The Countdown Begins

School doesn’t start for a couple of weeks yet, and there just doesn’t seem to be any way I’m going to get everything done that I need to before the teachers and students come back. This has been such an intense summer that I’m actually looking forward to the start of regular classes. We’ve put in a brand new student information system and upgraded to Windows XP on 1,500 machines, trained or planned training for over 300 staff members and been tweaking and troubleshooting the whole way. On the side, I’ve been redesigning and renovating the school Website, which gets it’s debut on the first day of school as well. Kinda boring.

In the midst of all of that, I’ve been trying to think about ways to get some more blogging going, and at the same time introduce wikis and Bloglines and Furl into the mix. I’m following Alan’s great work as, in a very structured way, he’s getting his staff up to speed. Not all smooth sailing, but he’s a man with a plan, and I’ll be learning much from him this year, I’m sure.

The good news is I’ve got about 20 more teachers who have taken the blog workshop, 15 or so more coming to the next one in early October, and an inaugural wikibloglinesfurl class coming up just after. I’ve already got two teachers on the schedule to set up blogs for their students, and the all the academic supervisors will be working with reps in their departments who will be updating their parts of the Website. (I actually ran through the site with the supervisors on Friday and despite some phobia, most seemed to be looking forward to highlighting and promoting their teachers and curricula.) So, we’re getting there.

But I’m feeling like this year I want more than more numbers. I want a class using a Wiki. I want my librarians teaching kids to use Furl. I want parents using Bloglines to aggregate their news. I want more collaborations. I want…all sorts of new and creative uses of this stuff.