From today’s Christian Science Monitor:

Somit Basak’s tutoring style is hardly unusual. The engineering graduate spices up lessons with games, offers rewards for excellent performance, and tries to keep his students’ interest by linking the math formulas they struggle with to real-life examples they can relate to.

Unlike most tutors, however, Mr. Basak lives thousands of miles away from his students – he is a New Delhi resident who goes to work at 6 a.m. so that he can chat with American students doing their homework around dinnertime.

So what’s next…grading?

Hey, wait a minute…
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I’ve been so buried I didn’t even realize that the May issue of Technology and Learning magazine had the excerpt of my RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators that I had provided a couple of months ago. Yikes!

A bit belated, but if you want the specific details on how to put RSS to use in your classroom, please check out the .pdf, and let me know if you have any questions, additions or suggestions.
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How cool is this? Kids in Singapore are being (gulp) ENCOURAGED to blog!

Nine junior colleges and 43 secondary schools will slug it out online in the Inter-school Blogging Championship organised by SingTel and the Ministry of Education (MOE).

Five student leaders from each school will help sustain and moderate the blogs from next month till August, during which their schoolmates are free to post messages on the blogs via the Internet or mobile phones. They can win more than $15,000 in cash and 3G mobile phones.

But that’s not even the best part.

Promising that there would be “no strict no-no’s” laid down on taboo topics, MP Miss Penny Low (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC), who is one of the judges, said the perimeter would be set as the competition progresses.

“We are pushing new grounds with this platform and there will be a certain amount of risk. However, we want the children to learn that there has to be a balance between self-expression and responsibility,” she said.

Oh. My. Goodness. A balance?

I wonder how many American educators would propose the same contest.

(Via Alec Courous)
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Feels like a pretty good run of posts here is coming to an end…my brain is FRIED. Cooked. Aside from the teacher Tablet PC pilot which kicks off here next week and runs through the summer and into next fall that I have to plan all the training and curriculum for, there’s all that gymnastics, soccer, reading, Brownies, grass cutting, mulching, reading, husbanding, end of year reporting, Moodle, car repair, blogvangelizing, writing, reading, learning, big personal project type stuff that’s making my plate just a wee bit overfilled these days. I’m feeling a much needed break coming on…anyone want to guest post? ;0)

…but remember…good thoughts for Anne tomorrow.

So I’ve been going back and forth with Dave Gilbert of Art Mobs fame about ways the students at my school might tie into the MOMA podcast virtual tours that he’s doing with his group at Marymount Manhattan College. I have to thank him for the idea; he’s really enthusiastic about connecting the technology and his college students with ours on the 9-12 level, and the more I thought about it, the more excited I got. So I corralled the forward thinking art teacher here and gave her a pitch to weave some form of audiocasting into her curriculum next year, and to make some of it synch with what Dave is doing. Here are some of the possibilities:

IBM is encouraging it’s people to blog and wiki.

According to the executive summary, IBM is encouraging the use of blogs, wikis and other forms of communication in order to help employees learn from others and share information about their own work.

Learn from others? Share information about their own work? Why would that be good for business?

From the new Blinq blog at the Philadelphia Inquirer comes this description of the blogosphere:

This is where all of us go to find evidence of whatever is in the new. When people can put their own hands on evidence, they’re going to talk. The Blogosphere has emerged as a forum – half forensic lab, half tavern – where people can gather and think and talk and investigate and contribute to the natural discourse in a way they haven’t before.

Tough choice…

(via Ken Smith)

Whether it’s Bill and Melinda Gates lamenting the state of American high schools, the CEO of the week lamenting the ongoing slippage in our ability to keep pace with the rest of the world, or Thomas Friedman lamenting our lack of a crisis-mode mentality about it all, it’s getting harder and harder to deny that we’re headed toward a serious wake-up call regarding this country’s competitive capabilities in a world that is becoming increasingly more connected. The rest of the world has always wanted what we have. The difference now is that more and more it’s easier to get. They don’t have to come here to get an education or a good paying job. And our problem is we’ve become far too complacent, urged to shop rather than to take up the challenge.

The challenge is to create students who are lifelong learners rather than successful test takers. One of the phrases that Alan consistently uses in his presentations is “fearless learners,” that we have to give our students the tools and the skills to find relevant information and use it well on their own. That we need to teach them to literally revel in the learning process and the collaborative, social construction of knowledge that it creates. That the teacher to student vertical model doesn’t cut it any longer. I sincerely believe that is what the Read/Write Web can do, that it can provide the means for our students to create their own learning opportunities, that it can teach them how to negotiate meaning, how to find truth, and how to become a lifelong learner. I believe this because it’s my own experience, and because I see more and more of it every day in this community of learners.

But here is the struggle, of course. Schools are not fearless. They are fearful. And they are fearful of a whole bunch of stuff that when you get down to it doesn’t have much relevance to whether a student can learn or not. They’re fearful of students not passing the test. They’re fearful of communities not passing the budget. They’re fearful of parents getting upset when their children don’t make the grade.

And they’re fearful about blogs and Flickr and the like. It’s becoming obvious that there are many, many schools who are blocking blogs and Flickr and the rest out of concern for a students welfare or because some misconceived notion that there’s nothing educational to be found in the tools. I would argue that while we should be aware of the risks, the risks can be minimized by thoughtful practice and effective instruction. Thousands of kids are blogging in schools safely, and they are learning in the process. Schools that don’t find ways to bring these tools into the curriculum are denying their students and teachers all sorts of learning opportunities and not preparing their students for what lies ahead.

But is more to it, obviously. Schools are equally if not more fearful of their own reputations. The transparency of all of this is the real problem, I think, not the safety issue. Take this, for instance:

Unfortunately, incidents like these have made my district shut down blogging sites on our network. I can’t blame the IT department for doing this. Lord knows the last thing we need is a public scandal.

The public scandal should be that we’re not doing our jobs to model and teach students the appropriate, educational use of technologies they are already using outside of school. Sure, they may come across something we don’t want them to see, but let’s teach them how to deal with that. Let’s talk to them about why what they see is inappropriate or demeaning or harmful or whatever. Denying access only teaches them that we’re either at a loss for how to deal with the reality or too scared to do so.

I’ve met a lot of good folks during my most excellent blogging adventure, none finer than Anne Davis who has done more to bring blogs to the classroom than any of us. This week, Anne will be undergoing an operation in Los Angeles to treat a tumor that’s been growing on her auditory nerve. If Anne has in some way been a part of your blogging world, head on over and send her your best wishes.

Here’s to a speedy recovery Mrs. Davis!
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Dennis Jerz links to an article in the Balitmore Sun that basically says essays are good, blogs are bad. (See the Metafilter thread of the same name for a lively discussion.) For me, here’s the salient “the author doesn’t quite get it” quote:

Any dot-commer can blog – a serious journalist with years of experience like, say, myself, or the teenager down the block spewing political rants during breaks from Grand Theft Auto. The problem in the blogosphere is that the kid and I will be received with equal credibility.

And this is a bad thing? What she doesn’t say is that in all likelihood, I’ll end up trusting her credibility more than Mr. GTA. But the fact that I no longer go the “she must be credible if she’s in the paper” route is a positive thing, I think.

The thing with most blogs, and one of the things I like best, is that by allowing me to comment back, the author isn’t just saying here’s what I think. He’s saying “here’s what I think…now what do you think?” When I blog, like right now, I’m writing to test my ideas, not just express them. That’s what is so different about this, the fact that I may wake up tomorrow and read what someone has commented back and perhaps change what I think. Maybe this doesn’t hold up, and I get the chance to find that out and negotiate a new meaning. That isn’t happening with the blogs are bad piece. That wouldn’t happen if I didn’t have that little discuss link at the bottom of the post.

It’s about constructing knowledge not just delivering it.
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So when I finally come across something that depicts blogging as a bit more than journaling, I have to share, right?

But as I discovered, blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging – if it’s done well – has evolved into an all-consuming art.

So there all you blogging is journaling knuckleheads. This ain’t no “Dear Diary” junk.

Serious bloggers, I realized, aggressively report a pet issue, updating their sites throughout the day. They scavenge the Internet for every shard of information on a hot topic, like John R. Bolton’s chances of becoming ambassador to the United Nations or Tom DeLay’s ethical troubles.

Yeah. Uh-huh. That’s right. We’re agressive reporters. We’re bloggers. Uh-huh.

To succeed in blogging you need to understand it’s a craft, with its own tricks of the trade. You need a thick skin. And you must put your life on hold to feed an electronic black hole.

Ooooo….take that! It’s a craft. We got tricks and tough skin. We’re like feeding an…um…ah…electronic black hole?!?

Oy.
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We got up early and went for a canoe ride this morning down the canal that runs parallel to the Delaware across the street from our house. The sun was peeking through these towering beech trees that lined our route, and the melodies of the songbirds crested in yellow and red and green made for an almost surreal moment. It was as peaceful a time as I’ve had in quite some time. Really wonderful.

Not so in the edblogosphere, however. Once again, we’re feeling another wave of angst, not just from the growing number of “kids attract predators in blogs” stories but from teachers and students who are learning the hard way what online publishing is all about. More evidence, I think, of that ungainly adolescence we’re in the midst of, the one where, as Terry so rightly continues to assert, the rules get made up as we go along.

Like this example of a teacher blogger who found himself on the local nightly news for what he wrote in his blog:

EVERETT, Wash. – A teacher’s extracurricular writing has landed him in some hot water. In a personal blog, an Everett high school teacher compared some of his students to prostitutes.

It all started with a recent dance at Cascade High School where tradition is that some female students dress up like call girls.

The teacher, Andrew McNamar, writes daily personal blogs about educational issues, such as cheating and accountability.

One recent posting dealt with junior prom night. He wrote he was disappointed with the principal for letting it happen, saying: “The unfortunate part about tonight was the crashing of the dance by the ‘Senior Sluts’… dressed, well, like hookers.”

Another line says, “…two of them I really respect as individuals and students. The other three, well, it was predictable…”

Some of the high school seniors were very upset.

The Everett School District sent a letter to the teacher with the simple message not to do it again.

The teacher in turn sent a letter home apologizing for his posting, saying he was sorry for causing any pain and embarrassment, explaining that his choice of words was poor.

The comments that follow his apology post are worth the read if you want to get some sense of the messiness of this process and the value of a space where the ideas can be shared.

Example two comes from Barbara Ganley’s class where some of her students got together socially last week and created a spur of the moment post to the class blog that Barbara subsequently had to pull. From the apology post from one of the students comes this:

The idea was brilliant: get drunk, wait for people to say funny things, and then post a series of EL170 quotes on our sacrosanct mother-blog homepage. In an instance of drunken idiocy, I created under my own name an entry entitled ‘Behold Writing Games.’ Hardly. I should have called it ‘Behold EL170 Students’ Taking Advantage of Their Blog.’

But even in this bleak moment, the blog instructs. Read what the students say about their space, about how they violated it, and what they learned from it. It’s inspiring.

In both cases, poor decisions lead to a greater understanding and learning. This is what makes me most sad when I hear that entire states are blocking Flickr in schools and that other districts make it a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy to publish to a Blogger blog. It such a missed opportunity for teachers and students to learn about what it means to be a part of the larger conversation, about building communities of learners, about actually contributing ideas beyond the stale four walls of the classroom.

I know I’m mixing the metaphor here a bit, but adolesence means making mistakes. I tell my kids ’til their eyes roll that mistakes are a wonderful gift, because that is when we learn. There are many ways to deal with adolescents. Locking them down and trying to keep them protected may have some short term return, but in the long run they learn nothing about how to make choices, about how to respond to adversity, about how to manage the vicissitudes of life that we will never be able to protect them from.

Blogging is not journaling. Blogging is learning. We have all the evidence we need to make the case.
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This already has the feel of a “Let’s Talk About How to Keep Kids Safe on the Read/Write Web Week” as there have been a bunch of issues converging in these parts and elsewhere of late. I know it’s getting obnoxious for me to keep doing this, but Dean Shareski found yet another story about Xanga-itis that brings the cluelessness of school administrators to an alarmingly embarrasing new level.

“I don’t know a thing about it but the kids know about it,” Steve Borgsmiller, superintendent of the Sikeston R-6 school district, said of Xanga and online blogging. “Through word of mouth it is common knowledge to those kids who are regular users of the Internet.”

Sikeston schools are among those across the nation that do not allow Xanga to be accessed. Students must sign an “appropriate use” document to use the school’s computers and Internet access, according to Borgsmiller, and online blogging is not among the appropriate uses. “The school’s computers are for educational purposes, not for entertainment,” he said.

(Amazing how almost exactly similar his response is to the Vermont principal of a couple of months ago. I know, I know…he was misquoted. Hmmm…)

Blogging is not an appropriate use. It’s entertainment. And so it goes.

So let’s talk about safety. I’ll start.

How about this? How about we get all the kids together and say to them

“We know that there are a lot of schools out there that are banning personal journal sites like Xanga and Myspace.com, but we want you to know that we’re not going to do that. Even though we may discourage you from reading and writing to these sites during school, we feel you have every right to use Xanga or Myspace to write about your world in an appropriate way. In fact, we think there are lots of ways that you can benefit from doing so. You’re writing and expressing yourselves and that’s generally a good thing. But we need to make sure you understand some of the unwritten rules that go along with any publishing you do to the Internet. And that’s what you’re doing, you’re publishing your thoughts, ideas, in some cases your pictures and videos to a vast audience. And that may have some unintended consequences.

The worst of these is that some people who you become “friends” with online may not really be who they say they are. They may be people who want to harm you or steal from you or your family. When you publish information about yourself like your name, your age, your address or your telephone number, you are increasing the chances that something bad is going to happen. When you post provocative photos of yourselves, you’re being more foolhardy than flirtatious. Plain and simple, you don’t know who is looking at your words and pictures. So please, don’t publish personal, identifying information, and never completely trust the people you meet online.

Second, remember that the things you publish may follow you long after your high school or college experience ends. Think carefully about what you want future employers or “significant others” to know about you. Google is good today; think about what it will be able to find five years from now. Many people are already being affected by things they wrote and published years ago. You may as well, so be smart about what you publish. Ask yourself if it’s really something you want to become a part of your online record.

Finally, understand that while you have the right to create and update these personal sites, you do not have the right to use them in ways that defame, threaten or harass others. Once again, we want you to remember that despite your best efforts, it’s very unlikely that what you publish online will stay private, and that means that even words written in jest may be punishable by the law.

Blogs can be wonderful places of learning and connection. They can be places to think, to reflect, to dream and to plan. But like anything else, we all need to learn how to use them effectively, appropriately and safely. We think many of our teachers’ and administrators’ personal blogs provide some great models, and we’d urge you to check some of them out. But we also understand that ultimately, you decide what you do and don’t do in your spaces. We hope you learn to use them well, and if there is anything you think we can do to help accomplish that and to help keep you safe, we hope you let us know.

We have some time for questions…”

Now, what do we say to parents?

So I’ve been spending some time with Flickr the past couple of days just kind of exploring more deeply what the potentials of the tool are. It’s an amazing site, not only because of the really great photos (I got sucked into this photoset earlier) but because of some of the conversations I found people having around them. Obviously a lot of potential for classroom use.

But here’s the thing. Today was the first time using Flickr that I ran across something that I felt was inappropriate for younger kids. And I’m not talking about bad photography. I flagged it with the “may offend” label, but I’m not sure exactly what that did. And I spent a little time digging around trying to see what the site’s policy was. Anyone know how it works? Aside from close monitoring, is there anything a classroom teacher can do to avoid photos like those from coming up? If not, I’m wondering how much of a negative impact that will have on teacher’s being willing to try it…

Moe the Student gets it.
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