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.

(via edblog) Now you can export your Furled sites by department in MLA or APA format, among others.

The export page just got updated to include two new features. First, you can now export items from a specific topic (in any of the available formats). And second, you can now export items in various bibliographic citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE). The citations only contain the data that we collect (i.e. title, view date, URL), but we will increase the amount of meta-data (i.e. author, publication, etc.) in the near future.

I love this. I have just got to grab someone by the lapels, drag them into my office, show them how to Furl, and make them promise to start using it with their students. Better yet…we need a Furl Club!

I’ve got three weeks to finish the foundation and put the finishing touches on our new Manila Website and I think I’ve actually got my brain wrapped around how this is going to work. Thank goodness. Not that I haven’t had the big picture all along, but it’s only when you start getting into the details that the complete puzzle starts falling into place. Even though there’s a lot to do, I’m very psyched about the unveiling on September 8. (No Labor Day weekend for me, however.) Today we worked out the departmental “template” which will (hopefully) satisfy the need for consistency and yet give the departments some flexibility in what they post. We decided to push pictures heavily (despite all the consent hoops that go along with that) and to set up a second Weblog for each department to use as a news site. Lots of work up front, but if it works it should be very cool. I keep thinking about collecting all of those RSS feeds from all over the place and pushing them out all over the place. Scary thing is I really think I could do this full time…really. It’s way too much fun.

So anyway, feedback or ideas are always welcomed.
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