Blog Juice for Educational Technology

(via Jon Udell) Now that I’m happily bookmarking at del.icio.us again (even though I hate the fact that I’m limited in the length of the comment I can leave) it’s great to know that I can use it to create private lists for other users as well. All you have to do is add a tag that says for:willrich, replacing, obviously, the willrich in the example with whatever username I wanted to add. So if I wanted to save something privately for Alan, I’d tag it for:cogdog. And the use of this with students is obvious. We could now send individually relevant bookmarks to individual students for their use only.

And, of course, now I can save all sorts of stuff just for myself too, like links to Cubs blogs that I’m sure no one else would want to see…

USA Today says “Teens wear their hearts on their blog.” Isn’t that special. Just ’cause I don’t think it can hurt anything to make the point again, what follows are not descriptions of blogging:

“…mostly they simply relay the details of their daily lives.” Not blogging.

“Girls, who dominate blogging, use it especially to talk about personal feelings.” Not blogging.

“Rypkema uses her blog to communicate with friends and as ‘a way to pour out my emotions.’” Not blogging.

And some ironies in the descriptions:

“‘I feel like family and close friends shouldn’t be reading my diary in secret,’ she says.” Ah-HA! Not blogging. Diary-ing.

“While famous political bloggers have thousands of readers…” So, are they simply relaying the details of their daily lives?

“Experts are divided about whether and how parents should treat the journals — especially when it comes to teens over 13.” Double Ah-HA! JOURNALS! A different genre.

I know, I know. Let it go. Lost cause. Never win the battle. Etc…

But this portrayal is exactly why schools start banning them (even though they know they’re journals) and more importantly, why they don’t think of them as potential learning tools.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging…

So I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to how best to organize my info life and make it more manageable. Let me first say that the hardest part about all of this is trying to ignore the “I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING THAT’S GOING ON” voice in my head, the one that says every deleted Bloglines subscription is surely going to have all sorts of interesting nuggets tomorrow that I’ll never see. (I’m an info hoarder, what can I say.)

Step 1 was to chop out 50 feeds at Bloglines just now. (Ouch!) Step 2 is to come up with some really focused search feeds that will let me chop out about 25 more. Now’s when the fun starts… I’ll let you know what I come up with.

Just a few think-abouts on a sunny, chilly Fall morning (with an extra hour to work with):

Blogging is different altogether, providing a wonderful balance between putting work out there and developing the practice. Yes, they get to float their young, sometimes inspired work out in the world and see what comes back. They get to read it on the Web, Google themselves, try the writer’s life on for size. They look back at old posts with incredulity–I wrote that? Argh!– but see the growth, the need for apprenticeships while reaching out with the work to see how the world responds. Through blogging, they also develop discipline, writing regularly both at as high a level as they can and freely, because no one expects you to do anything spectacular on a blog anyway. There is the freedom that comes with a medium that is not altogether accepted as a means of artistic expression. At least not yet. How immensely satisfying for the teacher and the student. We can both relax into the writing for its own sake, relishing the discoveries and the risks as they appear through our fingers and into language on our screens, and hold ourselves to a routine of writing and to a standard–the fact that our words go out into the world instead of staying in our notebooks forces us to consider them more carefully, perhaps, than we would in a journal or for a teacher alone (at least the kind of blogging I’m talking about). –Barbara Ganley

There are four themes that seem to form a core set of practices and beliefs among bloggers: the networked nature of communication, the opportunity for engaging in ongoing conversation, easily produced microcontent, and transparency…These four themes are not unique to blogging. They apply more broadly to systems that support social interaction, including user-editable sites (wikis), tag-driven sites like del.icio.us and Flickr. The community that makes use of weblogs tends to be among the first to take up other social technologies as well. Though it will almost cer-tainly change over time—and the word “blog” may disappear from the vocabulary—these larger themes seem to have taken hold socially and are likely to continue to be influential. –Alex Halavais

So how much commenting are you doing? If you feel you are not getting enough comments, are you giving? –Alan Levine

As I have said repeatedly, my kids live in a tiny town in the middle of Northern Canada, for them to make contact with kids from Texas and with kids from Melbourne is a radically different idea. I have been involved with internatinal education projects in the past. The kids spend a huge amount of time talking about their favoutie bands and movie stars, but often little beyond that. That is not education. Many of these projects I have wondered about the validity and worthiness of after we have put in the time and energy to create them. Blogging is different. It will give us extended contact on an entirely different level. It will actually allow for an exchange of views and concerns, not just lists of mp3 files. (only if we get into podcasting!) An exchange of viewpoints, burgeoning political beliefs, the ability ot write diplomatically for an international audience is not something that many junior high kids get experience with, or exposure to. Last week one of my students posted a well written piece on his blog against the war in Iraq. It was diplomatic, respectful of other viewpoints, and articulate. Within 24 hours, he recieved two long, well thought out comments from others who are in favour of troops being in Iraq. He posted again explaining his beliefs and recieved well written, extended comments in return. An international discussion, an interest in current affairs, an experience explaining his beleifs, and a chance to post a viewpoint knowing others will read it and think about it. This is a vital education for this century. –Clarence Fisher

This post by George Siemens really resonated down to my toes. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve started to feel guilty about the way I read these days. My wife gives me grief because I don’t spend as much time with books as I used to. And in some ways I miss that. But what I’m finding is that these new reading skills that I’m developing are necessary for the world in which I’m living.

What happens when we change how we interact with information? We “ramp up” our processing habits. Instead of reading, we skim. Instead of exploring and responding to each item, we try and link it to existing understanding. We move (in regards to most information we encounter) from specific to general thinkingÂ…from deep to shallow thinking. Shallow thinking, in this sense, isn’t as negative as its connotations. Shallow thinking (perhaps I need a better phrase) involves exploring many different sources of information without focusing too heavily on one source. Aggregating at this level helps us to stay informed across broad disciplines. So much of education intends to provide “deep learning”. Often, however, “shallow learning is desired” (i.e. we want to know of a concept, but we donÂ’t have time or interest to explore it deeply). All we need at this stage is simply the understanding (awareness?) that it exists. Often, learning is simply about opening a door…

As an example, today while skimming my Bloglines feeds, I formed a general awareness of lawsuits against Apple, developments with Google Base, blood tests for determining anxiety, etc. I’ve grown in my skills at rapid reading and aggregating information. IÂ’ve also learned to quickly recognize information that is important for deeper exploration. The bulk of this work still happens in my head, but IÂ’m encountering more software tools that assist the process. I donÂ’t think itÂ’s too ambitious to say that we are still very much at the beginning of a new era of learning – one defined by confusion in the abundance of informationÂ…and the accelerated need for determining which information is valuable, and how the pieces fit together.

Amen to all of that. And here’s to not feeling guilty about doing less deep reading than I’ve done in the past. When I’m moved to do so, I do so. But the fact that my reading habits have changed, that I’ve become better at quickly finding the main idea, that I’m more in tune with contextual cues to meaning, that I read with an eye to finding and saving resources that might be worth a more close inspection later on is a good thing, a different thing, not a bad thing. And it’s a skill that we’re going to have to teach our kids as well, once, of course, we master it…

So we’re in beautiful but foggy Monterey for the Internet @ Schools West conference where I’ll be doing some blogvangelism tomorrow morning before heading back East. Somehow I managed to get my jet-lagged rear end through the 10K Big Sur River Run yesterday morning through a beautiful redwood forest. I’m paying for it today, however.

But here’s the quote of the day, overheard in a restaurant: “You know, if you’re lucky, you’ll get one good teacher in your life.”
And there were general assents at the table where the comment was made. And it started me thinking about my own teachers, and how many of them I really remember as having an impact on my desire to learn. There were three, at least in my traditional schooling. I guess I’m lucky. But it also got me thinking about my own teaching, and the thousands of kids I had in my classrooms, and how many of them I left an impact on, not in terms of journalism or media or literature but in terms of loving learning. I wonder…

And it also got me thinking about how many teachers I have now who constantly help me learn. Many more today than in all of my past.

I’d been thinking about trying to put together a basic reading list for people interested in getting their brains around the Read/Write Web and the changes it’s bringing about specifically related to education. So when I saw that Chris Lehmann was putting together a reading list for his future faculty… So here’s a start, and I’m definitely looking for suggestions:

1. Small Pieces Loosely Joined–David Weinberger
Just from a Web philosophy standpoint, this is a great place to start. It really provides a great deal of context in terms of how the Web is evolving and what that means for us humans. Not education specific, but all sorts of connections.

2. Free Culture–Lawrence Lessig
Lessig is my hero at the moment. I’ve seen him speak three times and I just find his ideas and vision to be amazing. He’s the person behind Creative Commons which is as good an idea as I’ve seen in a long time. This book made me see many things in a totally different way. Best part is it’s free online.

3. Connectivism–George Siemens
This essay describes a new theory of learning for a digital age. Personally, the idea that learning is “a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources” makes a lot of sense since it parallels my own experience in this space over the last four years.

4. We the Media–Dan Gillmor
I have a journalism background, so maybe this book appeals to me more than to others. But these changes are already being felt in journalism, politics and business (we’ll get there eventually) and this book does such a great job of describing the effects in media. And guess what? It’s free too.

5. The World is Flat–Thomas Friedman
I actually like this book less and less as time passes because I think Friedman is capitalizing (and overusing) an easily accessible metaphor, and in doing so, I think he makes his argument a bit too lopsided. I’ve read much since that tempers the picture he paints. Nonetheless, the general idea that our world is changing in large part due to the technologies that connect us is an important one. And he does make that idea very accessible in this book.

6. bgblogging–Barbara Ganley
There are many really good ed bloggers out there that I love to read, but if you really want to cut to the chase, Barbara’s blog is the place to start, I think. No one that I have found writes more eloquently and with more synthesis than she, and I really love it when my Bloglines account shows a new post on her site. She’s one of the few bloggers whose content I don’t read in Bloglines because I just find it more engaging to do it at her blog.

7. Educational Blogging–Stephen Downes
8. OL Daily–Stephen Downes
Stephen is a pretty amazing thinker about these technologies, and this article in Educause and his daily wrapup of interesting links should both be required reading by anyone seriously trying to understand the Read/Write Web.

That’s just kind of a brain dump beginning. Now remember, this is a read/write list because you have to write about your reactions after you’ve done some reading. That’s the whole point.

Please feel free to add whatever you think might benefit educators who are thinking about drinking the Kool-Aid.

So I’m finally wading through some of the gajillion posts on Bloglines I haven’t been able to read, and via Ewan McIntosh I found this really interesting presentation from Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network. It’s a pretty sobering perspective on the access challenges we face. Some highlights:

C-Net gets on the blogs as learning tools bandwagon with a pretty good overview of the direction this is going (though we still can’t get past the “online journal” label…) They quote Clarence Fisher in the lead:

Like other teachers bringing blogging into the classroom, he thinks the online journals will spark students’ enthusiasm for computers, writing and opining.

“They’re learning the technical skills, but they’re also learning that they have a voice online,” he said. “They may be from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but they’re writing online, people are commenting on it, and they’re learning that they have a voice.”

A bit more mo’ for our cause. Go blogs! Go!

I just spent most of the last couple of hours participating in a Worldbridges streamed Skype call/Webcast with Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow (which is being restreamed right now if you’re interested.) And all the while there was a chat room with people listening and asking questions, sometimes Skyping in and joining the conversation. It was great fun, despite the fact that about 10 minutes into the show the power here at home went out and I lost my connection. (Great timing.) Took me about 30 minutes of e-mailing back and forth through my cell phone to get a Skype-in number so I could spend the last 75 minutes or so joining in.

Anyway, some good talk about the state of the Read/Write Web, and it was another one of those “couldn’t have done this a couple of years ago” learning experiences that have me thinking. And it was definitely a treat to be able to meet (albeit virtually) Stephen and get a chance to interact with him.

By the way, Jeff and Dave have done 20 of these shows at Worldbridges, live every Sunday at 10 EST, open to listener participation. Some more good stuff to consume.

I’ll post a quick link to the podcast version when it gets published.

Another simply amazing post by Barbara Ganley today that does a great job of articulating a healthy perspective of kids and computers. It’s another one of those posts that she writes that takes time to read and think through, one that I know I’ll come back to again. She’s been such an amazing teacher these past few years, and I’m not talking about the work that she’s doing with her students at Middlebury either…

The other day in Rochester, during my “Blogging the Verb” presentation, someone asked “what do I say to my administrators when they ask why we should have kids blog?” My answer was that blogging is work, that it’s an intellectual exercise that requires deep reading, critical thinking, synthesis of ideas, and well-organized, clear and correct writing that is built upon links and connections. As I’ve said many times here, this isn’t navel gazing. And I’m guessing my description of blogs as learning tools was fairly eye-opening for many who were in the “online journal” mode.

Barbara’s post is just great blogging, number one, and great thinking to boot. She’s pushed by the writing of Lowell Monke, “Charlotte’s Webpage: Why children shouldn’t have the world at their fingertips.” And, as she says, it is a great article, one that anyone involved in educational technology should read and think about. Here’s his thesis:

Children gain unprecedented power to control their external world, but at the cost of internal growth. During the two decades that I taught young people with and about digital technology, I came to realize that the power of computers can lead children into deadened, alienated, and manipulative relationships with the world, that children’s increasingly pervasive use of computers jeopardizes their ability to belong fully to human and biological communities—ultimately jeopardizing the communities themselves.

What I find most interesting about the article is the context it gives the argument that goes “our kids are bored and we have to create more engaging learning environments for them.” Monke says that’s the problem; the natural environments aren’t engaging any longer because we’re giving our kids “big events” on the computer. We’re sending them to virtual worlds and giving them experiences that offer up ideals and not reality, which in turn makes reality boring. Interesting thought.

But Barbara doesn’t buy it, at least not all of it.

But it’s ridiculous to shun or to vilify the Web-mediated experience. The Web can (just as books and stories can) point students towards the real, have them dream about the world, prompt them to explore it and revise their sense of it. I wish Monke had gone further in his article to discuss ways in which computers in the classroom–coupled with the experiential learning he promotes– can lead to essential discussions about society and expectations and relationships. Why not take those moments in high school when students turn from f2f conversations with members of their own community in favor of the blog or email discussion with someone halfway across the world as opportunities to talk about the reasons, the repercussions, the differences between these experiences? Why not even have elementary school children examine the computer-generated spider next to the real thing?

And this is the “teachable moment” theory of technology instruction, isn’t it? It’s not saying “this technology is changing things…let’s turn it off.” (Sound familiar?) It’s instead saying “this technology is disruptive and changing things…let’s figure out what that means.”

But make no mistake. As Barbara says, this is “uneasy space we are in right now,” made more so by a sense that the transformations we are seeing are different somehow, more important than being able to just create digitally in words and pictures, but to have something really meaningful to do with that work. That it really has been a warm-up act up until now, and that the curtain is coming up on the main event, for this era at least. And that if that’s the case, this is no time to be pulling the plug but instead to be exploring that unease.

Barbara takes the time to weave a compelling narrative around this point that highlights all of the reading and writing and thinking skills that blogging can bring to us, children included. It’s good stuff, grounded in her own experiences and accessible to anyone who has done even a little thinking about this stuff.

So I canÂ’t remember the last time where IÂ’ve had a stretch this busy, and obviously, blogging is suffering. Three presentations in the last week. Wall to wall meetings at school. On and onÂ… Yesterday I was in Rochester doing some serious blogvangelizing to New York State teachers and administrators, trying to carve out some time to write and read. Four different presentations. Whew.

So as a result, IÂ’m up to 500 unread messages in my Bloglines accountÂ…that has to be a record, and itÂ’s really weird this feeling IÂ’m getting of being really disconnected from whatÂ’s going on in this community. Makes me really appreciate the work of Stephen Downes and his OL Daily which gives me a quick view of whatÂ’s happening out there. But itÂ’s still starting to feel a bit overwhelming.

Yesterday, however, was great…motivated educators who are sincerely interested in what’s happening “out there,” asking great questions and starting some really interesting questions. It was really interesting to me that there seemed to be a pioneer spirit in our midst, a metaphor that certainly fits but one I hadn’t really tuned into much before. One particular thread of conversation dealt with the coming ethics issues that inevitably are going to come up when the “sum of all human knowledge” ends up online. That’s a bit of a sticky one.

So hereÂ’s hoping thereÂ’s a few more edbloggers in our midstÂ…

Quick mini-rant here…

Yahoo just launched a Podcast portal. Cool! But why isn’t there an Education category in the main list? WHY? (I guess I should be happy we’re listed, however…)

I can’t recall all of the ones I’ve seen lately, but I’m constantly amazed at how sites launch with all sorts of categories but none dedicated to education.

Oy.