This piece by Charlie Lowe and Terra Williams articulates a host of reasons why writing teachers should seriously think about bringing Weblogs into their classrooms. It continues this great string of links lately that are starting to get to the heart of classroom use and providing the foundation for more widespread adoption. Very cool.

Just a couple of excerpts:

Student hypertext projects expand the concept of the public audience to include the entire web. Yet, weblogs as a social, public genre can have equal if not more appeal to a generation who enjoys seeing the private made public on Survivor and MTV’s Real World, while also fulfilling the pedagogical goal of expanding audience outside of the classroom. When students hesitate to share their texts publicly–given the association of the word “journal” with the word “private”–an exploration of weblogging will clarify for them that a weblog is a public way of sharing ideas.

Using Delaney’s “digital paper,” we’ve found that blogging and reading blogs prepares students to write online. Weblogs can serve as an alternative to hypertext assignments, or even make hypertext assignments more effective. In our experience, students sometimes get carried away with the eye-candy of web site design–images, fancy layouts, Marcomedia Flash–at the expense of working on the alphanumeric part of their texts. Working with weblogs privileges writing: students are more invested in the writing that goes into end-of-the-semester hypertext projects when they’ve been writing for the web all semester. They learn rhetorical strategies for writing online before moving on to work with graphics. They also learn about how to make effective hyperlinks–a crucial part of website design and blogging. Thus, students spend more time developing their texts, rather than working mostly on graphics and choosing the “perfect” background. These texts likely end up being more rhetorically sensitive than without the intervention of the blog.

And too long to paste in here but well worth the read is the bulleted list of benefits their students got from blogging. Makes me want to get back in the classroom.

I’m definitely going to read and reread this and share portions of it with my English teachers. The sea is shifting here, slowly but surely. Maybe more on that tomorrow…

(via Micro Persuasion)

Whittemore said he thought a Web log will improve communication between ASG and the student body. Since appearing online, the ASG blog has received hundreds of hits its first three days — with discussion ranging from an open invitation for a poker tournament to concerns about diversity in the student body. Students are invited to add questions, comments and criticism to ASG-related matters discussed on the site.

(Wistful sigh.) I just love this concept, but I know it would be a really tough sell here. Unless there was a way to screen the comments…which of course cheapens the whole process. Still, I wonder if a high school community would be served well by opening itself up in this way to the comments and concerns of its publics. To me, the long run answer is yes, yes, yes. The short term fears will probably prevent it from happening.
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From Userland CEO Scott Young’s Weblog:

Don’t worry. UserLand will continue to advance Manila. Manila 9.0.1 will be announced tomorrow. Yes, the future is assured.

Nice to know…
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Ok, so I’ll probably catch all sorts of crud about this, and I’m really not picking on Tom who is doing excellent work in figuring out how best for schools to employ some of this technology, but here are all the things I (or my tech people) don’t understand about his latest posts on SUSE Linux becoming the leader in K-12 Linux deployments:

Thanks for linking to this — Alex Halavais created a wiki where EVERYONE could join in the roundtable, so be sure to put in your 2 cents at http://alex.halavais.net/files/OjrRemix .
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If you have about five hours with nothing to do, head on over to Slashdot and check out this thread on the value of computers in the classroom. It stems from a review of Todd Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind, which, from everything I’ve heard, deals a stinging blow to the whole technology in the classroom model. The stories of success and failure go back and forth, and the debate is as passionate as they come. But one theme that seems to run through most is that teachers are just not prepared to make good use of the technology they have. Now, that is not an indictment of teachers as much as it is one of the system that trains them. Personally, obviously, I think technology plays a crucial role in the classroom but only when the teachers using it have attained a fluency that allows them to be creative with its implementation.

And the great thing about Weblogs and wikis and the rest is that fluency is relatively easy. You don’t need hours and hours of training to see the potential of this. I know we have a long way to go with multimedia and handhelds and the like, but provided they have the access, this is something we can do now. And I think if more people could engage their children and their teachers via the transparency that the technology provides, maybe people will be able to recognize the benefits more easily.

I just realized I never got around to adding this often linked article at the Online Journalism Review which is really an interview with Dr. Kaye Trammel, Alex Halavais, Jill Walker and Cori Dauber.

Are Weblogs a passing fad or a revolutionary new form of communication and publishing? That’s still an open question, but the presence of blogs in the academic environment makes it more likely that they’ll survive and thrive in the long term. Educational types aren’t just using blogs to teach or spread their research. They are turning their research lens on Weblogs themselves, whether the context is within schools of law, journalism, communication or library science.

Note: Kaye sent along this link to a wiki page for further discussion.
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Interesting, in light of our recent discussions, that Frontier, the server software that Manila runs on, will be released as open source. Dave Winer says:

And that’s what I want to announce today. At some point in the next few months, there will be an open source release of the Frontier kernel. Not sure what license it’ll use. There won’t be any grand expectations of what kind of community will develop. Even if no bugs get fixed, if no features get added, if no new OSes are supported, it will be worth it, because its future will be assured. That’s the point Ted makes, and that’s my reasoning behind this.

Since I’m pretty clueless about the code, how about some help in terms of what this means for Manila users…especially the “future is assured” part.

(Sorry for the repost…the link to the rest is now fixed.)

To say that I-Law was transformative for me would be an understatement. Put aside the opportunity to sit in some of the most revered classrooms in the land at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Put aside the star power of the faculty. Focus only on the ideas and the debates and the discussions that while not specifically focused on education certainly articulated revolutionary ideas for teaching and learning in the digital age and you’ll understand how this weekend was one of the most profound learning experiences of my life.

It’s hard to know where to start, but since it’s so central to my concerns, let’s start with Weblogs. There was a lot, and I mean a lot, of conversations about the potentials of blogs and wikis and other such tools that “democratize” the learning experience. (At one point it was noted that Jefferson would have loved blogs, but Madison would have discouraged them.) In fact, if there was one almost mantra that came out of the weekend it was “Just be a blogger.” Read more…
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To say that I-Law was transformative for me would be an understatement. Put aside the opportunity to sit in some of the most revered classrooms in the land at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Put aside the star power of the faculty. Focus only on the ideas and the debates and the discussions that while not specifically focused on education certainly articulated revolutionary ideas for teaching and learning in the digital age and you’ll understand how this weekend was one of the most profound learning experiences of my life.

It’s hard to know where to start, but since it’s so central to my concerns, let’s start with Weblogs. There was a lot, and I mean a lot, of conversations about the potentials of blogs and wikis and other such tools that “democratize” the learning experience. (At one point it was noted that Jefferson would have loved blogs, but Madison would have discouraged them.) In fact, if there was one almost mantra that came out of the weekend it was “Just be a blogger.”

Larry Lessig, when speaking about the importance of blogging, said:

“Reading is important; but writing is also very important. It forces people to express an argument; it pushes you, because you are speaking “in public” means you have to have a better argument – discourse is dialog, not shoutdowns…It’s not about quality; it’s about the act of writing – thinking about what you have to say is a worthwhile exercise – and saying it publicly reinforces not only the effort to make a good argument, but you also have planted a stake in the ground – you are more committed.” (Thanks to Frank Field for the transcription.)

And just to supplement that with a passage from his latest book Free Culture:

As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. Today there are probably a couple of million blogs where such writing happens. When there are ten million, there will be something extraordinary to report.

Clearly, there is a huge opportunity for constructivist teaching and learning that can transform how students interact with their schools and the world. That sounds overstated, but I don’t think it is. Not that it’s going to be easy to bring about this change. As Lessig noted over and over, this is a very disruptive undertaking in terms of the potential effects not just on education but on our democracy. And blogs are a big part of that because, as I noted in an earlier post, they are a tool with which students can learn to create the truth. I love the idea that these tools allow for “the acculturation of what the truth is.” That’s so important, that concept that these truths can then become a part of the larger culture through publishing.

The idea that students can become active participants in their own learning is nothing new. But now, that participation has reach, and with it, legitimate and uncontrived purpose. As Terry so eloquently says, “The tools exist now for a revolution in education, one where we don’t just push out the metaphorical classroom walls into the real world, but one where we tear down the walls we have built ourselves and invite the world in.” Students as creators and collaborators not just passive consumers of curriculum. And teachers, now with the real opportunity to bring the world to the classroom, becoming true facilitators of experiences and conversations that create meaningful learning. I mean think of what it means in terms of the relevance of the current curricula when suddenly a whole range of new resources and tools are available to teachers. What does it mean for traditional texts when the body of knowledge on any particular subject can be updated and accessed AND contributed to on a daily basis? Amazing.

But there are barriers. The most acute to me right now parallels what Dan Gillmor has said about how webpublishing has changed his approach. “My readers know more than I do.” Well, our students know more than we do about the machinations of the Internet and technology in its various forms. As Lessig points out, this is becoming a mix and burn society, and the facility with which kids move from one application to the next is something that the vast majority of teachers cannot replicate. (Ironically, Dennis Jerz has a really interesting
post about just this point.) And that is an issue, especially when we are teaching students. Kids are constructing meaning by using preferred literacies that teachers don’t have, and are instead being taught in ways that “prepare them for our past instead of preparing them for their future,” a quote I heard a from local superintendent at a workshop last week. That’s not to say we should abandon text, but text is no longer the primary literacy that many students bring to the classroom. As evidence, just look at the many ways Lessig’s latest book has been “remixed” into different forms.

And right now, while kids by and large have the technology skills to create, they have very few models for appropriate uses for that creation. And that’s a huge problem. Agree with the laws or not, right now there are 60 million criminals walking around, teachers and students among them. While the legitimacy of the P2P copyright issue was a large chunk of the conversation this weekend, the point was not lost that this kind of loose disregard for law is not a great thing. (And while I won’t go too much into it here, the whole Free Culture concept was incredibly compelling and worth advocating in my opinion.) Right now, as Lessig said, people will say that most of what kids do in blogs and other things is illegal, and that’s a problem. Just as it’s a problem that the vast majority of teachers can’t speak convincingly on those issues, and the schools are doing little to help students frame their actions in any meaningful context.

Finally, there still exists a huge digital divide, not just in the states but around the world. I was struck by the number of people from other countries who attended, and their contribution to all of it was really enlightening. Much of this is still irrelevant and will continue to be until we really make a commitment to providing access and space and support for the kids who are not as lucky as others. It’s a huge issue.

Obviously, there is a huge media literacy component inherent in all of this that creates a excellent argument for a required course for every student in America. And the first people that should take it are teachers. I’ve been using that literacy word more and more lately because I do think much of this comes down to how quickly we can get away from the idea that it means simply reading and writing. There really is a technological literacy this should be required of both students and teachers. The problem is that these technologies are changing at such a rapid pace that it’s difficult to keep up with them.

There will be more that washes out from this weekend as this all settles in. And I know none of this may be particularly newsworthy for many. But things just seemed to crystallize for me in a number of ways that has made all of this work even more stimulating, more important, and more overwhelming. I met a ton of really good and interesting people who I hope will carry on these conversations. I sincerely wish that Harvard would put on a similar gathering called “I-Education” where we could talk more specifically about the implications of all of this for education. And I’m interested in what others think the best approaches might be.
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The big news in blog application ville is that Moveable Type has upped their pricing which seems to be freezing out a number of university blogging teachers who had set up multiple sites for their students. So I think it’s time to make another pitch for Manila.

Now I know it’s not an open source alternative which many are espousing, and I know that universities are more willing to go down that road. But from a public school perspective, it’s still just not an option for most. So, what about Manila? Educational license is $400 year for as many sites as your server will hold. We’re running a couple of hundred with no problem, and conceivably we could run as many as a couple of thousand. In the past year since we installed it, we’ve had only one or two instances where the server went down for more than just a few moments. (Frontier, the server software Manila runs on, has a cute little “keep it running” feature that automatically restarts it if something crashes.) In other words, it’s been very, very stable with regular maintenance.

The power and flexibility of the software is self-evident, it’s easy to use (at least as easy as MT,) Userland is showing some new energy in developing it, it has widespread implementation, and it’s got a great theme artist cranking out good stuff on a regular basis. It’s a great tool. And you can try it for free here.

No, it’s not perfect, and there is still a lot of work that Userland has ahead of it. But I think it’s still a great alternative to MT. Just my two cents…

(via David Weinberger)

Hi we are room 209. We are students in the Chicago Public Schools and we maintain this blog. This blog is a way of asking questions, writing about the things we are learning, discussing ideas from many sources, (books, blogs, letters, interviews) and reflecting on those ideas.

And the kids want our opinions on “Who is king of the jungle?” Another great example of an easy way to expand the classroom to include a variety of voices.
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(via Rick Barter)

Webfolios may have the most significant effect on education since the introduction of formal schooling. When fully matured and implemented by capable professional educators throughout every discipline in an educational institution, webfolios promise a viable alternative to current, high-stakes testing, which focuses education on test-taking rather than teaching and learning.

I’m glad Frank Field types fast as he “transcribed” this exchange:

Will Richardson, high school IT: This is an education issue for me. How to teach this to kids? What sort of strategic teaching is needed to get these ideas across. The freedom/information literacy/information creativity thing – how to sort it, filter it and teach it

Larry Lessig: This is about bringing together the producer and the consumer. Learning how, in the context of a film, is show how presentation changes the meaning of the facts presented. Teaching kids how to understand the content of media in new ways

“By participating, they get to see what’s “inside” of creativity; learning how this stuff really works. It’s not truth, it’s what is presented. That teaches something crucially important for participating in modern society; how to tell the truth; how to acculturate what the truth is.
”
–Larry Lessig

By participating, they get to see what’s “inside” of creativity; learning how this stuff really works. It’s not truth, it’s what is presented. That teaches something crucially important for participating in modern society; how to tell the truth; how to acculturate what the truth is.

Participation in the construction of the truth.

Right now, most of what kids do in blogs and other things, people will say it’s illegal – and that’s a problem

Terry Fisher: I agree, but I have another point.

The primary way that educational materials are distributed to kids is in the form of hardbound books made by major publishers; established by school boards/districts. There are disadvantages to this mechanism – expensive, and a disincentive to update; got to buy the expensive update – finally, it’s poor for disabled students

There exists a narrow provision that allows for conversion into media suitable for students with handicaps (braille, read aloud, etc). And there are companies that capitalize on this – they buy the textbook, and convert –usually with a digital intermediate form

SO there’s an initiative afoot to facilitate the more rapid distribution by standardizing and liberalizing the digitizing of the material – via a standard XML markup system.

OK – sounds good; but if you’re doing that, why doesn’t everyone get the advantages of digital formats? In digital form, the upgrades are now available; other advantages.

Income problem for hardware, but can be overcome. Will the publishers go along?

They see some advantages, but some threats. Unencrypted content, p2p corrosion. Not so bad; but a bigger one is this. Once the idea that books should be digital, the idea that a SINGLE book is the way to learn a subject weakens – a collection of several pieces would be a better way to assemble the necessary pieces. Publishers fear this

Why? Because of the collapse of the idea that a single source is the way to teach – educationally liberating, but upsets the industry.

Will: WikiText is a site that let’s teachers do this kind of thing (Note: I meant to say WikiBooks.)

Yochai Benckler: Turning this into a teaching tool, the teachers will learn this technology; and possibly this way of working

Celebrating free software is no more a criticism of writing software, than blogging is a criticism of professions journalism

Lawrence Lessig
Technology has facilitated a creativity that will fundamentally alter the democratic potential of a wide varitey of people who cannot currently participate. It is changing the way culture gets made and remade, mixed and remixed. The culture is effecting the freedom to speak and the power to speak. It is a capacity to speak differently, a bottom up democracy. Not the New York Times democracy but a blog democracy. The potential to advance and spread in the sense of progress is enormous.
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