I know, I know. I should just start a Lessig blog. So sue me. The man is inspiring, at least to me. So inspiring, in fact, that after listening to his most recent talk from the 4Cs conference last week, I decided to transcribe the whole thing for further study. (I know…I have no life.)

“Writing Not Allowed?” basically asks whether or not the freedoms we have always enjoyed in terms of “remixing” content through writing should apply when writing changes from just text into audio, video, digital photography, etc. It’s a typically well crafted, impassioned plea from someone who just gets it more than most, and I would urge you to carve out 40 minutes to listen to it. I’ll leave you with a snippet from the end.

Now you have a connection to this debate that is much more important, I think, than even the profits threatened by this war. You have a connection to the literacy that these technologies comprise. Because when we live in a world that is constituted by these forms of media, we live in a world where our ability to participate in this world depends upon the capacity to critically understand an express in this form of media.

Now we never had that opportunity growing up, in an age where the cost of doing it was so high. But our children will. And you in this context need to become engaged in a single objective which is consistent with the objectives of academics since the beginning of time. You have to defend the freedom to write. You have to defend a world where the expression of ideals using the tools of the age is again free. Because if we allow this issue to be defined and determined by the extremes that now occupy the few, that freedom will be lost to our children. And that loss is much more significant than the loss of profits to one very small segment of the American economy. It’s a loss that will ramify not just in the capacity to speak, but in the ideal of what it means to be member citizens of a democracy. You grew up with the freedom to obey the law, and our kids grow up in a world where that freedom is in so many places, taken away from them.

So I’ve come here to ask you to help in this battle. First to redefine it, not as a war, but as the continuation of the struggle that began when Guttenberg released free speech first in our tradition. You need to enter this debate, and speak with the authenticity of your position, not as promoters of piracy, because no one world believe that you are promoting piracy, but as promoters of the tradition of knowledge that we inherited, and that we have an obligation as academics to pass down to our children in as a robust a form as we inherited.

As teachers, we need to get our brains around these issues. And then we need to do some serious teaching.
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I know, I know. I should just start a Lessig blog. So sue me. The man is inspiring, at least to me. So inspiring, in fact, that after listening to his most recent talk at the 4Cs conference last week, I decided to transcribe the whole thing for further study. (I know…I have no life.)

“Writing Not Allowed?” basically asks whether or not the freedoms we have always enjoyed in terms of “remixing” content in writing should apply when writing changes from just text into audio, video, blogging, etc. It’s a typically well crafted, impassioned plea from someone who just gets it more than most, and I would urge you to carve out 40 minutes to listen to it. I’ll leave you with a snippet from the end.

Now you have a connection to this debate that is much more important, I think, than even the profits threatened by this war. You have a connection to the literacy that these technologies comprise. Because when we live in a world that is constituted by these forms of media, we live in a world where our ability as participants in this world depends upon the capacity to critically understand an express in this form of media. Now we never had that opportunity growing up, in an age where the cost of doing it was so high. But our children will. And you in this context need to become engaged in a single objective which is consistent with the objectives of academics since the beginning of time. You have to defend the freedom to write. You have to defend a world where the expression of ideals using the tools of the age is again free. Because if we allow this issue to be defined and determined by the extremes that now occupy the few, that freedom will be lost to our children. And that loss is much more significant than the loss of profits to one very small segment of the American economy. It’s a loss that will ramify not just in the capacity to speak, but in the ideal of what it means to be member citizens of a democracy. You grew up with the freedom to obey the law, and our kids grow up in a world where that freedom is in so many places, taken away from them. So I’ve come here to ask you to help in this battle. First to redefine it, not as a war, but as the continuation of the struggle that began when Guttenberg released free speech first in our tradition. You need to enter this debate, and speak with the authenticity of your position, not as promoters of piracy, because no one world believe that you are promoting piracy, but as promoters of the tradition of knowledge that we inherited, and that we have an obligation as academics to pass down to our children in as a robust a form as we inherited.

As teachers, we need to understand this debate. And then we need to teach.

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(Via James, who has much to say on this as well…) This piece by Ulises Mejias takes a look at the writing process in wikis as a way to understand the need for what he calls a “social literacy” now needed when tackling collaborative writing spaces.

Thus, social literacy…does not refer to the skills necessary to perform in society, but to the use of the resource of writing in social contexts. Social literacy amounts to the textual practices not (as has been true so far) of a single author, but of multiple and simultaneous authors. Wikis make social literacy apparent by allowing us to witness the evolution of text in time, and evolution that reflects the decisions not of a single individual, but of a community.

In keeping the focus on literacy in the context of writing, this post does much to identify the ways in which we are going to need to prepare students for the negotiation of content and style that is going to be required to navigate these collaborative spaces. And there is much to say about the educational benefits of using wikispace to create content, but not to use it as a discussion space.

There are plenty of other online tools better equipped to support an Initiation-Reply mode of conversation (such as discussion boards for collective dialogue, or blogs and email for more individualized forms of exchange). If appropriate, these tools can be used in conjunction with wikis. But the whole point of wikis is to de-prioritize the individual voice in favor of the collective voice, which dictates the structure and content of the text. This, of course, is a literacy which most individuals in our societies are unaccustomed to. Which is why scaffolding wikis with other technologies that support more traditional forms of communication might be an adequate strategy.

Worth wrapping your brain around if you’re trying to find some context for wikis in your practice…
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I’m still a little peeved at that Vermont school principal who says that blogging is not an educational activity. It’s just such an uninformed statement that I hope it’s a misquote. I’d bet the farm he’s never blogged, never commented, never even read a well designed classroom blog. Instead it’s a knee jerk, blanket assumption drawn from the bad habits of a few kids who have not been taught to do better. And there is enough blame for that to go around. But don’t blame the blogs. The fact is, Myspace is less a Weblog site than it is a community of adolescents making a lot of sexual innuendo who love the color pink. (I can’t even figure out how to post an entry to the account I just created there.) It’s journaling, flirting, posing…none of which comes close to what it means to blog.

What’s doubly ironic is that there is less and less doubt that writing ability is among the top factors in predicting a student’s success in college and afterward. To improve your writing ability you need to write consistently for real audiences. No tool that I know of does that better than Weblogs. In addition, bloggers improve their reading and critical thinking skills and become more information literate in the process. Blogging is most definitely an educational activity.

Blogs are getting a bad name in educational circles because those who disparage them think sites like Myspaces are representative of the technology and aren’t taking the time to understand their potential. We need to make the case more clearly that a) much of what is happening in these online writing spaces is clearly not best practice, but that b) best practices and real learning can occur when employed by teachers and students who have embraced blogging (v) and, finally, that we can c) keep our kids safe by practicing common sense, modeling appropriate use, and making sure our students understand the rules of the road.

Just a quick pointer to newly posted version 1.5 of the RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators. It adds some new information on Furl and del.icio.us feeds, begins a list of cool uses for RSS, and fixes some broken links. At last count, the guide has been downloaded over 2,500 times…Cool! Please let me know if you see any corrections or have any additions to suggest.

Enjoy!
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Steven Cohen e-mailed me this link to a story in the Rutland (VT) Herald about a jr/sr high school principal who has banned access to Myspace.com, a blogging site. The reason? Well aside from legitimate concerns about kids publishing personal information, the prinicpal says blogging is not an educational use of computers.

Um, I beg to differ. And if anything, this seems to be what they call a TEACHABLE MOMENT. Let’s see…we have some kids who are doing what tens of thousands of other kids are doing out there, writing about their lives in a public space. Good for the school for monitoring what the kids are doing there and realizing they aren’t necessarily being smart in the way they are doing it. Bad for the school for thinking that denying access will teach them the lesson they need to learn.

Instead, the principal urges parents to check history files and cookies on the computers that their children are using. Oy. This reminds me of Seymour Pappert last week at CoSN when he was talking about the initial reaction of parents in Maine when they announced the 1 to 1 laptop initiative. Many of them said things along the lines of “they’re just going to go to porn sites and play games.” Pappert, who was one of the major players in the project, responded by saying “But that has nothing to do with giving them the technology. What is it about your children that would make you think they would do that?” Amen.

It’s easy to check the history and cookies. It’s easy to ban sites that kids are going to find ways to access anyway. What’s hard is modeling and teaching appropriate use. That is the only way we’re going to help kids protect themselves from the dark side of the Internet.

So I’ve been seeing this link to amaztype for a few days and finally decided to have a look at the results for a “blog” search on Amazon. Sheesh! There are dozens of blog related books out there suddenly. Who knew?

Like Road Blog:

When the Websters leave Normal, Illinois, for a family holiday, Austin and Ashley get pulled right back into the World Wide Web–and this time, Mr. and Mrs. Webster get sucked inside the Internet, too! What began as a relaxing getaway turns into a wacky road trip when they set out to find Lost Lake Resort. Soon, the Websters are stumbling through a long lineup of lost links, like LostKitty-dot-com, the Lost Sea cave, a long-lost Inca city, and a lost round-the-world flight.

Or The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez:

Twelve-year-old Raisin Rodriguez has been uprooted from her life in California and plopped down in Philadelphia with her mother, sister, step-father, step-sister Samantha, and Samantha’s cross-dressing poodle Countess. The only way Raisin can survive the painful transition is by recording every detail in a secret blog she keeps for her best friends from home.

Wow! And how about Baghdad Burning : Girl Blog from Iraq:

In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.

And, ahem, China, the Sexiest Country on Earth: Blogs of China Business & Life:

Our blog contributors lift the veil of mystery shrouding China …who you meet (students, secretaries and staff) …starting from zero …the wrong freedoms …takeaways (top ten MBA rules to break, top ten business rules to follow, top ten China/USA contradictions, top ten China/USA similarities, top ten adjectives Chinese use to describe Americans). China will be ‘on top of us [U.S.]‘ sooner than anyone expects. Similar to the 1980’s economic ‘invasion’ by the Japanese, the impact of China’s economic penetration will erupt unexpected, unforeseen and overnight.

Mercy. And let’s not stop there. Looks what’s on the horizon: Blogs, Wikis, and Feeds In Action:

An innovator’s guide to application development with blog, wiki, and newsfeed technologies, this book introduces the new ways of collaboration enabled by these technologies and focuses on the fundamental concepts needed to understand how the technologies can be used in real world applications.

“Holy Spimoli!” as my grandfather used to say. It’s a veritable feast of blog books. Hmmm…
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In my real job, I’ve been trying to manage the process for changing the current five-computers in a classroom model at my school to something a bit more flexible and scalable, and we’re on the verge of selecting some pilot programs to implement this fall. Most notably is one that will involve outfitting about 30 teachers with Tablet PCs to try to see what effect they might have on delivery of the curriuclum, professional development, and student learning. Other pilots will most likely revolve around using iPods and thin client technology. And, like many other schools, we’re taking a serious look at a 1-1 student laptop program in the near future. Lots of work to do.

Now that we are entering the pilot phase, I’ve been thinking pretty hard about how to best support the project through online spaces like blogs and wikis. I think that setting up a blog for the teachers and encouraging them to reflect on their process and questions is going to be crucial. But I’m also thinking about a wiki as a space to capture resources and links for further study and research. With all of the bowing down I’ve been doing lately with wikis, it’s about time to start practicing what I preach, I think.

Widely linked, but I wanted to just post this news that Yahoo now has a search just for Creative Commons material. Nice.
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I’ve been thinking about the ramificaitons of open access publishing for quite some time now, especially with the work that Lawrence Lessig is doing. It’s no secret that he’s become one of my real heroes, and so his ideas are forcing me to rethink a lot of what I’ve always believed about intellectual property and publishing and how that relates to academia in general and the classroom specifically.

Here’s how I come at this issue. The capability now exists for mere mortals to publish ideas to large audiences, and it’s now easy for large numbers of people to contribute ideas to the process. And, in my mind, there are enough models to show that the collective efforts of the group can create a far more effective and useful product.

So, as someone who wants to continue publishing articles about the benefits to educators of the Read/Write Web, and as someone who has a good chunk of a book written on the subject, this all poses a serious conundrum. Should I, should we all follow Lessig’s lead and pledge not to publish without a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license? Should we, perhaps, publish our ideas not in book and article form but in blog and wiki form where others can contribute?

Alec Couros is struggling with the same issues, it appears:

Here I am at the beginning of my academic career, in a world where the old adage “publish or perish” still stands strong. Can I, in my position, possibly resound Lessig’s pledge? While my heart and mind will fight for this, what sacrifices will I have to make in the short term? Or, alternately, will I be able to build my career through the opposition of this seeming inevitability? It’s too soon to tell … one thing at a time … but what a ride it will be.

My sacrifices would not be as significant, I don’t believe. I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I’m not in a publish or perish environment. And having this space has already proven to be an increasingly effective way of airing my own ideas and spreading the meme. More importantly, I feel strongly about the idea of sharing the ideas in new and helpful ways. My inclination now is to let others write the books and instead work to facilitate and support the creation of more effective content by the community in more non-traditional forms. I won’t say it’s been easy to get my brain totally around the idea. But it feels right.

I’ll be writing more about these ideas as they develop, but I would really love what others’ take on all of this is. To me, it’s one of the really important shifts the Read/Write Web is bringing about.
(Alec also points to a long list of activities that can support open access publishing, by the way.)

Next month, two of my former blogging students and I will have the privelege traveling down to our fair capital city to blogvangelize to the governor and other assorted state and federal legislators. It’s all in the name of trying to stave off some serious cuts to the ed tech budget in the state of New Jersey. We’ll be one of only eight teacher/student groups from around the state showing off what we’re doing technology wise. Pretty cool.

But here’s the side story…we almost didn’t make the cut becuase I didn’t have any hard “data” about the effects of blogging on grades. Oy. I know that most people just assume that improved grades mean improved learning, but obviously that depends on what the assessment is measuring. I convinced them to take a chance on us because of all the anecdotal evidence I can provide.

More to come about this I’m sure…

Ok, so now there’s no excuse. We been able to create blog and wikispace for free. But now you can have your audiocasts or videos or other media hosted for free. Forever.

Ourmedia.org is the brainchild of a group of visionary bloggers who are obviously putting their time and efforts where their mouths are. It’s great stuff.

Time to make the content.

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So remember the teacher from a few weeks ago who started having grand designs about using a Weblog to get students and parents talking about the process of the course not just the content? (If you don’t, you might want to read those links before proceeding.) Well, he’s made it happen. As Mr. McHale puts it, “it started slow, but it’s beginning to grow.”

I have to say I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. The parents, students and teachers are talking, negotiating through the blog about how the course is working and what ideas might make it better. They’ve even enlisted a former teacher at our school who now lives in Minnesota. This is a combined English/Social Studies class, and at first, his team teacher wasn’t thrilled with the idea. But he’s come around.

I must admit that when Mr.McHale proposed this weblog idea I was a bit skeptical. I envisioned students using the weblog to complain about work without offering ideas on how to improve things. Although this fear seemed to be coming to fruition on the first day, it has been the exact opposite since. I want to thank those students that have contributed and the parents/teachers that have contributed.

And check out this thread where parents weigh in on the use of groups in class. They’re making serious, valuable suggestions, and at least one of them is impressed at being given the opportunity.

Interesting and sensible comments. I do want to say how encouraged I am by the thought behind the establishment of this site, and much of the conversation generated. I give teachers a lot of credit when they are willing to seek out student input as you’ve done; I know it can generate a lot of extra work for them. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in front of a classroom, but my students really seemed to respond well to those opportunities.

Now, I know that teaching is not all about winning a popularity contest with parents, and I know that this type of transparency can sometimes create more problems than it solves. But I’m anxious to see what evolves from this, to see what sticks. And the general idea that we can now create these sorts of connections still thrills me…
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They’re handing these out at CoSN. Nice way to pump up ETI!
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I really don’t want this to come across as snooty, but I have a mini-rant to er, rant. First, let me say that I know I am not even close to being a great presenter, and I’m guilty of some PowerPointlessness from time to time. But I still cannot believe how many technology presenters create PPTs and then do little more than stand behind the lectern and read their slides. Argh. It’s brutal, and it happened in three of the sessions I attended. As far as I’m concerned, if I could have gotten the entire presentation e-mailed to me, then why bother attending? Brutal. That’s another reason I like Lessig so much. He plops one word, maybe two on a slide and develops ideas around them, moving rapid fire at times through the slides. Watch this flash presentation he did. It’s a PowerPoint, but it’s a story. It’s, I think, great teaching to the level of his audience.

Unfortunately, that’s not what I saw today, nor do I see it very often when I go to other conferences. We’re educators. Shouldn’t we do be doing better?

One exception today was a presentation by Jonathan Finkelstein of Learning Times, who actually helped me through the “talk” I did there a couple of months ago on RSS. He showed how New York City schools are using Learning Times to do some awesome professional development.

Another interesting session was given by Milt Dougherty, the superintendent of Little River Schools in Kansas. He gave a pretty empassioned argument for school change…systematic school change. He actually said the phrase “disruptive technology” which, despite the fact that he wasn’t talking about blogs and wikis, makes him ok in my book. He talked about how education has it wrong when it comes to keeping time in class fixed while making achievement variable. The idea that achievement should be fixed and that we should honor the variable time it takes for students to reach those achievement goals is really important. I also liked it when he asked whether or not things would change if we removed the technology from our schools. A lot of schools would hardly miss a beat.

I like it when people make me think.