Blogging: Why is it the right thing to do with our students?

I wouldn't call myself an expert blogger, I am sporatically writing two blogs, this one and another that is basically a 'hot list' of things I think might be of interest to the students in my Technology Arts courses. Each of these blogs serves a different purpose in my professional life and has made it easier for me to communicate with the various groups of people I need to work with. This blog has technology resources for teachers and ideas on how to integrate them into the classroom. Previously, I was just sending this to the teachers at Capuchino, but I think the issues that are discussed on this blog are of value to all teachers in the San Mateo Union High School District. I discussed the idea with the District Technology Coordinators and they felt like it was a good idea as well.

Now, to the original topic... Blogging with our students.

Why should students blog? Well, there are several reasons, but the most compelling argument is that allows students to have a voice greater than their friends and family. Now, this may not sound like much, but when someone publishes something and they know it is going to be seen by more than just a teacher and a few other students there is a sense of ownership and innate pride that effects the student content. A new Wiki site has been established to assist teachers in finding ways to incorporate blogging into their classes, called 'Support Blogging.'

What blogging does for students: (From Support Blogging)

1. It helps them find a voice for individual interests that may not have been completely explored previously.
2. Creates enthusiasm for writing and communication. If students know there is a greater audience, their motivation is enhanced to write and to write well.
3. Engages students in conversation and learning. Students may find comonalities with students in different grades, in different classes or even around the world. This can have a tremendous effect on students desire to read and write.
4. Provides an opportunity to teach about responsible journalism and ethics. Maost students do not understand the role of the press and media in our society. By blogging, they become part of the mediascape and learn first hand some of the issues that professional journalists face.
5. Empowers students to look outside of themselves.
1. To become life-long learners and become inquisitive about things they are interested in.
2. Writing and blogging are intertwined and create a transparent society, where all members have a voice and are valued.
3. Teaches students to trust in others and to accept praise and criticism effectively.

If these issues interest you, take a chance to blog yourself and see what you come up with. If you become comfortable with the format, you might introduce it with your classes. There are plenty of sites that will allow you to create a blog for free, including the one I am using to publish this, Blogger.com. We will be using blogs with a group of 9th graders at Capuchino this fall in our Global Communications program. If you want to see what some of the prelimary plans look like, take a look at the wiki we have set up to collect ideas and create the course content.

If this interests you, but you don't know where to start... leave a comment on this blog post and it will e-mail me!

Thanks,

Kyle Brumbaugh
Technology Coordinator
San Mateo Union High School District.

Educational Models: Analogies for the new classroom.

With the all of the things going on at the end of the school year and the beginning of summer school, I didn't write on this blog due to lack of time. Just because I didn't write, doesn't mean I haven't been reading. To that end, I have quite a collection of articles that I have collected that I want to write about and get that information out to you. I am mulling over how the best way is to get this information to you. If you look at the previous post on this blog, I just gave you a hot list with some short annotations. I don't think that is the most effective way to get the information to you, so I have started using a shared bookmarking site called 'delicious....' This site allows you to collect bookmarks or links to pages that you can share with anyone. Now, the name and the URL are a little tricky. http://del.icio.us That's it, you just need to know the one word, you just have to put the periods in the right places. When you arrive, I have an account created, both the username and password are: 'captech'

In a theoretical vein, I am reading many ways that people are representing the use of the Internet for educational purposes. There are quite a few that I have caught my eye and have interested me enough to share them with you...

At the side of the page, there is a graphic from a site that wants to 'Create Passionate Users' and their analogy of innovation is to create an 'educational mosh pit' for students to explore the uses of technology in the classroom.

Another site draws from Thomas Friedman's book, "The World is Flat," referring to the 'Flat Classroom.' The 'Flat Classroom' doesn't rely on the teacher to be the source of all knowledge in the classroom. Traditional classrooms have teachers that know more than the students and therefore, gravity is the source that creates the educational process. As the classroom becomes 'flatter' there is less gravity and the source of energy in the classroom has to come from another source. If students are the source of energy, how do we as teachers harness that energy and direct it in such a way as to be educationally sound.

There is also an interesting wiki-site regarding the use of blogs in education, which is going to be a major component of the Global Communications program.

More on all of these to follow.... If you want to see what things in the Global Communications program are beginning to look like, take a look at our wiki at: http://globalcom.wetpaint.com

Have a great rest of the summer!

Hodgepodge: A little bit of everything!

As we start the process of finishing this school year, there are many of us that will spend some time developing curriculum for the new school year over the Summer. This is one of the tasks I will have in working with the teachers that will be a part of the Global Communications program, but I have also been collecting links of what I think are valuable resources for teachers in all disciplines.

Report and Notetaking:
- Easy bib: An online bibliography tool that will create a bibliography for you.
- Cornell Notetaking Tutorial: This site even has links to help you create your own note taking pages.

Research:
- The Wayback Machine: Part of the Internet Archive, it logs and keeps track of every page on the Internet and all of the changes in each page. (Some of you have seen me demo this!)
- gTranslate: A plugin for the Firefox browser that will translate any highlighted text.
- Google Cheat Sheet: Something everyone should have. If you can print it out in color and laminate it, something to keep next to your computer.
- The Ultimate Google Command List: Using this and the Google Cheatsheet, you should become a Google search expert!

Communication:
- Google Calendar: Share an online calendar with any number of people.
- PBWiki: A free Wiki tool. I will be doing a demo of this tool with my computer repair classes.
- Online Feed Readers: If you don't use one of these now, you will soon! Here's a review of all of the major readers.
- Google Blog Search: This tool along with a feed reader, will help you find that article that perfectly illustrates that tough concept you are teaching to your class.
- Skypecasting: This tool will allow you to hold a teleconference with 100 people... For free!
- SkypeOut is offering free phone calls to anyone in the US and Canada.
- Interactive Physics Simulations: Published by the University of Colorado. Pretty cool!

I'll have another post out in a few days that will be an update of the communication and other tools that will soon become common place at Capuchino in the Global Communications courses.

Update: MySpace - Evolution and Assimilation

Over the past few months as the number of stories about MySpace has increased, but they have moved in many different directions. As with previous stories about MySpace, most are negative in nature, but instead of calling for bans of the site, many of the new stories are looking for ways to protect users and to assist law enforcement. How popular is MySpace? It is so popular in some settings that a Community College in Texas has banned MySpace, not because of the content, but because of the excessive bandwith students have used on the college network. The general consensus is that MySpace is here to stay, but there will be attempts from the community that they will take steps to moderate the behavior that exists there. I am not in denial about the fact that MySpace is and will continue to be a blogging site that is dominated by teenage content and the angst that age endures.

So, what specifically is going on in MySpace that is changing the community? Local law enforcement officials are looking at MySpace accounts to identify participants or potential witnesses to crimes committed in their community. The foiled school shooting in Kansas was discovered by local school and law enforcement officials reading the MySpace accounts of local teens. Police also used MySpace to catch two teenagers who had fire-bombed an abandoned airplane hangar after the teens had posted video of their crime on their MySpace site.

The other issue relative to MySpace is the fact that teenagers post too much information about their personal lives, including their dating and social activities. There have been several articles about sexual predators using MySpace to locate potential vicitms. There have been at least two instances that I have read where teenage girls have been contacted, lured out and murdered due to the information they had posted on MySpace. In the past few months there have been a few stories, where MySpace has been used to catch sexual predators. In response to this, there have been a few new web sites springing up, including: MySpaceWatch. MySpaceWatch allows users to monitor the MySpace accounts of five users and reports back any changes to the site. This borders on cyber-spying on kids, but if the kids are going to post in public, parents have the right to look. The commonwealth of Massachusetts wants MySpace to do more to protect users from sexual predators.

There is also a 'MySpace Economy.' There are sites that provide tools to add additional customizations to MySpace blogs. Other sites will create MySpace accounts for businesses to connect to users in direct marketing campaigns through the site. There is also a backlash against MySpace by some, deleting their accounts and calling it: MySpacecide.

As most of you know, the Global Communications pathway will have students working with blogs, wikis and podcasts. As part of the Global Communications course, we will be teaching Digital Citizenship. Some of the best material I have found on the subject is through a research project at Kansas State University. Some of the material the project uses is posted on the project web page.

There is a method to the madness...

After last weeks post, many of you are still asking... Why? Well, I think I need to back up some of the things I have posted with a few facts...

MySpace is becoming part of the culture. When I went to Parkside Intermediate School last week to talk to the incoming 9th graders, I asked the room of 250+ how many of them had a 'web presence?' Not a single hand went in the air... When I asked them how many of them either had or knew someone that had a 'MySpace' account, EVERY SINGLE HAND WENT IN THE AIR! So, in reality, what is MySpace? It's a blog. A place where students can post their pictures, writings, art work, etc. Many parents and teachers don't like MySpace because of the uncontrolled speech that it supports, which I wholeheartedly agree with, but isn't part of our job as teachers to teach students how to express themselves in a socially acceptable manner. Isn't this part of what the 'Academic Integrity Policy' is working towards? So, how can we leverage what students are already doing to make our jobs as teachers easier?

MySpace has become such an ingrained part of 'Generation M' (for Multitasking) that most use it as their alter ego, social calendar and diary all rolled into one. Police are using MySpace to get leads in cases that occur in their cities. There has even been an unintentional sting of a pedophile in Southern California, when a group of 15 year old boys reported a man after they were posing as a 14 year old girl that had broken up with one of their friends. The owners of MySpace like to point these types of stories out, as they publically state how 'safe' MySpace is.

MySpace isn't the only type of technology that students and others are using. Technology usage, is up among all people. Are people becoming addicted to technology? There are many theories, but surveys of technology users shows a 21% increase of users logging on for 'fun.' There are other studies which state that the Internet, which has been seen as a male dominated medium, is attracting more female users and the 'Internet Gender Gap' is shrinking.

With the fun, there is also the unexpected. With everything online being archived by some website or server, what you say in a moment of joy, anger, love, hate, etc. is being saved by someone. This has the potential to come back to hurt you or even get you expelled from school. In the same article, college admissions boards are searching MySpace and Facebook for postings from applicants. But the reverse is also true, college admissions boards are using the Internet more and more to recruit qualified applicants to their schools.

A big thanks to Michele Fichera, Linda Henry, Christy Knott and Martee Lopez for helping Dominic and me in getting a much better handle on the Global Communications course curriculum and how the English, Health and Contemporary World Studies courses can collaborate in a productive way. I scheduled 3 hours for our meeting, thinking that we'd last an hour and a half, tops. We took the entire three hours and I think there was some big eye opening by everyone! Martee and Michelle, how are those shopping RSS feeds coming?

Thanks to you all!

Posing interesting rhetorical questions

There haven't been more annoying blog posts since the CUE Conference in Palm Springs for a myriad of reasons. One is we have been working on the beginning stages of implementing the Global Communications Grant. We received the official paper work from the State Department of Education and the District accepted the grant at the last Board meeting. To this end; on Wednesday, 3/29, we will be meeting with teachers from the various academic disciplines to find ways the Global Communications course can collaborate and provide support to those courses.

Well, sometimes working in the EdTech field you get to the point where you see things happening professionally that others don't and realize things are going in a certain direction and you want to move your organization in that way but find it difficult to do so. This is the situation I find myself in after the past 6 months. Based on conferences I have attended; books, blogs and other material I have read and conversations I have had with many people involved with EdTech and education in general, leads me to believe that the course we are currently pursuing is the right one.

I know that many of you are asking why are we getting all of these blog postings? The biggest reason is that I hope at one point you will see one thing that you can use and take it and use it in your class. Or you might decide to start your own blog for your students, this is a little different than posting homework in School Loop, because it brings in outside sources to your curriculum. I want to liken it to when I taught Social Studies and found that article was in the newspaper and wanted to make sure I shared it with my students that day. Blogging allows you to do that everyday, or once a week... So, the question becomes: 'To Blog or not to Blog???" That will get the ball rolling, but whether you start now integrating technology tools in your classroom not or not, there will be a time when you will be forced to do so. Many of you have suggested that we hold off on doing some of these things, because students don't have access to these tools. Recent studies have shown that close to 2/3rds of U.S. housholds have access to a broadband connection, therefore we must move the 2/3rds ahead and do what ever we can to assist the other 1/3. To do my part I have received a donation of over 50 computers we can GIVE to students. Just so you know you are not alone, Bill Bowe has taken to call me, 'Lord Voldemort' of 'Harry Potter' fame due to blog postings you have received.

So, in the best Rod Serling voice that can be mustered.... "You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone! "

I submit to you three points in space and time: The Blogosphere, RSS and Podcasting.

The Blogosphere is the general term given to the community or social network of blogs. Blogs can have many different purposes and meet the needs of their authors and readers/receipients. The biggest idea behind blogs in education is three fold. First, you are asking students to gather information in someway, whether that be from RSS feeds (Discussed later), individual blogs or from some other online or hard copy publication. Secondly, you are asking students to internalize the information in some way, whether you call it to synthesize, remix or mash. When you and your students start this process, it will be a little strange at first, but after the first time or so, it will be come much easier. So, how do I get started? USA Today printed a short article on starting to blog, using three tools, one of which is 'Blogger'. Blogger is what I use to produce this blog.

The second part of the equation is gathering information, whether it's something that has been around for awhile or something that is recent and topical. Information that has some history to it is easy to find, but you also need to be concerned with bias and propaganda. If it is something that is current or topical, you need to have a way to collect the information in an organized way. The most effective way to do this is through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Almost every newspaper, blog, journal or other written word on the Internet is cataloged in some way. Today, most of this content is available through RSS, but you need to have some way to collect the feeds you are interested in. To do this you need a news reader or aggregator. To create this blog I use an online news aggregator called Bloglines. Through Bloglines, I subscribe to about 15 different feeds, when new postings are placed on those feeds, a short synopsis of the article is sent to my Bloglines account. Through Bloglines, I can scroll through the captured articles quickly and decide if I want to open the entire article. I can also save articles to read later. Many of the articles you find linked to articles I write on this blog, I get through my RSS feed on Bloglines. To see if a website you read regularly has an RSS feed attached to it, look for the little orange symbol, like the one above. There are other ways to find and read current information on the Internet, but I'll save those for another time.

Podcasting is the combination of several different technologies, allowing anyone to create their own multimedia content. Podcasts can be strictly audio, or can include slides, .pdf documents, video or art. Podcasting uses RSS to deliver podcasts to subscribers, but instead of a news aggregator (like Bloglines) to collect the content, most people subscribing to podcasts will use iTunes, regarless of computer platform. (PC or Mac) There are no limits to the types of things you can send out to students or to other teachers using podcasts. In the near future, we will be looking at using Podcasts to send staff development tutorials to you, so all of you can see the power of Podcasts. Many colleges and universities are using MP3 players and Podcasts to make lectures available to students after the class.

Each of these tools has the ability to create a richer and deeper learning experience for both teachers and students. Teachers can create content that they can use over and over again. They can give access to students at home or have a podcast to explain an assignment for a student that has been ill. Students can use these skills to create their own content and make it available to anyone in any place. If we want our students to become self-directed citizens of the world, we must allow them to connect to people regardless or time or physical location.

CUE2006

Thursday: 3/9/06:

Kyle and Dom set out to attend the annual Computer Using Educators (CUE) confernce in Palm Springs. We arrived in Palm Springs late due to the flight in San Francisco being delayed for a mechanical problem. It's 7AM... We're on the runway... the plane is starting to pick up speed... and the pilot shuts it down. He takes us back to the gate.... we stay on the plane until 8AM and then they decide to let us off. We finally take off for Palm Springs at 10AM.

We get to Palm Springs, and everything goes OK, we get a cool little blue Hyundai with a sun roof. We get over to the Convention Center and this place is HUGE!

Getting involved in the sessions.... Went and saw Alan November during the afternoon. Alan was awesome as always and we told him that he was the one that got us $225,000. He thought we were kidding, but once he figured out we were telling him the truth, he jokingly asked for a cut.

Friday: March 10, 2006

In the General Session: Awards given... Some pretty inspirational folks using technology to enhance teaching and student learning. Keynote given by Robert X. Cringely from PBS, InfoWorld, etc. Great talk and gave us some more ideas to get the Global Communications Pathway moving forward. (Sorry for the blurry pic from the camera phone!)

Kyle tried to get into Hall Davidson's session, but it was packed and decided to go over to the Open Source Pavillion to see Chris Walsh's session on Blogging and Podcasting. Most of the blog tools Chris showed are things we are already doing with this blog and others, but the podcasting tools I knew about, but had never had the chance to put into action, we have some plans to use podcasting as a staff development delivery tools. Cool Content Management System (CMS) tools as well. We have been playing with some of these things, I guess we need to settle on a structure, get it all set and move forward.

Dom spent the mid-morning session getting some great ideas on Electronic Portfolios. We are looking at using this extensively with the students in the Global Communications program and this will probably be the first staff development podcast we will get out to the staff.

Both Dom and Kyle spent the two afternoon sessions in the Apple Training Center. In the first session we got the low down on their server products ...YAWN, but necessary to implement the programs we have planned. The second Apple training session was on Podcasting and how to create podcasts using 'GarageBand.' The Apple trainer, who probably drinks a triple shot cappuccino, a 'Red Bull' and a 'Full Throttle' prior to doing his session, was very informative and went through the entire process of creating a podcast.


Friday Afternoon - The CUE Ball
Now, I know what you are thinking, a 'ball' at a conference filled with EdTech Geeks... Those thoughts were running through our minds as well. But we decided to show up for the same reason people slow down to see a wreck on the highway. When we got there, four guys in the band and the lead vocalist is Mike Lawrence, the Executive Director of CUE. These guys ROCKED! Going from Cheap Trick, George Thorogood and the Destroyers and finally to James Brown, the band had some great range. We also got to rub elbows with Jim Daly, the publisher of 'Edutopia,' the magazine that is put out by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF).



Saturday: March 11, 2006
By the time we get through the first session on Saturday morning, there is only so much more you can try to fit into your brain to bring back to school. Both Dom and Kyle went in and out of a few sessions during the middle of the day. The student technology showcase in the main lobby had some interesting projects including a 10 minute film made by students at a continutation school in Southern California. The film is a horror film where students that do not complete their homework have their brains turn into mush. Dom was especially impressed with some of the special effects that the students included in the film. We made a run through the vendors and saw a few cool things and decided that was enough! Plus, there was snow on the hill outside of the convention center.... check it out!


Overall Impressions:
The conference content was great, the presenters were great, we are coming back with plenty of things to use at Capuchino. Biggest negative... the wireless access in the convention center was HORRIBLE! Most of the time you couldn't get a wireless connection, something that you would expect at an EdTech Conference these days.