Our school has been running a 4 x 4 block schedule for about six years now with pretty good success. One downside, however, is the relative inflexibility of the schedule. So, we’re starting a process to look at some alternatives. There is another high school in our area (about 30 miles away) that’s interested in taking a look at this with us, and yesterday my principal broached the idea of using a Web log to communicate. Could be another opportunity to see how they facilitate collaboration and communication.
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We’ve kicked it around before, and now Pat is giving it another boot with some help from Seb. I like the idea of getting together the “early adopters” for some face to face kicking around of ideas with some fun on the side. Seb’s mentioned Vienna in March, Karen is offering up W. Va. in July (ugh) and I’m getting the shove to see about a summer confab on the Barnegat. (Camping anyone?) I will say this, at least for me, the timing feels right. I’m just getting this sense that things are starting to break here and there (i.e. a WSJ mention, T&L interviews, presentations here and there, workshops…). By next summer, we might have a real movement afoot.

Still finding it hard to believe that a.) so few people know about this stuff, b.) even fewer people are doing it. I’m no rocket scientist, believe me. And, once again, I know I have some priveleges and support that others don’t have. But I can’t believe how far I’ve come in just a few months with Manila. I just feel like more and more people are going to start seeing the potential. (And Pat’s pr efforts can’t hurt!)

So…any well off souls out there willing to fund a few days on the Jersey shore for some idea tossing by a bunch of inspired edu-bloggers (I hate that term) looking to push their thinking and figure out some ways to take a great idea and bring it mainstream?
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I’ll compile this into a more salient post at some point, but here is some feedback from my journalism kids regarding the use of Web logs in the class.

Karen is struggling a bit with her Web log use with her students, finding it more difficult to keep up the process when meeting with kids each day…

Quote: “I’m feeling almost like a edu-blog failure lately. I know that I’m not capitalizing as much as possible on my class blogs but find that using a blog with a face to face class is much different from using a blog with a class that meets electronically. My earlier intentions to write weekly reviews has fallen apart (at least three or four weeks ago) and what bothers me the most about this is that I’m missing an opportunity to make a visible, historical record of our experiences.” And later…”What I do mean to suggest is that communicating in person is fleeting, temporary, able to evaporate into the atmosphere with nothing more than a memory and if students don’t hear what I think I’m saying, or if I don’t say what I think I’m saying, or if I just don’t say it….there’s no record of what has passed between us. If, however, I say those things on the blog, students can revisit them for clarification, every student has access to the same information, and nobody has to rely upon their memories to conjure up what transpired between us.”

I too am finding that Web log use has varying degrees of effectiveness from class to class. I’ve been able to do it pretty well in Journalism , primarily because I teach it in a computer lab and I can teach WITH the site. And I can’t count how many times I have referred my students back to the Web log when they have questions about homework or handouts or whatever. While I don’t use it to save notes (although I have had the thought to have kids post daily summaries of class discussions as a record of what occurred…), it still serves as a teaching record. And the more interactive I can make it the better, obviously.

But I’ve aborted efforts to keep up a daily Web log in my media and literature classes which are taught in regular classrooms because it’s not as easy to interact with it. It seems like on a college level when you meet once or twice a week it would be a great way to keep communicating and thinking and teaching. When I see them every day, it’s a bit different. Still, I’m thinking of ways to use them as k-logs in Media (having groups keep Web logs to find and sort information on a particular topic) and as conversation extenders in my literature classes (reader response, etc.)

I’m not sure how much use my Journalism class homepage gets after class. (Actually, I just checked, and it got 50 hits since yesterday’s class…) Unless I conciously plan for students to use it outside of our time together, it pretty much just serves as a resource, which isn’t a bad thing…I guess I’m just wondering how to make that resource even more of a teaching tool…

Pat says: “It feels good to know that Joe is pissed. Good! And it feels great to get rip-roaring livid at this description in Will’s recent Disney-gram…”

That Disney post was dually motivated by a sincere interest in figuring out how best to use my riches and to get some type of de facto pardon for having those riches in the first place. You don’t think I knew that list would get people pissed? The discussion about class differences in education is much needed, so I thought I might as well make my edge of the canvas clear. Not meant to rub people’s noses in it by any stretch.

Pat again: “Will wonders about ‘the responsibilities that come with privilege.’ OK, response from urbEd to sub-urbEd: First off, watch the language. “Small victories?” Urban ed victories aren’t small.”

Noted, with apologies. Lately I’ve been more tuned into Joe‘s struggles than Pat’s successes. And Pat has had many, many successes made all the more impressive by the limitations he works under.

“Second, keep naming the disparity and share the wealth. Reference the privilege often. Hook up with organizations (few though they may be) that actually try to bridge the distance between suburban and urban teachers. Hell, take a sick day and go visit a school in New Brunswick or Newark. An interesting aspect of privilege is its proximity to despair. Afterall, Jersey is Jersey.”

Well advised, and as I get clearer on what I’m doing and what I can do, that’s on the schedule. Have made offers of server space to Terry and Joe, and will continue to do so.
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Something in Bill McCoy’s post has been flipping in my brain the last couple of days, the part about overcoming the cultural issues of Web log use. “…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…” And Seb really nails it when he says: “…we necessarily are confronted with people who simply do not have any interest in sharing information on their activities, who don’t want to engage in a conversation with the students, their parents, and the wider community.”

I think this is my biggest fear, and would be my biggest challenge given the task of implementation on a wide scale. I can make the case for Web logs as portfolio, as knowledge management tool, as classroom portal, as any number of other things. I know they can work in these capacities given the person creating and using them commits the time and energy to use them well. It takes more time to write it all down, to find relevant links, to set up the sites. Using Ken’s rule, I can guess that about 1/3 of our teachers will adopt, and another 1/3 may come along grudgingly. The other 1/3 won’t. Yet underlying all this is what Bill refers to as a cultural shift in how we teach. We have to believe in the benefits of the technology, see the ways it can improve our teaching, implement it in creative, personal ways that motivate not only our students but ourselves.

Seb takes the point a notch further when he says:

“But I even argue that also learners need to build up “enthusiasm, altruism, optimism” to be comfortable to share an externalized record of their learning process with others. We live in a culture that mainly focuses on the measurable (…often short term) results of one’s learning efforts. The struggle, the mistakes, the detours, and breakdowns are usually kept private. So, while it is really important to talk about issues of tools, access, and hosting… we should not forget to think and converse about the conceptual shift that is required to support human learning efforts with these new technologies.”

Conceptual shift, culture change, call it what you will, I think this is the major issue.

A few weeks ago an old friend asked what I was doing to assess the effects of my use of Web logs on my student’s learning. I basically told her that right now, I’m in the “Do No Harm” stage, that what I am really interested at this point is CAN this work. I think I’m at the point where I believe it can. The much bigger challenge lies ahead, and I’m happy to see that conversation seems to have begun in earnest.
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“Our article examines how Weblogs offer a way to initially cloister, organize, assess and criticize, and then re-distribute knowledge and information for the purpose of convening a community that will then function to amass knowledge, each member sharing, collaborating, redistributing and redefining themselves in the act of knowledge production. Members of weblog communities enter into apprenticeships with one another that constantly enhance intelligence in knowledge spaces because the guiding principle is that we don’t know everything so we are looking to “the other” to complete us, and therefore complete the community.”

Wish I’d said that! Congratulations to Sarah, Hector and Barbara…let’s ride that wave…
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Pat continues his most excellent discussion on access issues…it’s obvious he’s been doing a lot of thinking and testing. Isn’t it great that we all can so easily share in his knowledge and experience? Very cool.

Which leads to this comment from Will: That is one kind of cumbersome aspect of reading kids’ Web logs that I am finding…having to go into each one separately to leave feedback. I’m just so time stressed right now that any shortcut would help. Again, writing classroom analogy: This is a problem with hard copy as well. Advantage with blogs is pushing kids toward response to each others’ writing; enlistment of trusted outside adults with Net access as response partners; and creative use of non-Blackboard, inexpensive work arounds. E.g.: We’re getting all our kids set up with Gaggle e-mail accounts. Why not have what you want to read sent to you as an e-mail that directs you to the blog page where the final copy is located? Or give kids access to a newsBlog that asks for teacher response with the posting of newsItem headlines that link to pages ready for response. Whatever you do, don’t respond to every posting. You deserve a life.

Great ideas. A life? I remember that!
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There’s a really great discussion about student access issues going on at Pat and Seb’s sites…I wish I had more time to chime in. One of the kind of nervy parts about back to school night last week was when a couple of parents ask how we prevent knuckleheads from the outside from getting into kids Web logs and causing havoc. I didn’t have a great answer…I know that the easiest solution is to just sign up all the requisite members then close membership for the site and just let kids admit members by taking requests. At least that way their writing and their sites are still there for people to see. (Someone correct my thinking here if it’s faulty.)

Pat says “the simplest solution for mlk student blogging seems to be letting large numbers of students share Contributing Editor status on one blog.” I’m still trying to picture this…would each kid create a personal story page? And then just edit it as they go along?

Such aggregation of student pages gives tremendous “access control” to the ME, right? And to as many MEs as a teacher wants to add. Just have any page notices sent to whoever needs to be notified. But wait. Filter it even more. We have an Esoteric Setting plugin on the BAWP sites, letting us make a site “members only” or “open to the public” with the click of a button. Add to that the not-hacker-proof-but-useful turning off of public access membership and to various content (stories, pics, gems, etc.) in Editorial Preferences, and an ME can significantly limit public access to student work within a publicly accessible site. Throw in a strictly enforced appropriate use policy and we’re close to COPPA and CIPA compliant. That is one kind of cumbersome aspect of reading kids’ Web logs that I am finding…having to go into each one separately to leave feedback. I’m just so time stressed right now that any shortcut would help. And I’m still going to have to learn template creation so I can build some of those settings in like Pat suggests.

At any rate, this is the best part, this figuring it out stuff. Nothing like going through it to see how it works and clarify your thinking. And Manila has so many layers to explore. Which is a good thing…keeps me interested.

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Have been noticing lately that the NY Times and others’ approved spelling of this medium is “Web log”, a la “Web site” I would guess. The journalist in me will accede to the change from this point on because the everything-else-I-do in me doesn’t have the time to go back and change all the department names and links etc. So, welcome to my Web log.
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So my colleagues are impressed, and all of a sudden a few of them are sincerely interested in what this weblog thing is all about. I’m carving out time with the thought that I should probably just offer up a little workshop after school one day. Time to get the sales pitch together again.

And Seb has offered his expertise at template building to see if I can’t get something off the ground with this newspaper idea. Just want my journalism kids to get a taste of real newsroom activity with instant publishing, and I’m hoping maybe to make it happen before the quarter is out in five weeks or so. Pat’s doing a great thing, and I can see the wheels turning through his weblog (which, by the way, is the one thing I like to read most in weblogs…the reflective, roll up your sleeves, work it out in writing stuff.) But I can’t wait for his template to get done. So, maybe Seb and I can whip something together.

BTW, the more I find out about it, I’m really interested in the metadata plug-in. Could have some really interesting applications should we switch our school website over to Manila at some point. (Not that that’s in the plans…yet.) Wondering if there’s anyone out there who might want to start a metadata/weblog/study group/learning log about it. Collaborative learning at its best.

Meanwhile, it’s nice feeling like my students are getting something from this. That is the bottom line. I’d love to have the time to do nothing but develop the ideas here. Amazing what a little thinking and tweaking can do…imagine a lot of thinking and tweaking!

Some thoughts and observations of my first month with Manila in the classroom. (Click on title of this post.)
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Quote: “In other words, I realized that a weblog could be a useful tool for personal knowledge management as well as for public communication.”

It’s cool to think of the potential of weblogs as student notebooks, easily searchable, chock full of information from class work and outside reading. Homework repositories, communications with teachers and mentors, etc. all in one place. But the author is right when he goes on to discuss the limits of organizing and publishing this information.

BTW, is there a way currently to make some of Manila public and some not???

Spending a lot of my time now thinking about the best ways to use this beast I’ve unleashed on my kids. The real unknown here is how best to use the discussion feature (and as always, advice is welcomed). Now that it appears the author will be joining our book discussion in my lit class, I need to figure out the best way to use her input, and to get my students talking online too. I’ve spent some time this morning on Barbara’s and Karen’s sites, and I think I have some ideas. But I’m not quite clear…

Should I start conversations? If I do, should I do as Karen did and label them “Current Discussions”? (Still trying to figure out how she connects her discussion topics to the threaded discussion pages.) Should I ask the author to post her comments as news items on the home page? Or should I just have her check out these “current discussions” and respond. Then I could point to those responses from the home page. (And, as Barbara does so well, I should summarize the discussions going on throughout the site.)

I’ve posted some “model” content for my students, and I’m already worried that my plan to post everything as news and then sort it by departments may be a bit unruly…just too much to read. Perhaps I could link to those departments more prominently.

Still hard to see this all working without having seen how it works.

Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees, the book that we’re teaching in our Modern American Lit classes, will be collaborating with my students in our class weblog. So very cool. Stay tuned next week for more details!

It’s frustrating enough taking on one school…must be hell taking on a national organization! “Web workspaces have to be as easily available as paper. Teacher consultants and their students need access to forests and forests worth of digital paper.” Amen.
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I really like the way he has organized his information and the way that he has developed his site into a valuable resource for his students. Interesting starting points for discussions on student portfolios too. But, couldn’t all of this and more be done more easily by teacher and students using weblogs? I definitely want to use some of the ideas when building the teacher template, but this is obviously someone who knows what he’s doing with a computer. (He’s got his own consulting gig going.) I wonder if he knows about Manila?
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I’m sure web logging educators are no different from others, but how clear is it that school is just around the corner just from doing some teacher “blogrolling”? We’re all taking a little step back it seems, getting ready, recharging, sitting quietly…I miss all the posting, but I don’t miss the time it’s affording me to get focused on kids once again. 17 days…

Followed Sam DeVore’s message from the rss post and found a whole bunch more teachers using Manila. Haven’t had a chance to go through all of them, but a couple of pretty good ones I’ve seen so far are Tammy Waller and Jennifer Johnson (who already has a couple weeks worth of lesson plans and assignments posted…sheesh!). It’s interesting to see some of the elementary school applications here as well. At some point, I have to get focused on my own planning…
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…just got word that the story on edu weblogs in the NYT is on hold due to some another similar story in the same issue. I’ll be watching the Circuits section on Th to see what’s up. The reporter said she’d revisit it later in the year. That’s ok…too many chefs????
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Dale Pike (who has a new eduweblog) says: “Management of meta-data is a great idea (e.g. categories), but it requires, to some extent, some foreknowledge of how you’re going to want to use the information in the future.”

This is kind of what I’m struggling with right now as I think about the template aspect of this. It’s not just the development of categories or departments, but also the vehicle that teachers or students could use to recall or find relevant posts or snippets of information. When I was in Vermont, David asked if there was a way to “file” posts even further, to have sub-departments. I said probably not, but it got me to thinking about the really important need to find stuff once you post it. Blogger was just one long page of posts, really, and the search I had on it was terrible. Hector suggested FreeFind as a search tool, and I’m going to check it out once I get my site address straight. But the deeper issue is the KM piece of it. It would be great if someone could create a simple folder system for storing posts.
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As I was laying awake before dawn this morning listening to the Vermont rain pound on the roof of our tent, I had this crazy vision of using rss feeds to create a separate site where all the teacher portfolio entires were collected, or all the class entries by students were automatically posted. I need to ask Sarah tomorrow more about the rss-ability of these sites and how that all works. That would just be another cool way to sell this, as a way to offer one-stop shopping for teachers or supervisors or whatever.

“Given that the entire class is involved in a discussion, all ability levels are working together. The most able students have a chance to share their knowledge and talk to each other while less able students are able to read these ideas and formulate their own ideas based on the additional wisdom of others. The level of performance for all students, not just the less able, will rise due to influence from more capable peers.”

A very interesting discussion at Kairosnews from which I need to spend some time culling ideas. Much of what is being said is apt for any “philosophy” behind using weblogs.

Also, of course, is Terry’s fine continuing essay on his own reasons: Part 1 and Part 2 are already up.

See the Why Weblogs? link at right.

Found this comment from David about templates:
“Any site can be turned into a theme. Also a programmer with server access could write a newsite callback that set these configuration preferences.”

If I’m reading that correctly, it sounds like I can do what I want to…set the configurations beforehand. Now I’m wondering if I can set up departments and the e-z edit buttons on the nav bar beforehand too.