Pretty interesting article about the impact on weblogs…highlights a student’s personal use in the lead. I like this quote: “[weblogs are] helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment.” I’m thinking that can be true in the classroom as well, empowering teachers and students to articulate and develop ideas and reflections. Other snippets:

• “One blog is written in the voice of Julius Caesar, tracking the Roman’s progress as he takes on Gaul.” How about a character journal in a lit course?
  
• “But the bigger story is what’s happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives.”
  
• “‘In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people on the Web,’ says David Weinberger, author of ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined,’ an incisive book about the Net.”
  
• ” The genius of this scheme is that you can get going without any mental heavy lifting.” E-Z.
  
• “The next wave seems to be corporate blogs.” And what comes after that?

(See Joe’s comment, which was also lost…)

Writing With Web Logs
Weblogs Compendium
Blogroots
Chris Lehmann
pMachine
Antville
UpSaid
History of Weblogs
Weblog Power
Pitas
Moveable Type
GreyMatter
Weblogger
Xanga
Onclave
Weblog Articles
Swiss Army Website
Weblog Awards
Weblog Madness
Bloggar
Tinderbox
Targeted Serendipity
10 Tips

A Disruptive Technology Coming of Age?
Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research
Weblog Apps in Ed.
Is it Time to Get Blogging?
Blog Software Roundup

New Kids On the Blog
Weblogs in Ed. (Sarah)
Web Logs in ESL
Blogging Thoughts
The Wisdom of Blogging
Resource List
Blogging in Education
What We’re Doing When We Blog
Education Weblogs
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Pretty interesting article about the impact on weblogs…highlights a student’s personal use in the lead. I like this quote: “[weblogs are] helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment.” I’m thinking that can be true in the classroom as well, empowering teachers and students to articulate and develop ideas and reflections. Other snippets:

• “One blog is written in the voice of Julius Caesar, tracking the Roman’s progress as he takes on Gaul.” How about a character journal is a lit course?
  
• “But the bigger story is what’s happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives.”
  
• “‘In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people on the Web,’ says David Weinberger, author of ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined,’ an incisive book about the Net.”
  
• “ The genius of this scheme is that you can get going without any mental heavy lifting.” E-Z.
  
• “The next wave seems to be corporate blogs.” And what comes after that?
  
  

But really, Liza, on a Mac? Sooo trendy. 

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…

For the latest on the state of the Internet in schools. Quote: “In fact, if you ask these students, as we did, what would happen to them if someone waved a magic wand and took their Internet access away, many would tell you—in all seriousness—that they would just die.”

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Some really interesting articles that I’ve annotated in the link above. None, of course, mention weblogs. I’m amazed at how many of the issues mentioned in these articles can be solved to some degree by weblogs. I’m thinking we’re just going to have to amaze people with our Best Practices this fall!

Some extremely interesting stories in today’s Circuits section that I’ll annotate below. (Free registration required to read articles.)

First, an article about the demise of HighWired.com and other such services which allowed teachers “easy” access to web space. Some of the relevant excerpts include:

“The fact is that both educators and companies providing Web site services underestimated how difficult it was to gather, format, present and refresh so that people would keep coming back and find it useful.” One of the best parts about using weblogs is the ease of updating content. I don’t think difficulty is the issue now so much as time.

“…only 55 percent of students who say their school has a Web site have even visited it. The main complaint about the sites is that they do not have useful information.” I think this is a two-fold problem. First, I think most people who maintain websites do not have an understanding of them as information management tools. Second, when only one person can upload content, it’s no wonder there isn’t more relevant stuff.

“One problem, experts who study school technology say, is that many classroom pages are static, with teachers posting a syllabus for the entire year or simply links to interesting Web sites. So visiting the site is not part of a daily routine for students and parents, particularly if only a few of their teachers have classroom pages.” Ease of use issue, again.

“Perhaps the biggest problem is technophobic teachers who are wedded to traditional ways of teaching. When Grunwald Associates asked school-district technology leaders to rate the competency of their teachers in using the Internet for instruction, more than one-third of the teachers in large districts were classified as novices. Only 18 percent were called experts.” This goes back to what Ken said about focusing on teachers who are willing to adopt the technology instead of forcing teachers to do it.

“The training of educators to use the Web as a classroom tool has often been spotty at best…In the process, few companies worried about training teachers in how to set up Web pages or cared whether the teachers followed through.” Classroom support for this is crucial. Using weblogs or any other classroom technology is not going to work without mentoring and support.

“And while some educators promote the Web as a way to break down the communications barrier between school and home, some teachers would prefer that those barriers remain…”  Again, time is major issue here. But if we can show how to manage the increased communications between parents and students and teachers, and if we can show the benefit of that…

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Here’s another piece whose title says it all: Study Finds That Teachers Fail to Grasp the Web’s Potential. An excerpt:

“Many schools and teachers have not yet recognized — much less responded to — the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet.” Reminds me of a post by Charlie about the different ways that students write: IM, e-mail, etc.

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A really interesting article on Case Western Reserve U’s incredible new high tech facility. If you want to see the future, here it is: A Campus for Collaboration, at a Billion Bits Per Second. An excerpt:

“Aside from the sheer speed it affords, the network is intended to encourage students and professors to confer and collaborate readily, whether they are in the same classroom or in another building, university officials say.” Hmmm…sounds like weblogs to me.

I’ve been working on a weblog template to use with teachers in the professional portfolio program. Anyone want to give me some feedback? More…
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First of all, here is the template with some fake content added.

Background: This year, we are moving to “framework for teaching” developed by Charlotte Danielson in which she defines four domains that teacher assessment should consider: Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. Since she is doing a workshop with our supervisors on the 27th, and since I’ve been given a few minutes to present this, I’m looking for some feedback. My goal is to first, make it as simple as possible, second, make it relevant to the Danielson model, and third, to make it a valuable tool for reflection and development. As you can see, the teacher will be able to interact within the weblog with a supervisor, a peer coach or colleague, and others if he or she chooses. I see the news posts as reflections, and stories can be created as artifacts or goals or whatever. I’ve created easy edit buttons for the navigation bar (here is a screenshot of what the editing mode looks like.) I’m trying to require as little code work as possible.

What other standard links or categories might you add to this template? Any thoughts on design/look? Functionality? Any specific thoughts on what other configurations I might need to preset? Any thoughts in general?

As an aside, I find myself being drawn more and more to the teacher/professional development potentials here. Maybe it’s the trickle down approach…better teaching means better learning. But as teachers we lack any real forums for discussion, debate, or sharing outside of our close circles. Best Practice teacher portfolios published and promoted, departmental weblogs for discussion of ideas and policy, schoolwide professional weblogs to link to news and information about the teaching profession…all of those ideas really intrigue me.

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What is it they say about second children???
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What is it they say about second children???
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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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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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