Just a quick link to another example of how teachers can use blogs to enhance the reading of a book in class by extending conversations past the school day, linking to resources and relevant materials, inviting parents to read and study with their children, inviting students from other parts of the country to collaborate and have students learn directly from interacting with the author of the book. What a concept!
Guerrilla Season is the book, Eric Langhorst of the Speaking of History podcast is the teacher, and it appears he’s looking for more participants.

Check it out and join us if you like. In addition to the students here in Liberty, Missouri we have students in California and a teacher in Louisiana taking part right now. It just started so there is plenty of time to join. I want to thank Pat Hughes for taking such an interest in our project. She is commenting directly to reader questions and spending a great deal of with this project. How incredible it is for an author to be communicating with her readers while they read the book!

Makes me nostalgic…

technorati tags:Eric_Langhorst, blogging, learning, education

In preparation for her day at Kennesaw State University last week, Anne put together this great wiki resource site that should be on everyone’s resource list. (And check out her nifty use of Rock You on the language arts examples page. You go girl!) It’s chock full of reflection and links and thinking, and it’s just pure quality. And the best part is that it’s not just the folks at Kennesaw that get to enjoy it.
[tags]weblogs, education, Anne_Davis[/tags]

So this 7th grade “Exploring Our Dynamic Earth” blog (with the very appropriate tag line of “Using blogs to learn”) is an interesting example of how RSS can be woven into the work. The front matter is all done by placing feeds from a host of class blogs and a few science news feeds (including a latest earthquake feed) for pretty easy viewing. Click on one of the headline links and it will take you to a specific blog where teachers are posting some pretty thought-provoking assignments and students are engaging in some pretty impressive conversation through the comments.

For example, we’ve got 58 responses to the question “What’s the most dangerous place on Earth?” and if you read through them, you’ll see some real give and take going on. And the writing is pretty audience-centric, as in this snip:

Imagine this: it�s a perfectly normal day, nothing particularly unusual has happened. Everything is going fine until� BAM! OH DEAR LORD, A VOLCANO IS ERUPTING!! EVERYBODY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! This is what could happen if you lived in Chile…

Or this gentle push back:

johanna, I know 143,000 people died in that Yokohama earthquake. But that�s not because the earthquake was more dangerous. It�s because the CIRCUMSTANCES were different. Maybe there just happened to be a lot of people in Yokohama walking around, underneath buildings! Maybe they didn�t have very much advance notice. THAT DOESN�T MEAN THE EARTHQUAKE WAS MORE DANGEROUS. A 9.5 EARTHQUAKE IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN A 8.3 EARTHQUAKE. Also, earthquakes in Japan do occur pretty often� but they�re usually of small magnitude, and so not a lot happens. I�ve done research, and it turns out that BIG earthquakes only occur in Japan every 70 years. The other earthquakes aren�t very dangerous at all. So I would have to disagree with you.

Oh, by the way, the blog is courtesy of teachers and students at the Shanghai American School, Jeff Utecht’s hangout…
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The latest issue of Education Update from ASCD has the above titled article as a feature. It takes somewhat of a different tact in that it presents blogs as a teacher support tool, which, of course, it can be.

Blogs, or Web logs, are increasingly popular among teachers seeking support and advice on managing their classrooms more effectively. Topics discussed in blogs range from perspectives on education policy and curriculum issues to effective classroom management tips and personal survival strategies.

Here’s the shocker, though…at least to me:

Of the 10 million to 15 million people who blog daily, technical experts estimate that only a few hundred thousand are educators. “Most [of them] are younger teachers coming out of teacher-ed programs,” says Nussbaum-Beach. “They’re the ones who are comfortable with virtual-type tools.”

A few hundred thousand edu-bloggers!?! OMG! My 150 (now 167) feed limit is about to get blown out of the water…

No disrespect, but there’s no way there are that many teachers out there “blogging daily.” I’m guessing a thousand, maybe, and that’s given a lot of leash to the “daily” part. Using blogs? Maybe four or five times that many. It’s hard to tell.

But if we get to the day that a few hundred thousand educators are blogging daily, I will GUARANTEE you schools as we know them will be long, long gone.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, reporter Kevin Delaney asks the question and answers it with blogs, wikis, RSS and the like.

Pioneering teachers are getting their classes to post writing assignments online so other students can easily read and critique them. They’re letting kids practice foreign languages in electronic forums instead of pen-and-paper journals. They’re passing out PDAs to use in scientific experiments and infrared gadgets that let students answer questions in class with the touch of a button. And in the process, the educators are beginning to interact with students, parents and each other in ways they never have before.

Very cool, especially since many in our community including Tim Wilson, Tim Lauer and yours truly are featured, as well as a nice mix of other teachers using other interesting technologies. Wish I could post the whole thing here, but you know how copyright is. Time to fire up the ProQuest account, if you have access to one.

A few other excerpts of note:

Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Ore., also uses Web-based publishing technology to open up new possibilities in communication. Fifth-graders send classwork, and essays and articles for their monthly newspaper, to a wiki over the school’s network. Teacher Kathy Gould goes to the Web page and writes corrections and comments directly into the text — instead of posting a note in a separate “comments” section, as with a blog. Students can then access the wiki to read and respond to her comments.

How neat is that?

Some school administrators caution that much of the new technologies’ educational value has yet to be proved by any academic research. Some schools have slowed teachers’ efforts to introduce blogging in particular because of concern about what students might write, and be exposed to, online.

Technology presents other problems. Teachers have to learn it themselves and then figure out how it can serve the ultimate goal of teaching the curriculum. And, of course, students sometimes use computers to cheat, harass other kids or just waste time.

But grass-roots tech advocates say that they see improved learning already, even if formal studies to support that don’t yet exist. And others say that as kids get more tech-sophisticated, they have no choice but to experiment with new ways of teaching their curriculum.

Ok, have I broken the law yet?

I hate that word, but be that as it may, Weblogs are now certified wonders of technology by the Times. We’ve finally reached the plateau where there are enough stories about blogging to create a separate page devoted to the topic.

And, as a special treat, the Times just introduced a new Dining and Wine RSS feed! Yippee!

Can world domination be far behind?
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The “official” launch isn’t until Monday, but the new eSchool News “Ed Tech Insider” Weblog is up and running, featuring the blogging insights of yours truly, Tim, Tom, Anne, Steve and a few other edbloggers. I think it’s a great opportunity for all of us to reach a much, much wider audience of teachers and administrators not only about the Internet technologies (blogs, wikis, rss, etc.) that we normally write about but about other ed tech issues as well. I’m pretty psyched to have the opportunity. Thanks to Clarity Innovations for the initiative. Here’s the RSS feed.
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I’m not sure why, but Anne‘s feed in my Bloglines account never seems to update, so every now and then I have to remind myself to check her site. (RSS has really spoiled me.) As usual, I’ve been missing some good stuff. For instance, the Internet Public Library is categorizing blogs and it looks like a good starting point for anyone just trying to get the feel for this. (In other words, it’s still a manageable list.) One pretty interesting find from that list is the list of History News Network blogs, a list I’m going to share with the Social Studies teachers.

And just as a side note, this is what I miss most when I don’t read Anne’s blog…her enthusiasm:

Let’s get our students writing – and what better avenue than weblogs! Let’s hear it for a weblog writing revolution!

I’ll second that.
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Paperbark looks to be a new Weblog about how blogs are being used in the classroom. Some pretty interesting initial links and posts from some West Australian educators. And check out Mrs. Dudiak’s blog where her kids went comment crazy. Interesting to see how many of the comments were really questions intended to get the students to focus on detail and specificity in their writing. Great example of classroom Weblogging.
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One of the things I just didn’t get a chance to write about was Anne‘s presentation at NECC which was well attended and well worth it despite some technical difficulties. She is our best cheerleader for blogs in the classroom, no doubt. Whenever she speaks about her experiences, her passion just floods through, and you can’t help but be inspired. And her blogging from NECC offered up some great links to her own resources, and those of some digital portfolios a la Weblogs by Julie Lindsay of the International School Dhaka, Bangladesh.

I’ve been Furling like crazy this week it seems. I almost can’t wait to get back home to get some semblance of routine again so I can keep track of all of this more effectively. I’ve had to punt on a lot of my Bloglines stuff just because I know I’ll never get to it. I hate that vague feeling that something really quality is slipping through…the curse of aggregation…
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(via Stephen Krause)

This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others.

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Here’s the most comprehensive list of libraries using Weblogs that I’ve found yet, and the best part is that each section comes with its own RSS feed. Glad to see that Pat’s library and mine made the list.
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(via Jeremy) I’m happy to see Helen Barrett has started a Weblog. She is one of the best resources for e-portfolios out there, and I’m hoping her interest in blogs might lead her to explore how the two might work together.

Welcome to my first entry into the world of blogging. I’m not sure I can get into the habit of posting to a web log on a regular basis, but I want to give it a try, since this looks like a technology that is being used in reflective portfolios.

I had a sabbatical leave a few years ago to study electronic student portfolios and she was very helpful in my research. I’m going to have to add her to my Bloglines list, which by the way, has been growing much too quickly lately…I’m up to 80 edubloggers. May need to do some paring down at some point…
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One of the Weblogs I first started reading was Dennis Jerz’s Literacy Weblog. A professor at Seton Hill Univeristy, he writes about writing, journalism and a variety of education related technologies that I’ve always found pretty interesting. (His colleague Mike Arnzen is also a valuable read.) Problem was, once I discovered syndication and aggregation, I stopped reading since there was no RSS feed. Well, Dr. Jerz has finally relented and created a feed, and I’m happy to say he’s the latest addition to my blogroll.

The latest WWW Tools for Education takes and in depth look at Weblogs in the classroom and collects a huge number of links, some of which haven’t popped up on my radar. Definitely a great starting point for anyone looking to get an overview of the trends in this arena.

When we looked at Edublogs in 2002, blogging technology was sufficiently advanced for common use, and general uptake was enthusiastic as people discovered this new, easy and inexpensive means of Web-based self-expression. However, many of these early adopters soon discovered that Weblogging, like any journal-keeping activity, can become a time-consuming chore – a good idea at the time, but soon outranked by other priorities; many bloggers said what they had to say, then moved on, abandoning their Weblogs to the cul-de-sacs of Cyberspace. On the other hand, while perceptions of the churn rate for blogs may vary , the figures seem to indicate an overall steady increase in the number of viable blogs of all sorts. In educational implementations in particular, adoption has been explosive as educators continue to seize upon the genre to support learning in many different ways.

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