Bud the Teacher

        I have ended my school week early so that I can attend the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Spring Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I’m looking forward to the opportunity to recharge my batteries a bit as I dig into the work that other teachers are doing.  I’ll be presenting on two collaborative projects that I have been working on — one a collaboration with my students and a colleague’s middle school students via an online discussion board, the other a collaboration between my students and some preservice teachers and their professor at Colorado State University.   
        The preparations for the presentations (say that three times fast) have gotten me thinking an awful lot about blogging and how it is a collaborative project of sorts.  I am writing assuming that you, whoever you are, are reading.  More than that, I am assuming that you are thinking about what I am saying and, if you’re so inclined, are responding. 
        I have had some fascinating conversations over the last couple of weeks via this space, conversations that are really just beginning.  As if the conversations occurring in this space aren’t enough to keep me busy for quite some time, there’s also the conversations that I am eavesdropping on.  RSS and a comment button or two are easy ways to collaborate with the online community of educators that I am learning from.  Talk about professional development. 
        Here’s a sampling of what I’ve learned in the past week:
        ** There’s a ton of really great Open Source software out there for school use.  (Thanks, Steve!)
       ** How to teach students to take notes in the dark when watching a movie.  (Thanks, Mike!)
       ** That blogging is sometimes "like an avocado."  (Thanks, Nancy!)

These bloggers and their ideas, and others that I don’t have time right now to mention,  have been like a mini-conference for me.  I’m thinking about what they’ve said, and what others have said,  and my brain continues to spin.  This blogging experience has become a professional development opportunity for me.  I read and write and feel refreshed; and I’m just getting started. 
        What is blogging doing for you and your teaching?  What collaborations (virtual or otherwise) are lurking out there in the blogosphere, waiting for just the right time to rear their heads?

        If you’ve got a minute, there much to read and discuss over at this week’s Education Carnival, brought to us by the Education Wonks.  Hopefully, tonight I can sit down and really dig into some of these posts — I’ll probably have some comments to share once I’ve done so.  I sure don’t agree with everything that I’m seeing — but I’m sure glad there’s a place like this to have some conversations.  In the meantime, happy reading!

        I’ve got a daughter who will eventually enter this stage.
The stage where anything and everything goes into her mouth or wherever
else she can place things.  I hope we never, ever make a contribution
to this jar.

        My wife and I, both Colorado State University Writing Project alums, had a chance last night to have dinner with other writing project folks from around the state of Colorado.  The event was a reading by Gary Soto, and the fine people at the Rocky Mountain Writing Project at UNC in Greeley were our hosts.  (Unfortunately, due to residual illness, I missed the reading.)
        The meal was a nice chance to say hello to other teachers who, like us, think that teachers of writing should also be writers.   Also, we think that writing shouldn’t be taught in just English classes.  Writing is a tool for learning, not a content.  Then again, most content areas are artificially so.  Ever try to do science without math?  How about math without reading?  Social studies without statistics? 
        Anyway, the reason for this post is to just mention the idea that there might be a National Writing Project site near you.  If so, you should check it out.  I can honestly say that the NWP has the potential to change your career.  Tomorrow, my wife and I will be among several writing project teachers meeting applicants for this year’s summer institute at CSU.  I am honored and eager to meet so many distinguished teachers and to have the opportunity to discuss their practice with them.
      

        Steve over at Teach42 has posed some really, really interesting questions.  He writes/asks:

It’s a fascinating topic. Blog the noun, vs. blogging the verb. They
are very different things. Thinking about blogging as the set of ’21st
Century Skills’ that students must know to create and maintain a blog
puts a very different spin on it. The reality is that this really needs
to be considered closely, as these skills should probalby be included
into curriculum standards. Blogs are one way to teach these skills,
they aren’t the only way. But they do need to be represented and built
into the curriculum.

Hrrrm… Methinks this requires more
thought. What are the important skills for a student to know in order
to be an effective, quality blogger? What skills does a student need to
know when they graduate lower school, middle school or secondary
school? Finally, what is the intersection of those two sets?

One
last question to mull over: Do blogs offer up a new way to teach the
same skills we’ve already been targeting, or do they represent a new
skill set that we need to be incorporating?

        And I responded:

        Wow. You ask a huge question at the end of your post here, Steve. My
gut answer is yes and no — Blogging as I am beginning to understand it
asks a writer to take ideas and weave them together — a little of this,
a little of that, add some critical analysis and you’ve got a good
piece of writing. That’s no different than any other writing that I ask
my students to do. I want them to think critically.

But blogging,
because it involves hypertext and the entire Internet to draw from,
adds a layer. Students linking and cross linking can get, well,
complicated. as you say, a blog can help to make clear a “conversation
occurring in slow motion,” which is precisely what a good piece of
writing is — it speaks to the pieces that came before and it hints at
those to come.

    There’s lots here that I, like you, have to think about.

        But I don’t like what I said there — yet.   
        I failed to mention that the physical act of linking is an essential skill.  To be able to connect multiple texts, to show where one idea was born and merged into another idea — that is a fantastic skill that I do not believe is possible without the blog.  The hypertext here is essential.  A student making these same connections with sticky notes or string or highlighters on a paper text  just doesn’t make sense to me.  But I don’t know.  It’s late, and I’ve been thinking too hard lately.   
        My answer is a work in progress.  Like me.
         I want to think more about Steve’s questions and get back to them, so I’m reserving the right to do so.  In the meanwhile, why don’t you take a stab at them?  Tell us what you discover. 

        Been trying to read lots of educational blogs right now.  An easy way to do so is to hop over to the Education Carnival.  at The Education Wonks.  It’s an interesting collection of a variety of posts, almost all by teacher bloggers.  Worth a look if you have a minute.  Probably worth a look if you don’t. 

       I wanted to give a quick update on some of the technology that I’ve been playing with lately.  I’m continuing in my quest to teach my blog pilot class next quarter — and that’s now less than a month away. 
       While I’ve been aware of Bloglines for several weeks, I hadn’t had the time to play with the site and see what it can do.  I like that I can have my aggregator online so that I can check it from both home and school.  The program is also entirely free, which I like — but I’ve been told that it is blocked in some school districts.  Can anyone tell me why?  I think it’s got definite potential as a student tool — it’s web-based, so anyone using it can access it from multiple locations.  That’s important to me because if my students take to blogging, and some of them already have begun to do so, then I want them to have the tools after they leave my school.  If I get them excited about a process that uses technology that only exists in the school, what good have I done?  It’s also free and very user-friendly. 
        I also discovered Site Meter yesterday — it’s a really great free program that give me some interesting information on links and visits and hits and so on.  I don’t really understand some of the information it gives me (yet), but it’s another step and piece of a potential puzzle.   The program wins my "Easy to Use" award because they have service-specific instructions for installation.  Took three minutes to install.  Really. 
        Podcasting has taken a backseat for me right now, as I am working to make sure that my district can get a blog system going.  Once that is in place, I will refocus my efforts on podcasting, which I think has multiple uses at my school — but is less essential than blogging.   As I’ve told some of the technology folks in my district, blogging is the cake, podcasting is the icing. 
         That said, I still have located a headphone/microphone combo and I’ve also purchased an iTalk for myself.  I’ll be playing with those tools as time permits, and perhaps get a podcast or two going on my own.