Colin Brooke at Syracuse has some great thoughts about the recent brouhaha about the accuracy and trustworthiness of Wikipedia. How can we trust it, some are asking, when anyone can go in and write anything about a particular topic without editorial scrutiny? Suddenly, studies are springing up to check the accuracy of the posts. People are posting nonsense at Wikipedia to see if it gets edited out quickly or, god forbid, remains a part of the entry for a longer period of time thus confusing and misleading those who access the information. Ghastly.

If I sound cynical, it’s because, well, I’m cynical. Colin nails it when he says that we start with the totally wrong premise in this whole conversation, namely that

Authority/trustworthiness/reputation/credibility is something that pre-exists the research.

This is one of the most interesting changes that blogs and wikis are bringing about, the idea that we must learn to seek our own truths and not just rely on the interpretations of truth by others. The read/write Web by it’s very nature creates unedited texts that are going to have more and more influence and impact on how and what we read and believe. And, it requires us to think about new ways to teach students (and ourselves, for that matter) to find truth. Colin says it better than I can:

Believe me when I say that I’ve looked, and I have yet to see the writing handbook that doesn’t assume that the only valuable information on the Internet is that which mirrors the “real world.” Credibility (in this model) is to be validated, through reference to a “real world” identity, rather than tested or explored via multiple sources. There are a gazillion sites for verifying the credibility of web sites, very few of which offer the simple insight that dates back to Aristotle at least: credibility is something you earn and develop, not something you simply have. When we ask our students to do research and to prepare the results in written form, we are teaching them to earn credibility through breadth and depth of research. You don’t earn credibility by citing an “authoritative source,” whatever that means. You earn it by testing your sources against one another, understanding what the reasons are for differences of opinion, and figuring out how to resolve them or to choose among positions, etc. In other words, authority should be something that each of us assigns to our sources, not the other way around. It is the result of research, not a prerequisite.

The advantage of sites like Wikipedia is that much of this back-and-forth (as Liz explains at Joi’s site) is visible and public, and in that sense, Wikipedia offers students a chance to watch credibility-in-action. “Trustworthy information” is indeed important, but perhaps more important is that we offer students a chance to see how trustworthiness is developed, to see the conversations that may ultimately result in Encyclopedia Britannica articles. Rather than asking students to plug “authoritative quotes” into 5-paragraph containers, why not ask them to take a topic on Wikipedia, and research its validity? And if they find that there are pieces missing, why not encourage them to contribute? You telling me that stringing together blockquotes from authorities is going to teach them more about research than participating in a wiki might?

Amen to that. A wiki is a perfect tool to teach kids about finding truth and developing trust. Regular Weblog readers know that trust is something that has to be earned. It takes time for someone to be added to the blogroll. We’ve always taught students to assume that trust with textbooks and encyclopedias; if it’s in print, it must be right…right? But times are changing, and I would bet that as the Web’s influence continues to grow, truths are going to be challenged to an even greater degree, and it’s not going to be so easy for students to find the right answer or right quote. That has huge implications for education.

An exceptional article by Stephen Downes in this month’s Educause Review should become, as others have said, must reading for any educator interested in using blogs in the classroom. Stephen does just a great job of giving context to Weblogs as classroom tools, providing an overview of the tools out there, and challenging some of the assumptions that have attached themselves to blogs as they become more and more mainstream.

The best part, however, is that Stephen really sets the stage for where our discussions need to go next.

And herein lies the dilemma for educators. What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don’t say the wrong things?

That gets to the essence of one of my most closely held beliefs about all of this, that the real power of the tool is in the type of writing it facilitates, namely, blogging. Which in turn leads to the larger question of how do we use Weblogs to nurture blogging? How do we create enough freedom within our curriculum to allow students to write about their passions? How do we find and develop audiences for our students to reach and interact with? How do we use Weblogs to develop lifelong learning skills instead of just making them storehouses of digital paper?

Jeff Rice speaks to this when he asks “What about Weblog pedagogy?”

What I tend to be seeing is a lot of usage of the tool for non-web practices: taking notes, journal writing, etc. Some folks seem surprised that students yawn at this approach. Course, these students were probably yawning when we did the same thing without a weblog, right (and I, too, have been guilty of asking students to use weblogs in such a way for group work or research)? Oh great. Another stupid journal assignment, but now I have to do it on the Web… Weblogs are being used all the time, all over the Web, but in ways which don’t mesh with many of these created assignments. Folks want to write. Many find this tool very helpful for writing. Academia is too far behind to understand how to integrate it into the classroom.

I think I’ve just decided to make that my question/quest for this school year…how do we integrate Weblogs into the classroom in ways that enhance learning instead of just manage practice? The only way to answer that is to focus on what makes a Weblog unique as a writing environment, because everything else could be just as well accomplished with paper and pen or Word or any of those other tools that we’ve been using.

Anyway, a great article, with another one about wikis in the same issue, and a third by Middlebury’s own Bryan Alexander. Good, good stuff…all by bloggers.
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For the first time in a long time I feel just totally overwhelmed with getting ready for school stuff and birthday parties and house repairs and…well, you get the picture. This is a major crunch week…day long training on our new student info system tomorrow, day long workshop on MovieMaker on Wednesday then tons of documentation to write for a full staff training next Wednesday. Oy. What’s been interesting to me, at least, is how strong the urge is to let all of that other stuff drop and just write/blog for a couple of hours. Partly because it’s become such a habit, and partly because there is so much good stuff out there to write about. (I have been managing to steal a few minutes here and there to scan what’s coming through the aggregator…I’ve got at least a dozen links to write about.)

Any full time ed blogging openings out there???

Some nice discussion at Kairosnews about the reactions of students when they get their own blogs. The thread starts with a link to a post on TechSophist that I think makes some interesting points about why classroom blogging is sometimes difficult for students.

While questions about assessment and posting requirements and quality are ones we all have to think through, I’ve often felt that one of the hindrances to blogging with my students was that we met every day and that I only saw them for nine weeks. To me, a blog almost feels more like something I would do outside of class, or that it would keep me connected to my peers and teachers when we weren’t physically together. In college where classes meet once or twice a week, that would work well. But in K-12, unless you’re using some alternate day block schedule, we pretty much see each other every day.

Ironically, however, that’s not the case with the author of this post:

…to accelerate the “community feel” that exists in a successful group blog, I will have blogging be in-class with the video-projected screen to lend accountability. I did that this summer, but not every class period; most of the blog assignments were outside of class and intended for discussion the next class period. Unfortunately, class time would come and postings were embarrassingly low, leading to weak discussions by the few students who read the assignment at all. In order to get the blog habit going, daily class time may be needed… Moving the bulk of blogging to in-class writing may seem artificial, but writing instruction can seem that way anyway.

I guess I wonder, however, if that isn’t the point…why should we continue to teach kids to write in artificial environments when blogs give us an opportunity for real writing? Why not stick to paper? Just thinking it through…

The discussion mentioned above has some other great ideas. Connection to a community space is essential. Dennis Jerz adds:

I give students their own blogs but also make those blogs integrated into a communal site. Assignments in which students are asked to comment on each other’s blogs, but are also asked to “Find two peers who disagree with each other and blog about their differences,” or “Quote from a primary source to support or disagree with a statement made by another student.” I let them know that their portfolio would include general requirements such as these. I also think it was very successful when students were asked to blog their oral presentations first, and in class to present from their blog. Those students who posted early often got comments from their peers (or their friends who are blogging in other classes, or strangers who happened across the blog entry).

And Samantha Blackmon talks about the importance of keeping it all relevant:

This term I am relying on blogs heavily in my advanced comp class where we are focusing on political rhetoric and looking specifically at the convention bloggers (as well as other things). I think it could get interesting very quickly, especially if the students don’t want to blog (or just don’t get it)!

The distinction is how do we nurture blogging instead of just the use of blogs? By creating community. By making writing real and relevant, not artificial. By giving students audience. I’ve said it before, Weblogs are just tools, but blogging is where the learning takes place.

Rob Lucas, a sixth-grade teacher in Rocky Mount, NC has started a wiki for teachers to share lesson plans, files and experiences. It’s a great model for how I’d like to present a wiki for articulation in my district, but heck, maybe I’ll just point everyone to Rob’s space. His wiki got a mention in a Christian Science Monitor article, and while I’m not positive, it might just be the first mention of a K-12 wiki in a major press piece. Cool!

One thing I really like about it is that it has a comments function which shows up once you register. Not exactly sure what the registration is for, but…

Anyway, a nice early model to watch. I Furled the site, added Rob’s feed to my Bloglines account, and am thinking more about Wikis today. This is still just too much fun…

A really great post from Aaron Campbell on the potentials of blogs and wikis in developing students that know how to create knowledge rather than just possess it. It really captures the disruptive nature of all of this, and crystallizes the huge shift that will be required should we adopt on a wide scale. The whole post is worth the read, and it’s one I know I’ll return to later when I have a bit more time. This sentence captures it pretty well:

I believe that personal publishing via weblogs and wikis on the growing social semantic web can be an excellent educational practice for feeding the being mode in young minds. The medium emphasizes process over goal, collectivity over individuality, decentralization over centralization, humanity over automation, authenticity over simulation, freedom over control, self-directed over teacher-directed, and the dynamic over the static. Furthermore, it can be self-reflective, potentially giving rise to insights into the socially constructed nature of self-identity.

That’s really well put, and defines much of what’s “different” about the read/write Web. But making that happen in schools is a huge task, as Aaron notes:

When learners are given the chance to join in the authentic and cooperative social practice of constructing knowledge in society, we are providing a new educational arena which encourages a participatory and potentially political orientation toward the ‘world out there’ – necessary for a healthy democracy. I can’t help but wonder though, whether our institutions of “learning” are commited to helping young people ‘know themselves’ or to merely condition them for a status quo existence, currently a predominant having mentality.

Good stuff.
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Gave an “Intro to Weblogging” presentation today to 15 elementary school teachers at a county tech center up the road, and my big surprise came when I set them up with Blogger accounts to get them started. I really hadn’t used Blogger for some time, but the changes are pretty significant. I especially like the turn comments on and off option…

And the best thing about Blogger is how easy it is. We were 14 for 15 in terms of creating blogs in under five minutes, and that always helps to sell the concept. So, add a few more to the list.

(via OL Daily) I love Stephen Downes’ take on the New York Times ed blogging article:

With a new school year approaching in the northern hemisphere the blog phenomenon is about to go mainstream with not thousands but tens of thousands of teachers using them in their classes. New experts will be annoited by the press, academic studies will be conducted, and the inevitable backlash will be in full force as writers will complain about the poor grammar and trivial topic selection of the average student blog.

I’ll wait to see if blogging actually hits the mainstream to that extent, but let there be no doubt that as more teachers turn to blogs, the standards for their use will become increasingly more challenging. The transparency that Weblogs offer means that not only can we celebrate our students’ learning and thinking and our own teaching more widely, we also have to be ready when people start to realize that we’re all far from perfect. (Shocking!)

Obviously, this is what scares many away from using Weblogs in class. Ironically, however, my experience so far has been that parents who actually read classroom blogs give more weight to being able to see their children’s work and follow along with the curriculum than the inevitable imperfections of the work that is published. But I agree that those outside observers who have no real stake in the outcome will be more inclined to highlight the flaws rather than debate the merits. (Oh, and by the way Stephen, you spelled “annointed” wrong.)

Too bad, but if current politics is any indication, it’s not surprising.
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Elizabeth Fullerton has her students using Weblogs in groups to report and comments about sports, music, movies, reality television and news. I always think it’s interesting to look at how students’ writing voices become so audience oriented when they start blogging. These are no exception.

Most of what her students are doing is exposition, but it’s not a huge step to get them doing some basic blogging; reading stories from other places and bringing the content into their own Weblogs to comment and link. I’m convinced that is where the true value of student Weblogs lies. It’s nice to be able to give them an audience and a forum for publishing their views, but the synthesis that blogging demands is where the real learning happens, I think.

I like the way Elizabeth is taking the time to nurture her students relationship with audience as well. She’s posting stats about their use and how they show up on search engines. But she’s a blogger herself, so I guess that’s no surprise…
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School doesn’t start for a couple of weeks yet, and there just doesn’t seem to be any way I’m going to get everything done that I need to before the teachers and students come back. This has been such an intense summer that I’m actually looking forward to the start of regular classes. We’ve put in a brand new student information system and upgraded to Windows XP on 1,500 machines, trained or planned training for over 300 staff members and been tweaking and troubleshooting the whole way. On the side, I’ve been redesigning and renovating the school Website, which gets it’s debut on the first day of school as well. Kinda boring.

In the midst of all of that, I’ve been trying to think about ways to get some more blogging going, and at the same time introduce wikis and Bloglines and Furl into the mix. I’m following Alan’s great work as, in a very structured way, he’s getting his staff up to speed. Not all smooth sailing, but he’s a man with a plan, and I’ll be learning much from him this year, I’m sure.

The good news is I’ve got about 20 more teachers who have taken the blog workshop, 15 or so more coming to the next one in early October, and an inaugural wikibloglinesfurl class coming up just after. I’ve already got two teachers on the schedule to set up blogs for their students, and the all the academic supervisors will be working with reps in their departments who will be updating their parts of the Website. (I actually ran through the site with the supervisors on Friday and despite some phobia, most seemed to be looking forward to highlighting and promoting their teachers and curricula.) So, we’re getting there.

But I’m feeling like this year I want more than more numbers. I want a class using a Wiki. I want my librarians teaching kids to use Furl. I want parents using Bloglines to aggregate their news. I want more collaborations. I want…all sorts of new and creative uses of this stuff.

From the “Shameless Self-Promotion” Dept. comes this Q & A with About.com.

A pretty straightforward presentation about the potentials of Weblogs in libraries and schools. This paragraph, however, caught my eye:

I think the late Douglas Adams would have approved of weblogs. The snowflake/blizzard analogy may refer to something completely different, but it does seem to encapsulate their very essence, i.e. something which starts life small, but which gradually ‘snowballs’ into something bigger as more people contribute comments, ideas, news, etc. Above all weblogs can, and should be, fun – which is perhaps why they appeal to children and are being used by children’s librarians.

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So my Feedster search feed for “classroom weblogs” kicked out a few interesting reviews/reactions to the story yesterday. Here are a few snippets…

From editorsweblog.org:

Not directly related to the newspapers industry but a trend which will have effects on our future readers: the New York Times reports that “webblogs will eventually become a more successful teaching tool than Web sites…

Yeah, you know, we talk a lot about blogs and writing but not much about blogs and reading. Reading starts the whole process, and more of our students are going to end up reading blogs on their own than writing blogs on their own, most likely. Someone must be blogging or writing about reading Weblogs…

And Furd Log picked up on something I just noticed a couple of minutes ago:

Of course, in classic NY Times style, they screw up the name – “web blogs,” indeed!

Ouch! Web Blogs! Now if they could just get together with Wired on that capitalization thing…

Here’s a comment at Talkleft that’s kind of interesting, though I think he/she meant wary…

I’d be very weary if teachers actually encouraged students to use blogs as credible sources. Mainly because they are mostly OP/ED and rarely base their presupositions on facts. Let’s not be too hasty and making our wonderful university and public libraries obsolete.

Followed of course by the Alan Levine Award winner:

Teachers should forget using blogs, TV, movies, as “educational tools” and get to work teaching the young how to read and write. Books. Laziness is what impels most “teachers” to use the simple-minded approach.

Ai Carumba.

(via OL Daily) So it seems that Excel can now be used an aggregator as well. Just another step on the road to the blogwikirssfurlbrowseroffice app?
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Well, I think the title just about says it all: “In the Classroom, Web Blogs Are the New Bulletin Boards.” Um, I beg to differ.

You know, it’s amazing how often I get asked that question: “Well, how are blogs different from, like, news groups?” Graphics. Collaboration. Shared space. Digital paper. Syndication. And so on, and so on… But for some reason, so many people still look at them and see, well, bulletin boards I guess. Too bad.

The good news is that the article does bring to light some more teacher bloggers who are doing some creative work with their kids. But what’s up with not including links in the story? I mean, c’mon…

Some other not so great observations: turning collaborative, trans-oceanic study of the Holocaust into pen-palling (modern day at least.) And this:

That has led some teachers who are critical of blogs to question wonder the technology has actually done anything to interest students in writing. Critics also worry that the casual nature of writing on the Web may encourage bad habits that are hard to break, like e-mail-style abbreviations, bad grammar and poor spelling.

Ok, now the journalist in me would love to know what teachers are critical. And, how about some discussion of blogging as something other than IM.

Can you tell I’m disappointed? Look, I’m not saying that edublogging is the answer to every problem in education. But I just hate it when the incredible potential of this technology is missed almost entirely. Too bad.