Tools
On the slight chance that <a href=”http://www.blogger.com”>Blogger </a>users didn’t see this, now you can <a href=”http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html”>compose your posts and send them directly from Word</a>. Another step toward integration of all of these tools…

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I know that I have said this before, but very few edubloggers out there have more practical experience than Barbara Ganley at Middlebury College. She’s back from an extended break with a post that talks about getting ready for her fifth year of using blogs in the classroom.

And so, here I am, back again, delighted to be a part of this evolution of blogs in our classrooms, convinced that we should take the time to help our students develop a grammar of and a practice of academic blogging, both individual and collaborative, then pretty much step out of the way except to ask questions and provide feedback (i.e. step out of the center of the blog and thus the classroom). Our students will surprise themselves by how much they accomplish even in a single course in a single semester. Imagine if all their courses, all their semesters, all their disciplines of study were connected via their blogging…

Barbara is definitely an inspiration, and she mentions a visit I made to Middlebury, must be three summers ago now to meet with her and Bryan Alexander, Sarah Lohnes, and Hector Vila. I think that was the first time that I had truly been in the company of bloggers, and the fact that it was at such a beautiful and well-respected educational setting just validated a lot of what I was feeling about blogs back then. If these guys were using them, there must be something to it.

And there definitely is. If you don’t believe me, believe Barbara, who is without question someone who has been a wonderful teacher of mine through her blog. If it’s not on your list of regular reads, it should be. I’m really looking forward to see what she has in store for her students this year.
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Today was one of those days that made me yearn for the classroom again. It was the second of two Tablet PC Pilot trainings for about 20 teachers where we really started getting into the pedagogy of how we’re going to use these things in the classroom. It was part just exploring the potential of all the cool apps that are coming out for tablets, part evangelizing the changing nature of digital content, and part amazement at watching technology actually work. I love those days when you know people are walking out drained but psyched about the prospects.

For me, the coolest thing was not so much being able to walk around the classroom and have everything I did on the tablet project wirelessly to the screen as I taught. No, the coolest thing was the ability to give up control of the projector to other teachers who wanted to show what they were doing on the tablet. Three clicks and they were on screen. And then someone else would take over and show their work. And then someone else. We got into this cool kinda “And Then You Can Do This” dance with tablet and projector, each of us building upon the other…really wild. I can only imagine what it might be like to have a classroom of students with this technology, being able to seamlessly bring their work up on screen to talk us through it or annotate it.

The lightbulb moment in today’s session really had little to do with the tablets, however. It came when one of the teachers showed a Word document that he’d created that was full of links. Thing was, the links didn’t go to Websites; they went to pictures and audio files, and presentations or other documents. For some reason, this was a huge “a ha” moment for at least half the class, and I tried to develop it in the context of how digital content blows away traditional paper content. When you get that, you finally start to understand how inflexible paper is, and how powerful links are. All of a sudden, they were wanting to know more, and they started understanding what true hyperlinked documents can be. The energy level in the room just shot up.

I’ve got a second group to train next week, and then we’ll start bringing these into our classrooms in September. I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens. But today was definitely too much fun.

From the Shameless Self-Promotion Dept. comes news that this blog ranks 294 on the Feedster list of top 500 blogs. Amazing and humbling and scary and motivating and a bunch of other things all at the same time. If you’d a told me four years ago…

Go, Blogs! Go!
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