Dan Mitchell extends yesterday’s post on Manila’ LOR capabilities even more:

Since the links can be embedded in other pages on the weblog site it is an easy matter to create a page describing the gem that includes a link. (Or, as hard-core Manila users know, a News Item may serve even better.) Now you have a searchable page containing a description of the resource with a built-in link to the original gem.

It gets even better. Frontier/Manila server operators can add plug-in tools that provide extra features to those who create and maintain sites. One such tool is the Metadata plugin, which puts full metadata fields on the page where one creates new Manila stories – making it a relatively easy matter to add metadata to the page wrapping the resource… if you are into such things.

[Update] I failed to mention the RSS piece of this when I first posted this message. The RSS feature can automatically publicize the fact that the new object has been created an made available. Those subscribing to a site’s RSS feed will get the descriptive text for the resources with a link back to the original.

Weblog tools can provide the following:

Learning objects (by the way, I don’t like that term!) can easily be uploaded.

They can easily be incorporated into web pages on the weblog site, either by embedding or by linking to the original object.

The page containing the link or embedded object can contain descriptive material concerning the object.

Plugins allow additional features such as easy inclusion of metadata.

The page and the metadata are searchable.

RSS can provide notification when a new object is posted.

The more you dig into it, the more powerful Manila seems…

I’ve been looking for a resource like this where I can try out some other search to RSS type applications. It’s amazing how fast the RSS/newsfeed aspect of all of this is growing.

Came across a couple more examples of teachers blogging with their students that look pretty interesting. First is this e-book of a Tapped-in presentation by Barbara Dieu who is a teacher in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I like how she introduces her project on her own site:

So as many of you are about to embark on the adventure of creating a web page or using a blog…here are some questions for you to consider: Does the architecture of the environement online (blog, web page, wiki, message board) affect your stds’ motivation and the way they learn, communicate, interact? Will a page with text only make students read more and pay more attention to the text ? What kind of balance should there be between design/layout and content online?

Good stuff. One quick thing I realized in going through her workshop site was that Blogger now has a notification piece built in. Did it always have that? Seems like a lifetime ago…

Also got an e-mail from Scott Rogers who is blogging with his Freshman Composition students at Weber State in Michigan. The posts on his own site relating to his teaching are great, including this set of questions he’s looking at in his use of Weblogs:

Can technology solve some problem in a better or more meaningful way than another, non-techie way?

In this case, I’m concerned with the following issues:

1) We spend most of our time in the classroom off in the ether of rhetorical analysis or argument structure or whatever, and there are no real outlets for them to discuss the connections between what we’re reading and what they see going on in the “real world.”

2) I want students to evaluate sources from day one–and not wait until the major research essay at the end of the semester.

3) I want to give students a little more room to roam around in their responses to the texts.

4) I want students to see themselves as taking part in a larger set of discussions, and really, in the end, to see the way that technology like Blogger goes a long way toward democratizing the publishing of what Scott Russell Sanders calls “the individual mind at work and play.”

I think it’s so cool to see more and more educators pushing their thinking and sharing the struggle. It always makes me push my own thinking on what I’m doing.
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