’ve done e-mail mentorships in the past, but this is an even easier, more profound way that renowned journalists or authors or scientists or others can really share space with students without physically being there. The possibilities continue to amaze me. As does my luck…

Didn’t get away much this summer what with the new job and everything else that always seems to be going on. So we’re escaping for a long 4-day weekend to Chincoteague Island. (Sorry, Pat…the Jersey shore just isn’t for me.) It’s going to be really weird starting the school year NOT in the classroom. After 20 years of navigating the mayhem that is opening day, it will be nice to just kind of sit back and watch. In fact, I’m coming in late the first day because I want to see Tess board the bus for the first time as she heads to first grade. My little girl…sniff. Anyway, will probably not be posting ’til sometime next week.
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The more I think about this Web log as Website concept, the more appealing it gets. I’ve been “drilling down” the idea more and more, and one thing I’ve noticed is that in some corner of my brain I am constantly asking whether the content all these ideas might generate is useful to the school community. That goes back to the knowledge management aspect of this…the ability to define and manage all the good stuff that we do. And it also goes back to the publishing piece of this and the concept of audience. I want the teachers and students and others who create content for the site to be driven by meeting the needs of the audience, whomever that may be.

But last night, I had what I would call an epiphany. Why should we limit the creation of content to just a school or local audience? Why shouldn’t our content be for a wider audience? I started thinking what if, say, the environmental group had it’s own Web log on the site. And what if, as a way of developing their own mastery of environmental issues, they decided to post an environmental tip of the day for students. Things they could do in their own lives to make the world a better place. Now, of course, this site will offer RSS feeds, which will allow ANYONE to subscribe. Hmmm…

How about this…once we get all these Manila sites up and running, we’re going to create an index page for feeds from our site. We’ll include a “Mom’s First Aggregator” description of what all the RSS stuff is. We’ll include a link to Bloglines and instructions of how to set all of it up. We’ll promote our feeds within the school community and to parents and local officials, etc. But we’ll also promote them elsewhere. I know I wrote about this before, but I’m loving the idea of blogumns written by student and staff and maybe parent blogumnists. Think of it! Here ya’ go! Digital paper! As much as you want! And audience! As much as you want! Real world stuff, not just school Website stuff. And isn’t that what constructivist teaching is all about?

It was bound to happen…some of my former students have turned into serious bloggers. I just want to say that no matter what they’re writing about, they’re writing, and this is a good thing. Very cool!