NECC 2007

In the off chance that somebody might stop by here and not be tuned in to NECC 2007, here are excerpts from a couple of messages I just posted to a local discussion list in Seattle:

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I really recommend following the conference via rss feed, as the
bloggers, podcasters, wikimakers and more will be bringing tons of
it right to everyone. There is an aggregator for all posts tagged
with necc2007, neccprep, and necc07 at Hitchhikr. Subscribe here,
and you won't miss a beat:

http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?conf_id=215

Once you start looking, the resources are just overwhelming, and it
is happening right now, so here are a few links to dynamic, virtual
ways to attend NECC 2007 in Atlanta:

http://edubloggercon.wikispaces.com/ - wiki with many bigtime edtech
bloggers contributing...

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ - I hesitate to single out any
one blog, but if you subscribe to Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher
blog, you will not miss much...

http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?conf_id=146 - another Hitchhikr
aggregator to subscribe to, great info and insights, happening right
now....

There's a flickr photo group in there somewhere, too... enough for
now, got to get back to my Bloglines - Mark

Mark Ahlness
mahlness@halcyon.com
http://ahlness.com
http://roomtwelve.com

Technorati Tags: edubloggercon07 edubloggercon2007 edubloggercon necc2007 neccprep necc07

Art 1.0

Artwork Giveaway
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Another non-tech post, sheesh - about teaching - and the arts. I covered the corner of my classroom for a couple of hours today with my own artwork... pieces I produced while leading two third grade classes in art lessons this year.

At the end of the day I let my third graders choose an "original Ahlness" to take home with their artwork projects for the year... reminding them that Claude Monet, Henri Rousseau, and Andre Durain art works (we studied them, you see) went for pennies at first, and some now go for millions... well, you just never know, do you?

Dance Chance

I just posted this to my school's PTSA list. Not about technology, but it is indeed about teaching, opportunity, and excellence (and the two girls are in my classroom).

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Just to let you know that three third graders from Arbor Heights got to participate the entire 2006-07 school year in Pacific Northwest Ballet's Dance Chance. Today I caught up with them after their performance in "Pacific Northwest Ballet 26th Annual School Performance" at McCaw Hall in Seattle. Hundreds of kids, in one group after another… I was amazed at how many kids get to take ballet lessons. Not cheap, for sure. Enter the Dance Chance program, an amazing effort by PNB to reach out to those who have the talent and drive, who might not otherwise get a Chance to Dance.

When the curtain came up on “Dance Chance”, this third grade teacher must confess to a lump in his throat and misty eyes. The Arbor Heights trio did not miss a step, were spot on at every moment, and moved with grace – and wonderful smiles. I remember two of the families asking me, at the beginning of the year when they were invited to participate, if I thought their kids could afford to miss so much school. I replied something like I did not see how they could afford to pass up such an incredible opportunity. A year’s worth of ballet lessons at a world renowned school, transportation, gear, and more. It is a wonderful opportunity. Not only were these three chosen from 1650 third graders this year, they were part of an elite group that made it through the cut halfway through the school year. They have all worked very, very hard. This is a pretty big deal. They will find out this summer if they get to become a part of an even more exclusive group, to continue as fourth graders in Dance Chance. I am crossing my fingers for them…

Family Internet Night 2

I finally got around to our second Family Internet Night this year, with just a week and a half to go in the school year. I offered it on two consecutive nights, hoping to get as many parents in as possible. It amazes me how busy families are with their kids these days... especially at the end of the school year. A total of 18 people came, representing 8 families. Here are links to the materials:

• The PowerPoint presentation (2 MB) that I used. Nothing real fancy, but it guided the conversation.
  
• A podcast of the evening (4 MB mp3). I just let the recorder run for 30 minutes... Definitely not a polished presentation, this was from the 13th, the second night. Just a conversation.... The battery died right at the point where we had some good Q&A for about 10 minutes. Oh well.
  

It was a good evening.

Kids too?

Tom Hoffman recently posted What are the Big Problems in Ed-Tech? - a succinct distillation of three big issues. This is my favorite:

Out of control web filtering. Again, what's the doctrine? There seem to be no professional guidelines. We've got a situation akin to letting the clerks in the purchasing department decide whether or not the books ordered by teachers and librarians are acceptable.

Yesterday afternoon I submitted a request to have a site unblocked from school. The author had quoted a couple of my kids on her blog and had left comments on their blogs to give them a heads up. I indicated this in my unblock request. This morning, 16 hours later, I got a response saying that my "teacher" computer should already have access to that site, and did I want my "students to access it?"

I answered yes, please.

Twenty-four hours after the request went in, after I sent a reminder that it was still not open, the site was unblocked for my kids. Of course the school day was over...

Good grief.

The 1.0 ball and chain

Everybody, no matter what their job, has some extra difficulty, some additional weight to carry, cross to bear, etc. I mention this one here because it pertains to teachers adopting (or not) web 2.0 technologies.

Here is that ball and chain: school web sites, class web pages, district specific tools for creating 1.0 static web sites. Most teachers or tech leaders are currently using Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or similar to update those web sites. Those same people are the ones who should naturally be the ones jumping into web 2.0 stuff with both feet, because they have a lot of technical skills. Unfortunately, they are too overwhelmed maintaining the status quo, often as volunteer web masters, to find the time to experiment and create using new forms like blogs, wikis, podcasts, and so on. Anybody who does want to branch out must commit to maintaining web 1.0 and 2.0 sites. One does not easily replace the other. It would be nice, but it does not work that way...

My personal ball and chain:

• The Ball: my school website. Because it's one of the oldest around and relatively well known, there are a lot of reasons for hanging on to it. It has a certain amount of celebrity, in part thanks to the unauthorized use of an image of its home page in a well-known best seller. Thirteen years at the same URL is not something I'm about to throw away overnight. Yesterday I updated one of the thousands of pages on the site with this year's Young Author's Conference. A tedious three hours - and I'm fast at this, but gosh.... choosing the right pictures, being sure kids in the pictures have permission from their parents to appear, creating thumbnails, resizing and renaming pictures, uploading it all via ftp (ouch). Now I'm pleased with it, proud of my school, happy there is another record of the event, but man.... I should have been blogging on my classroom blog and editing podcasts...
  
  
• The Chain: The Earth Day Groceries Project. Now I dearly love this project and have spent even more time on it over the years than the school web site, but man, what a time-eater. The text info is fed into multiple databases, so I'm not html coding individual reports anymore, but still.... biggest year ever, in terms of folks sending in pictures to document their participation. I finally caught up yesterday, creating a total for 2007 of 142 picture pages - each with multiple pictures. To top it off I created a page with lots of pictures for my school - since we started it and I'm in charge, we get whatever we want - ha. Two hours+ on a page that normally would take me 10 minutes (see above for some of the tedium). I should have been working on our classroom wiki, or getting a presentation proposal in to k12 Online...

After all this, I think the message I want to leave is that the tech leaders people would assume might be leading the web 2.0 charge are stuck. There are plenty of tech savvy teachers and tech leaders out there everywhere, but they cannot break free from the ball and chain of

1. the obligation to follow a school district's guidelines and vision in "web design"
2. morphing 1.0 sites into 2.0 environments, not an easy task, and there is no manual...

Many of the tech leaders and teachers with web skills (and obligations) wanting to venture out into new web media creation must be willing to work in both the 1.0 and the 2.0 worlds right now. For a while, anyway. Twice the work, in the same amount of time, and for the same pay (volunteer school webmasters roll their eyes).

It will happen, but it will be a slow process, where education will follow business, as usual. I wish for once we educators could lead... I am certain my school's web page will be replaced with our school wiki within 2 years. How do I know? I'll do it.

Now the Earth Day Groceries Project, I just don't know. I set up a project blog a coupla years ago, but that's clearly not the answer for a total transition to web 2.0. Any ideas? TIA...

Third graders on blogging

Third graders are pretty self centered, concrete thinkers, especially at the start of a school year, but by the end of the year, they are well on the way into thinking about ideas, reflecting on different points of view, etc. I love working with kids at this age.

This is the second class of third graders I have taken through a school year with individual blogs. Three days ago I described a nebulous writing assignment to them. Write about your blogs, I said. Blogs in general, blogging next year, are blogs good?, convince somebody you should be allowed to blog more, summer blogging, what age should blogging start, - I threw out several ideas, and asked them to blog their thoughts. There were several blank stares, like was I going to give them the assignment, or what? Then some ideas began to flow onto a few computers. Kids talked. We all looked at the writing of a few volunteers after 20 minutes. A head of steam began to build. They took approaches to this that were as individualized as, well, each one of them is:

Good Things about {My Blog} - AnaLisa
Why I should keep my blog - Ryan
my blog - Kody
My Blog - Chelsea
Why I Should Keep My Blog Over the Summer - Nathan
Why I should keep my blog - Christopher
Good Things About Blogs - Nicole
How my blog is doing. - Elyjah
Good Things About My Blog - Maribeth
About My Blog and Other blogs - Casey
My Blog - Lindsay
Why We Should Have Blogs Over the Summer - Jonathan
Good Things About Having A Blog - Riley1
Why I should keep my blog! - Keean
Good Things About a Blog - Logan

Quit teasin'

Today at school Flickr was unblocked - for at least two hours that I was aware of. When I realized it, my kids were naturally on the Internet, blogging, reading blogs, etc. I checked it out - yes, totally unblocked. Started showing my kids my Flickr directory - they were VERY interested. Started thinking of the promises I made my kids in November of 2005 when I told them they would have their artwork on their blogs, via Flickr. Alas, it ended up being blocked in early 2006.

Then I thought about the rest of my school. Yikes. I spent part of my lunchtime telling as many teachers as I could that Flickr was open. Yes, great news, BUT we gotta be extra careful now. We must be active again about teaching responsible use.... For now, keep an extra close eye on your kids. This is big...

(added on June 14, 2007)
I sent the following email to all staff in my building at the end of the school day:

Hi all,
I mentioned to several of you at lunchtime on Thursday that http://flickr.com was unblocked. Long story, but I wanted everyone, especially classroom teachers, to know to be on their toes. Meanwhile, my head was spinning with the potential I’d been talking about for two years – but denied, due to the district filter blocking flickr. Anyway, by mid-afternoon Thursday, it was blocked again. I spoke to a few tech folk downtown on the phone at lunchtime, and they did not know about flickr being unblocked. Maybe word got ‘round…. Sorry for the alarm/excitement. Aargh. - Mark

Midway through the afternoon Flickr was blocked again. Maybe it was the tech guys I asked about it on the phone. They seemed surprised. Maybe the word got around... Maybe next time I should keep my mouth shut. What a great fantasy or two I had about opening doors for my kids. Shucks.

SSR 2.0 - final update

An end of the year update - with a podcast - on a little exploration into changing the traditional, standard boundaries of silent reading (SSR, "sustained silent reading") in an elementary school classroom. I have posted a couple of times earlier here on this:

• Is this SSR, 2.0? (Feb 9, 2007)
• SSR 2.0 continues... (March 30, 2007)

On June 1st I sat down with my third grade reading group to talk about this one more time. Here's what they had to say:

SSR 2.0, podcast #2 (6 min. mp3),
linked for now from my presentation wiki for the IRA Conference

I must say the boundaries of what they read online is also changing, morphing - in very much the same way the boundaries established by a teacher in a traditional silent reading period might change. For instance, there was this real excitement over reading about (ahem, looking at the pictures of) different Pokemon characters on Wikipedia. This wonderful discovery came from reading some of the posts from Doug Noon's fourth grade bloggers. So I watched for a couple of days, finally put my foot down, and said, no more just clicking on this or that to just see pictures of the different characters. Get off Wikipedia, for goodness sake. Kind of like a teacher might not allow somebody to "read" Where's Waldo? day after day.... Know where those boys eventually wound up? - reading and rereading the posts on Pokemon from Doug's kids.

Then there are the walkabouts that happen, like today, a student was at a classblogmeister blog that had Google Earth embedded into a blog post. Never having used the program, she figured out how to see our school from space - pretty much on her own. Reading? Sure, she had to. I have to check with her tomorrow to see where this was - very cool!

Then there is the reading of a post that leads to "non-blog" reading, like a news report linked within a blog. Several of my kids have done this thanks to the fifth grade bloggers in Gordon Brune's class.

At the end of all this, I will say there is a renewed and excited interest in reading with this group - which had not existed before I opened this door. Sure, they still read from books, but they read also from blogs, online reference, online news, and who knows what else tomorrow. Just like their teachers - and their parents.

Pigs on Parade

Almost there
Originally uploaded by mahlness

The Centenniel Celebration of the Pike Place Market began with 100 gorgeous - and zany, Pigs on Parade. In downtown Seattle, from Westlake Center to the Market. Two of my third graders, a Dad, and I volunteered to be herders for a pig.

We had no idea what to expect - but we had a sign to carry with the name of our school (thanks to a mom), and we were willing to take a gamble on participating in a civic event. A couple of weeks earlier my class had taken our annual tour of the Market - something the Market Foundation has offered to third graders in Seattle for a long time- I think this was my 14th or 15th year.

Anyway, there was a lot of walking here and there in downtown Seattle, asking event coordinators where our pig was. We finally found her (three different numbers on her, depending on what list you had), thanks to an organizer who said she knew the pig. She did.

Mrs. Pike Pigstein, sponsored by the Seattle Symphony. She'll be on display in front of Benaroya Hall for the summer, as the Market hits exactly 100 in August.

Can't remember when the last time was I marched in a parade. So of course I took lots of pictures - a set of 40 is on Flickr. I think we did pretty well, by pig herding standards. And thanks to our great sign, we're pretty sure several thousand folks now think Arbor Heights Elementary created this beautiful pig. Oh well, I told the kids at the end, no harm, maybe someday you will make one. Three weeks to go in the school year... I think I feel an art lesson coming on...

Bench

Bench
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Today I replaced the rotting and broken seat boards on this old bench with wood our next door neighbors had given us when they moved. They were getting divorced. Roger had lots of wood and asked if I wanted it. Several years later now, much of that wood is still stacked in our garage, waiting for me to find the right time and the perfect project. I had figured they'd be a part of a bookshelf. These new boards on our backyard bench were part of our neighbors' waterbed.

It sits in the shadow of a laurel hedge separating our property lines. It feels good to put the wood to use. As I was ripping and refinishing each board, I started thinking about the purpose and function of this particular wood - from waterbed to private refuge. If I were Billy Collins, I'd have some pretty darn good poetry coming along right now...

"Not one glue stick...

... was used in the production of this book".

That should have been the little tag line at the end of each of the books my third graders produced this year for our school's annual Young Author's Conference. Not exactly leading edge web 2.0 stuff, but in the world of an elementary school, where glue sticks, markers, scissors, pencils, and crayons are the tools every child uses to produce a "book" in our celebration of literacy and authorship, this was pretty cool. It was a big deal.

A few weeks ago we got a slick color laser printer (HP 2605DN), thanks to the generous parents of my kids. It can duplex print, so I went out and bought heavy glossy paper for the pages and printable card stock for covers. The kids wrote from the get go in Word, writing, revising and editing on our classroom computers. Several of them posted rough drafts of some of their chapters on their blogs. The illustrations ended up slicker than whatever, as the kids photographed their artwork with our ancient Mavica and inserted those images into their digital stories. Many brought in photographs from home, took pictures of those pictures, and inserted them. They thought this was pretty cool, and they learned an amazing amount of technical stuff oh so quickly.

Not one glue stick. Not one curling up corner of a paper stuck onto another paper to try and look professional. No smeared crayon or runny paint job. These look pro. Looks do matter, you know. And of course they can be reproduced again and again, being totally digital. My kids will have them as one of the many pieces on a CD they will each get in four weeks to document much of their work this year.

Their third grade work might have been stuck in a box, stored and forgotten in an attic or under the stairs like mine was/is. Maybe it would have ended up in the back of a teacher's file cabinet in a file folder. Some of their work may go that route. But it also can and will exist on a CD, in storage online, on a flash drive, on a hard drive, a DVD, on a blog, and who knows what other media.... to be retrieved - and edited, improved, and built upon - in an instant. Forever.

K-12 Online 2007: Call for Proposals!

Hoping for an even more exciting and inspirational year.... which would be quite something!

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Announcing the second annual “K12 Online” conference for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. This years conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.” A call for proposals is below.

OVERVIEW:
There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday - Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in any of a variety of downloadable, web based formats and released via the conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) and archived for posterity.

FOUR STRANDS:
Week 1
Strand A: Classroom 2.0
Leveraging the power of free online tools in an open, collaborative and transparent atmosphere characterises teaching and learning in the 21st century. Teachers and students are contributing to the growing global knowledge commons by publishing their work online. By sharing all stages of their learning students are beginning to appreciate the value of life long learning that inheres in work that is in “perpetual beta.” This strand will explore how teachers and students are playing with the boundaries between instructors, learners and classrooms. Presentations will also explore the practical pedagogical uses of online social tools (Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers are using the tools in their classes.

Strand B: New Tools
Focusing on free tools, what are the “nuts and bolts” of using specific new social media and collaborative tools for learning? This strand includes two parts. Basic training is “how to” information on tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers. Advanced training is for teachers interested in new tools for learning, looking for advanced technology training, seeking ideas for mashing tools together, and interested in web 2.0 assessment tools. As educators and students of all ages push the boundaries of learning, what are the specific steps for using new tools most effectively? Where “Classroom 2.0″ presentations will focus on instructional uses and examples of web 2.0 tool use, “New Tools” presentations should focus on “nuts and bolts” instructions for using tools. Five “basic” and five “advanced” presentations will be included in this strand.

Week 2
Strand A: Professional Learning Networks
Research says that professional development is most effective when it aims to create professional learning communities — places where teachers learn and work together. Using Web 2.0 tools educators can network with others around the globe extending traditional boundaries of ongoing, learner centered professional development and support. Presentations in this strand will include tips, ideas and resources on how to orchestrate your own professional development online; concrete examples of how the tools that support Professional Learning Environments (PLEs) are being used; how to create a supportive, reflective virtual learning community around school-based goals, and trends toward teacher directed personal learning environments.

Strand B: Obstacles to Opportunities
Boundaries formalized by education in the “industrial age” shouldn’t hinder educators as they seek to reform and transform their classroom practice. Playing with boundaries in the areas of copyright, digital discipline and ethics (e.g. cyberbullying), collaborating globally (e.g. cultural differences, synchronous communication), resistance to change (e.g. administration, teachers, students), school culture (e.g. high stakes testing), time (e.g. in curriculum, teacher day), lack of access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district concerns for online safety, control (e.g. teacher control of student behavior/learning), solutions for IT collaboration and more — unearthing opportunities from the obstacles rooted in those boundaries — is the focus of presentations in this strand.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
This call encourages all, experienced and novice, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this link. Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in “playing with boundaries” in one of the four strands as described above.

Deadline for proposal submissions is June 18, 2007. You will be contacted no later than June 30, 2007 regarding your status.

Presentations may be delivered in any web-based medium that is downloadable (including but not limited to podcasts, screencasts, slide shows) and is due one week prior to the date it is published.

Please note that all presentations will be licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

As you draft your proposal, you may wish to consider the presentation topics listed below which were suggested in the comments on the K-12 Online Conference Blog:

special needs education
Creative Commons
Second Life
podcasting
iPods
video games in education
specific ideas, tips, mini lessons centered on pedagogical use of web 2.0 tools
overcoming institutional inertia and resistance
aligning Web 2.0 and other projects to national standards
getting your message across
how web 2.0 can assist those with disabilities
ePortfolios
classroom 2.0 activities at the elementary level
creating video for TeacherTube and YouTube
google docs
teacher/peer collaboration
KEYNOTES:
The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a well known educator who is distinguished and knowledgeable in the context of their strand. Keynoters will be announced shortly.

CONVENERS:
This year’s conveners are:

Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice and for “child safe” blogging practices. He has more than 20 years experience in both formal and informal education and 13 years experience in team building and leadership training. Darren has been facilitating workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for the last 10 years. Darren’s professional blog is called A Difference (http://adifference.blogspot.com). He will convene Classroom 2.0.

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching graduate and undergraduate preservice teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. In addition, Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. Sheryl blogs at (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/). She will convene Preconference Discussions and Personal Learning Networks.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a “catalyst for creative educational engagement.” His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He is the Director of Education Advocacy (PK-20) for AT&T in the state of Oklahoma. Wes blogs at (www.speedofcreativity.org). Wes will convene New Tools.

Lani Ritter Hall currently contracts as an instructional designer for online professional development for Ohio teachers and online student courses with eTech Ohio. She is a National Board Certified Teacher who served in many capacities during her 35 years as a classroom and resource teacher in Ohio and Canada. Lani blogs at (http://possibilitiesabound.blogspot.com). Lani will convene Obstacles to Opportunities.

QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:
Darren Kuropatwa: dkuropatwa {at} gmail {dot} com
Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach: snbeach {at} cox {dot} net
Lani Ritter Hall: lanihall {at} alltel {dot} net
Wesley Fryer: wesfryer {at} pobox {dot} com

Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we’d really like people to do that ) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs).

My Trip to Toronto

Well, I only went virtually, but still...

Background first. I was invited several months ago to give a presentation at the International Reading Association's annual convention in Toronto. It was to be a part of a day long preconference institute. Try as I might, I could not find the $ to get me out there for a couple of days, and I was extremely disappointed. In sending my regrets to the organizers, I threw out the idea of presenting virtually, kind of as an afterthought. Well, that afterthought became reality.

Last Sunday I gave the presentation, via a DVD I produced. There is/was a wiki, we had a live Seattle/Toronto Skype chat after the presentation, and it was just a huge thrill. And an incredible learning experience.

I started my presentation a couple of months ago, writing an abstract and laying out what I thought would be an informative presentation. My travels through producing a 30 minute piece took me to three of my third graders' homes, where I interviewed and filmed them while they were blogging. It took me through the ins and outs of filming myself, trying to figure out what looked good (not much), what sounded good, and then learning that I just had to stop SOMEtime, for goodness sake, and finally learn to live with what I had. It was quite a journey.

Then there was all the incidental learning - pbwiki, which I had not used nearly as much as wikispaces. I learned the basics of Camtasia, a very slick program to to produce all sorts of A/V presentations, in pretty much any format you want. I learned tons more about compression, file sizes, video displays. The dvd I sent out for the conference was over 4 GB - that was interesting to learn about, too, burning one of those puppies. Afterwards I even put up a couple of pieces from the presentation on teachertube.... then of course was embedding those videos here and there... it never ends.

Ah yes, but what about the message? It was all about blogging with my third graders, of course. The biggest problem was that I just had way too much to say. How to condense the message and at the same time make it meaningful for an audience I knew nothing about was a challenge. I'm afraid I got a little scattered at times. What I ended up showing was the world of blogging in the elementary classroom - what it is like for my kids and me. I decided that was the important message to give - just to show people exactly what it is like for my kids and me. The audience saw and listened to three of my kids blogging from their homes. This was an eye opener to me, too. I also just talked on camera, as somebody might do at a conference presentation - from my back yard and from my classroom.

And then it was 15 minutes too long. But most of the material from the cutting room floor ended up on the wiki - along with the presentation itself. Here are the main bits and pieces:

• Technology and Literacy: Perspectives from the Classroom: precon1small.wmv (63 MB, 30 min) - the main presentation.
• Family Internet Night: familyinternetnight.wmv(28 MB, 8 min.) - one of the cuts, but stands well enough on its own. It's a PowerPoint presentation with commentary.
• SSR 2.0, the Podcast: ssr1.wmv (4 MB, 6 min, podcast/screencast) - blending of a podcast done some time ago with some still images - just seeing if I could do this in Camtasia
• The wiki for the preconference institute
• My presentation page on the wiki

Many thanks to:

• Janice Friesen, for mentioning my name to the conference organizers over a year ago.
• Jill Castek, for encouraging and guiding me though the process, and for hosting my session in person.
• Don Leu, for his "Miss Rumphius Effect" and for his leading the search into new literacies.

TipLine - Gates' Computer Tips: [TIPS] background view of blogging using blogmeister

A follow-up to the previous post here on that Family Internet Night video, this post says it better than I did, especially talking about classblogmeister.com, the tool that makes it happen:

TipLine - Gates' Computer Tips: [TIPS] background view of blogging using blogmeister

While that one runs fine on teachertube, even in full screen mode, here's a higher resolution version you can just download and save - it's a 27 MB wmv file: familyinternetnight.wmv

Family Internet Night - on teachertube

Well, I finally took the plunge and uploaded something to teachertube.com This piece I developed for a larger presentation elsewhere (more on that later), and it got cut out because of time constraints. I think it stands well enough on its own - at least I hope so.

It is a PowerPoint presentation I shared with the families of my third graders in December, 2006 - with voice over narration.

Flexible thinkers

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how easily my third graders can use a tool, especially a new one, to solve a problem.

We're in the middle of writing these books for our annual Young Author's Conference, and of course not everybody is right on schedule... just like grown ups and deadlines. On Friday when I reminded them that their writing was supposed to be DONE by now (and perfect), there were a few gasps. Not that this deadline should have been news, but, well anyway.... So somebody raises her hand and asks if there is a way they can take their books home for the weekend to work on. All their writing is saved in Word on our local server, and they know they can't get there from home. Well, I was about to answer, but...

A few hands shot up, and somebody explained to her that she could just copy/paste to her blog, save it (and not "request publishing"). Then she could log in from home, and copy/paste from her blog into Word, upload the new version to her blog, you get the idea.

We have never talked about this. They came up with it on their own. Several knew this was the answer the moment the question came up. As a matter of fact, a couple of them said they had done this two months ago when they were collaborating on their Science Fair Project presentation.

Teacher nods his head, gives kudos all around for being creative thinkers, and wishes them good luck on their books. And has a flashback to a similar incident a year ago...

How can we possibly question giving them these new tools?

Games - cracking the door open

I had an interesting conversation with my third graders this past week.

It involved talk about video games, especially violent ones. I had noticed a lot of them wrote, and even blogged about their plans and then experiences playing PS2, WII, XBox, and so on. Lots of talk about Halo and Halo 2. Now I am not a game player at all (like zero), but I know that's a pretty violent one, and you're supposed to be 16, or 18 - or something. These kids are 8 and 9. So one morning I asked them about their game playing. It was as if I had lifted the lid on another world that they were all too eager to talk about. Lots of bravado, talk of levels, scores, and kills (!), especially from the boys - but I did manage to ask some yes/no questions, the answers to which disturbed me. Over half the class said they regularly play violent video games. There was this sort of guilty, cringey feeling I could see going around as they looked at each other and admitted (confessed) this to their teacher (good, I thought). I asked if their parents thought this was OK, and most said yes. So then of course I had to ask about their parents.... A clear majority of my class said their parents regularly played video games. I asked about dads - about 3/4 of the hands went up. I asked about moms - over 1/3 of the hands went up. I nodded my head, the teacher just asking about their lives outside of school, appreciating their honesty, saying we ought to talk more about this, etc. I did tell them that I was bothered by this, that I did not think it was good for them to spend so much time with violent games.... But I was truly stunned.

Lots of big time edtech bloggers talk about the potential of video games in education. I suppose that is so, since the kids spend so much of their time in that world. But man, do I have a long way to go. Now, are we talking Halo for third graders? Not likely, but I wonder what the educational world can ever tap into in games that will even come close the the addictive lure of violence my kids (and their parents) are so captivated by?

Maybe some educators are thinking that replicating the game playing medium somehow in school will draw kids back into the educational system. I understand that line of thinking, certainly. But my gut tells me kids are more drawn by the violent content than the slick interface. I hope I'm wrong. It does not feel good going down this road.

Publishing Drafts

I just posted this to my classroom blog over at roomtwelve.com. I don't know how it will turn out, but it feels right...

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Blogging Drafts

This is just a note to let the readers of roomtwelve.com know that some of the third graders here are publishing drafts of their writing - that is, unfinished work, writing that may contain mistakes.

Normally, the writing on their blogs is pretty close to perfect, in terms of the conventions of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. At least we try :)

Right now everybody is working on a book for our annual Young Author's Conference. A few brave writers in room twelve are posting their works in progress - for you to take a look at - and even offer feedback on!

So if you see an article with the word "Draft" in the title, keep this in mind - and please feel free to leave a comment for the authors. They will certainly appreciate it. Thanks! - Mr. A.

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day 2007, Burien, WA - 1
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

Just a quick post on Earth Day. Yesterday I was in nearby Burien, Washington, and decided to stop into a grocery store, just to see. I never shop there, don't know anything about the store or its surrounding community...

Hanging above the checkstand area of this Albertsons were dozens of Earth Day Grocery Bags and globes. How cool. Made me wonder how many thousands (hopefully) of other stores will be passing them out, with their beautiful kid messages and artwork.

It is that wondering, coupled with hope, that keeps all of us leaning forward, I think. Happy Earth Day!

Pictures are coming in!

(Not real sure about the ethics or wisdom of cross posting on more than one of your own blogs, but this is where my extra energy is going right now, The Earth Day Groceries Project blog...)

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Wow! Pictures are coming in already. A few are listed on the project pictures page. Here's one from Falcon Cove Middle School in Weston, FL Simply amazing art!

Check here if you're not sure how to get your pictures in.

Getting readier for Earth Day

One of the things I do for the Earth Day Groceries Project that I enjoy the most, and dread each year because of how long it takes me, is offering up desktop wallpaper that will keep people reminded of the project year-round. I just posted this to the Earth Day Groceries Project Blog:

It has been a tradition for the Earth Day Groceries Project to offer free desktop wallpaper on the website, reminding people of the beauty of our natural world. Here are a couple of this year's incredible photographs from Marv Breece:

Cooper's Hawk

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1440x900

Snowy Owl

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Northern Goshawk

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1440x900

This year we have added widescreen versions for people who are spreading out a bit on their computers...

I am relieved and exhilarated. Beautiful pictures again, Marv - thanks! A dozen days 'til Earth Day...

Waiting for the hatch

Waiting for the hatch
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

You know, all this web 2.0 wonder that many talk about can overshadow other forms of wonder - and surprise, and simple, silly joy.

Yesterday one of my third graders (on Spring Break) blogged The Easter Egg from home.

You just never know what might happen. Kind of a Peter Pan way of looking at things that I'm grateful for having put in front of me day after day. Thanks, Lindsay. Happy Easter!

The Earth Day Groceries Project

It is now April, and my life changes in an annual cycle that is quite remarkable. Since 1994, I've been coordinating The Earth Day Groceries Project on the internet. I spend dozens, some years hundreds, of hours in a two month period working on this. Every year.

That's the work.

Here's the joy.

It is a true blessing to be in the position of receiving so much good news. Good news sent in from around the world. Sent in with the hope that stories and pictures will be there for their kids to see, for a grocery store to see, for a community to see, and for the world to see. Forever. To document the fact that they tried to make a difference, tried to reverse decades and centuries of abuse to our planet.

I am lucky, lucky, lucky. It is a huge responsibility, and I do not take it lightly.

Happy Earth Day!

April 22, every year.

SSR 2.0 continues...

SSR 2.0 continues...
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

Took this picture today of my little reading group at silent reading time. The only student not in the picture is at a computer. I have let them have free choice. It is interesting to see where they are drawn.... the majority, obviously, choosing blogs. The picture from yesterday would have had different students at desks/computers - but the ratio about the same.

Today in our library book checkout time, I asked one of my kids if he was checking out a book, and he proclaimed, to anyone listening, "I don't read books - I read BLOGS!" Librarian blood runs cold at the thought....

They are reading so differently. What strikes me the most are the reluctant readers who are not so reluctant to read online...

Beyond comments

A week ago Jeff Utecht posted A Problem With Blogs, talking about the connections made - and sought - in conversations, on blogs. He made an important point about the function of comments. Great post, wonderful follow up comments. I encourage people to read it and think about how their classroom blogging reflects - or even mirrors - their personal blogging habits.

A few weeks ago I made a concerted effort to get my third graders into the blogosphere beyond where they naturally went. They seemed stuck in writing mode only - as if writing were some narcotic they could not get enough of. Sound ridiculous? Not to me. I had kids staying in from recess, connecting from home, using every minute to put something out there for the worldwide audience. Too cool!!! But that's all many of them did. They rarely read the writing of others. It was all about their writing - and comments they got.

So I gave them time when they could read online ONLY. Silent reading, 2.0. After doing this for a while, and thinking about what Jeff said, I struck out in a new direction. A direction in which many adult bloggers move quite often. Writing about the blogs of others. Recommending other bloggers - as most bloggers do, a Blogrolling kind of thing...

This week I asked my third graders to write about 2 or more bloggers they enjoyed reading. Knowing some would see this as a "friendship" thing, and only mention their own classmates' blogs, I said they could only write about one classmate. The other(s) had to be from other places - and they could even be adult blogs. Pushing them out of the nest, if you will.......

And then, just to see how far the envelope would stretch, I showed them how to hyperlink to those blogs, using raw html. To be clear, the blogging tool they use does not have an html editor, so everything had to be hand coded. They got it. They are so totally amazing in this medium. They helped each other, and they taught me a lot in the process.

They chose their favorite bloggers thoughtfully, I thought. Granted, their experience and exposure to blogs is limited, in large part predetermined by links I preselected and made easy for them to get to.... but I thought they chose well. Here are their posts:

• The Blogs I like
• Blogs I Like
• Blogs That Are Really Cool
• Blogs I Like
• The Blog I Like
• BLOGS I LIKE TO READ
• Cool Blogs
• Blogs I like to read
• Cool Blogs
• The Things I Like About People's Blogs
• My Favorite Blogs
• Blogs I like to Read
• Blogs I like
• Blogs I Like
• Blogs I Like
• Blogs I Like To Read and Why I Like To Read Them
• Blogs I like to read
• These are the Blogs I Recommend you Reading (These are also my Favorite Blogs)

Now what does this have to do with Jeff's posting about conversations and connections? I believe it is about qualitatively different CONTENT. What my kids wrote about this week is different. It is exactly what their blogger teachers write about regularly - about their peers - and what they are thinking and saying. This is extending their writing in a different dimension, I believe. Comments are nice, polite, back patting, and sometimes informative. And indeed, a conversation can occur.

But writing about what others think and how they write is a major leap in a different direction, one in which we are not accustomed to taking our kids, at least I am not, with third graders. Not sure where it leads, but it feels absolutely right.

Doing report cards, 2.0

I don't know a single teacher who enjoys doing report cards. Matter of fact, most teachers dread doing them. It's one of the most unpleasant things I have to tackle, and of course I have left the task for the weekend before they are due to go home. Grrr...

Today I sat down to go through the motions of "providing feedback". Bailing me out of this cynical mood was the realization that I have a new way to evaluate my kids. A new way that just might be a little more meaningful- and definitely more fun - and undoubtedly more long-lasting. So I pulled out my laptop and jammed it in there with all the other papers, forms, gradebook, etc. On our little kitchen table that knows the drill...


I took great pleasure in writing in "blog" on the "Other" line for measures used to evaluate student progress. No more flipping through a big stack of manila file folders for the "choice" pieces of I had selected to save - to maybe send home at the end of the year (ultimately relegated to a box in an attic) - or to pass on to next year's teacher (to be buried, if lucky, in a file cabinet for who knows how long). I have student files from nearly ten years ago taking up space here and there in my classroom... really.

So when I got to the Writing section of the report card, I simply went to my third graders' blogs. There is all kinds of writing there. Some assigned, some written because the spirit moved these young scholars. It's funny. When I started this process, I was thinking that I knew and remembered my kids' writing so well that I probably didn't really need to look. Big surprise. They have written so much, that I often had to shake my head as I went through their blogs. I had forgotten much of what they wrote, even though I had read oh so carefully every single word appearing there (publishing on the Internet makes you do that). What is also there for me is their work behind the scenes. I can browse through the database on my Classblogmeister account and look at many pending pieces, comments I had left for them in the publishing process, and so much more. It is a literal gold mine of information for following the development of the writing skills of these 8 and 9 year olds. Rather than being on the refigerator for a short time at home, buried in a teacher's file cabinet, or recycled immediately, these pieces of writing can be there forever. For the world to see.

Now if I can get us using the classroom wiki soon, I'll be able to look at math in a 2.0 way as well in the next round of report cards.

Documenting chaos

I don't know as I start out here where this post will end up. However, I feel somehow it's important for me to document the chaos (some good, some not so good) in my working life - and this is just the tech stuff - the past couple of weeks. In no particular order then, here goes:

• For the past week I've been setting up donated PIV's for my students to use in the classroom, from scratch, one at a time - while at the same time the kids continued to use the PIII's they are replacing. Over 20 cpu's in the classroom, some towers on top of others - yikes, good thing we didn't have an earthquake. Yesterday after school I moved them (all but one of six) into place. They are cool - and speedy! I am so grateful to the parent who donated them!
• I'm still constantly frustrated by the relentless taking away of student permissions on my classroom computers - and all the student computers in my school. The more permissions are taken away, the less the computers are being used in the classrooms. It's a real clear relationship. So far, the new computers I just set up are still working the way they need to, but I fear it's only a matter of time before they will be rendered nearly useless again. I have not found the time nor energy to defend and explain the educational justifications for every little permission I need (that we'd had for the past ten years) to non educators making the decisions. I try and chip away at things one at a time via email and whatever, but it's a big mountain to reclaim. And I am getting nowhere. Huge frustration.
• The parents in my classroom just came up with a large chunk of money so I could buy flat panel monitors for some of the 12 desktop student machines in my classroom! I had tried other funding sources, including our PTSA, and had got nowhere. Then I started asking for donations of used flat panels (15" ok). Next thing I knew, my parents were organizing donations to the cause, matching funds, and they came up with this amazing gift. I was, and still am, just blown away by this!!
• Then a couple of days later, I was awarded this pretty hefty technology grant for computer equipment in my classroom. Talk about an unexpected long shot coming through. I've never won competitive grant before (not like I've tried a ton, either), but holy crud, this is amazing. So now, with an embarrassment of riches, I am figuring out how to handle it all. For a guy who has scraped and created everything in his classroom on his own, out of his own pocket, well you could say it's about time - but it does feel a little - I don't know. It's so foreign , I can't even think of a word.
• The Earth Day Groceries Project is underway again. I've got the announcement out to several lists, and, as usual, lots of email is coming my way with questions and requests. I love coordinating this project, but it takes so much time. And I need to find corporate sponsorship for the project, or I won't have the bucks to pay for the database development for this year... I am always so far behind.
• Last is an event that almost didn't happen - and may not - but is still real exciting to think about and plan for. I was invited to present as part of a Preconference Institute (Using Technology to Develop and Extend the Boundaries of Literacy) at the IRA National Convention in Toronto this May. Just to be included in a group that includes Don Leu as a keynoter blows me away. Having found no local funding to finance the trip, I initially sent my regrets - and added a long shot ps about presenting virtually. Now it seems that may actually happen (via Skpe video). It's on a Sunday, so I'd luckily be at home (Skype is not allowed at school anymore). I'm in the process of preparing my piece and writing the abstract. Very exciting.

Looking back over what I just wrote, the chaos is mostly good stuff, for sure. It's just that it's all happening at once. This weekend I can relax and start in on report cards - ha.

Hard decisions

Nothing about technology here. This is about something harder than learning ANY new program, harder than any teaching ANY thing.

Deciding on the school budget for next year - with less money (positions cost more, schools get the same as they did before). Net effect: what position will not be there next year?

Trying to talk openly and honestly. Trying to pretend that the two individuals whose jobs are on the line are not present in the room nor in on the discussion - right.

I somehow ended up trying to organize this horror - to give folks choices, to moderate the discussion, to facilitate making a decision. It was agony. We made a decision, and I feel terrible. I would have felt this way no matter what the decision was.

If anybody wonders why a teacher might not have the perkiest smile every minute of every day, well it's hard to explain, but there is a bunch of stuff we deal with that the public will just never know about. There will be a smile tomorrow in the classroom, but it will be a shallow one, with a deep sadness underneath.

I can only hope that when I end up in a meeting where my colleagues are deciding the worthiness of me compared to somebody else - that I conduct myself with the grace and dignity that a couple of my colleages did today.

Audience and Body Blows

Audience

Lately I've been getting readership and comments here from students, elementary aged students. It has to do with my post about silent reading. It also has to do with posts from other adults to the blogs of my students. They are curious, of course, and it's pretty exciting to track down the URL of a commenter on their blog - and oh so very cool if it's a grown up with a slick looking blog. And some have tried to read - and even comment to - those grown up bloggers. Several adults have done this, and I expressed appreciation to them at the end of the school year last year. They are still there this year, and there are more of them. So kids are reading grown up blogs. And then eventually, they check out their teacher... not my intended audience, but it IS important to keep in mind.

Yesterday one of my kids got a comment from MV, a fifth grader. Following back the URL left in the comment, I was amazed to see MV had posted some thoughts about reading my blog, and (this is the really cool part) some thoughts about the blog of Logan, one of my most prolific third grade bloggers. Many readers here know the excitement of having yourself cited, quoted, hyperlinked. Imagine how this feels to an 8 or 9 year old. You just can't buy this. It is, as the ad says, priceless.

Body Blows

1. Early in the week I was showing my class some comments left for them by Wes Fryer - very exciting, motivational stuff. They all know how to click on the name of a commenter to get to a url (if it was left for them). On this day I was showing them how to deal with a malformed http... address - how to cut, extract the URL, etc... - to get to the blog of the writer. All ready for Moving at the Speed of Creativity to appear (ta da!), and it is BLOCKED by the district filter. Out of nowhere. Never had been blocked before. A lost moment in the education of a classroom of third graders in so many ways. Ugh.

2. Later in the week, Logan moved quickly to compose a comment in response to the post of MV. All the kids in my class know they must let me see any comments they write from our classroom before they are sent. He spent some time writing and revising this comment. It was a thoughtful piece. I gave him the go ahead to click "submit". BLOCKED by the district filter. What does a teacher say at this point? Ugh.

Body blows are meant to wear the fighter down. They are delivered repeatedly, the effect is cumulative, and eventually the fighter gives up from exhaustion. These would have been glancing blows if I had not worked so hard to create and craft this environment for my kids. They would not have even landed if I did not believe so desperately that what I am doing with my kids is absolutely right.

Audience and body blows - two unrelated topics, maybe. Perhaps my new found audience can deliver a more powerful counter-punch than I've been able to muster.

SSR 2.0 - a podcast

(3/5 update: I reposted the podcast - it was incomplete here for a while - sorry about that!)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my kids' experiences reading blogs during silent reading (SSR). I have continued to let them choose either blog reading or book reading. It has been interesting, to say the least. One day last week I asked them all about it, afterwards. Their perceptions and feelings were amazing. I told them I wished I had been able to record their thoughts - so, the next day I brought in my little mp3 player, put it on my stool in the middle of a circle of the 13 of us, and we talked about it. Here's the six minute podcast:

Going and coming home

Three Recoverees 1
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

What is home, anyway? When I go back east to visit my parents, I am clearly coming home, at least to them. From where I'm sitting right now in the airport in Connecticut, I'm clearly going home to Seattle.

Spent the last six days helping my folks recover from a vicious flu. Mom was in the hospital for three days, and I spent a horrific night in the ER with my dad, then they got better - and then I got it. Ouch. Bottom line, though, is that we are all well and leaning forward once again.

Home is where the heart is, and I guess it can be more than one place.

Why I teach

Valentine's Day Eve
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

Valentine's Day is tomorrow. It does not get crazier nor more fun in third grade. Here are twenty-one reasons I'm still at it.

Is this SSR, 2.0?

(check the podcast that grew out of this post)

So here's silent reading (SSR - "sustained silent reading") in my reading group this afternoon. Tried this out yesterday, and today the kids were much more comfortable, started getting into it, maybe a little novelty had worn off. What were they reading? Blogs! Who wrote them? Kids!

I'd been thinking lately how my own reading habits had changed in the last couple of years, with the huge increase in blogs, online news, and so on. When was the last time I actually sat down and read a book? The last time I flew back east to see my family. Yikes! I used to feel guilty about this until I took a closer look at the net of my reading. I read so MUCH more now than I ever used to. But it's a different kind of reading.

In third grade it's a constant struggle with many kids to get them to sit down and cuddle up with a book. The "goal" is that they latch on to a chapter book, get hooked, and want to read, read, read. Read what? More chapter books, I guess.

So my kids were (many of them) struggling to have this type of reading be a major turn on, despite lots of encouragement, rewards, and modeling from me. And I noticed that my modeling had slipped lately. Silent reading time was one of the only times of the day when I could sit down at my desk, check my email, read through my Bloglines. Feeling guilty, and somehow feeling it was the right thing to do, I've turned them loose on blogs - to read. Now this is very different from our blogging time in class. Many wanted to know if they could comment on blogs, even work on their own posts. Nope, I said, this is reading time. OK, fine.

The classroom was the quietest and most focused I have seen in a long time during silent reading. Could have heard a pin drop, were it not for the new agey, light classical instrumental background music I always have going at this time. So, what did they gravitate to?

A few of the things I saw them reading: their own blogs, their classmates' blogs, Gordon Brune's kids, Doug Noon's kids, my blog (yes, this one), Wesley Fryer's blog, even. Those were easily reachable, via comment links or hyperlinks I had set up. And this was just day two. They are still exploring, seeing what is out there. It will be a while before they settle into favorites, and return to them on a regular basis. So much is made of young kids creating content, that I think it's real easy to overlook the positive aspects of young kids consuming content - created by their peers - and who knows who else?

I will likely not do this every day. There is still value in cuddling up with a book. But that is not they way I read anymore. By the time they grow up, I bet their reading preferences will be worlds away from where they and I are now. My hunch is it will not be cuddling up with a chapter book.

Tully's Laptop Readers

I'm sitting in a Tully's coffee shop writing on my laptop. Ethan is sitting next to me (along with his sister and Nathan) watching me write. Maybe next time he'll read from his blog...? Tonight I was very proud to hear Casey read from her blog about her mom, and Nathan read from his about his friend Allen. Big news this year is that it was free wi-fi! I hope to have the whole crew here at some point this year!

Heroes and Hopes

I have not written here for a while. My energies are with the (incredible) writings my third graders are producing. Trying to wrap a school-wide writing prompt idea around young minds that have not had the chance to experience a whole lot so far, I just posted this to our classroom blog:

The third grade scholars at roomtwelve.com have been writing a little this past week about people they admire. They’ve also been thinking a bit about what they’d like to be when they grow up. Some of their writings are about both. Visitors are invited to check in on their thoughts, leave comments, and let us know who your heroes are – and what your hopes for the future are…. Mr. A.

I hesitate to single out individuals, because all of my kids are very, very special. But for the benefit of those who are interested, but don't have the time to wade all of their writing (some are already, at 8 or 9, quite prolific writers), here are a few notables:

• My Dad
• I Want to be a Softball Player When I Grow up
• Allen, the person I admire
• Why I Admire My Mom
• Tom
• Become a Hip Hop dancer

My hopes for the future hang on the dreams of these youngsters. They will do well, and the world will benefit from their contributions.

4 Generations: How to Save a Life

Make it count, change your priorities. Stop and think about what REALLY matters....

Thank you, thank you, Tim Lauer in Portland, Oregon for this. Click on the water buffalo...

How much we have.

How little it takes to change - or save - a life.

Bloggers becoming gardeners

Konrad Glogowski recently expressed regrets about not hanging on to the blogs of his 8th graders for the last three years:

...However, I was never able to experience this sense of growing community because, like most teachers, I have been programmed to divide learning into yearly or monthly episodes. The blogging community begins in September, it grows until June, and then gets deleted because September will bring another batch of students and another community.

.....Last June, ten of my former students asked to remain part of the community. They had grown so attached to their class blogging community that they asked me not to shut it down and to give them access to the new community that they knew I would be building with my new grade eights in September. I was thrilled that they wanted to remain in the community. I knew that as grade nine students, having already gone through the grade eight programme, they would greatly enhance the experience for their younger friends.

...And yet, I chose to shut down the community and restrict access to the new one. For the past three years, in fact, I have been creating communities only to dismantle them every June.

I struggled with much the same crisis. And I am only now, halfway through the following school year, approaching a way to effectively and appropriately deal with this, as a teacher of third grade bloggers. I started by letting my kids from last year blog through the summer, with permission from their parents. When the new school year started I changed the passwords on their blogs, so they couldn't add content. We of course talked about this many times as the year was ending (there were pleas and tears), but I figured, as Konrad did, that it was time to move on to another group. One difference was that I left their blogs alone, and set up a new site for this year's class. So you could visit their old blogs, but it was kind of like reading a book - there was no life there, no heartbeat of writing...

Just last week I offered to let the kids from last year back on to roomtwelve.com - as alumni - and they can blog again. With parent permission, of course. I have heard from four, and they are now part of a new class, "Alumni". I still will approve every word they write on their blogs and every word in every comment sent to them - and edit, within reason, and offer behind the scenes feedback on writing that needs to be improved. The first thing I set up for them on their new blogs was a link to their blog from last year.

This was complicated. I'm not their teacher anymore, and I had to check with their teachers from this year to be sure it was OK with them. More issues will come up, I'm sure.

I am a saver, an archiver, especially with Internet stuff. For whatever reason, I save almost everything I have had a hand in. I have archived versions of my school's home page over the last dozen years. I've archived Louis Schmier's Random Thoughts, going back to 1993. The student newsletter (now a podcast available on iTunes - there is a blog of course) is archived back to 1994. I even have an email I posted to Ednet in 1994, encouraging teachers to create web pages for their schools (ohmygosh). I'll post it when I get the nerve - it's a little embarrassing to look at these days...

But the work I feel most protective of and will work the hardest to maintain is the writing of my students - on the Internet. This is real stuff, for a worldwide audience - and sometimes that worldwide audience is involved in that writing. The best writing I have ever seen in 24 years of teaching third graders is from the blog from the 2005-06 school year. I am happy to welcome those kids back.

Konrad closes I Will Be a Gardener with this:

I feel that like an architect or an engineer, I have been too preoccupied with the act of building communities and have not paid as much attention to sustaining them and giving them the nourishment they need to grow. Clay Shirky says that "To create an environment conducive to real community, you will have to operate more like a gardener than an architect." I have been an architect for too long. Now, I will be a gardener.

It's definitely worth a read.

Student Bloggers/Reporters

Dogwood 2
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

This pretty picture has nothing to do with this post, except for the fact that as a result of the big snow last night, we had no school today... and I finally had some time to work on the web 2.0 skin of our school newsletter.

The Junior Seahawk Newsletter is a student newspaper that I have worked on for over a dozen years. Kids send in reports and jokes/riddles. I add some graphics and distribute a copy to each kid at school, 10 months a year. Then I produce a pdf version and post it online.

For the last four months of school last year I started having the reporters read their reports, and produced a companion podcast. This has grown slowly, because it's just me working on this, but some sigificant strides have been made this year. I'm asking the kids to do the writing on their own - from their classrooms, our lab, even from home. They can always stop by my classroom anytime, as we will always have computers available for them. I've been using Alan November's Web site to host the blog. The reporters simply send in their reports as comments. They've taken to this really easily.

Today I was able to to two things, both of which made me feel great. I figured out how to link to their iTunes home - which I had set up months ago. Anyone can now subscribe to their monthly podcasts, via a link from their blog. And I redesigned the home page, incorporating the Newsletter logo into the blog - not so easy, given the limited accesibility to the November Learning "themes". Anyway, I found a couple of fields that would accept html....

Now I have to sit down with Publisher and their raw reports and produce Volume 16, Issue 5 of the Jr. Seahawk Newsletter.... and listen to the news to see if school is on for tomorrow - or if we have our fifth no-school day of the year.

Am I Nuts?

I have struggled with what to do with last year's third grade bloggers for a long time - nearly a year. I extended the school year, and let them keep blogging through the summer of 2006. This year I have done in-house inservices, offered individual assistance to their teachers, have encouraged those kids to ask their new teachers about getting a blog going for them (and volunteering to help other kids in class learn how to do it all).

It's January, 2007. I do not believe those kids will get a blog going this year. This is difficult to write, because it might seem like I'm being critical of my colleagues - like, why aren't they blogging with their kids? Truth is, I understand. Our teacher plates are way too full already. One more new thing with a steep initial learning curve.... not likely to happen, especially if it's optional.

I've checked into getting their blogs automatically switched over to their new teachers. I'm getting nowhere with that. Here's what I have decided to do:

1. ask their new teachers if it's ok for me to set up new blogs for them - on my current classroom blog (in an alumni area)
2. if that's ok, ask their parents (I have all their emails) if they will give their permission for their blogs to be open, with me as their moderator/teacher
3. set up an alumni section on my classroom blog for last year's students.
4. write an initial post for each of them with a hyperlink to their last year's blog

This is more work, for sure. I am certain a dozen or so (some even now at different schools) will jump at the chance to blog again.

Am I nuts? Naw, I just see those kids, I still hear their (online) voices, and I want to give it back to them. Wish me luck.

The Kids Are Alright

As 2007 starts, there is a lot of talk about the future of web 2.0 in education: listing the best posts of the year, wringing hands over continued obstacles, nodding of heads in agreement , and many, many predictions of what will happen this year...

My 8 and 9 year old third graders are ready now, they are alright with web 2.0. Many of them take it for granted. A third of my classroom has blogged from home over Christmas Vacation:

Casey: The Lucky Soup 1/1/07
Nathan: Things I got for Christmas - 12/31/06
AnaLisa: Winter Vacation - 12/30/06
Logan: My Christmas - 12/27/06
Nicole: The Accident - 12/26/06
Riley1: Hockey is a sport - 12/24/06
Kyra: Over The Week - 12/19/06
Logan: The Play Date - 12/19/06

These kids are comfortable in the medium. My job is simply to give it to them. My resolution for 2007 is to give them more. They will not waste the opportunity.