Still More Edu Blogs (and Wikis) to Check Out

It’s been a long week. Way too much thinking. I’m tired. So instead of holding forth on some convoluted idea in my brain, here instead is a list of some edu-blogs I’ve Furled of late.

Chico Christian Middle School
AuburnWiki
Apple Students Blog
Simmons College Student Blogs
The Future of Mathematics which today has some ideas about Flickr in the classroom.
Networked Rhetorics from Syracuse U.
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When Parents Contribute to Student Blogs?

Anne pointed to this pretty amazing exchange that occurred on one of her student blogs recently, and it’s an interesting and effective example of how involved parents can contribute to their childrens’ learning in these more transparent spaces. I wonder how many teachers actively invite parents to at minimum read and perhaps respond to the work that their children are doing in their blogs. I know when I was in the classroom, I made a point of letting parents know what the URLs of the blogs were, but I left the decision to have parents comment on the sites up to the students themselves. Since it was high school, most opted not to let that happen. But a few did, and while the responses were not many, almost all of them were helpful, instructive, and relevant. And I do think for the students who allowed their parents to contribute it was a positive experience, especially for the parents who like the opportunity to be more involved.

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Blogs vs. wikis vs. podcasts - why schools like wikis & podcasts

At TCEA 2008, I heard a number of teachers say that they are able to use wikis or make podcasts at their schools, whereas blogs were discouraged or blocked. My initial reaction was that it was simply a knee jerk reaction based on popular uses of each. Blogs = MySpace = pedophiles, while podcasts seem safe and wikis are associated with Wikipedia, which at least sounds educational.

But as I thought more about it, I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it reflects a larger issue of assessment and comfort with the status quo. In most schools, curriculum focuses on student product rather than process.

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Blogs link up a new kind of knowledge net

Yesterday when I blogged the website on Ancient Human Occupation of Britain my post was picked up at the weblog Archaeology in Europe. When I went to that blog, another post there was what the archaeologist David Beard who does the posting called “A very nice Website giving information about the ancient city of Aptera.” One more click, and I was wandering virtually among ancient Minoan stones reading old stories of the Muses.

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Blogs - a “must-have”

eSchool news points us to a great article entitled, “CoSN profiles ‘must-have’ technolgies. One of those must-haves is blogs!

The article states:

“Most schools embracing technology today have primarily focused on its deployment for administrative purposes or for the back office,” said Keith Krueger, CoSN’s chief executive officer, in a statement. “Our hope is that this guide will provide technology leaders with a strategic understanding of technologies that can truly transform their schools over the next three to five years.”

Parent voices on blogs can be profound

Zachary’s weblog has so many outstanding posts. He is a fifth grader from J.H. House who will be moving on to middle school next year. He is one of the student bloggers in Hillary’s Blog Write group. I believe Zach will continue blogging. I sure hope he does. He has quite a voice. His mom, Robin, has commented frequently on his blog and entered the conversations throughout the year, not just with Zach but with other students as well. I wanted to point you toward his blog because it is an excellent model to share with other parents or others who are interested in commenting on your student blogs. I remember when I first started blogging with elementary students, the parents were so excited to have a window into their child’s world. Now that was four years ago and try as I did, I was not successful in getting them to enter the conversations. Now if I had had Zach’s blog to show them I think it would have helped give them ideas and let them see a “real-life” example. Here’s one example but the blog is peppered with them and they are all terrific. Check out this one where Robin talks about a comment another blogger made that some thought might be hurtful to Zach. Yes, parents’ voices on blogs can be profound. What a great avenue to let them be a part of the conversations. Hmmmm, I hope Robin starts a blog, too. I’d quickly add her to my Bloglines account.

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How to Get Something out of Education Blogs

Though I have been blogging about education for almost two years, I still do not flatter myself with the notion that I’m an expert; however, in those two years of blogging and reading others’ blogs, I have learned a few things that I think make the experience better for everyone, whether you blog yourself or not.

How to Find Blogs

The best method I have found to find blogs that you like is to check out blogrolls. Most bloggers keep a blogroll, or list of blogs they link to, in a sidebar to the left or right of the text on their own blog. If you find a blog you like, chances are you might like some of the blogs listed in their blogroll.

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The Future of Blogs

That’s the title of one of four, count ‘em, four different presentations I’ll be giving at MACUL on Friday. (How I got talked into that I’ll never know!) When I originally submitted the idea, I saw it as a way to show how blogs in schools were evolving and branching out, and to have a conversation on the ways in which they would continue to mature. And while I still see that being a part of it, I’m feeling like the bigger, and in some ways, more important discussion is what we need to do to insure that blogs in schools even have a future. I don’t mean that in a defeatist sense as I obviously believe these tools need to play an important part in our teaching and practice. I mean it in the “what are the obstacles and how do we overcome them” sense. So I’d like to start the presentation early here by looking at the most widely articulated impediments to adoption of the tools and offering some very thin, discussion starting ideas about how we might respond to them. This assumes, of course, that you believe (as I do) that these tools can make significant contributions to our practice and to our (and our students’) learning, that they in fact do have the potential to fundamentally improve what we do in the classroom. And, it assumes that we all have access.

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Cool 7th Grade Science Blogs

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.

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Linkin? (B)Logs: A New Literacy of Hyperlinks

Bud pointed to a new article, Linkin’ (B)logs: A New Literacy of Hyperlinks, in the English Journal column “New Voices” by Tiffany J. Hunt and Bud Hunt. They are the column editors for the EJ column. It is a terrific article speaking about the read/write Web  in this participatory culture. The article posts about the obstacle of filtering and how it “blocks” us. I really like reading the story of Bud’s learning from blogging and the community of readers and writers he has met along the way. I identify with that and also with the teaching of blogging being hard. It is the building of a different type of community and this article helps us define the literacy development better. It is so encouraging to me to see this quality of writing about the learning with students. We need more articles where work with students is shared.
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