Iowa City schools, parents embrace blogs, social media | GazetteOnline.com

Iowa City schools, parents embrace blogs, social media | GazetteOnline.com

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Final Post...

I liked the David Warlick book a lot. I felt that his book, particularly chapter 4, dealt with how to authentically teach some of the concepts we discussed in class. For example, he discusses packaging information extensively. I am pretty much convinced that he’s right about how you can use short paragraphs and visual modification to get more information on a page. Also, he discusses the use of photographs clearly. Those visual tools are great helpers for students who often scan documents quickly. Finally, I like how he talks about planning lessons, and how teachers should figure out how to display the information they are collecting before they begin to collect it. Again, a strength of his book is the way, at the end of every chapter, he has plans for everyone in the school district, from tech directors to parents, that help integrate technology.

I also liked how he ran his website. He had frequent blog updates, and I found his interactive polls really compelling. For example, last week, he asked if teachers could be good teachers if they didn’t use technology. Also, a recent poll was linked to a Google spreadsheet. I had no idea I could do that! I totally need to figure that one out. It would be much cooler to do that than to go old school and make an SQL database in Access and link that to a poll. These kinds of things make Warlick a very compelling thinker. I can’t imagine what may lie in the future in his brain. Lastly, Warlick’s frequent posts make me want to keep reading it.

I am currently following him, Kathy Shrock, and all of my other classmates on Google Reader.
Warlick’s site is http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Interview

Questions for Public Enemies: what state was the jail he broke out of, where did his gf work before they dated, and describe his relationship with the chicago mob.

Warlick 3

Communicating Via Twitter.

I've struggled with how to best communicate with students, but I think Twitter has the greatest potential. Here's why. First off, Twitter can be adapted to fit nearly any other networking site. You can set up a Facebook account that displays your Twitter status for friends to see. If you send a message through Twitter, it will go on your page. Twitter can also cross-post to any blogging software through RSS updates. Those are just the outputs. Twitter also has great potential for flexible inputs. You can set your phone up to send updates to your Twitter account, meaning that you can go to a convention, hear about a book, and post it to an account within a matter of minutes. Any purchases, or new books catalogged, can go through Twitter.

Finally, the short requirements of posts force you to condense what you really need to say. I am currently experimenting with Twitter in my college class. I am having them use it to create micro-reviews of documents that they have to read. I am eagerly anticipating the results.

I can now post to the blog from my phone. Get ready for a Pokedex podcast!

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Check out my vegetables!

Ch. 7. Flickr'd Off

I'm not so sure how I feel about Flickr. I've used it to publish family pictures, but I've reached the cap, and now have to pay to show all of them. On the other hand, I've kind of grown into Facebook. I can publish more pictures, but have to show ads. And, on Facebook, I have a more readily available social network. Then again, Flickr doesn't require membership, unless I make the pictures member's only.

My family's pictures on Flickr are available for anyone to see, and I like the idea of storing them there. I can get to them anywhere I go. I guess I could even download them and use them as a screen saver anywhere I went. But I'm not sure if this is the best use of the technology for schools. Like I said, my school's Facebook page has fewer pictures available to people who are suckered into Facebooking me as their friend. I guess there's a trade off in there - popularity vs. ease.

One thing I like about Facebook's photo option (in addition to the video it let me upload) is that it forces me to think small. I have less than 40 pictures up there, from a year's worth of school. If I made a new page for a new school year, I guess I'd also have about 40 up there as well.

All this makes me think about what it means to be a school librarian. Are we also supposed to be the school archivist?

Ch 3. Flog this Blog

OMG, Did I tell you I'm totally in love with Blogger? Can I just say that I love the ability to add features, and I am dying to find out how to get people to comment on this. I also like the flexibility.

In practice, I'm thinking of creating a new blog for every year I work as a librarian. I could run Twitter feeds through it from myself and others. I could also link to other accounts and pages that have RSS feeds. I think that I could do a great job of creating a Liveblog feature with the HTML that is available. And I like that I have added Worldcat searching.

One interesting thing - it's not easy to customize unless you know html. I had to change the width of the columns to fit the entire worldcat box in the view, and change the width of the main column to make sure that everything looked ok as a result. I figure I know just enough HTML that the features will work ok for me.

Finally, I like the export blog feature. I can maybe upload this into another format if I decide I want to pay for more features.

Ch. 6. Socialist Boorkmarking?

I am not convinced that social bookmarking is the best method of providing links to the world. Here's why.

I have way too many internet passwords and accounts. In fact, I need an entire file to keep track of them, and that account has a password. God help me if that's ever hacked. And when I had to change that account password, I was in big trouble. So, I believe in Occam's Razor, which says that things that are simple are the best. I don't really understand what advantage I get from social bookmarking, and I don't really get why I should have an extra account for those purposes.

In the past, and currently with this blog, I work to add links that are on a single page that people can get to without a password or an invitation. I have a blog page with relevant links, and if I want people to follow links, I can add them, and then blog about them. I'd hate to say that I set a page up that people have to get to using a password. Plus, most tasks like descriptions of pages, or rss feeds, can be updated on the blog. For example, I don't have any explanation of why I love the Simpsons, or why I have a link from Ashton Kutcher's blog on this page, but I could easily add them to the format. Also, I can post links from these fluidly by using an RSS box, as I do with feeds I subscribe to.

Basically, I believe that the simplest form of information is the best. If people get used to looking at ADAMB (A Diigo Ate My Baby), they will know to trust it when looking for other information. I am now convinced that the blogger/blogspot format is useful to me, and that I can adapt it well enough to my needs. So, when at school, it's a lot easier to say, "Check out the links of the library blog," than it would be to say, "I can send you the url for my social networking site." Finally, I have added diffferent options to my bookmark bar, including one that is an "email this," link. If I like a page, I can email it to myself, or to anyone I want to see it. They get the link, and can look at it for themselves. That's been good enough for me. It should remain so.

Ch 5. RSS Feeds

I've been using RSS feeds for about 3 years now. I first had to use them when I ran BlogForIowa. I wanted a faster way to track other blogs in the blogosphere that I had no time to read during the course of a day. I used a service called Feedblitz that also let people subscribe to my blog.

Everyday, Feedblitz would send me detailed posts of all the blogs I followed. I found I couldn't keep up with all the email, so I moved to Google Reader, and then Bloglines when Google Reader couldn't keep up with over 1,000 posts and 200 per blog. Then, I switched back to Google Reader because Bloglines had some display trouble. I didn't really use the reblog feature that Bloglines had - where could republic stuff from other people's blogs to my blog. I think there's something called Tumblr which does the same thing. Not sure, though.

Although it was easy to move the blogs themselves from one reader to the next, it was not easy to move the bookmarked entries. I haven't even tried that.

Throughout this time, RSS feeds have been useful tools to help me follow news I cared about. The best thing for me, however, was the auto-identify rss feed feature that I use in firefox. I love the little organge box. It's my new best friend. I can't wait to see what features are added to all of this in the future. I'm sure there's a record number of blogs that some one reads, but I can't handle more than about 50 posts per day. I skim a lot, but reading all this stuff still takes time. I wish I had more of that.

Shrock V. Richardson

Kathy Shrock and Will Richardson both run educational blogs. There are some differences, however, in how they are created, how they are presented, and the purposes they can serve.

Shrock's Kaffeeklatsch has a great look, and is part of her on-line empire. There, she has lesson plans and advice about teaching. She has links to her on Facebook, and her page looks a lot like the Blogger page we have here. It doesn't say it, so she probably paid for better service. Her blog is updated a bout once a month.

Richardson also has a on-line empire - he has ads for his book, the ability to link to him on facebook, a twiter link and even You-Tube video links. His blog was created in Wordpress, which is kind of like Blogger - takes very little time to set up, and is great at basic features. His page is updated a few times a week.

Neither of these titles are very helpful. Shrock's could be anything, as could Richardson's. Similarly, their subtitles are equally vacuous - What does it mean that Richardson is "learning with the read/write web?"

Because both of these writers are heavily invested in publishing, there are links to each of their bios. There, they establish their credentials, where they clearly are reputable to write on education.

According to Technorati, Shrock's wank is about 109,000, while Richardson's is 5,945. His authority rating is also about 5 times hers. Obviously, both of these posts privilege education. I doubt homeschoolers or tax avoiders might use them to figure out how to improve their lives.

Ultimately, I can see using Shrock's page. It has more durable resources, like worksheets that could easily have been used 15 years ago when the WWW was brand new. Richardson, on the other hand, may be moving through temporary space. Wiki's may be here to stay, but Twitter is replacing more formal blogs, and podcasting and videocasting may go the way of the way of the buggy whip if cell phone technology continues to advance.

Allied Online Vs. Berlin High School

Brick and Mortar School sponsored blogs are hard to find. Not so for on-line high schools. I have chosen to review Allied Online High School, a distance education program offering on-line diplomas out of Southern California. I will compare them to Berlin High School, a building in Connecticut.

Both have bland and generic titles, but one is more useful than the other. AOHS has a blog that is run by Heather Brunson (I have no idea who she is, or what her exact job description is at AOHS), who seems to produce pro-AOHS news that supports the idea of on-line diplomas. BHS, on the other hand, runs an aggregator that displays content from high school teachers. There is a host of login and names that contribute content dealing with bus schedules, senior class lists, and school picnics. On the other hand, the AOHS blog has readily available features for subscriptions, including a host of reading programs like Google Reader. And like, AOHS, BHS has an auto-RSS feed button, which is probably the easiest way to subscribe to blogs today.

Interestingly, neither one have extensive comments, nor are they geared towards creating discussion. Both of these work as information providers, throwing out varieties of facts and updates to the world. But Brunson's PR machine is obviously an attempt to add dimensionality to the AOHS website. The posts aren't dated, and could have been written anytime. It's a incomplete use of the form. On the other hand, BHS updates are great because they provide a more modern use of the daily school newspaper. Parents can follow what students are doing, and check up on how the school day is going through this mechanism.

All things being equal, I'd prefer to build something like the BHS page, where blogs are used to update things that at happening in progress. I don't know if comments would even be necessary there, as it's simply a better way to throw information out there.

Everyman(woman) his (her) own historian

Carl Becker, 1931 president of the American Historical Association, once said that everyman would become his own historian.

Certainly, it's true that blogs have allowed people to become their own journalists.

Fernette and Brock Eide have shown that blogs can do for journalists and personal opinion what popular and social history has done for the masses: people can create their own content and expose themselves to quality information, adding their own reflection and interactive capabilities to those of so-called experts.

Now more than 5 years old, the form, according to Richardson, continues to allow students the ability to monitor each other's work while building on knowledge collaboratively. More significantly, as he points out on page 31, blogs provide students with new tools to edit. No longer at they subject to the whims of an English teacher wiht a red pen. And blogging can add a further dimesnion - follow up and feedback, something Richardson calls "Complex Blogging."

I've never used a blog in class, probabaly because I've had the use of much narrower tools like Ning or Wikispaces. which provide for equal degrees of collaboration. Rooted in the ongoing but short-lived blogging tradition, those comments on Ning were essentially easily done examples of comment sections on more traditional blogs.

At least, Chuck Norris thinks so. He inveted them. And he's mad at Al Gore for stealing his idea.