Jumping off of the CUNY discussion from yesterday comes this piece in today’s Times about how a Swiss magazine decided to cover the recent riots in the Paris suburbs. It’s a great comparison of how traditional methods are being replaced by the immediacy of the new tools.

The blog turned their work routine upside down. Typically, they would do their reporting, then write the main piece for the magazine, and finally perhaps, a related feature or a reporter’s notebook.

But with the blog, said Serge Michel, a world affairs editor who opened the office, “we report and immediately write and publish an initial draft, giving a first tentative shape to the narrative.” When the staff members sit down to compose that piece for the magazine, the reporters have days of this “flow writing” behind them.

And later…

The reporters say they found a new relationship with their readers, who are invited to leave comments. The journalists engage in the discussions, and have used reader feedback as inspiration for more posts.

I wonder as I read articles like this what the demands will be of our current and future students in terms of writing. I’m not suggesting that the basics of written communication will change that much, but I am suggesting that the purposes of that communication as we currently teach it are going to have to be reconsidered. Writing the essay or the narrative or the story for the teacher only these days is to take a very narrow view of what writing is for. That’s not to say everything gets published. But as I walked through the hallways last week at the semester break and saw teachers attacking stacks of final, culminating papers that their students had “handed in” instead of published to a wider audience (and potentially more effective assessment,) I couldn’t help thinking how much our students are missing in terms of what it really means to write these days.
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Considering I took this with my Treo…click to see the big verstion.
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If you’re reading this in an aggregator, would you mind letting me know? Bloglines seems to have dropped my feed for about a week and I can’t tell if it’s them or me. Thanks…

Yesterday I had the very great pleasure of teaching some of the Read/Write Web tools to a group of professors at the new CUNY Gradute School of Journalism which will open this fall. Jeff Jarvis asked me to join him and his son Jake (who is quite the Digg maven.) As usual, I feel like I learned more than I taught.

Interspersed with the presentations about wikis and podcasting and screencasting, there were some pretty heated, interesting discussions about what all of this means for journalism in general and journalism education in specific. Obviously, journalism schools need to address and include the explosion of citizen journalism tools, but to what extent? And what happens to the traditional standards that journalists are expected to uphold? In a world where there are now literally millions of media outlets, one where people can find trustworthy sources of information that haven’t been educated in the finer traditions of journalism, how do J schools best deal with that reality? There was a palpable frustration in the room at times, but the conversation was extremely thoughtful and provocative.

And it was relevant to education in general, too. I just think these are such interesting times, especially as one who has experienced such a transformation in my own life from using these tools. It’s neat to be able to step back from these other transformations that are just beginning and see them in that context, something I don’t think too many people who haven’t sipped the Kool-Aid can do. (Listening to the passion with which Jeff made the case for change was pretty inspiring.) Doesn’t mean I have a clear idea of how education will eventually deal with these changes, but it does mean that I know with certainty that serious change is imminent. We’ve got to get more people to that point, and we do that by starting the difficult conversations that people are going to have to engage in. CUNY is taking a step in that direction.

I haven’t mentioned lately how much I love the Tablet PC, so let me just state for the record: I still really, really love my Tablet PC. And so do the teachers at my school who have been taking part in the tablet pilot this year. Love them. Really.

Today, I teamed up with my colleague Rob Mancabelli and his wife Gayle Allen and presented on our pilot to a rapt audience of about 30 tech types at NJ Techspo in the smokey, noisy Ballys casino in Atlantic City. Rob went over the project plan, Gayle, who is in the doctoral program at Columbia, presented some pretty persuasive research findings that she had put together after doing a number of observations, interviews and surveys, and I got to demo the technology. (I loved that part. Really. Loved it.)

The result? Well, um, let’s just say it’s too bad we weren’t getting a comission from the tablet makers ’cause there were quite a few converts, I think. And yes, we had the obligatory “so why do I need a smart board?” discussion.

But I have to say that while the tool is pretty amazing, I think our process has been even moreso. I got the sense that most people were more envious of the almost complete buy-in we’ve had on the part of over 200 teachers in our build out for next year, based as much on the way we made our decisions as the technology itself (if not more.) Teachers are invested in becoming better practitioners with Tablets, not just happy to be getting laptops. That is a significant difference.

One side note: I finally got to meet fellow Jersey blogger/podcaster Jeff Moore for a quick chat before the presentation. That’s always a treat when that happens. It’s almost like being a birder, crossing of bloggers on your life list. Well…almost…

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So I’m back into slogging rather than blogging mode. This seems like a pretty rhythmic thing anymore. About every few weeks I seem to hit a wall where I just find it impossible to keep up with what other people are writing and doing and I get envious as heck because I want to be writing and doing that stuff too. Take for instance this very cool Flickr presentation that Alan and Brain put together. I mean, my goodness…I’m in awe. Where do they find the time to do that and keep their day jobs? My brain has this very whiny voice screaming “I waaannnnnaaaa doooo that! Waaaah!” And I know I shouldn’t complain because instead I get to blogvangelize in Florida and Tablet PC-elize in Atlantic City today and work with Jeff Jarvis training some professors at CUNY tomorrow and all the while have a pretty swell time. But I just want to do it all.

Oy.

So, I’m slogging, and probably will be for awhile. But the good news is the reinvention side of my brain is clearing. Some changes are afoot. For now, I just have to deal with the fact that I can’t know everything and do everything. For now…

From the “Courses I’d Love to Take (or Teach)” Dept. comes this class from The University of Missouri taught by Dr. Donna Strickland:

The goal of this course is to provide you with the tools and incentives to take up blogging as a reading/writing practice and to use blogging generatively for gathering and commenting on ideas and events. With that goal in mind, we’ll spend time throughout the semester on three categories of tools and incentives:

Technology: use blogging software, simple hypertext, rss, and other social networking tools

Practice: read and write regularly to develop habit/rhythm

Theory: read widely in blogs and the growing number of commentaries on blogging to generalize uses and strategies for blogging; contribute to “mother blog” to theorize blogging

Ok…where do I sign up? “Blogging generatively for gathering and commenting on ideas and events.” Cool. “Develop habit/rhythm.” Yes, that is a part of this isn’t it. “Read widely” and “contribute to the ‘mother blog’.” I love it.

Now, where is the “Blogging in Theory and Practice for Educators” course???

Go, Blogs! Go!
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I’m in the Tampa airport (free wireless!) catching up on some reading after spending the day with about 100 tech coordinators from Pinellas County schools talking about investing in the stock market…er…I mean blogs, wikis, RSS and all that other fun stuff. And it was a great day overall (with the exception of one sobering moment that I’ll get to in a bit) that was filled with really thoughtful questions and conversation and a surprise visit from Clayton Wilcox the blogging superintendent. (That’s him in the picture…click it to see a larger version.) Here are a couple quick observations:

Steve Dembo is noting another way the tools are pushing us to reinvention:

Some professors posting their lectures online as podcasts claim their seeing a rise in absenteeism. Professors are responding by having more pop quizzes or giving extra credit for attending class.

Am I missing something? What’s the problem here? If students can get all of the necessary information and pass the final exam just by listening to the podcasts, then A ) the student should get a cookie and B ) the professor do some serious thinking about how much value there is of hearing the information firsthand.

If the student could just as easily get all the information from a podcast, then isn’t the lecture period being completely wasted?

And then he asks this really big question:

When the lecture, presentation slides and notes can all be shared online, what SHOULD a higher education class look like?

To be honest, I have a secret wish that when my kids get old enough for college (in about 10 years), that they’ll have consumed all of the necessary consumables and just be showing up to classes that focus on actually taking an active role in the learning. What a concept…

But these are old habits. And we’ve got our fair share of ‘em down here in K-12 land as well.

There are thousands (millions?) of new Web tools coming online every day it seems, and thanks to TechCrunch and Tim Lauer, I think I do a fair job of keeping up with the most interesting ones. MyStickies is one of those tools that I think has some cool thinking behind it, and one that I can see immediate application to the classroom.

It’s a Firefox extension that basically allows you to create Sticky Notes on the fly, tag them, and archive them with links back to the original page. So say I’m doing some research on the ways in which schools are trying to control this new Web and I find a salient paragraph in that Wall Street Journal article I referenced yesterday. I just highlight the text, ALT-drag a MyStickies notebox over it, and a sticky pops up with the highlighted text already included. At that point, I can add my own notes/reflections, and then tag the sticky under any number of headings. When I go back to my MyStickies dashboard, all of my notes are displayed along with links back to the original page, sortable by tags or the sites themselves. In the near future, I can add friends to the process…the obligatory pinch of social goodness.

The downsides:

So let’s just get to the heart of this article in the Wall Street Journal on the changing face of cheating in schools:

By some estimates, at least seven million new Web pages are added every day. In a competitive global labor market, where white-collar jobs are increasingly outsourced to other countries, being able to find and synthesize information about the World Bank could be more crucial than memorizing the date it opened. Failing to teach kids how to navigate in the knowledge economy, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Frank Levy, “is like putting them on the track with[out] the locomotive.”

Do I hear an “Amen?” There is so much to think about in this article that I might actually be convinced that we’re starting to figure this out, that the old way doesn’t work, that we need to rethink the approach. That we need to REINVENT!

Hey, Ford can do it…

On My Mind
A couple of days ago, I was reading one of the blogs written by a student in my Seton Hall class and she took the time to write a post honoring her mom who had died suddenly the week before.

<blockquote>As I was reading the recent blogs by Cohort IX I was thinking how blogging allows one to live on in cyberspace past their years on earth. As you are aware, I lost my mother to a massive stroke last weekend. One minute my mother was a healthy 79 year old the next she was not the person I knew. I am choosing to blog about her and perhaps be silent for a time while I get through my sorrow. I just wanted to immortalize a woman I am very proud of, my mother. I wanted all to know she made me the person who I am today. I grew up in a one parent home since I was 12. She has given me her gifts of strength, appreciation of education, perserverence and selfishness. I am who I am because of my mother.</blockquote>
Today is the 25th anniversary of my own mom’s death, and I hope you’ll indulge me for just a bit to carve out a bit of my own blog in her memory. I’m sure I would of had I been blogging back then.

My mother was a Swedish immigrant with a pioneer spirit. She left her family in Stockholm and set out for America with the same dreams that many in the late 40s and early 50s had.

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From the “What the Heck Does That Mean?” Department:

This cannot be good.

Leave it to Lessig to set up his own Echo Anti-Chamber. Shouldn’t we all have one of these?

The aim of this page is to build a collection of content that criticizes my work. I’ve mapped the chapters of Free Culture, but feel free to add any other work you’d like. Also, if there is stuff that adds support, of course that can be added. But please keep it separate from the criticism. My aim is to create a simple source for “the other side of the story.”

Ok…I know…I worship the man. But you have to admit, the guy just gets it…