That’s the title of one of four, count ’em, four different presentations I’ll be giving at MACUL on Friday. (How I got talked into that I’ll never know!) When I originally submitted the idea, I saw it as a way to show how blogs in schools were evolving and branching out, and to have a conversation on the ways in which they would continue to mature. And while I still see that being a part of it, I’m feeling like the bigger, and in some ways, more important discussion is what we need to do to insure that blogs in schools even have a future. I don’t mean that in a defeatist sense as I obviously believe these tools need to play an important part in our teaching and practice. I mean it in the “what are the obstacles and how do we overcome them” sense. So I’d like to start the presentation early here by looking at the most widely articulated impediments to adoption of the tools and offering some very thin, discussion starting ideas about how we might respond to them. This assumes, of course, that you believe (as I do) that these tools can make significant contributions to our practice and to our (and our students’) learning, that they in fact do have the potential to fundamentally improve what we do in the classroom. And, it assumes that we all have access.

These are in no real order, though I’d be interested to hear what the top choices are.

Fear (for kids’ safety)–There has been so much blog angst of late regarding MySpace and blocking/filtering of other blog sites that we either have to start our own marketing campaign or change the name of the tool. (But some have been saying that for over a year.) The fact that not all blogs are the same and that we can keep our kids safe with a bit of common sense doesn’t seem to be resonating much in some parts, though on the flip side, I have been heartened to read of districts where blogs are being implemented widely albeit with homegrown tools that I’m not sure will scale to other districts (though that would be nice.) Some of this isn’t fear as much as it is a control issue, an easy excuse to reel people in and stifle creativity and imagination which can be threatening. Solution: Twofold, I think. As an edblogging community we need to keep pushing these discussions out into the open as I think half the problem is the discussions aren’t even being held. There have been a couple of reasoned responses of late that we need to keep highlighting and referencing. Second, we need to continue to press for safe, open source solutions that schools can run internally with a minimum of tech support (or that can be cheaply hosted.) There are some already out there, and some on the horizon, but they’re not coming quickly enough.

Fear (of change)–Barbara Ganley covers this far more articulately than I ever could:

…the fear of free-falling, of moving away from the known, of relinquishing control and of the impact on our time and the resulting pressure on how we train our teachers. It’s one thing to talk about subject-centered, collaborative-centered, connected learning (via blogs or not); it’s another thing altogether to make it truly a reality in classrooms employing blogs in ways many edubloggers write about, including me.

It’s a great post, full of connections and synthesis that is a poster child for the type of writing and thinking that blogging (connective writing) demands. On the K-12 level, I think this is even more acute. There are so many pressures in terms of curriculum and outcomes and test scores that to take a leap into the unknown with blogs is scary at best and nightmarish at worst. Especially if the tools demand not just an understanding of technology but a redefinition of good pedagogy. Social software, connective learning requires us to rethink our practice, not just our curriculum. Solution: We need to keep highlighting and celebrating the successes that teachers are having in terms of raising the quality of learning in their classrooms. The good news is that there are more and more teachers who are seeing this happen. The bad news is there still are not enough. I’m feeling very teased these days…

Time (or lack thereof)–This is obviously a huge issue, not only in terms of time to learn the technologies but also time to figure out how they impact practice. (Not to mention the time it takes to make these a part of your own learning system.) And it’s one that I’m not sure has an answer in the current construct of public schooling. Let’s face it, most teachers are not willing to sacrifice too much more of their personal time to learn new technologies, and in most cases, you can’t really blame them. I was an English teacher for 19 years…I should know. (How did I learn all this stuff anyway?) Solution: The only obvious answer is to infuse preservice programs with instruction on the potential and pedagogy of these tools. I mean seriously, how long are we going to be teaching teachers how to do PowerPoint presentations which are becoming more useless by the hour? As for current teachers, without a fundamental shift in how we perceive and fund education, this will remain an intractable roadblock for all but the most highly engaged and motivated.

Standardized Tests and Assessment–Similar to the fear of change, as more and more districts start tying teacher salaries to student test scores, and as long as current political winds keep blowing, there is going to be less and less motivation to move toward pedagogies that may be more relevant and effective in a connective classroom. I’ve not heard too many serious discussions taking place about bringing high-expectations performance assessment into the mix, even though now it’s becoming easier and easier to do so. This is quick becoming a world of performance, and we need to think about how we can best connect that to assessment. From Dewey to Wiggins, most “experts” agree that if knowledge doesn’t translate to skill in doing, it’s not really worth much. We’re not measuring much of that at all right now. Solution: Vote. And keep trumpeting the fact that there are alternatives to standardized assessment that are being implemented around the world.

Lack of Research–I’ve been grumbling about this one for a couple of years now, and I’m still amazed that there isn’t more out there, good or bad about how blogs and the like impact learning. Amazed. Yeah, there is some stuff here and there, but it’s not much to carry to your curriculum supervisor and plop on her desk. (I’ll be right back…let me do another search or two…wait!…some more here and there!) Solution: C’mon Laura…get crankin’. And for the rest of you teacher/researchers out there…we need more than a continual stream of generally positive stories of transformation (although that helps greatly.) We need some numbers crunched.

Lack of Support–This kind of ties into the fear of change angle in that it’s hard to try any of this without an adequate tech safety net, especially when the online tools are coming under fire. And with technology budgets being cut rather than supplemented, many schools are way behind right out of the blocks. The good news is the tools are cheap. The bad news is they still break from time to time, and if we’re going to invest our own time and our kids’ sweat into using them, we need to make sure we have help to keep them working. Solution: While there are many schools that can support their own hosting, there are going to have to be hosted solutions that are “safe,” from blogs to aggregators to photo sites, etc. All of those exist, but none have wide implementation as far as I can tell.

That’s a start, I think. What have I missed, misread, or misstated?

Tags: macul, blogs, future, control

One of the earliest edbloggers is Peter Ford who, with Adam Curry, started schoolblogs a long, long time ago, at least in blog years. Today, Peter has a great post about the state of the edblogosphere and the changes it’s undergoing:

Weblogs have had great impact so far because they have an inherent flexibility that allow teachers and students to explore, create and find solutions on their own terms. Software that imposes limits on teachers’ ability to teach will stifle creativity in the end. That for me, is where the present danger lies. Big corporations will start producing their blogsafe walled-gardens for schools to use. Districts and LEAs will love them, and pay handsomely for them but their very blogsafe and inflexible nature will drain them of their enabling power, adding just another demand on teachers in the classroom.

As we work our way through the current very legitimate concerns about blogging in the schoolplace, there’s no doubt there will be vendors that will try to capitalize on the current unsettled feelings that many districts are having. There are open source solutions that are would seem to satisfy most concerns, but I think that most districts don’t have the comfort level or the knowledge to effect them and that in the end, they’d rather pay to play.

Much of the power of blogs lies in the openness of blogs. Outside of school, they are a critical part in the open content movement that is expanding at a pretty amazing pace. That’s another whole issue that schools are going to have to get straight with, one that I myself grapple with to some extent. Freely sharing ideas and knowledge leads to more ideas and knowledge than not doing so. It’s not as neat and tidy as current solutions (textbooks), but it’s more valuable, if we know how to deal with it.

For connective learning to work, we have to be able to access and build networks around the knowledge that’s relevant. Teachers have to be able to create their own networks and model the learning process for their students. That’s what open blogging facilitates. Using blogs in closed environments may have some benefit, but as Peter says it won’t enable the true promise of tool.

Technorati Tags: blogging, connective_learning
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Since I’ve been more than apt to complain when journalists do the “blogs are online journals” story, let me compliment Cynthia Kopkowski from the Palm Beach Post who put together a pretty nice article whose headline actually refers to teacher bloggers as “saavy!” Wow!

Hey…that’s two articles in a row that actually paint Weblogs as learning tools…a trend?

And I’m open to a better estimate in terms of teachers blogging. 3,000 seems low and high at the same time. My guess is more are using them in some form, but I wonder if it’s close to how many are actually blogging for themselves on a regular basis.
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It’s good to have Anne back, isn’t it? Her presence on our panel yesterday was really great, and her list of things she’s learned from blogging has inspired me. Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

Weblogs are disruptive. I think that’s what I find most intruiging about this technology is the way in which it changes much of what it touches. Weblogs disrupt the notion that the best way to deliver curriculum (or publish the news, or run a campaign) is the same way we’ve been doing it for eons. It’s not.

Weblogs are personal. It doesn’t matter what I blog about, I leave a piece of my soul every time I blog because I’m always feeling the reader on the other side of the screen, imagined or not. I’m not just putting words out there; I’m putting a part of myself, and even though I’ve been doing it for four years now, each post still feels like a risk.

Blogging is thinking. I know I say that all the time, but if you’re not expending some brain cells when you blog, you’re not blogging.

Blogs take work. They need to be nurtured. They demand attention. It really is like planting a seed and then consistently tending to its growth.

Blogs are not for everyone. Although I wish everyone had a blog, I can understand why many choose not to.

Blogs are as flexible as your imagination. I’m still amazed by the different ways teachers are employing this technology in classrooms, and I still don’t think we’ve even begun to realize the potential.

Blogs are a risk, but not as much of a risk as some would suggest. Common sense tells us to protect our students and to teach them appropriate use, and by and large, most kids play by the rules.

Kids love comments. I know Anne said this as well, but it’s so true. And they also think they know what this blog thing is about, which they really don’t from an instructional sense. And therefore

Teaching blogs to students takes a plan. What do you want to achieve? What can you do with a blog that you can’t do some other way? Effective use of Weblogs in the classroom comes when teachers have planned well.

Blogs empower students and move control away from teachers. It’s something that at first takes a while to get used to, but to not see blogs as expansive is to limit their potential.

Parents like blogs, the ones that take an interest, at least.

I’ve learned more about teaching, about communicating, about the world, about technology, about community from blogging than anything else I’ve done.

The good news is there is plenty left to learn…
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If I wasn’t at iLaw last week, I would have sure liked to have been at Gnomedex. The big news, of course, was Microsoft’s announcement that RSS was going to be integrated into the next version of IE. (Wonder what Firefox will have by then.)

But the even bigger news was that there was a presentation on “Blogs in the Classroom” as well! Kathy Gill at the University of Washington gave it, and she gave some surprising stats about the blog knowledge of her incoming students: 89% had sipped the blog juice in one form or another, but only 7% had even heard of Flickr. Sheesh.

BTW, some great Gnomedex notes at Blogaholics.
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Back to iLaw: Yochai Benkler did a presentation on “The Internet and Political Values” yesterday that was, for the most part, way over my head, but the parts that I did get were pretty enlightening. One thing that really stuck was his deconstruction of the Long Tail, where it appears that there are a few blogs that get lots of readers and many, many blogs that get just a few. In the larger view, this is true, but what’s significant is when you break it down into clusters of blogs by interest. Benkler showed that within interest groups, the distribution is pretty standard: some blogs have a lot of readers, most blogs have a fair number (in relative terms) and some have very few. His point, I think, was that as the blogosphere grows larger, there will still be great opportunity for new bloggers to become significant contributors within their interest groups. Think of it as a lot of mini blogospheres, similar to our growing K-12 edublogger sphere. There have been so many great new voices added to our mix over the past six months or so, and that only promises to continue.

The other thing he talked about which I found interesting was how quickly the blogosphere can organize to take political action. He used the Sinclair Broadcasting Group story from last year as an example. Within a week after announcing they would run a controversial program about John Kerry, bloggers brought about movement against local advertisers of Sinclair that eventually caused the company’s stock price to go down and to them pulling the program. It was a pretty powerful case study.

Unfortunately, I can’t stay the full day today. My brain is spinning once again, not quite as buzzed as after last year, but buzzed nonetheless. It’s hard to capture it in one general thought or idea, but if I had to, I’d say the message here is that the huge waves of change caused by the Read/Write Web are just growing larger, that “the law” does not fully understand the implications of these changes, yet, and that it’s going to be a very interesting (and messy) decade ahead. Sounds right for education as well.
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THE Journal this month has an article I wrote about my Secret Life of Bees blog if anyone might be interested. It seems hard to believe that it’s been almost three years now since that project. Time flies…
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Over at ETI, Tom is writing about the future of blogging in preparation for our NECC panel in a couple of weeks. I’m cross posting this back over there in response.

My take on the future of blogging differs from Tom’s in some respects. Specifically, I don’t agree that the practice of reading and writing in blogs will remain unchanged in 10 years. If fact, I would doubt that blogs in their current iteration will be around in 10 years. To compare blogs to e-mail is, I think, to say that, like e-mail, blogging has only one fairly restrictive use. I don’t think that’s the case. In fact, Tom points out correctly that blogs have already evolved from basic link lists with little annotation to a more complex form of exposition, which is, ironically, a change he’s been fighting against and I’ve been fighting for.

I think that evolution will continue as more and more communication goes online in more and more transparent ways. In fact, I would argue that in 10 years, especially in educational circles, exposition will be taught in what is currently blog form. I sincerely doubt that our current process of exchanging paper will still be around. I also believe that the social, collaborative aspects of blogging will also be subsumed into the writing process we teach. It will move writing as product to writing as conversation or contribution. Because of blogging, writing will take on more meaningful outcomes.

This type of blog work will become part of a much more complex and diverse learning environment which combines blog, e-portfolio, community and more. I think Elgg comes close to that vision, though I wonder what level of autonomy over these spaces students will be afforded. (That’ll take a few more decades…) And in similar ways, individual blogging will cede to more community aggregated forms. (RSS is already beginning to render individual Websites fairly meaningless.) Again, the emphasis will continue to move toward dialogue and conversation and away from monologue.

So, once again, to me this comes down to a distinction between form and function. To me, the form will not be sustainable, but the function, the blogging will become an integral part of what we do.

Konrad Glogowski has a post up titled “Grading Conversations” where he writes:

I think that student bloggers should be recognized for writing as part of a larger community of inquirers. Some of my most successful writers are those who are aware of what their friends are writing about and who participate in conversations with other bloggers in their class. This is an important part of knowledge- and community-building, especially when (as in my class) students investigate and write about related ideas. When the whole class is engaged in investigating human rights, for example, the interactions that occur among bloggers can have a strong impact on individual writers and the communal sense of knowledge-building. Students quickly become aware that they are all co-constructing knowledge and begin to spend a lot of time commenting on other blogs and other entries. When I mark their contributions, a part of their grade is given for showing that they are an integral part of the blogosphere and not just an isolated writer.

I just think that is so good, and so different from the ways in which most teachers approach assessment. I mean many of us give grades for something called “class participation,” but that is much, much different from “knowledge construction participation.” We’re saying to our students that while it’s important for them to share their ideas with the rest of us, it’s equally (if not more) important to be willing to contribute and test those ideas in the context of the class community. That they need to stop giving “answers” (which suggest the discussion is over) and start contributing insights and experiences and questions (which suggests the discussion continues.)

We need to stop thinking in terms of assessing answers and start thinking about how we assess the contributions our students make to the conversations about learning that are happening in our classrooms. It’s not going to be an easy shift, because it’s much less concrete compared to what the system now calls for. But it’s great to see that teachers are starting to move in that direction, and that they’re willing to enter the conversation for themselves.

(via Clancy Ratliff) Interesting couple of threads running through the higher ed universe regarding how students should refer to themselves in their class blogs. It’s not so much a safety issue at that level as it is a student being linked to work that is less than excellent issue. Like what happens when someone does a search on them before a job interview and the freshman comp essay full of misspellings and grammar errors pops up. Jill Walker says

If a student has to publish under her full name during her learning experience, and makes mistakes, they’ll show up for every future employer or lover who googles her name. That doesn’t seem like a safe environment for learning.

What a concept, huh? But it’s true. I know that whenever I come across a new source these days I find myself Googling the name to see what comes up. Or what doesn’t. (I would hate to be dating these days…)

I don’t have any problem with giving students at the college level a choice of how to represent themselves in their blogs. As Jill says, some are more comfortable than others with their online lives and won’t even think twice.

That’s why I’ve recommended to my blogging students this semester that they use pseudonyms unless they’re quite comfortable about claiming their identity online. Many of them do. As they become more secure in the environment, and especially once they understand, really understand, that anyone can read it now and in the future, then real names are just fine and a good part of establishing a durable online identity that you’d be happy for anyone to see.

Certainly, however, owning your ideas whether they are text or video or whatever raises the stakes, in a good way, I think. There’s no question that the bloggers I read think hard about what they write and about whether it’s correct or not. I find it hard to get to good ideas that are delivered poorly…must be the English teacher in me. But I find it equally as difficult to get to good ideas given anonymously. In fact I’m at a point now where I don’t subscribe to any anonymous feeds.

But on the high school level, there is no choice. I’ve mentioned that we only let our kids use first names, pseudonyms if they prefer, and that they refrain from even mentioning other students by full name. They’ll have plenty of time after high school to lay claim to their public body of work. But I struggle with this nonetheless. We want students to take ownership, we want them to be a part of the larger conversation, yet how much ownership can they take when they write anonymously? And when they know that the site will be “depublished” at the end of the year? While it doesn’t totally take away the value of the blog, it certainly diminishes it.

Not sure what the answer is…

(via Stephen Downes) Mercy. I think we’re getting somewhere. Here is a list of almost 200 blogging in education related articles as listed at Kairosnews. I think I’ve only read about a quarter of what’s there (a fact I’ll probably not divulge to my wife and kids.) As Stephen says, it’s hard to believe the scope of the writing on the subject.

Go, Blogs! Go!
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(via Bryan Alexander) The Village Voice offers a pretty interesting piece on blogging in academia, including quotes from my hero.

“I’ve published a bunch of articles in law reviews, and I think I’ve gotten maybe a total of 10 letters about them in the history of my career as an academic,” he says. “I publish stuff on the blog, I get literally hundreds of e-mails about things all the time.”

It’s a wonderful thing.

But here is the blogging (the verb) quote, from six-year (!) blogger Josh Kortbein:

I write my blog because I wish that things were different, and I’m thinking about how to make them that way.

That feels right from where I sit, too. Blogs as platform. That’s what blogging is…

Bud Hunt gets it right when in mentioning our recent blogging vs. journaling discussion he writes:

But I wonder how many students are actually participating in this conversation. Are adults once again making decisions for students without their input? Wouldn’t it be terrible if the decisions about blog use in classrooms were all made for students, instead of with them?

So what does he do about it? He asks his students. And they answer, here, here, and here (among others.)

But I also found their reactions to Bud’s class blogging “experiment” to be equally interesting. Here are some excerpts.
From David the Student:

man blogs can be useful to our school because it is out there letting us be big and connected to the world. yes there will be problems but only user problems and it is worth every bit of effort.

From Moe the Student

Blogging to me, is a place where you can post your ideas, and your thoughts on certain subjects. You can show the world what you are interested in, and link to certain sites, or other blogs related to your interest. Then the really awesome part comes along…people may comment, and help make your thought process easier. They may comment and tell you, “well, here is really great site,” and you will learn more, through the help of other people.

From Elle the Student:

I’m so freakin’ curious about this, y’know? And now I’m aware that people are out there listening/reading what I actually have to say. This class definitely makes me feel like I’m a part of something bigger than just a classroom.

And, from Mike the Student:

If this post and the comments on Bud’s blog are any indications, then the educational blogsphere may soon have all of it’s eyes turned on us. It may be up to us, the students, to decide the place of blogs in the schools.

I feel like I’m part of something.

Good stuff, and it’s very cool to read the way kids are thinking about the technology. Kudos to Bud for getting them started.

So Barbara has anotheranother great post up, writing about how her students are changing in their expectations and needs from their time in college. They are pushing against the traditional structures, asking to mix the classroom experience with online community and off campus travel, capturing all of it in their Weblogs with the voices of teachers and mentors and loved ones mixed in. I love that image…seriously love it…the reflective, interactive chronicling of learning. The getting it down, capturing the experience if for no other reason than to acknowledge it, and to help it take root. That is one of the reasons I maintain this space, to make the learning stick in my brain by articulating it in writing. It’s one thing to nod your head as you read or listen, but it’s another entirely to write it, especially for an audience.

My natural inclination is to try to envision that happening with they younger kids in my world. The kids like Barbara’s 15-year old daughter who has “propelled herself through her high school curriculum so fast…because it has been excruciatingly mind-numbing.” I’m not sure high school kids could ever have enough license to explore the meaning of their learning in the ways Barbara’s students do. But I wonder if the making of meaning that blogging their education might require would transform the experience for them, and, in the process, give educators a heck of a lot more insight as to what our students are learning. Help us make it less mind-numbing.

Barbara’s students want more:

They want what goes on in the classroom to have some bearing on their lives as well as enabling them to develop skills of critical inquiry.

What a concept. I would bet that high school students want that same thing. The question is how long will it take us to see the growing irrelevance of the traditional system of education and seriously rethink what we do in the classroom to make learning more meaningful to our students. Right now, it’s feeling like this mountain is pretty darn high…

From Anne:

My vision for classroom blogging is simple. Use it as a tool in the classroom to ensure that the students and the teacher are talking, reading, and writing frequently about how and what they are learning and thinking. Get them to explore their thinking and the teacher can do the same. Get them to interact with others through comments. Encourage others outside the classroom to join in on the conversations. Value the students’ ideas by making them feel safe to share real thoughts and feelings so discussions can be meaningful. The teacher sets parameters to lead students toward building a community of learners who respect and encourage each other. They can learn to disagree agreeably. They can develop a good standard for learning on the web. They will be writing about the content they are learning. They will be thinking about it. Best of all, they will be writing about it. Writing to learn!

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Bud Gibson at Michigan State pointed me to his analysis of Weblog use in his classes last fall and it has some interesting insights into the dynamics of a blog classroom. What I like is that he shares the struggles and the solutions out in the open so we can all learn from his experience. Here’s a snippet:

By design, blogging allows individuals to raise topics of interest and create threads of conversation without having to ask anyone’s permission. That was an explicit design consideration for this course; I wanted to know what was going on with students…

Second, because blogging also produces XML-based feeds, it is very easy to aggregate all of the individual contributions in one place while still maintaining individual attribution.

Third, the XML-based feeds in blogs allow me to join people and resources to my group vs. having to get them to join me. Note, I did ask permission of everyone whose feed I aggregated into our site, but they did not have to go through a sign-on process and explicitly produce content for the site. By localizing content creation, blogs make it possible to ask permission and get a coherent stream of content.

Bud says that an analysis of student surveys about the class is upcoming.

So I took a much needed day away from the computer yesterday to go skiing with the family…it was seriously a perfect 10. (Right now, the slopes are getting another 9 inches of powder. Sheesh.)

Anyway, this morning I was greeted with a whole bunch of great thinking about the Read/Write Web in the classroom. And the good news is that this is becoming the rule rather than the exception. The bad news is that it’s a lot to capture, and it’s getting harder and harder to do justice to it all. (Especially if I want to go skiing with the kids from time to time…)

Here are some snippets and some pointers.

Aaron Campbell—

The possibility that personal webpublishing might encourage a move toward autonomy is real. Just as Fromm argued that the social structure determines which aspects of the social character are dominant, perhaps likewise the semantic social network as learning environment might play a role helping learners become more autonomous in the way described above. If institutions of learning founded their pedagogy and practice on learning methods that allowed the learner to develop this kind of autonomy en route to cooperative knowledge creation and the development of useful skills, we could indeed achieve at least a partial degree of sanity and peace in this world.

Tom Hoffman—

But, more significantly, I haven’t heard a peep from anyone about creating a blogging system specifically for schools. That isn’t too surprising either, because it also seems inherently unprofitable, especially with school budgets being stretched ever more tightly. We’ll see if blogging starts popping up as a feature in other school-based applications at NECC, but it is looking unlikely to me. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be much demand for much demand for school-specific blogging tools, even among school-based bloggers. Perhaps I should point out why I think they would be important.

Jeff Moore—

And we all know the dirty secret. When you control for everything, socio-economics is all that kids need. Traditional teaching and measurement, and traditional “rigorous” curricula, are only relevant to certain socio-economic groups. They are only understood to be part of the formula for success by students who come to school ready to learn. They will never deliver on the promise to be a ticket out of disadvantaged communities, because they will never be relevant to a student who experiences more strife on the way to school than the high-socio-economic kid experiences in his/her entire life.

Educating the Net Generation (Educause e-book)

The Net Generation has grown up with information technology. The aptitudes, attitudes, expectations, and learning styles of Net Gen students reflect the environment in which they were raised—one that is decidedly different from that which existed when faculty and administrators were growing up.

This collection explores the Net Gen and the implications for institutions in areas such as teaching, service, learning space design, faculty development, and curriculum. Contributions by educators and students are included.

David Warlick—

What our students understand (and that we, as teachers, seem blind to) is that the very nature of information has changed. It’s changed in what it looks like, what we look at to view it, where we find it, what we can do with it, and how we communicate it. We live in a brand new, and dynamically rich information environment, and if we are going to reach our students in a way that is relevant to their world and their future (and ours), then we must teach them from this new information environment.

I’m awed and overwhelmed. Very cool.
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That will happen in 2007 according to predictions by Teemu Arina over at the new Flosse Posse Weblog dedicated to open source technologies in education.

2007–Educators discover one-click publishing

In contrary to large and rigid content management systems, educators and students have noticed easy personal publishing on a wide scale. One weblog related to education is created every second according to statistics provided by Technorati. Google has launched a specially branded service called EduBlogger™ based on their popular Blogger™ service.

Teemu spun this prediction and many others out of an interview with Alan Levine that is definitely worth putting on your iPod.
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James Farmer has an interesting post about how students might use blogs to manage their learning. Here’s a snippet:

However, if that learner has their own blog ‘outside’ of the central, managed environment then things can start to look a bit different. Let’s say that in this case they are studying four units and they can simply create categories for each one (so postings relevant to that unit can go there and to their main blog if appropriate), that that category is then aggregated into the ‘central’ area (where unit guides, copyrighted study materials, core materials etc. can also be found) and that this blog also serves as a portfolio cum social tool for the student in question (as each learner has also been furnished with their own aggregator). The student in question owns the content, they are able to develop their blog as they choose and do with their content as they please, they are able to develop an online presence over an extended period of time and become parts of communities through their blog (communities that will form as naturally as communities form in f2f college) and they are able to subvert the technology in many wonderful ways (podcasting, photoblogging, vogging etc. etc.). It’s also their responsibility… and that is a great teacher in itself.

I’ve always thought that the most efficient model for using blogs in schools would be the one that collects student work from all courses and then feeds it out by categories to teacher aggregators. That way students build an online archive and ultimately, perhaps, portfolio of work throughout their schooling. Teachers simply subscribe to the relevant content from each student blog and comment back as necessary.

What James reminds me, however, is the importance of making the site truly one’s own by allowing students to develop the look of their sites and add personal experiences and artifacts as they see fit. Really, the blog should be something not only outside of the cms, it should be outside of school altogether. I mean how many of the 8 million + bloggers out there blog because their schools are asking them to? This is my blog, but this is a place where I think and learn a heckuva lot, and I’m not doing it for school. And so it should be.

We should encourage students to have online learning environments from which we as teachers can pull the relevant bits. That way we’ll be creating lifelong learning spaces, just like real bloggers do.

(via George
Siemens) Now I know I’m kinda strange, but the premise of this
article from Educause seriously gives me chills:

What
do we wish for? That every citizen, at birth,
will be granted acradle-to-grave, lifetime personal Web space that will
enable connections among personal, educational, social, and business
systems.

Ok, now I know that’s a lot to wrap your
brain around, especially on a Friday afternoon. But if you are at all
interested in the potential of the read/write Web and what it might
evolve into, I think this is must reading. The paradigm shift is
staggering, and the pedagogical foundation its build on is still pretty
rickety, but think about some of this, for starters:

The
LPWS will store
searchable content (personal, educational,social, business) that was
important in a user’s past and make it accessible for future use, as
well as current projects. Since technology changes over time, the older
sections of the Web space (for example, K–12 grade content) might be
technologically less sophisticated, but would connect nonetheless to
newer additions (such as postgraduate work activities).The primary user
would decide whether
a cell is private or public (potentially functioning as an e-portfolio
or Web site) and who will
be permitted to enter various parts of the structure. Some cells may
be off-limits (even invisible) to all but the primary user. Moreover,
the user will decide which cells connect to others and which do not. As
the user matures, an analysis of the types and numbers of connections
might assist in setting goals and strategies for subsequent personal
and professional development.

Um, whoa. I seriously want one of these. And the benefits:

Few students maintain ready access to both the content and products
from their K–12 years. College students typically sell their books and
lose access to their collegiate course management Web sites. While an
e-portfolio provides ready access to selected work products, intent and
effort are required to transport content between separate, often
incompatible systems. The LPWS construct will enable users to preserve
more knowledge over time and to forge richer connections between their
academic and work endeavors.

Read the scenario that’s included. In fact, read the whole thing. What
a concept.I think the reason this idea connects so strongly for me is
because of what I’ve been mentioning recently about this being a
learning log, and probably the most educational experience of my life.
It’s really wild when I think about it. For me, blogging just clicked;
maybe I had the gene, or maybe it was because I always wanted to write,
or that I’m an info junkie or a hundred other reasons. But I have
sampled the Kool-Aid, and I really do believe. In some really strange
way (remember, I am sorta out there…) it’s like my recorded life
began three years ago, and I really wish I had a more historical
archive. Should have started earlier.

Anyway, this is what the
read/write Web makes possible for us and for our students. We just have
to grab it.

Nancy Peckham at New Mexico State is doing action research on Weblog use in the classroom. She wants to know:

Can the use of BLOGS (Web logs) as the journal writing instrument in the classroom and/or for Action Research promote writing skills, individual voice, understanding of technology, and collaboration between students and teachers?

If you get a chance, you might want to take her survey.

—–

Barbara and Anne are making me whistful about getting back in the classroom. (I spent about 30 minutes with a class yesterday getting them setup with Weblogs and I just didn’t want it to end…I’m definitely teaching at least one class next year no matter what.) I just love reading about what they’re experiencing with their students and this technology.

Barbara is reflecting on four years of using Weblogs with her students at Middlebury. That’s like 25 in blog years; in fact, she’s probably got just about as much practical experience with all of this as anyone out there. And it shows. This is just a great post that illustrates the power and flexibility of Weblogs, and it really inspires me to keep looking for more ways to integrate them at my school.

Watching these students take what they have learned in a single semester and apply it to their lives provides me with valuable feedback on why we should integrate technology into our classrooms carefully, thoughtfully, and meaningfully. If we show our students how these tools might work in their efforts to communicate their experiences, to connect with communities and to engage in complex intellectual and artistic endeavors, we can step back, out of the way, and watch them take over their education.

It’s that “complex intellectual endeavor” that I find most interesting, because that is what leads to real learning. I’ve been bemoaning the relative lack of complexity of Weblog uses in K-12, and I swear I get butterflies when I think about how cool it would be to get high school students (or younger) doing the kind of complex work that Barbara’s students are doing. And, like Barbara, we need to model that work for our kids. There is energy in this moment, and we really need to find more ways to take advantage of it.

Blogging has to be integrated into the course pedagogy…it is a new means of expression that must be used accordingly with the course goals in mind. In other words, what does linking and commenting and writing evolving, multi-media hypertexts in this virtual space do to the course goals, methods and structures?

Yeah…it is a new means of expression, more than a writing tool. And they are complex texts that can be in constant production, evolving over a long period of time. And that whole aspect of multi-media is something that she and Hector Vila are really getting me interested in.

Anne, meanwhile, is off on another most excellent blogging adventure with her kids. She’s embarking on a WebQuest with her Blooming Bloogers using Bloom’s Taxonomy (get it?)

Starting today, you are going to take charge of your learning. You will tell the story of what you are learning and what it means to you. You will decide what is worth knowing, You will satisfy your own burning curiosity. You will ask good questions about what you are learning. You will use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help you get to some really good thinking. Plan to knock your audience’s socks off! You are about to embark on an exciting journey. Stand-by! You are about to enter the wonderful world of weblogging!!!

It looks like a great project that is bound to break some more ground for us all. If you get a chance, let Anne know what you think as she’s looking for feedback.

I still love to read about the emerging influence of bloggers in the political sphere. (Wonder when that will happen in the education world…) An article titled “Bloggers Become Weapon in US Presidential Election” from Agence France-Presse says that bloggers

have become a vital source of information and commentary, and an alternative to traditional newspapers and television.

And yesterday as I was listening to a discussion on NPR about how most people don’t really tune into the news any more, the host mentioned blogs as a viable alternative that the younger generation might make good use of. (By the way, did you know that the median age of people watching network news is 60!!! Wow.)

But the one quote I liked best from the article was from Howard Finberg at the Poynter Institute, who said bloggers “…are, in a sense, an editor on your behalf.” I absolutely love that metaphor; blogger as editor. And that’s why I think every student should have a blog and be blogging. Because they all need to be editors, every single one of them. Because there is soooo much information out there and because most schools aren’t doing much to teach them how to be smart consumers of that information. (Only a fairly small percentage take the media literacy course we started here.) I’ll say this again, they may not end up being bloggers, but they need to end up thinking like bloggers regardless.

This post is primarily for the attendees at the blogging session yesterday at the New England Library Association conference in beautiful downtown Manchester, NH. The link to the presentation is here, but beware it may take some time to load (1.9 mb). And, please refer to the RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators that I mentioned for more on how to use RSS in your libraries and classrooms.

As I was driving back home last night I realized that I may have skipped over one important part in our RSS discussion that you really need to know, and that’s locating the feeds themselves. On some blogs, you can find a link that says “Syndicate this site.” or something similar. But in most cases, just look for the XML button (shown here.)

Just click on the button, take the URL from the page of gobbledygook that appears, post it into your aggregator, and start collecting news.

Thanks for all of your enthusiasm and great questions, and please let me know if I can help in your Weblogging adventures.