How About This…

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?