“These “blogs” have been leading the charge against Trent Lott and his appalling praise of segregationist 1948 presidential candidate Strom Thurmond. If Lott is forced to resign as Senate majority leader, which is devoutly to be wished, credit must go to the blogosphere.”

We can only hope…
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John Udell: “The knowledge effects of Weblogging, or “k-logging,” go far beyond search-and-retrieval. A collection of Weblogs isn’t just a pool of documents. It’s also a knowledge network, where at each node human intelligence performs the routing function. The network’s architecture is publish/subscribe. Its protocol is RSS (Rich Site Summary), a simple, powerful, and popular application of XML. Bloggers tune into other bloggers’ RSS channels; they select and react to items flowing through those channels; they post items that also flow out on their own RSS channels. It’s a kind of Krebs cycle where the input is individual thought and the output is group awareness.”
I like this description of the potential uses of Web logs as KM tools…especially the “output is group awareness” piece of it. That’s what I’m trying to sell to these committees and departments, but I don’t think they have the context to see the value…yet. Some still want me to set up a newsgroup…Just have to keep plugging, I think.
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Quote: “The portfolio consists of both of collection finished tasks and of a learning journal – a weblog that each student keeps through the course. “

Comment: Another example of how they can be used.
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Quote: “There are over 1,000 schools worldwide (Caltech, Berkeley, Harvard, Dartmouth, Innsbruck, Vanderbilt, Cambridge, Iowa, Middlebury, Washington, Nebraska Public Schools, Denver Public Schools, and many more) using UserLand’s Manila (mainly due to its broad feature-set, easy set-up, scalability, and low cost — a single $299 server license can support 500 or more full featured weblogs). As a result of this widespread adoption, I get to spend a lot of time talking to educators about how best to use K-Logs within an educational context.

A new and exciting area of development that I have been talking to educators about is the student managed electronic portfolio. This is a website that documents everything a student accomplished while at school in electronic form. These portfolios include original writing, links to resources, documents (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), pictures, audio files, and video files. It seems to me that this is a perfect application of K-Logs in education…”

Comment:I agree…see my post from last summer which is on hold for next year. John adds to those points, and his entire post will be added to the Idea File.

Who knew that Manila had so many “clients?” This is making me think there should be more in the way of support and tweaking for schools and educators coming from somewhere. As much as I love the package, it still needs a better classroom feel somehow. More of the things that teachers will use, like departments for example, need to be made easier. More on this later.
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Yin…Yang…Yesterday, a teacher/member of the tech committee (who has never attended) comes up to me and says “what’s with all that e-mail I’m getting from you? (Copies of posts.) And by the way, Web logs…fffffttt!” (or something like that). She has no clue how to work the site since she’s never been to a meeting. Instead of asking for some help, she starts complaining. Amazing. Later, more shaking of the heads due to the Netscape issue I alluded to previously. I swear I’ve said “IE, IE, IE” twenty times at meetings. They don’t listen. Today, finally, a fellow English teacher comes up to my office to talk about setting up some Web logs. I show him the Bees site and some others. He shakes his head too, only in a good way. “Pretty amazing…let’s set it up!”

Thanks…I needed that.
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…is Manila really flaky with older versions of Netscape (4.7)? And does anyone else have issues reading certain templates (like this one) where the words seem to cut off? The inconsistency of the Manila browser templates in different browsers is starting to be a point of concern as a few teachers are actually attempting to use the Edtech Web log I set up. I keep telling them to use IE for now, but our e-mail defaults to Netscape when you click on a link and things go downhill from there. I had attempted to contact Brian about this issue some time ago since I know he did a lot of work on his template to make is compliant with different browsers. Any one have any advice?

Pretty interesting and light hearted discussion of Web logs by a couple of U. of British Columbia professor types attempting, it appears, to sell the concept to their department.
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This is the coolest! (Via Jenny.)
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Interesting presentation by Gary Thompson of Saginaw Valley State U. outlining the use of Web logs in a writing classroom. Some sample student Web logs included.

Quote: “Creating weblogs in a writing class has one great advantage over most weblog composition: there is an established community of interested readers. Initially it may be necessary to require that students determine a weblog title, a theme, and a number of posts per week, and to require that they read and respond to several other students’ weblogs. Eventually this level of interaction becomes routine, and they begin to write for this group of readers as well as for the instructor.”
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Here we go…very cool concept using, guess what…Manila (check out the yearbook link). Note the high school site and the news site: “Who maintains this site? Volunteer editors. Each dynamic site is constructed and maintained by one or more editors. Look in the about area of each site to find the names of the editors.” AND “Why are we using a content management system? It requires far less technical knowledge to publish a good looking site. The value of our network will grow as more and more people use it. Publishing is a simple way to start the ball rolling.”

Definitely an addition to the rolls!

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Quote: “Given past patterns where technologies like portals, personalization etc. have found their way from the public Internet to mainstream enterprise use after 3 years or so, I figure blogs
have about 12-18 months to go. Here’s a preview on what I think is coming-and why.” Joe Katzman (via David)

I found this presentation (.pdf format) really interesting, probably because I’m getting more and more interested in this idea of Web logs building what he calls “Communities of Practice.” There is so much good stuff going on in our classrooms that is just waiting to be shared…it needs to be published. In fact, if you want to make teaching better, it requires publication. I keep reading all these Web logs with such amazement because I LEARN SO MUCH from them. Pat and Joe and Seb and Sarah and countless others inform my teaching and my practice every day. They push my thinking, in some ways demand that I articulate that thinking, and in some way it all translates. Why shouldn’t we be doing that for each other here at my school, or among many schools?

That question I asked about teachers being more afraid than kids to “publish” their work has been tumbling around in my head for the past couple of days and it just keeps making more sense. Teenagers are the digital gurus in our school. In my media class yesterday, one group produced a video commercial that was worthy of any 2 a.m. major channel time slot. Another cranked out a rap CD that was “produced” in ways that boggle my mind. (I went to both groups after class and told them they need to show me how they did those things.) But this happens all the time, students teaching their teachers. Now, we come along and ask those teachers to follow their students to foreign turf, and it’s no wonder they balk.

But why not sell Web logs as the pretty painless way to enter the next phase, where publishing is king?
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Funny world…(via Sarah) title links to the same Pam who I spent hours playing pinball with at Ohio University in the late Seventies, now diving headfirst into whatever mess this is we’re creating. Soon I’m sure we’ll be sharing picture space in Seb‘s Edublogger’s Yearbook! Welcome to the party, Pam.

She’s no slouch, either:

“Focus on process of learning rather than the product of learning. The responsibility will be to challenge students and to provide situations where the inquiry approach are utilized and learners are lead to investigate in order to formulate their thoughts and ideas. Educators will need to learn to think in terms of future, not today, but tomorrow on down the road. The world is in constant change mode.”

Echoes of today’s Webtools newsletter that is filled with some interesting resources on constructivism. But like Terry, my mind is saying “puhleeeese don’t let it be this hard…”
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In case anyone might be interested, title links to an application for a New Jersey Best Practices award that I submitted today. I know it’s been helpful to see others articulate their thinking on theory and implementation, so I offer it up for whatever purpose it might serve.
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Guess I passed over the lates Web Tools Newsletter dedicated to the “Factors Inhibiting Change” (or maybe I just buried it my subconcious). Too much interesting stuff to detail here, but let’s just say it raises the question of how best to implement new technologies and makes clear the very difficult road that lay ahead.

Thomas Friedman, NYT
“Friends, we are on the edge of a transforming moment for America in the world. If President Bush uses his enormous mandate to prepare for war-in a way that really deals with our political and economic vulnerabilities, increases our own staying power and convinces the world that we have a positive vision and are responsible global citizens-there is a decent chance we can win at a reasonable cost. But if Mr. Bush simply uses his mandate to drive a hard-right agenda and indulge in more feel-good politics, the world will become an increasingly dangerous place for every American-no matter what war we fight, no matter what war we win.”
And the chances of this “responsible global citizen” thing is…?
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