Back to School in a Web 2.0 World

The sight of big yellow school buses and children with backpacks walking the sidewalks are emerging throughout the United States and several other countries. In many schools, teachers have already been working in their rooms for weeks preparing for children to fill their classrooms. But the preparation is no longer limited to an isolated teacher sorting through the bulletin board supplies alone in his or her classroom; more and more teachers have been using Web 2.0 tools to reach beyond their classrooms to prepare for a successful year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookipedia/ / CC BY 2.0

About a month ago, Steven Anderson, (aka as web20classroom on Twitter ) sent out a tweet looking for some great First Day Back activities. He also put this request on his blog. For those who have heard of Twitter but not tried it yet, check out this great Twitter in Plain English video from the folks at Common Craft.

Steven's personal learning network did not let him down. Within a few weeks over 50 people had filled out the simple GOOGLE FORM with wonderful tools, tips, tricks, resources, and advice for the first day of school. (It's not too late to add your own first day favorites.)

As soon as you fill out this form with your own advice, the results automatically appear in Steve's Google spreadsheet. With just a couple keystrokes Steve was able to share these suggestions with you by making his spreadsheet visible to the public over the Internet. This simple easy to use way of collecting information is being by used educators daily to collect and display data from their colleagues and students.

Steve used his blog to highlight a few of his favorite suggestions such as the way Ms. DeSilva uses
http://stixy.com/ to "post a welcome sticky on the board explaining to students that I would like each of them to drag a sticky to the board and on it to introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves that they would like to share with the class." Steve also shares the full list of suggestions with you by linking to the published Google spreadsheet.

Within minutes of exploring these suggestions I found myself gleaning lots of advice from educators from every discipline sharing their First Day Activities on a collaborative First Day Wiki set up by geometry teacher Dan Myer's (not to mention all the first day suggestions offered within the comments of Mr. Meyer's First Day blog post.

If your first days of school activities got your year off on the right foot, why not share them with other educators by adding to this wiki. If you've never contributed to a wiki before, here's your chance to share with others outside your school wall. Commoncraft video “Wikis in Plain English” offers an excellent introduction to the world of wikis.

And if your first day didn't quite turn out as well as you planned, don't despair, many of these suggestions can be used any day or even help you start over as suggested by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlaza and others on the Starting Over Page of the First Day Wiki.

As we move beyond the world of Web 1.0 (the sermon) and surround ourselves with the tools of Web 2.0 (the conversation) , I encourage you to experiment with tools like Twitter, wikis, and blogs to join the myriad of educators who are changing the culture of teaching from one of the loneliest and most isolated professions to one connected with colleagues from all over the world and with rich resources provided by YOU using today's collaborative tools. For more information in creating this culture, check out Alan Novembers article "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning or just jump in, reach out, and connect and get your school year off to a roaring start.

Blogging can make you smarter

Did you know writing down your ideas can actually make you smarter? I have an intuitive sense of this, as a pretty avid blogger, but I was thrilled to read this message in the closing chapter of Dr. Stephen Krashen's excellent book "The Power of Reading, Second Edition: Insights from the Research." On page 137 under the heading "What Writing Does, he wrote:

Although writing does not help us develop writing style [Krashen contends READING develops writing style], writing has other virtues. As Smith (1988) has pointed out, we write for at least two reasons. First, and most obvious, we write to communicate with others. But perhaps more important, we write for ourselves, to clarify and stimulate our thinking. Most of our writing, even if we are published authors, is for ourselves.

As Elbow (1973) has noted, it is difficult to hold more than one thought in mind at a time. When we write our ideas down, the vague and abstract become clear and concrete. When thoughts are on paper, we can see the relationships among them, and can come up with better thoughts. Writing, in other words, can make you smarter.

The context of these sentences from Dr. Krashen is WRITING in general. He is not specifically addressing blogging or digital writing. However, I think his conclusions (well documented with references to educational research) are equally applicable to the blogosphere.

People blog for different reasons, and all of those reasons have value. In the past, people were much more limited in their abilities to publish and share their ideas with a global audience. That has changed dramatically in the 21st century, however, as ANYONE with access to a computer and the Internet has access to "the global stage." Whether writing on the "global stage" or a private, personal paper-based letter, writing can stimulate thoughts, and many of those can be "higher order" thoughts involving analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Writing (not simply copying and pasting information with a web browser and word processor) is inherently a CREATIVE act. That process therefore has inherent, creative and ideological value. (Ideological in terms of helping people further develop ideas.)

Is the greatest value I personally derive from blogging this process of clarifying thoughts, literally "getting smarter" via writing? I'm not sure. I know that aspect holds great value, but I think the CONNECTIONS which are fostered via blogging as well as the CONVERSATIONS are at least of equal value, if not more.

The more we blog, the more we reflect, the more we think and write about learning and our practices as professional educators, the smarter we're all going to get! Dr. Stephen Krashen, Emeritus Professor at the University of Southern California, confirms this conclusion is supported by educational research! Isn't that cool, as well as affirming?!

Blog on... and tag on... The world is watching, reading, and often even writing back! What would Neil Postman say about all these digitally-empowered conversations if he was alive to read blogs and possibly even write on one today? I don't know, but I think he might need to revise some of his observations and conclusions in his book "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business."

Many if not most of the people participating in online blog conversations have moved far beyond "The Age of Show Business." We've entered the era of participatory culture, and the conversations are really just getting started. Think how smart we'll all be in ten years if we keep this up?! [grin] It kinda makes my head hurt to try and look that far into the future!

Want to help your students literally get smarter? Consider involving more of them in moderated, online blog conversations!

Best of 2006: The Read/Write Web in Education

It's the winter break for many educators (at least in North America). Email has slowed to a trickle and most educational blogs are not being updated. During this time of reflection and rejuvenation we'll be celebrating the new year (along with the rest of the world). We at the ITM have discussed posting several "best of 2006" (or "predictions for 2007") posts to mark the occasion. For my part, I've identified five trends in the educational use of the read/write web that I've felt had a significant impact on my work - and ultimately, the work of teachers and students. In each case I discuss a free (and teacher-friendly) service.

For the sake of brevity, I've posted my predictions separately.

1. Educational Blogging at Edublogs.org (and learnerblogs.org): Though blogs and educational blogging have been around for several years, and though James Farmer's Edublogs.org was created in 2005, the impact of these tools grew a great deal in 2006. In February, I switched from using Blogger to using Edublogs when leading blogging workshops for teachers. In addition to being able to post text and pictures (and being able to receive comments), teachers could now post Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, too. There were no random links to embarrassing or inappropriate blogs, and teachers could set up various levels of permissions for comments and for participants in team blogs. To boot, the tools were free and open source. Also, in June 2006, ITM blogger (and open source advocate) Steve Hargadon created supportblogging.com, which quickly became a valuable resource for teachers interested in these ideas. Read my predictions for 2007.

2. Educational Podcasting at podomatic.com: Podcasting began in 2004, and in 2005 my colleagues and I began leading workshops in which we helped teachers jump through many technical hoops in order to "easily" post a podcast. Podomatic was founded in 2005, but it wasn't until 2006 that we started using the service to help teachers and students. Now, teachers can create a new podcast episode by simply uploading an audio file that they've created using a free program such as Audacity. Or, for even greater simplicity, they can record directly into Podomatic over the web. The hosting of the audio files is free and the system takes care of most of the back end technical issues, creating a blog-like website complete with comments. Read my predictions for 2007.

3. Educational Wikis at Wikispaces.com: Though wikis have been around even longer than blogs, they are arguably behind blogs in educational adoption. But, in January 2006, Wikispaces.com started offering free (and add free) Wikis to teachers. Ten thousand wikis later, the company was so impressed by the work teachers and students were doing on their free wikis that they launched a campaign to give away 100,000 wikis to teachers. Today they are nearing the 20,000 mark. These wikis not only allow teachers to create collaboratively edited online resources, but also to post images and files as well. (I've written about educational use of wikis on the ITM before.) Read my predictions for 2007.

4. Google in Education: When we look back on 2006, this may very well be the biggest impact. This is the year Google began working in the k12 arena (an effort now headed up by Cristin Frodella). They launched the Google for Educators site, and played an critical role in the launch of this blog, the Infinite Thinking Machine. Google also released several new products that benefit educators who use the read/write web... particularly the easy to use RSS aggregator, Google Reader (for keeping up to date on news, blogs, and other "feeds") and the web-based word processor Google Docs (for creating, sharing, and collaboratively editing documents online). Though they existed prior to 2006, free desktop applications such as Picasa and Google Earth have been heavily used in education this year as well. (Of course, the newly updated Blogger is also still used by many educators.) Read my predictions for 2007.

5. The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA): This may be the biggest change that didn't happen in 2006. Call it the biggest disaster averted (at least in the United States). Introduced in May 2006, the bill proposed to protect students from online predators by limiting their access to "social networking websites," which could have potentially limited student access to a wide range of websites, including everything I've mentioned above. In July, the house of representatives passed the bill by an amazing 410 to 15, and it seemed as if the Senate would quickly follow suit, thus placing an additional burden on many schools receiving federal funding - and placing a significant obstacle in the path of enterprising teachers using these tools with their students. Happily, organizations such as SaveYourSpace.org rose to the occasion and opposed the bill, which has languished in the Senate since before their August recess. Read my predictions for 2007.

Please feel free to discuss these read/write web trends (and predictions), and to leave ones of your own, in the comments. I look forward to reading your reactions.

PS: The image above was taken by Alan Levine and generously shared under the Creative Commons Attribution license on his Flickr account. Read his prediction about Creative Commons licensing in the comments for this post.

ITM in the Top 100 Ed Blogs

The Online Education Database has listed us as one of
the Top 100 Education Blogs!





The list also includes a lot of our friends such David Warlick's Two Cents Worth, Will Richardson's Weblogg-Ed, and Steve Dembo's Teach 42, as well as our very own, Wes Fryer's Speed of Creativity, and Lucy Gray's A Teacher's Life.

For anyone eager to explore the Blogosphere, this is a great place to start!

Good thing you had nothing better to do over the Winter Break...

ITM 4: Welcome to the Blogosphere

ITM #4 focuses on how teachers and students are using blogs in K-12 education. Ready to jump into the swirl? (8 min)

---

Downloads

> Quicktime MP4 (21 MB)


Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."

Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."

---

Show Notes:

The word "blog" is short for "web-logs," and Wikipedia defines a blog as "a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order." So why are blog's so popular? First, they are VERY easy to create. Using FREE services like Blogger and Live Journal anyone can create a website in minutes. Second, they are collaborative. It's very easy for more than one person to be a "writer" for a single blog (just like the ITM), and your readers can quickly leave comments to tell you what they they about your ideas. Lastly, blogs are interconnected. The words, images, and links from one blog can be easily posted on any other blog, making it easy to spread ideas quickly.

To learn more about how Blog's are being used in education, check out these websites:

• Support Blogging - wiki on educational blogging


• Weblogg-ed - Will Richardson


• 2 Cents Worth - David Warlick


• Savvy Technologist - Tim Wilson


• Class Blogmeister - free student blogs


• Gaggle Blogs - free student blogs

"Ms. Cornelius" publishes a blog called the Shrewdness of Apes - which is a finalist for "Best Educational Blog" in this year's WebBlog Awards. (P.S. The ITM is nominated in a separate competition - the EduBlogs Awards. So you can vote for both of us without feeling guilty!) Be sure to check out her popular post that includes classroom setup advice for rookie teachers.

Teacher "Mike" writes the Education in Texas blog. His entry on the use (and abuse) of the word "dude" can be found here.

"Ms. Frizzle's" blog covers a wide range of topics and chronicles her life as teacher on a near daily basis. Be sure to check out her post asking: "What is education like in different countries?" Then follow her adventures on her new blog: Öğretmen - her insights on teaching in Turkey as a Fullbright Scholar.

Don Knezek is CEO of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE is a non-profit organization that is a trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy, and leadership for innovation. They also run the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) - the largest ed tech conference in the world. This year's conference is in Atlanta in June 2007.

Here are some webcasts we did from last year's NECC Conference that you might find interesting.

ITM correspondent Wes Fryer (Speed of Creativity) reported from the rolling prairies of Oklahoma. Be sure to check out his Konza Prairie entry on Wikipedia.

Thanks to the students from Mr. Hernandez' class at Price Elementary School in Anaheim, CA, for helping us explain what the Infinite Thinking Machine is!