So this is good news…right?

Gates called blogging and the RSS Web content syndication service a “very interesting phenomenon.” He suggested that by using RSS as notification system, customers can “get the information you want when you want it.”

Substitute “parents,” “teachers,” “students” etc. for “customers” and at least Weblogs as school communications tool looks promising.

Tom has been reading the end of the year wrap ups from blogging teachers and the reports are obviously not good.

It is a little painful reading the trickle of end of semester recap posts coming the self-selected early adopters of classroom weblogging. It’ll get very interesting when the trickle becomes a flood. Will the negative cases overwhelm the positive? Will we collectively learn or just get discouraged?

Will the trickle become a flood? Are we just barking up the wrong tree with all of this? Will we still be at it in two years? Five? Ten?

Last year I was thinking blogs in the classroom were at the tipping point. But Joe Luft, who was one of the early adopters of Weblogs, was a bit more even headed in suggesting this was going to be a long road, one that faced a number of hurdles; access, time, risk averse teachers and students…and more. Pat Delaney, one of the earliest adopters, has really reigned in his enthusiasm as well, saying “the bloom is off the blog” at one point. And my own results this year have been a mixture of some really great moments and a majority of fairly average experiences.

But the thing is there have been enough moments to keep me interested. And I have a handful of teachers who are interested too because their students are showing signs of learning more effectively with the use of Weblogs. They articulate argument in writing, they synthesize what they have read and discussed, and they research more effectively when they are asked to annotate sources and information. Not that any of that can’t be done with a Weblog, and not that it’s happening across the board. But the dynamic has changed enough to be significant, and they want to continue to experiment. None of them have given up. That’s a good sign.

And then there’s Anne, who sees successes every day with her younger kids. Is she wrong when she says “The building of a community through weblogs is exhilarating. It’s truly the best way to learn.” And that’s the thing. For Anne, and for me, this has become one of our greatest learning experiences. And that in itself is motivation enough to keep looking at ways to make this work in the classroom. Will it work for enough teachers and students to make it worth continuing our collective efforts? I guess we’ll see. But I do know that a) there is a great deal of untested potential left in these tools, b) it’s still relatively early in the blogs in schools narrative, and c) I’m still learning.

Blogging is work. Despite its relative ease of use, it’s still a challenge because of all of the reasons and shifts we talk about in this community almost every day. We don’t have time. We don’t all like the transparency that blogs create. Early adoption is a risk. And on and on. But there’s nothing different here than with any other new technology or process. If Tom had comments, I’d ask him if he’s going to give up on all those programs that he’s struggling with, that he sees potential for but that rise up and kick him in the butt from time to time. It’s messy by its very nature. But by blogging his failures he’s making the chances of success greater since he’s sharing what he has learned. Teachers are doing that too. And I think on some level our collective experience is translating into greater learning for our students.