It will be great to see Tim later today, and the fun has already started here in SF. Training with Bryan Bell today, reception tonight, discussions tomorrow. Here’s Tim’s pre-discussion thoughts:

I’m accelerating toward putting the second version of our teacher’s hands on Friday, so I won’t have time to flesh out a few ideas I wanted to kick out before edBlogger on Sunday, so here’s a quick list of thoughts:
When will the Salam Pax of the American urban public high school appear?
And will he or she get a trip to the Ivy League for their trouble?
Should we try to write a grant to fund an open source project to create the kind of content management system needed to do classroom blogging on a large scale?
It may take tools designed for use in the Third World to solve the technological problems of inner-city schools.
We should really avoid talking about our own blogs.
If I start going off about OPML or RDF or any other obscure technical issue, send me to the time-out room.
Overall, I have a really good feeling about this meeting.

I agree…this shouldn’t be about our own spaces. These conversations should have one goal in mind, to advance our use of Web logs in the classroom and in schools. This will be the first time that we’ll have this size group of people in the same room all focused on education and schools. I’m feeling good about all of this too.

By the way, Tim has started a blog for NCTE…

Here’s the Mock Online Newspaper for Seton Hill University’s “Practice of Journalism” course. Very cool, and very easy. I need to make sure Bryan teaches me how to make columns in Manila on Saturday. (Via Mike Arnzen)
—–

I’ll be taking part in a panel on Sunday at EdBlogger that deals with “Blogging in the classroom, lab, library and school.” It’s going to be moderated by Terry Elliot and will include Karen Claxton, Paul Allison, Christopher Kelly and Tim Lauer. I know Tim, but I haven’t met the rest, which is the main reason for getting together in the first place. The other panel on “Blogging in the district, campus and organization” will feature some people who I have been reading for quite a while: Dan Mitchell, Tom Hoffman, Jay Cross and Erin Clerico (who, by the way, keeps our servers here at Hunterdon Central running smooth as glass.) As expected, Pat‘s done great work on this and deserves nothing but our highest praise for taking this on. The attendee list is up to 50 or so, the weather looks cool but clear, and the wharf is calling…Pat’s right…THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!

Now if only we had a wireless T-1 connection…(Maybe EdBlogger II)

I think I’m having too much fun doing my daily post to my journalism class. First of all, it gives me a chance to be silly, but it also gives me a chance to point to really good work being done by my students. That was one major goal I had for this quarter was to be more Barbara Ganley and Anne Davis like in bringing together the relevant comments and work from among my students’ Web logs. It is just so very cool to be able to pull up their stuff and share it with the class, talk about why it’s exemplary, and give some real recognition to good stuff.

Even better is that more of my teachers are starting to understand the power of the Web log portal. And this book discussion site that a group of teachers are working is really blossoming. (As is this one and this one!) We’re at over 275 Manila sites on our server right now, and while some of them aren’t getting a great deal of use, I’d say there are at least 150 active Web logs at our school. I’m finding now that when I go into classes to set kids up, there are at least one or two students that are Web log vets, and I’ve even run across a couple who have two sites going for two different classes at the same time. Warms my heart…

I’m in a very happy place about all of this right now…perfect timing for EdBlogger!
—–

This is one of these great posts where someone takes the ideas of another arena and makes it relevant to education. Anne is giving me some relevant things to think about on the the plane to San Francisco…

OK, we have seen the educational use of weblogs increase this year but maybe we need to think a little harder about what we want to celebrate as more educators enter the arena.

It’s time for us to give students ownership. We have to be willing to take the risks of giving them a voice so we all can have a dialogue – I think that’s teaching at its best and if we don’t do this, who will?

Let’s keep building our educational community. Let’s keep finding others and keep on sharing all we are learning and thinking. We can make a difference!

I think we will get lots more educators on board if we just keep it simple. I am still in awe of how much you can do with a weblog in which students and teachers are writing, posting, thinking, creating, and responding on subjects they care about. Yep, keep it simple! It works!

Ok…c’mon…we’ve got 48 hours to pitch in and get Anne out to SF for EdBlogger…
—–

A little birdie told me that Bloglines will be releasing an upgrade tonight that will let me get rid of all of those saved items that have been stacking up AND be able to rename saved items. YAY! And there seems to be more on the way…
—–

Pete Markham of Hopkins High in Minnesota has started a Tech Guy Web log to answer questions from teachers and students. Very cool. Pete and Tim Wilson are creating a K-12 Web log force out there…too bad I don’t see their names on the Ed Blogger attendee list.
—–

It’s been a bit more difficult than I thought it would be to get my students up to speed on the blogging thing. As is often the case when I teach from experience, I tend to assume he same level of enthusiasm and understanding from my kids, and that’s just not the case. Today, though, I think I have some bloggers being born. I’ve had to give them a pretty well-defined form to start, but the plan is to help them evolve out of it into more of a style of their own. And, now, the big hurdle is getting them an audience. I’m going to try to encourage them to post on each other’s sites, and maybe I’ll implement TrackBack. But sometime after the holiday, they’re going to start doing some marketing of some type. I want them to reach beyond the classroom.

Also kind of slow has been their understanding of the aggregator. A few of them are having “oh wow” moments, and they are getting it. But it’s proving more difficult than I thought for them to find feeds for their topics. I think next time I need to set aside a block to get them started with that. It’s more the concept of actually reading from a variety of sources that’s holding them back more than anything else, I think.

What’s cool, despite these humps, is that they’re in the act of reporting. Doing research, finding news, synthesizing the information, interpreting it, and publishing it. Now I know it’s not the traditional form…we’re getting to that. But it’s active engagement in the process on some level. And it’s going to help them when they do get to their “real” stories by providing some background.

Classroom
http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/

http://www.gg144.com/blog/musings.asp

http://holton.ltc.vanderbilt.edu/blog/archives/001319.html

http://www.christineterry.com/mt/

—–

I’m sure there are more, but two stories dealing with Web logs came accross my aggregator today that I found interesting. The first is from the Times and talks about Nick Denton who is trying to turn blogs into business. BloggerCon session leader Jeff Jarvis is quoted prominently. I thought this was pretty interesting:

The way Mr. Denton determines the theme of his blogs has less to do with his own personal interests than with the demands of the market, as determined by Google. He relies on Google’s AdSense program, which pays Web sites to publish text ads matched to the pages’ content, for the bulk of his revenue. As a result, he picks blog subjects based on the rate Google pays for clicks on ads in specific topic areas. Among the topics of blogs he plans to start this year are computer gaming, travel and politics.

Another story in the Des Moines Register talks about the growth of Web logs in politics, but notes that the Internet still has a way to go when it comes to being a source of political info:

A Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus participants, taken in July, found that 18 percent had gone to the Internet for political information. That’s a significant increase from October 1995, when 3 percent of likely caucus participants reported in an Iowa Poll that they had gone online for political purposes.

—–

The latest issue of Educational Leadership magazine is dedicated to accountability and devotes much of the issue to No Child Left Behind and it impact on schools. The articles are all very thought-provoking as they debate the best ways to deal with the expectations set by the law. Most of the authors argue that NCLB is unrealistic, based on bad philosophy, and more a burden than a help. The goals of the law are admirable, but the methods of implementing it are pretty out to lunch. It’s pretty heady stuff and worth tracking down if you don’t already get a copy.

Anyway, there was one “a-ha” passage for me in an article by Richard Elmore titled “A Plea for Strong Practice.” Elmore enumerates the problems with the law and writes about more effective ways for schools to improve what they do. One key point that he makes is that “Knowledge is not necessarily where you think it is.” Basically, he says that there are a heckuva lot of “low performing” schools that know more about creating instructional improvement than other nominally high-performing schools. And in that section, he writes this:

Most high-performing schools in our highly segregated society have gotten there not by knowing a great deal about instructional practice or improvement but by getting and holding on to students in high socioeconomic groups. The practice in most nominally high-performing schools is emphatically not about improvement but about maintenance of a certain level of confidence with the surrounding community.

It made me think about my school, which for all intents and purposes is a great high school from most standpoints. But there’s no doubt that much of our success can be attributed to the fact that our kids come to us pretty successful to begin with. It’s almost like we just have to be careful not to screw them up. Now that’s not to say that we don’t have good teachers and good intentions to improve our practice. But we’re really not doing much that I would consider “bold” in terms of getting the most out of our kids. And I think all the posting of late about e-portfolios and alternative assessments has made that even more acute for me. It would be so cool if we were to push the envelope, challenge the assumptions more. But we’re so concerned, it seems, with doing well in the standardized areas that it leaves little room for real innovation. It’s too bad, not only for our kids but for the millions of kids across the country who are taught to pass the test without really knowing for sure they can put that knoweledge to productive practice.
—–

From a comment left at Jeff Jarvis’ site:

Blogs are about trying to find as much truth as possible, to be fair and accurate, to get as close to meaningful information as possible, but they are not impartial, and we, the audience are desperate to know what people think, especially those that have developed expertise in a particular area, with access and time (because it’s their job..) to things we don’t have time for, to hear their comments and to be able to comment back. We, the audience, understand that blogs are partially journalism, but also opinion, constantly iterated, and the usefulness is in this more temporal aspect.

Great description of the relationship, I think. I’ll have to post that to my J Class page…
—–

Siri Anderson is a junior high social studies teacher in Minnesota that is really the first that I’ve seen to do what we’ve been doing here with posting questions to a class Web log and getting students to answer via comments. It was really cool to find this and see that someone else is trying it this way too. Found it via Tim Wilson’s “The Savvy Technologist” which obviously has become the newest addition to my Bloglines aggregator.
—–

Another dip into the e-web-folio world with this study from ePortConsortium.org. Couple this with the post from yesterday and it’s pretty clear where this is heading, and I think I like it. There is much, much more than the blog-relevant excerpts I’ve pulled out below that is worthwhile reading, including a plethora of practical applications of such a program.

Like a traditional portfolio, teachers, mentors, colleagues and friends can be invited to review and comment on work. Unlike traditional portfolios, participation is not limited to who can be physically present at any time or place. By organizing work to meet specific needs and managing access, the author can control the nature of the interaction. Teachers and mentors might exchange comments privately with the student/author about work in progress, colleagues and classmates might discuss their work with each other, the author might request feedback about specific issues and concerns, and students/authors can reflect on their learning experiences. In addition, work also can be made public for viewing and comments.

and:

The theory and value of portfolios has been more fully developed. Unlike paper-based portfolios, ePortfolios can more effectively provide both an authentic assessment of learning as well as significantly more information about the learning experience. The aim of the ePortfolio is to present and document the work and the process that the student and faculty member have used to get to a certain point. There is an ease of annotation that encourages dialogue. This evidence can then be saved and organized and reorganized to meet specific needs, such as relating the advising process to the student’s strengths and weaknesses, in order to make future learning experiences more relevant. Clearly, this is of great benefit to the academic dialogue that goes on throughout the student’s participation in the academy. It is then, that the true power of ePortfolio thinking begins to emerge.

ePortfolios also can make it possible to include information, artifacts and reflection on more than just the courses that a student takes. They can be used to capture learning experiences that usually fall between the cracks — that do not result from a specific class, but are gained from social interactions, extracurricular activities, internships and other less formal learning opportunities. The desired outcome is that when a student finally uses the portfolio as a tool to seek employment or advance study opportunities, the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.

BTW, Tom’s response to my earlier post has me thinking too…
—–

Anne was no doubt the star of last night’s Tapped In chat about Web logs. Reading through the transcript I found myself saying “You go girl!” as she was doing some major evangelizing. I’m going to make a bet that they invite her back to moderate the next one they do about Web logs. Here was my favorite bit:

Once you start blogging, other educators will find you and everyone shares what they are learning and thinking. It is better than any inservice I have ever attended. Lots of thinking, sharing, and learning going on!

Makes us sound like we’re a real pack, doesn’t it? Great job, Anne…
—–