k12blogWrite News

A f2f meeting, an IM chat, and a possible new direction is born

pat delaney — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 23:35:02 GMT

In which I get just a taste of how nice it is to have a local partner who understands "digital paper."

We've just finished a NWP-sponsored face-to-face meeting that brought Dave Boardman, Joel Arquillos and me together for a 3 day discussion of how we might continue or extend last years' Maine to California project. Joel has posted a thorough summary of what talked about. This idea was particulary intriguing:

"... I also will experiment with a similiar site in San Francisco. My idea is to create a forum for students from different high schools in SF where students can discuss SF issues of concern in a closed site. I would only invite interested teachers who can help me manage the discussions..."

That idea of a local SF student blogging community resurfaced in an IM session today. (The chat is linked here for editors.) Joel started off talking about what we do at Galileo as something that includes blogging but isn't REAL blogging. This brought up the tension between what Dave calls "authenticity and safety" in school situations that have students using digital paper, all the applications and hosting that empowers them to read / write, speak / listen, and produce / view content on the public world wide web. (And I hope Dave will post some details about that discussion.) I suggested that that tension does create an obstacle but that we're working on it. I said that Joel and Dave and some of the Galileo teachers are "blogging" in its truest form. I mean with their personal websites (examples: 4f, Chiang: Reflections on teaching, learning, and everything else in life, Sit Dora Sit) and with BAWP related "reflective journals" like this one, and even some Galileo sites that have students posting behind password protection (mTc). In working on overcoming the safety obstacle we are investigating and "tweaking" various tools to provide some compromise between authenticity of blogging and safety of school community.

In the same chat, I mentioned being a little startled by Joel's passion to get something authentic and safe started soon. He described it as "the idea I've been talking about-- a Maine To Cal thing, but in SF-- to break down barriers between schools/neighborhoods and build a real COMMUNITY of youth through writing (hats off to BAWP)." That led us both into sketching a plan in which his participation in this year's TI2005 might be to lead a local group of SF teachers in utilizing some tool ( maybe our new [and as of right now untested] district-supported blogging tool, Blojsom) to pilot such a community on a scale that is sustainable and maybe even fund-able for including non-BAWP teachers.

T TIC Agenda

pat delaney — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 17:52:53 GMT

Click the Discuss link below this message to review and comment on the agenda for the first Teaching and Technology Inquiry Community meeting.

blogChat Main 01.26.03

pat delaney — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 03:20:55 GMT

Click the headline.

01.26.03 blogChat Tech transcript

pat delaney — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 01:25:22 GMT

Click the headline.

This dog don't hunt

pat delaney — Sat, 04 Jan 2003 11:40:43 GMT

Which is to say that at least last May it wouldn't. But that's no reason not to try again, though a good deal of what was envisioned here may be happening to better effect at disruptiveTechnology phpBb:

How this Web log might work - There vs. Here:

Emphasis on might. We keep it simple. Below is a sample headline and brief descriptor that might appear as a newsItem on the main page. You click the 'headline' and it takes you to a story on my weblog where I was thinking through some design issues.

Some thoughts on k12bW design
Take a peek at where we're going.

A reader really interested in the content of that message might join the discussion there (if you're a member of that site), even reading this further thinking about the design. Which would keep the newsItem posting on this k-UbW site very short.

What's the point of here? A relatively small group of teachers submit practioner items to a single site. Non-virtual school hallway analogy:

Karen's walking down to the copy room and glances in Albert's classroom. He's teaching a 3rd. grade class how to do blogChat interviews with I-Search contacts. Hmm - pretty interesting. Might work with the oral interview project that she's starting. She detours into Albert's room for a visit.
I can't figure out how to get my blog's Discussion Group messages to show up in topics format. I leave a note on the k-u blogWErite digital door, saying, "Halp!" Karen Claxton walks by, reads the note, and leaves a quick reply, telling me to click the first radio button under Prefs / Discussion.
Will has a sign on his door announcing, "Portfolio Presentations in Progress." Pam goes into his classroom. A 12th. grader is talking about an article entitled 'Boys in Skirts.' She checks with Will and arranges with the student for a blog visit to her 8th. graders.

k-U blogWrite is really just the digital hallway, an informal blog commons. Doors are left open a crack if folks feel like it, an invitation for visits. Doors can stay closed too. (We've all had those days - sign in, grab the mail, hide in your room, go home.) Occasionally a couple of folks will talk for a while in the hallway, but usually away from other people's doors. If it gets really good, teachers generally move into a room/blog of their own, leaving the door open a crack.

The Discuss link under any front page newsItem connects to a very simple board, "off of the hallway."

How to Join:

Pretty simple. Click the Join Now link in the left nav bar. Please, say yes to receiving bulletins. It'll make communication easier. You can always decline later. Once you're a member, you have to Log in and then you can use the Post newsItem link on the nav bar and the Discuss link after postings. I need your address to change you to Editor status, so send me (or another person on the right nav bar) an e-mail saying you've joined. Once you're an Editor, you can post newsItems.

If you got here via Theresa Ross Embrey's article

pat delaney — Wed, 18 Dec 2002 20:41:02 GMT

You Blog, We Blog: A Guide to How Teacher-Librarians Can Use Weblogs to Build Communication and Research Skills, you may be interested in these links about Web logs, public and school libraries, and teaching.

mlk's Digital Daily Agenda Our middle school library's Web log is the first of its kind and a portal to lots of linked blogs, including a student newspaper, school daily bulletin, and much more.
Find It, Read It, Write It - A school librarian and teacher's investigation of Web logs applied to I Search projects.
buildingPortola - A collaborative Web log used by our middle school and the local public library branch, focused on research project updates and the building of the new branch on school grounds.
Bay Area Writing Project - aka BAWP. The 'mothership,' inspiration and host for all of the Web logs listed here. BAWP is a collaborative program between UC Berkeley and Bay Area schools. For over 25 years, BAWP has been a vital resource for teachers and schools in the Bay Area, not only in the teaching of writing but also as a model of professional development, teacher leadership and reform.
BAWP's handy-dandy digital tour of Web logs for various purposes
nwpHelp - A help and tutorial site sponsored by the Design Team of the National Writing Project.

Much of the work originally envisioned for this site is being done with commitment and flair over at Sebastian Fiedler's Cognitive Architects blog.

Will's Making Lists

Will Richardson — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 03:00:31 GMT

The stars may be aligning for some real weblog infusion at my school...I don't want to miss the chance so I'm doing some brain dumping about what might make the case. All feedback accepted.

Paul Allison from NYC Writing Project e-mails...

pat delaney — Sun, 30 Jun 2002 19:28:31 GMT

with some questions about Weblogs. To follow or join the conversation, click the Discuss link immediately below the last line of this paragraph . If you haven't joined the site yet, directions are here.

Karen's earlier post

pat delaney — Sat, 29 Jun 2002 16:16:34 GMT

Just wanted to throw in a few comments about my class (that I thought I had posted about before but can't seem to find it here). I'm using a blog as an anchor for the class since we will meet f2f at the most three times. The really cool thing, though, is that I had my students create blogs (see the right hand nav bar on the class blog). In these they are posting their weekly online journals and they will post the work they do in the development of (and the final presentation of) their major project, the Multigenre Research Project. What strikes me is that most of these students have taken to the weekly online journal like fish to water. Their postings are long, insightful, conversational, reflective, and probing. These from the same people who groaned loudly every time I asked them to do a major reflection on their class projects last semester...it's simply amazing to me!

Feel free to drop in and take a look around. I'll post more as we get some of our genres drafted (the student blogs are perfect for this...put up a draft and then people can add comments quite easily and quickly).

Class Update

Karen McComas — Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:50:03 GMT

karenMc Just wanted to throw in a few comments about my class (that I thought I had posted about before but can't seem to find it here). I'm using a blog as an anchor for the class (<A href="http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/15">http://www.bayareawritingproject/15</A>) since we will meet f2f at the most three times. The really cool thing, though, is that I had my students create blogs (see the right hand nav bar on the class blog). In these they are posting their weekly online journals and they will post the work they do in the development of (and the final presentation of) their major project, the <A href="http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/15/stories/storyReader$24">Multigenre Research Project</A>. What strikes me is that most of these students have taken to the weekly online journal like fish to water. Their postings are long, insightful, conversational, reflective, and probing. These from the same people who groaned loudly every time I asked them to do a major reflection on their class projects last semester...it's simply amazing to me! Feel free to drop in and take a look around. I'll post more as we get some of our genres drafted (the student blogs are perfect for this...put up a draft and then people can add comments quite easily and quickly).

Will's gettin' some contacts...

Will Richardson — Fri, 21 Jun 2002 12:05:27 GMT

The teacher-bloggers are starting to come out of the woodwork...

Bulletin board vs. hallway

pat delaney — Tue, 18 Jun 2002 14:29:19 GMT

Karen Mc and I had a long, long chat and phone call about using Manila for some class sites. Very detailed, very useful. Seemed like it belonged here, that others could benefit from, and contribute to, an essay into managing, as well as using, blogs with kids. But it didn't happen here - it happened over on akp. My guess is that is the way it will work, the way it should work. Another site, this site, is just another stupid after-school meeting that the department chair says the principal says the superintendent says the state says we have to have.

The independent spaces of cms's are where the best work will happen, like individual teachers' classrooms. Which is not to say that cms, and classroom, content and pedagogy shouldn't inform practice beyond individual boundaries (url or room #). Just that it should be effortless, seamless, not just another stupid meeting that a tired teacher has to go to.

So we stick with the notion of teacher inquiry, some benignly non-onerous posing of a question about using blogs in classroom practice. Participants assign all writing about that question on their personal sites to a news department, which automatically gets fed into the k-12blogWrite home page. That's it. Not so much a hallway as a faculty room bulletin board, with very brief postIt's pointing to writing about teaching and learning. The hallway is the Web itself, the long, long hallway of teachers reading and writing to and from it. This site is a bulletin board for folks who've met along that hallway.

Question is, can such an rss feed be built with Manila and with other cms tools?

Rethinking this site

pat delaney — Mon, 17 Jun 2002 14:43:54 GMT

From a John Robb post on the k-log Yahoo board: "Group or ad-hoc K-Logs are fantastic for specific situations, the key is to leverage the tool so people don't have to duplicate their publishing efforts or deprive themselves of the benefit of a personal K-Log that contains all of their content."

(Hmm - that's a Yahoo board, not a Manila board.)

Cathie English joins...

pat delaney — Fri, 07 Jun 2002 13:44:20 GMT

and tells everything that she wants to do with blogs. (Cathie's from Nebraska, where "N" stands for "knowledge.")

Terry, Albert, Karen, Michelle, whoever!

pat delaney — Thu, 06 Jun 2002 13:20:42 GMT

Some weirdness with Manila but... the earlier "End of the world as we know it" still exists on the site. Just lost its headline link below. You remember - where you get the chance to design this thing? Will has a cool model which might easily get "borrowed." Take a look at the headline above.

Cheerleader!

Karen McComas — Wed, 05 Jun 2002 14:09:57 GMT

Been reading around blogs this morning...and I think Will's right. He said, "Maybe we're all just a bit tired." I can relate...but I'm about a month post-semester now and starting to feel fine. Eager to start a new class (a month ago I never wanted to teach again) and full of promise for new and exciting things to happen here and there. BTW, feel free to join the site and watch what happens this summer...I have no idea what will happen or even how effectively I might integrate blogs into this class...but I always like company and someone to chat with :)

The other day I received an email with the subject line of "A little note from a grateful student!" In it, she writes:

I have decided that once I get settled in Florida I am going
to gradually start working on my masters, but I don't want to feel rushed. I have something that I want to send you,but I don't know your address... It is a picture from graduation of me, you, and Kacy. It turned out really good and I thought that maybe you would want it to decorate your door. Thank you for all your encouragement and advice, you will never know how much it meant to me or how much it helped. I will keep in touch and let you know just the minute I get a job! Thanks again,
Love,
A... H...

She was a tough nut to crack and I never quite knew if I was doing the right thing with her...I just did what felt right. What really struck me in her message was her use of the word "love" in her closing. That is not exactly the term I would have expected her to use given our interactions...but it heartens me to see it. So many times students don't realize that I - we - teach out of love...and it seems that sometimes that can come back to us.

Just wanted to share...and give us all a big HURRAH!

It's the end of the world as we know it...

pat delaney — Wed, 05 Jun 2002 13:50:58 GMT

and not only are we all feeling fine, but we may soon have some free time to reflect here on writing and learning and blogging. So, LAST CALL for feedback on the design. All suggestions are welcome. I'm going to insert a new one, much pared down, this weekend. (Of course, we can always change the new one.)

Thinking Through the Design

Karen McComas — Fri, 31 May 2002 02:25:14 GMT

Worked today on my computer class....it's called "Computer Networking in Communication Disorders" and has a number of goals but if I tell you that the focus is on learning technological skills in the context of specific content that might be enough for you to follow me here. If not, you can see the goals in my yet unfinished syllabus. The goals I'm pretty solid on (with the exception of oral communication skills as having this class in the summer doesn't allow time for oral presentations of their work).

In the past, I've used a mailing list with a hypermail archive hosted by our university. They took away that archive utility, replaced it with a much inferior one and I don't plan to use it. I spent the better part of the morning debating as to whether or not I should use yahoogroups.com or the discussion forums in webct (available through the university). The reason I balk at using webct is

the university shoved it down our throats and I always balk at something that is shoved down my throat (OK, so not the most logical reason, but it's there and I can't deny it)
if this class is to help students use the Internet as professional development tools they will not be using webct when they aren't enrolled in this class...on the other hand, there are several professional discussion groups I belong to that are hosted at yahoogroups.com or at similar type sites
I much prefer getting email as having to login to webct to check and see if anyone has posted anything...

The other thing I'm wondering about is how to make use of, or if to make use of, the discussion options in the blog itself. Has anyone used this with a class...or at least with numbers of about 14?

Not wanting to be charged with lack of consensus...

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 09:36:47 GMT

but trying to figure out how to organize things without getting constricted or silly, I invite you to take a peek at a possible redesign of the site by clicking the headline. Suggestions very welcome.

A bit a' beta - Tech babble Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 05:50:22 GMT

A place to post items from the wide, constantly changing, and often arcane world of blogging and cms-ing and kms-ing and lms-ing and, in general, learning with technology. This is done well elsewhere - SiT, the shiftedLibrarian, IU folks, schoolBlogs, , Sam d., Middlebury, etc., etc.- so maybe this is just a list of recommended sites. Or maybe we don't need this department.

A bit a' beta - Teacher inquiry Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:47:13 GMT

This is the heart of the site, where practioners, over time, ask themselves hard questions about blogs and writing and learning. If this department grows, the others (aside from the Help with blogs Dept.) become peripheral, unnecessary.

A bit a' beta - Introductions Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:44:40 GMT

Say hello. Wonder why you're here. Never come back again because there are too, too many papers to grade.

A bit a' beta - Interesting... Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:39:54 GMT

A place to post whatever doesn't fit in any other department.

A bit a' beta - Help with blogs Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:35:33 GMT

This is a newbies dept. for questions related to any cms that teachers are using. Very, very basic questions (Read: "This is a dumb question, but...") are not only allowed; they're encouraged, should actually dominate.

A bit a' beta - Clerks of the meeting Dept.

pat delaney — Sat, 25 May 2002 04:32:47 GMT

Quaker model. Somebody has got to be able to slow things down, clarify issues, calm the commons, and show folks to the door when they need some air.

If the hallway metaphor works...

pat delaney — Wed, 22 May 2002 18:44:47 GMT

it looks like there might be a Manila school district of hallways forming at Manila Frontier. It's got David and Raymond in on it. Good - they can do the brand specific stuff.

Our Lives as Webdoggies--Woof!

Terry Elliott — Tue, 21 May 2002 23:21:21 GMT

Our first mind virus: ease of use as the first principle of weblogging in schools? Follow the contagious trail.

Ease of Use is the Key

Will Richardson — Tue, 21 May 2002 10:57:51 GMT

Karen got me thinking...

We've got our own blogChat

pat delaney — Tue, 21 May 2002 00:12:59 GMT

Courtesy of Brent and company. Click the headline for details on how to use it.

Karen's here (finally!)

Karen McComas — Mon, 20 May 2002 19:01:34 GMT

Finally made it in...ignore the first line of this story that says I couldn't make a story...all is well now, my intro is a story, and I'm happy to be blogging with you guys!

Tools for Teaching on a Weblog: Blackmask

Terry Elliott — Sun, 19 May 2002 19:54:36 GMT

I posted this on my schoolblogs and then began to think about the uses of e-books in weblogs. Perhaps you can come up with more uses. I will come back to it later. I am especially interested in the k-log management of e-books and weblogs. Maybe AlbertD might have some thoughts on this.

Will's Brief Bio

Will Richardson — Thu, 16 May 2002 15:20:45 GMT

Just a few words of introduction...

Help design the tool

pat delaney — Thu, 16 May 2002 05:24:29 GMT

blogChat folks are interested in hearing from teachers.

Another state heard from

pat delaney — Tue, 14 May 2002 13:48:35 GMT

Michelle Rogge has a site for Dakota WP.

Shaping a Teacher Inquiry question

pat delaney — Tue, 14 May 2002 13:38:32 GMT

Reflecting on this year for next year.

RssFeed works

pat delaney — Tue, 14 May 2002 02:25:34 GMT

Put the text which follows this paragraph between these a { and a } bracket and you will have an Rss feed of k-12 blogWrite on your Manila site. (Might work with Blogger too.We may need some help re: other engines.) You can see an example on my site.

viewRssBox("http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/k12blogWrite/xml/rss.xml", boxTitle:"Macintosh News", align:"", width:infinity, timeZone:"PST")}

Terry's out and about

pat delaney — Mon, 13 May 2002 15:21:42 GMT

At SiT.

Why we need colleagues

Terry Elliott — Mon, 13 May 2002 01:43:51 GMT

The topic of collegiality seems appropriate for my first post to our joint effort. Good luck and good stories to all. Thanks for the suggestion, Pat.

Hallway is open

pat delaney — Sun, 12 May 2002 18:52:51 GMT

Welcome. Read About for an intro.