Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Tim Tyson, the principal of Mabry Middle School. I had blogged about his take on Friedman’s book, The World is Flat on an earlier post, He thinks it is essential
reading for every parent of every child at Mabry Middle School and
should even be required reading for most of the students, at least in
the 8th grade. Hear! Hear!

We had
connected through our blogs and exchanged a couple of emails but it was
really nice to talk to him about blogging and other aspects of
technology. If you have not taken a look at mabry online
you need to do so. Right at the top there is a link to Under the Hood
of Our Website….  One excerpt from this explanation:

There’s even a printout that
readers can print that gives a flow chart of the organization. I love
how all this is explained for readers. Dr. Tyson is not only educating
his students but the public as well.

Room 313

Derek Brandow teaches fourth grade in
NYC. His blog had a really nice look to it. He has created a turnstile
click effect that leads to these sections which are blogs -  home
room , fourth graders, parents, and teachers. Cool!  Derek also
jumped right in with commenting to my students at Getting Heard.
Some interesting conversations are going on with parents, he has blogs
ready to be used by students, and lots of interesting ways to help
children learn.


casa del bambino

Observations, ideas, teaching experiences and other thoughts by  a pre-school teacher in Malaysia. Her tagline reads “ Montessori-an at heart. Follow my thots as I journal thru the KL-ian education context”



Word 
This is a Weekly Reader online site. It caught my interest because of
the tagline. “A literary blog chock full of writing tips, book chats,
and whimsical word ramblings brought to you by the editors of READ and
WRITING magazines. It has just started this month so I thought I’d
follow it and see where it leads.

The Open Classroom: Using technology, transparency, and discussion to transform education
I had been reading Tom McHale’s blog for a while and enjoying the
reading and the thinking that came as a result.  Tom had an
article,  Portrait of a DIGITAL NATIVE, recently published in Technology & Learning.

I arrived at the high school early this morning. I made my way to the Teacher Cadet
class only to discover that last minute scheduling changes were going
to make it necessary to reschedule this group. Too bad! OK,
regroup.  If I’ve learned nothing else I’ve learned flexibilty and
the knack to recover quickly and move on. So blogs for the teacher
cadet class have to wait until next week. Not to be deterred I headed
on down to the Getting Heard
group. I spent a great morning in Ms. Baros’ class. It was really
helpful for me to observe her teach and watch the way the students
interacted.  I’ll post a synopsis for the students on that blog
but I wanted to thank those of you who commented. It meant so much to these guys and to me. These guys were so
much fun to watch as they read their comments. All we got done today on
the blog was replying to the comments. They didn’t have the time they
wanted to say as much as they wanted but they were so eager to write.
It was very serious, a good serious. We decided we’d have to make some
posts later because they had much to say.  I did
chuckle when I heard one of them say to another - (No, I haven’t heard
from any girls yet)

This past Friday I traveled to the local high school and the blogging projects begin!
I have lots to talk about but time is short today. I just wanted to
point to the newly created class blogs (and a few student blogs!) I
return in the morning to continue the sessions so I hope to blog about
it shortly thereafter.

Five junior colleges
and 20 secondary schools entered the final round of this competition
where their blogs were evaluated in terms of the depth and clarity of
thought as well as the creativity of presentation by a panel.

Good quote from Dr Tan Seng Chee, Assistant Director, MOE Educational Technology Division. He said: “When
we blog, we write to a real audience, to someone out there who might be
reading and, most importantly, responding to our blogs.  Through this we learn new ideas, gain new perspectives, and learn to appreciate alternative views.”

“I
hope our participants have also learnt that because we are writing to a
real audience, what we say has a real impact. We have to be sensitive
to the feelings of others and be responsible.  If not, we could hurt others unknowingly.  Even in the face of new technologies, our moral judgments should still be key.”

Check out Rage Against the Machine,
written by one of the high school students. (You’ll need to scroll down
the page to see the post.) Here’s her ending for the post:

“Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety
deserves neither liberty nor safety,” said Benjamin Franklin.

I think he’d have made a monster of a teenager.

Great ending to a really thoughtful post.

OK, back to reality but I still plan on hoping and dreaming for changes……..

Next week I will have my first meeting with the groups. I plan to give
them an overview, go over guidelines, show them some blogs and have
them comment, etc. I’m in the planning stage so any suggestions,
especially from those of you at the high school level, will be much
appreciated!

My day began by reading this quote…..

“Write daily for 15 to 30 minutes.  Many scholars believe that
writing requires big blocks of time.  They’re wrong. 
Research shows that scholars who write daily publish far more than
those who write in big blocks of time.  The problem with big
blocks of time is that they’re hard to find.  In contrast, when
you write daily, you start writing immediately because you remember
what you were writing about the day before.  This leads to
impressive production. “

This came from Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing list. The author is Tara Gray. This reading led me to this thought and hope….

Picture tomorrow’s schools. At schools across the nation writing is
considered of paramount importance. The day begins with everyone
writing on their own personal school blog. The first 15 minutes of each
day is reserved to reflect on what they have learned, what they wish to
learn, or to explore some aspect of their learning. Teachers, staff and
administrators do the same. Writing is valued by our society. Time is
provided for discussion about what is learned from the writing. Blogs
are viewed as places to have honest, open dialogue about issues of the
day. Writing helps the students become better readers and thinkers.
Students and teachers are learning from each other. as they reflect
crtically from available information and understandings. Assessments of
student learning are easily made through these blogs so the need for
standardizing testing as a single unit to measure achievement has been
eliminated, Previous time spent testing is now spent writing.

It’s been hard to
think about much else other than the tragedy that has unfolded in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina. I’ve just been following the blogs. I put my
trust in the many blogs that are from every day citizens. I look on all
the evolving ones from the media with some skepticism. Many of those
are informational only from that media’s perspective. Usually comment
features are not included. We need give and take, back and forth
communications so we can develop relationships that work better than
the top down mentality we currently have. I am weary of rhetoric from
our political parties. I wonder if events like these will be the
catalyst to help us understand how stories from many can help us
develop the wisdom to trust and begin to understand that we must
change. To me, it is not a question of whether bloggers are
journalists. Somehow that is not relevant. Maybe this can be the
toppling of how we look at journalism, if that is what we want to call
it. I like to think of it as communications from the people -
authentic, real and a phenomenon that we are just beginning to
understand.  Will it be heeded? Will we start to trust and respect
the building communities? We need more from the people. The voices need
to be heard.  We need much more from our current administration.
We need more voices from our educators. We need to get our student
voices in the mix. Sometimes I feel real hope but I have to say at the
same time I feel fear that we won’t learn from all this. There is so
much to sift through and it is really hard to know and understand what
is true and what is not.  This post, “Rambling About Katrina” offers more food for thought….

One of the recurring themes that’s been going around and that’s been intensified by the Hurricane Katrina coverage is
the concept of citizen journalism.
This is the idea that regular folks (*gasp*) can inform the public
debate and populate the shared information space by using blogs, photos
and other forms of digital media (including audio and video).

Now, at the risk of getting too attached to
a particular metaphor, think of a football stadium full of people: If you step back and try to take it all in, most of the time you get a dull roar.
However, if you have the right tools, you can zoom in to hear what a
particular group, or maybe even an individual, is saying. Also, every
once in a while, a synchronized chant will spontaneously self-organize. Sometimes, there’s a marching band. And every once in a while, a streaker will run out onto the field. (Let’s ignore the riots for now.)


Okay, that’s a silly metaphor — I’ll leave you to think about which part means what (I’m not quite sure myself).



What does all this mean? For now, it
means keeping track of efforts ‘both big and small’ to harness the power
of thousands and millions of voices on the Web.


Joe, the AOL employee who programs the AOL Journals main page wrote this and there’s more to read at his post.

I’m all for the kind of controlled chaos. I’m thinking back to my brain
studies and how we learn - out of chaos comes order. It’s also thinking
about why education must change. As the Caines conclude, “ The
change involves everyone, and as yet (or perhaps never again) no one
has the exact answers. The world we are entering is one of multiple
answers and infinite possibilities. It looks “messy” and trial and
error is essential. But we must learn how to live in that world. Because
our children have no choice.”

So
I’m going to keep on keeping track of efforts, both big and small and
feel hope that all these voices will make a difference. Ours
included….

I can’t tell you how happy I was to read this post from Nancy McKeand from Random Thoughts. I have really been worried about her and her family. What wonderful news! She writes….



Many thanks to you all for your emails and comments inquiring about my
safety after Katrina. We stayed in our house through the storm and got
through it with nothing more than a blown out rear window on the car.
We have no electricity or water, but we are fine. We have food and can
haul water from the college where I work. Things are getting better
every day.



I had to drive 30 miles to get internet, so it will
be awhile before I post again, I’m afraid. I just wanted to let you
know I am fine and that I will write again when I can.

Hillary Meeler over at Blog Write  has her student bloggers up and going- hooray! Click and comment to these budding bloggers:

Diana’s Weblog

The Jose-Juan Journal

Zachary’s Weblog