Pat has added some details on what might be on tap for our gathering in SF next month. Personally, I think they are a good start, although I think I’d like to see a “Next Steps” or a “Where Do We Go From Here” type discussion to end things on Sunday. It would be good if we could talk about more ways to work together to bring Web logging in schools to a greater audience, or something like that. (I’m writing as I think…not always a good thing.) BTW, if there are any well-to-do attendees out there, we’re in need of some support for our reception…
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I got my official Blogger sweatshirt today, my compensation for upgrading to Blogger Pro only to have all the extra goodies become free anyway when Google aquired them. It’s kind of strange to look back at that first iteration of this site…my how things have evolved. Now I actually have three pieces of blogging wear; my “I’m blogging this.” shirt from NECC, my official eBN black polo shirt, and now my Blogger hoodie. I’m not sure what this signifies, really. But on some level, it feels kind of unsettling…
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For one of the most comprehensive looks at all angles of the Web logs as journalism story check out the Nieman Foundation report which features no less than 18, that’s right, 18 essays on the effects that blogs are having. For me, this is incredibly interesting stuff that I am definitely going to bring to my class. For even non-journalists, I think it’s required reading because like it or not, journalism IS where Web logs are having the most profound effect right now, at least in as much as they are stirring real debate. Inherent in that whole discussion, of course, is the underlying thread about writing in general, not just journalism. It’s just that journalists are playing it all out in a very public way, whereas students of writing are being changed by blogs in more inconspicuous ways. But as I’ve alluded to before, I think we’re on the verge of some serious study of Web logs’ effect on student writing. In fact, I’m hoping to be a part of that research in some way.

I have to say that the more I read Jay Rosen and Doc Searles and Jeff Jarvis and David Weinberger, the more I believe in this tool as a way to not only communicate but spur serious thinking and analysis. Jay’s post on the Bill O’Reilly incident with Terry Gross on fresh air just blew my mind because it forced me to see a different angle on that whole thing. And Doc’s follow up is equally challenging but important. And therein lies the key to this whole thing, the constant thread and analysis that Web loggers do. It seems like my thinking just keeps getting pushed and pushed by what I read in these spaces, moreso than anywhere else because there are other voices that chime into the conversation. I love Paul Krugman. But I’d love Paul Krugman even more if he got a Web log. Like Jeff says, they all should be blogging:

That is why weblogs are great for such people. It is a way for them to interact with their audiences without having to write individual letters. It is a way for them to answer the same comment or question from many people at once. It is a way to enter an actual conversation. And better yet, we all get to watch. I far prefer it when people leave comments on my blog vs. sending email, for, again, I am a bad email correspondent (sorry, Uncle Richard and all the rest of you!) and I prefer to have the conversation in public.

I’m still amazed at how cool it is to watch all this as it happens.

Terry Elliot left a comment on a previous post that for some reason isn’t linked:

Maybe adopt a buddy/mentor for at least first week of weblogging. Get established webloggers to give some time to set number of students just to pump that adolescent ego for the first week or so of weblogging. At least they will know they aren’t just pumping words into dead air (I know you will be reading it, but as we both know teachers don’t count as audience.)

What a great idea! I’ve been so hell bent on getting journalism mentors that the idea of a blog buddy went under the radar. So, class starts on November 10. I have 20 or so students. Anyone interested in introducing the fine art of Web logging to a high school journalism student or two?

I’m getting more and more psyched about the edblogger gathering in SF next month as it seems more and more is falling into place. We’re talking about some pretty cool sessions for the Sunday schedule and the Saturday trainings and socials promise to be great. I know the last time we met out in SF earlier this year that the few of us who got together (Pat, Tim, Marion, and some Intel folk) had just a great time of it. This promises to be even better.

If you want regular updates on the conference, subscribe to the RSS feed, and when the sign up goes online, don’t forget to let us know you’re coming.

I start teaching a journalism class again in a few weeks and I’ve been putting together a mental list of how it’s going to be different from the way I did it last spring. It’s no secret that I think Web logs and the act of journalism are a natural fit, but I’m even more of an evangelist for teaching journalism with Web logs. That I’ve been doing now for over two years. It’s getting time to start seriously thinking about some changes I’m hoping to implement this quarter:

Jay Rosen’s exceptional post on the original 10 Radical Things has been widely linked and is must reading for those who are looking at this form as a way to do and teach journalism. But I think the Five More Radical Things served up at Hypergene Media Blog are equally as interesting. The one I hold the most hope for is “Collaborating and having a conversation with audience members is sure to provide an even more meaningful and memorable experience than passive consumption of news.” Wouldn’t it be a kick if 10 years from now we point to Web logs as one major reason we have become information literate and more active consumers of information? I really think the ways in which we teach our students to collect, process, and apply information is going to have a huge impact on what kind of society we become. It may be a bit romantic to think that Web logs will be the vehicle to large scale change, but it’s nice to think that they might.
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I posted this on the Manila and Frontier sites with no replies, so maybe someone else out there can help. How can I limit the number of lines that the Manila aggregator displays when showing new posts? I don’t want full post aggregation, just the first four lines. Anyone have any ideas?

Now that’s what I call a great look. Pam‘s site overhaul has me checking out her css to see how she put it together. Remember, thievery is a form of flattery…or something like that. Great job, Pam!

Tom Hoffman, who is doing some really cool things with open source CMS type programs up in Providence, has a far better understanding of all this technology than I do. He’s demonstrating COREBlog which is a Web log interface for Zope, which I don’t have any clue about. He may be right when he says “Regular weblog tools aren’t designed for the kind of enterprise integration and complex roles needed for large scale deployments in schools” (though I hope he’s wrong about Frontier…at least in the short term.) But it’s eventually all going to come down to the same issues: ease of use, ease of installation, tech support, time, etc. At least open source is reasonably priced, but as I’ve said before, I know there’s not going to be a lot of support for it here for quite a while simply because it’s too unknown and there is safety in what you know. I wish I had a developer like Tom at my school, but…

UPDATE: Read Dan Mitchell’s response.

I’ve been thinking more and more about how to mine the possibilites of RSS for teachers. There are a lot of obvious applications: tracking student work in Web logs, being able to scour Websites for school info, communicating with parents, etc. But I think there are a lot of ways to embed it into good practice as well.

One of the areas I want to delve into more is the creation of news feeds for Feedster or Goolge Alerts. I’ve been setting up feeds for weblogs and journalism, weblogs and education, educational technology, and others and watching to see what kinds of things come through. The interesting thing go me is that the Feedster feeds which search just Web logs have been more useful than the Google feeds. It’s not surprising when you think about it since that’s what Web loggers do anyway is search the Internet for good stuff to link to and comment on. Actually, Feedster is probably a better resource since most of the results coming through it are annotated to begin with. I need to play with the search terms to see how specific I can get and still get results, but I think the potential here for professional development is pretty huge. Think if all teachers had feeds set up for key concepts in their curriculi. The research would come to them. Now there’s a selling point.

Take that one step further, obviously, with feeds from learning object repositories like Maricopa. Or from other, let’s say, calculus teachers with Web logs who are posting assignments and syllabi and all sorts of other stuff. (I just realized that I’ve got to find out if Bloglines has an rss feed of search terms as well. Even though I’ve done a pretty good job of scanning through all the posts that come through my reader, which is about 150+ a day at this point, it would be another way of making sure I wasn’t missing anything especially relevant.) What’s needed here, of course, is an easy way for teachers to get setup with all of this. Would be nice if you could search and subscribe to the feed all in one place…which is really what I’m thinking could happen at Bloglines.

Dan Mitchell at DeAnza College adds another nugget to this day of highly relevant posts in my aggregator:

A basic and easy web-based content-management system is a first priority. Most faculty members simply need to create a few web pages that can quickly and easily be updated, and possibly post some other file types for downloading. Frontier from Userland (and its Manila component) is the one I am most familiar with. Yes, it is a “blogging” tool, but it does a lot more than that, and I can vouch for the ease with which faculty can adopt this solution.

Me too. My teachers are sailing along with Manila right now.
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Now I ask you, how cool is this?

The mission of BlogAudio.org is to give you the resources you need to put audio files into your weblog and other web pages. It grew out of efforts to help Christopher Lydon put audio interviews into his blog and to build his BlogRadio.org website. Our ideal is to capture, edit (at least mark start and end points), and deploy audio through a browser interface, but you may need cooperating server middleware (implementing SoX and transcode, for example). We will also survey desktop tools and the hardware you need to capture the media.

And there’s a blogvideo.org too (although right now it bounces to a Chris Lydon site.) We’ve just been talking about a site that includes video and audio done by students.
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It may just have been a slight tremor, but I think some real gains were made in the educator Blogger cause earlier this month at BloggerCon. I wish I could find the audio of Pat‘s impassioned and articulate assessment of the needs and dreams of this community. I think quite a few in attendance took note. Witness the coming together of what once was a pretty much left-for-dead eBNvention that is getting ressurected next month in San Francisco. Dave Winer has pledged to attend, either Mena or Ben Trott are expected, Erin Clerico and Bryan Bell will be workshopping, social events are being planned and who knows what else. I’m really hoping we can have a mini edBloggerCon, since I found the Boston event so stimulating. But as Pat says, hopefully this will be the first of many such gatherings around the country. It’s November 21 and 22, around NCTE, so start making plans if you haven’t already.

I presented about our Website redesign to a small group of parents at our Family School Council meeting last night and the reception was, shall I say, very enthusiastic. I showed our principal’s Web log and some of the other sites we’re building, gave them the overview on the syndication aspect of it, and even got commitments from a couple of them to try out the subscription form that I have set up. One parent reported that her daughter “absolutely loves” the way the Web log is being used in her Sociology class, and the whole group was really positive about the distributed content creation model that we are moving toward. When I talked about the content/knowledge management aspect of this, even the principal and another supervisor in attendance seemed to more fully understand the potential. (The supervisor, in fact, wants me to come and present to her department next week.)

Slowly but surely, the buzz is growing around here about Web logs, and I think the pieces are starting to fall in place. We still need some design issues straightened out, and I need to map the current site more clearly so I can plan the conversion effectively. But the best part is that the more I talk it, the better I get at figuring out how to explain it all. And last night’s reaction did much to affirm the philosophy and the process.
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