A French restaurant served it’s one millionth strangled duck yesterday, a menu item they’ve been cooking since 1890 and keeping track of since the beginning. For the record, Charlie Chaplin ate duck No. 253,652 in 1955, and many other famous persons have partaken of this, uh, delicacy. (BTW, the ducks are cooked in their own blood…yum.)

Not nearly as significant, but a milestone of some sort nonetheless, yesterday the 100th person signed up as a member to this site. I’m not sure what exactly membership entails as I don’t send bulletins, and certainly there haven’t been nearly that many people actually joining the conversation. But it’s kind of a neat moment, knowing that that many people have taken the time to sign in. It’s enough of a motivator to keep me writing for another week or two at least…;)
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On the Yahoo Manila Dev Group, David clears up most of my pinging issues:

Bottom line: Trackback is basically a cross-site commenting technology. Heck, I’d call it that “Cross-site comments”. Others have come to a similar conclusion: http://kalsey.com/blog/2003/02/simplecomments/

I’m writing a comment about something you wrote, and I want to tell you that I’ve done that. From a technologist’s perspective, that is called “pinging”, but from a user’s perspective it should be called “Notify” or something even more obvious (e.g. “Send my comments to original site [url]“).

If I want you to tell me when you comment on what I’ve written, I must enable notification, which technologists call “incoming pings” but I would suggest that users need something simpler here too (e.g. “Receive comments from other sites”).

Similarly for “URLs to ping”, I’d suggest “URLs to send my comments to.” Similarly for “Incoming pings require approval”, I’d suggest “Incoming comments require approval”

I guess I didn’t understand that Trackback wasn’t automatic, that I had to turn it on for every post or comment. Hmmm…now I have to think about why I wouldn’t want a particular post to be pinged or pingable…

(Via Anne) I had missed this nice mention at Xplana about the collaboration Anne and I did last month through our kids’ Web logs:

One of the first “collaborative” educational uses of the Web was to link students together with pen pals. As the Web has matured, group collaborative tools have become more prevalent. One great result of this evolution is the The Georgia-NJ Connection project. The Georgia-NJ Connection links Journalism students of blogging educators Anne Davis (Georgia) and Will Richardson (NJ), for collaborative learning and writing. The result is a special connection and a synergistic learning that transcends the common learning experience.

Even these first “toe-in-the-water” attempts have changed the dynamic in my classroom. More to come, I’m sure.
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Sometimes someone else articulates what you’re feeling soooo well, as Dale Pike does here:

I’ve noticed the conversations that are taking place have increased in complexity, as well. They aren’t as easy to just jump into and make sense of. We have gone from talking about things like, “What tool do you use?” to such diverse topics as Open Education, Knowledge Management, and Reusable Learning Objects, to name a few. I find that I often read someone’s post on one of these topics and find that I am lacking in some background. Sometimes such background is linked to by the poster, and sometimes I go googling, but always it turns into a huge investment in time. I suppose this is indicative of the great potential of weblogs to guide instruction. I’ve always thought of the Internet as the largest library in the world with all of the books in a huge pile (I can’t remember where I first heard that analogy, but it obviously stuck). I’m finding that weblogs seem to be like huddles of people with similar interests, sharing what they know and pointing out new resources to one another in the Great Pile. While I’ve been wonderfully welcomed in each huddle I participate in, it is awfully tiring running from huddle to huddle, looking in over the shoulders of those adding to the pile or digging deeper into what is there. Tiring, but very exciting. The sense of overwhelm is not a pessimistic one–I wouldn’t trade the opportunities available to me. I just have to figure out how to pace myself.

I’m feeling all of that, and more, what with a new job, two little kids, a needy wife (just kidding, dear…) My sense of it is that the days of being on the front edge of this are in many ways coming to an end as we have no doubt passed the “tipping point.” (Witness last night’s report on Web logs on the Lehrer News Hour.) I have no doubt that those with far greater technical understanding of the tools will continue to push the technology to wider and wider adoption both in education and elsewhere. And I have no doubt that sooner rather than later, the uniqueness of this place where our merry band of edubloggers have been residing will fade. Those with more facile understanding of the technology will be the ones adding more and more to the “Great Pile” and break more and more new ground.

And this is a very good thing, don’t get me wrong. And there is still much work to do…our students and our schools will continue to be our research, and both will benefit from our collaboarations and our passion. The job of aggregating all that good work into eBN or elsewhere is in itself a huge undertaking, that and teaching the many, many teachers out there who will come stumbling to the table as many of us did. But the development of new and exciting ways to use Web logs in classrooms of all ilks will soon come fast and furious from many new and diverse sources, I suspect. And like Dale, I think I’ll be doing a lot of looking over shoulders and watching as others take the ball and really run with it.

If there ever was a perfect example, it’s this post by Jake about Trackback in Manila. Now tell me, who or what am I supposed to be pinging???

Made a pitch to my IMC staff today to start implementing Web logs as ways to not only create content but push it to the people that want/need it. I swear when I start talking about this stuff and explaining the “big picture” that is Web logs and RSS, I even amaze myself with the potentials that come up. And the best part is that none of it is overwhelmingly difficult. Just step by step, and the library is the first.

I’m going to mock up a site for them that follows the lead of Tim at Buckman in terms of setting up simple Web logs that feed into a more complex design for a home page. They want one where the book club does reviews, another for adding relevant links that can be sorted into various departments based on discipline, and perhaps another for news. Being able to “file” all of these infobits into relevant collections really caught their fancy. (And I think they even got the idea of having just, let’s say Science links eventually feeding to the Science Department homepage. The whole concept of being able to create one piece of content that is categorized and stored and at the same time for made available for easy consumption by many is just very cool.)

David and others have been writing lately about seeing the pieces coming together:

“I’m becoming more convinced that our ultimate content management solution at my work will include a significant weblog component with integration performed by aggregators and rss.”

When he says it, it somehow validates what my feeble left brain only marginally grasps. But this is the best part isn’t it? Watching each other “get it” and pushing on down the road.

As much fun as Key West was, it’s good to be back…

Back from Fantasy Island and man does it seem like things are moving light speed around here. I am amazed at what the Manila Dev group is doing and I can’t wait for Jake to release the new News Item interface. I’m doing some training next Tuesday with some teachers from Asbury Park High School and that would be a HUGE improvement in being able to get them involved. Please Jake and Seb and Dave, hurry…HURRY!

With all this talk and action about feature requests and improvements, it’s opening up many new directions for using Manila in the classroom. I think it’s time to get back to some of the Best Practices that people are developing. There are definitely going to be some very cool new ways to implement and use all of this with students, and since the technical developments escape me, that’s where I need to focus. What are we going to do with Trackback? The news feeds and aggregators? How are we going to get kids collaborating and communicating at an even higher level? Some very interesting possibilities…
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I’m heading to Key West for five days to reintroduce myself to my wife while the in-laws babysit the kids. This will be the first time in over five years we’ve gotten a chunk of time together, so someone please shoot me if I start posting the rest of this week. I figure having posted 104 of 113 days this year buys me a little rest. Of course the problem is that things are moving so quickly that I know by Monday I’ll feel way behind. Hopefully I won’t be totally left in the dust…I’ll be thinking if not posting. Be well.

(Via Andrew Carpenter) I think I knew this at some point, but Voidstar has put together an RSS generator for Google News queries. Now that in itself is cool enough, but I’m wondering how hard it would be to create a similar generator for searches done on Web log sites. Since I already use Google to search my site, could someone set up a query, say “RSS,” that would then be fed to them each time the term is used here? Similarly, think how that might work on a school Web site…hmmmm…Thanks to Andrew as well for donating his .opml file. If I get the chance later today, I’ll extract the edu Web loggers he’s got and add them to my own then repost.
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Ok, I have to admit it. I like what Dave is doing here. And if he and Jake et. al. come through with a similar form to update other nav. links, I’ll be really very happy.

On the Yahoo Manila Dev Group, Seb notes that there is a little known macro that “allows a theme designer to include specific messages in the overall theme template thus making it possible for users to edit specific sections of their template via separate edit buttons…” Perfect! I think this is what Pat alluded to in his comment to a previous post. Now, can someone show me how to include this in a template? Half the macros I try to embed seem to disappear. Is there a template creation tutorial out there somewhere? Something that clarifies exactly what can be templatized and what can’t? (I know I’ve asked this before…)

And later…this:

We’re going to do a user interface for Theme designers for modules.
Dave and I talked about it the other night after dinner, and Bryan Bell
and I just had a phone conversation about it. Stay tuned…

-Jake

Ok…this could be getting really good now…
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Recent articles by Dave Pollard and Michael Angeles have gotten me musing more on this whole concept of Web logs, specifically Manila, as a KM tool for my school both externally and internally through an Intranet. One of the issues that we are currently taking a hard look at is not only the use of data to drive decisions (which is very difficult to get my right-heavy brain to grasp) but, more importantly, how to access the data once it’s available. As with the earlier post about learning objects, having a central repository for “knowledge” would make data retreival and study much more accessible.

The big picture here (and I do mean BIG) involves widely distributed creation of content by individuals that is then aggregated by “department” into a taxonomy of feeds that individuals can subscribe to depending on their “knowledge needs.” (I swear if someone had asked me to translate that sentence just a week ago…) In that way, you’re getting the information you want from whatever internal source is providing it. To do that, I’m thinking the organization would have to clearly define these “departments” and feeds beforehand, and each post, no matter who makes it, would be created in one of those departments. Now, how we aggregate all these individual department feeds into one BIG collective department feed for redistribution is something I’m not quite sure of, but I’m sure it can be done.

Of course, all of this depends on the willingness of individuals to participate, using tools that are transparent to the knowledge worker. Rarely have we used the words Manila and transparent in the same sentence. And as time stressed as people are already, it’s going to take some work to find the best way to market the concept that producing and sharing knowledge in this way benefits the organization and students. In fact, the faces I’m envisioning right now are downright scary.

Dave Pollard writes that Web logs as KM/filing cabinet are valuable because:

Much more knowledge is codified and available for sharing (including sharing with customers via Extranets)

Knowledge is kept more current and complete

The context of knowledge is more apparent and hence richer

Knowledge is easier to find

Less centralized Intranet management and technology is needed

Evaluation of individuals’ contribution to organizational knowledge is easier to gauge

Less effort is needed to persuade individuals to share knowledge

Communities of practice can develop spontaneously and flexibly

Peer-to-peer knowledge transfer (the most valuable kind in most organizations) is facilitated, and new knowledge is automatically ‘pushed’ to ’subscribers’ on a timely basis

Great stuff, and all good in theory. But this is going to be a very, very long haul to get the horses to the water and then get them to take a drink. As I’ve said before, this direction represents a seismic change in how we do business. And I can guarantee that few if any of the administrators to whom I will be speaking have even heard of any of this stuff. Still, I’m feeling armed with some good thinking and a pretty clear idea of what can be done. Boiling this all down into a 30-minute “Big Picture Presentation” next week ought to be interesting…
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George Siemens and others have begun putting together a formal collective to ponder, plan, and develop a network for open source content/learning objects. If you haven’t read George’s Open Source Content in Education you should if you want to get a very clear picture of what they are trying to do. I’ve joined the group mostly as a lurker at this point as I try to get up to speed on all of this. (FAQ here.) This whole concept of learning objects and the ways in which they can be shared by RSS and developed through Web logs is extremely interesting to me when I can get my brain wrapped around it. The group has a Yahoo list going where you can watch the evolution as it happens.
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Despite all of the movement by Dave and Jake and Bryan to clean up the templates and streamline the process, they still have a long way to go. I’m hoping they hang in there. But as positive as these efforts are, I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever get what we need, those of us down here at the classroom level. I mean a spam free e-mail and a “neat browser-based blogroll editor” might be nice but how about getting Trackback working, or making an easy way to add links to the side column without having to create an include message and all that stuff? (Really, wouldn’t it be nice to be add content to the side columns without all the configuration that’s required now? Surely someone can include an editable list or two in the template.)

All Dave is doing right now is making blogs for individuals who want to implement for personal use…I haven’t heard or read anything about implementation for courses or classrooms. I guess I’m just going to have to find some more patience…

In the spirit of sharing (and playing), headline links to an .opml file of educator Web loggers that are currently in my Sharpreader list. There are 42 right now, and I will update the list as needed. If you have Sharpreader, which I highly recommend, all you need to do is save the file and then Import it into the software (File: Import Subscriptions…easy.) You can delete or reorganize as you like. Let me know if I’m missing anyone…

Just downloaded and installed SharpReader and it took about 45 seconds to get it running. Great stuff. Easy to import feeds, and I think that just this moment I figured out the solution to my wanting access to my RSS feeds from every computer dilemma. (I absolutely love it when my bulbs go off, though I am also absolutely sure that they usually light up way behind everyone elses…) David Wiley has a post “A Beginner’s Guide to Joining the Instructional Technology Blog Scene” which highlights the use of RSS. He created an .opml file of all of the edubloggers he has on his list which I downloaded and imported into SharpReader. Voila, I had twenty feeds in a moment. Well, why can’t I just do that with my own feeds, then just import the .opml into the SharpReader install I have on each computer I use (only three, really.) And I could have the .opml and the SharpReader install online for “emergency” use if necessary. Duh.

Ok, now two things. First, how to create the .opml file, which I know I can do through the Manila. (I think I’ll need to create the list as a my subscriptions file and then grab the code, right?) Second, what do I do when I want to add to the list? I guess I just add it to my subscriptions and then reexport the code. A couple of steps, but still the easiest solution I can think of if I can’t get all of this to be Web based. And yes I know the Manila aggregator qualifies as that, but I just don’t like the lack of flexibility in terms of sorting and searching.

Now the only other problem is finding time to read all the stuff I’m going to aggregate, and even more, keep track of all the good stuff in here. Has anyone else noticed that as more and more thoughtful, smart, forward thinking educators latch on to this idea it gets harder and harder to keep up? I could do this full time, I swear.

UPDATE: Too easy. I now have an .opml file for all my student Web logs which I can read through Sharpreader AND click through to respond. AND, I realized that Sharpreader will export the .opml file of my list of feeds, so when I update it, I just upload it for import on my other machines. I am now officially overwhelmed.
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