Bud the Teacher

The Death of Blogging is Greatly Exaggerated

    I don't think for a moment that blogging is going away.  In fact, I'm surprised by how quickly some folks seem to embrace that.  (I wonder if it's because blogging is hard.  I'd like to give up plenty of hard things - but I won't because they're good for me.)    Ryan Bretag writes that, unless "blogs evolve" then they'll drift away.  I don't agree with him.  In fact, in the spirit of constructive debate, and because I've got lots swirling around in my head at the moment, I'm happy to provide the constructive criticism that Ryan was seeking in his post. 

    In his piece, Ryan argues, on one front, that blogging is dying because we as a blogging community were never able to all agree on goals and objectives:

There are times when I ponder what the goal is for the edublogger community. Obviously, there will be those that immediately move to the power of blogging is that it is about the individual; it is about whatever that person wants it to be about. While this is true, I would hope the end goal for edubloggers is improving education and that the goal of individual blogs or community blogs will focus on how they are helping to achieve this larger community goal.   

    There are multiple problems here.  The same assumptions that inform Ryan's argument above are present in many of the important and interesting conversations taking place within my personal learning network now and in the past.  Mostly, the assumption that's troubling me so much is that there's one group (community - whatever) out there that exists for educational conversation via electronic media, and that we should all try to engage and involve everyone in that one (fallacious) group so that we're all friends and reading and commenting each other.  And that we'll all agree on where that group should go, when they should meet, and what we'll all do when we get there.  Or that we ever agreed in the first place.

    Ain't going to happen.  Not now, not ever.  Never did happen, in fact.  We all construct our blogrolls, our Twitter friends, or our other social networking relationships for our benefit and to meet our own unique needs.  That leads some folks to add everyone as a friend.  Others, no one.  And whichever way you want to go is fine for you - but please don't require that I or anyone else goes with your system to meet our own needs. 

    However folks decide whom to add as a friend, a trusted source, or whatever, dictates to some degree which bits of the "conversation(s)" one receives.  (And maybe it's not even a "conversation" in the sense of the word that we're all most familiar with.  Bakhtin's a good guy to get cozy with to follow this conversational, or dialogic, view of blogging.  If there is such a thing.  Yet.  I'm still wrapping my head around this stuff - have been for a while.)  So context itself gets funky in a network situation, leading to instances where, in my friend group, something would be totally okay, flattering, in fact, and in another, the same act would be a serious social violation.  And different readers, responding to different network contexts (because every one of our networks is unique), will react differently to the "same" information.   Add in the fact that a piece of my network exists inside of a piece of yours,  or vice versa, or used to, or soon will, and things get messy pretty quickly. 

    Despite the fact that this makes for some seriously complex audience(s) analysis every time one puts fingers to keyboard (or at least, I hope that it does for you - sure does for me), I hope it's pretty clear that there is no such thing as "one" edublogosphere.  I used to think that perhaps there was - probably before I started blogging in 2005 - but there're too many of  "us" and so it becomes more than impossible to keep track of it all.  That's a good thing, once we recognize the reality.

    It's actually dangerous to believe that we can stay on top of all of the information.  Some do better than others, of course, but I don't know that there's any one person that's got all of the necessary information for world domination at their fingertips.  (Sorry, Steve. - And that's a reference to an inside joke that you'd only understand if you'd been reading Steve Dembo's Twitter stream for the last several months.) One stance I'd urge folks to consider, if they haven't already, is that we can and should accept that there's plenty we're going to miss, lots of it quite good, but that we're doing no one a service by trying to read everything or make declarations about the "proper social norms" of the "edublogosphere."  Since there's not "one" and we're all a little bit different, then lots of the "we musts" only make sense in particular contexts. 

    And there're plenty of contexts to go around. 

    Other people, smarter people than myself, have attempted to explain this before.  Stephen Downes, for one, continues to be helpful to my understanding of just how wicked complex such a simple act, that of blogging, is.

    But I certainly don't get it.  At all.  I'm still fumbling along, as best as I can - and that's a good thing.

    This will sound horribly selfish, and I'm overstating it just a bit for emphasis, so I hope it's taken with the grain of salt that it deserves - but I'm not writing or reading or thinking for the benefit of all mankind, no matter how selflessly I say otherwise.  I'm doing it for me, for my personal learning and attempt at understanding.  Now, there's a certain benefit for others if I'm able to better teach, to better serve my students, or the grown ups with whom I work.  But they are not the primary beneficiaries of my labors. 
    I am.   
    Like I said - that sounds selfish, and there's certainly a large piece of me who works in this space because I believe in the value of sharing and collaboration.  Heck, I'm a teacher because I believe that education helps to make a difference in peoples' lives.  The paradox of  "the edublogosphere" is that sometimes, the best thing I can do to build community/group/network capacity  is to serve me, myself and I and trust that such self-service will be of use to others.  I've seen time and time again that it can be. 
     (I've also seen that Ryan's probably right about folks' desire to be in agreement with people rather than in conflict about ideas, but that's another blog post.) 

   

Save the Date

  Save the Date 
  Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher

Making a Fool

I can think of many more foolish reasons to make a fool of one's self than this:

I have made a fool of myself before and will no doubt do so again. I am happy to make a fool of myself, if it will advance our knowledge and understanding.

-- Stephen Downes, via his blog.  Read the post these great lines come from - and follow the other links.  I'm learning a great deal from this conversation, as I usually do from Stephen. 

K12 Online - Post-Session 1

    I think we had an excellent first session of our K12Online group in St. Vrain.  I had to literally turn folks away, as we ran out of space in the classroom - and it's a pretty tight classroom.  (Perhaps I need to run a second session?  Why couldn't I?  The content's there either way . . .)
    After dealing with course logistics and introductions - there's a wide range of school district staff there, from classroom teachers (elementary and secondary), to librarians to support staff to school board members -- I walked folks (or maybe sprinted - I talk fast when I get excited) through a short history of the conference.  I then shared the first half of David Warlick's 2006 pre-conference keynote with the group.  I like his direct approach to the audience  ("I am here and I am now - but that's not important, because you are there and you are then .  .  ." - goosebumps.) as well as his metaphors for education.  I thought it got us off on the right foot.
    For two months, we'll be communicating mostly via Moodle forum as we begin to take a look at the various course offerings of the conference.  The forum's just for us right now, as we get comfortable using digital conversation spaces.  I hope to invite some of you to join us, if you're willing, at some point in the future.  I also hope that some of the participants will choose to punch through the password-protected private space and join the public conversation(s) in some way - but that's up to them.  It should be a choice.  And, speaking of choice, thanks, K12Online, for the handy schedules for each year of the conference - it's really easy to look at all the options when they're all there in one place, just like a big ol' menu of PD.  Well done. 
    John is attending our class.  He's also scheduled to be sworn in as a school board member tonight, so I'm pleased to have him with us.  He posted his reflections on the first night of the class over on his blog.  I thought his list of learnings was an excellent summary of the night:

My take aways from last night (including ideas reaffirmed), in no particular order...

- We have barely scratched the surface of what's possible when it comes to tapping technology to enhance learning.

- There are good and bad online protocol, "good ethical practices," as Bud described them.  I'm still learning which of these practices I might be violating - and doing well.

- Geography means a lot less than it used to.  The very notion of school "buildings" is going to be challenged far sooner than many of us imagine.

- Students will choose their own pace and hours for learning no matter what schedules we try to impose.

- The role of teacher will be far different in just a few years. Teachers will shift from instructors to guides helping students direct their own learning.

- We still need face-to-face time to strengthen relationships.

- We still need quiet time, uninterrupted by technology, to reflect on what we're learning and imagine what we might learn next.

  I particularly like the last one - we all need time for reflection and imagining.  That was well said.  The trick is finding that time, as well as continuing to flex the brain so that imagination continues to be a possibility.  Now begins the hard part of courses such as these - trying to create and maintain community.  All of the right people are in that room - lots of really bright and passionate folks.  I'm excited to be learning with them.  Should be good. 

K12Online. Slow & Reflective.

    I'm pretty excited about tomorrow.   Tomorrow, I begin this class:

The K120 Online Conference is an online offering of presentations created by educators and centered around new applications and new technologies. It's a way to address both teachers' needs as well as the opportunity to connect to an online network of professionals that can be drawn upon for future professional development activities.

There will be four face-to-face sessions of this PST. In between each of these sessions, participants will be expected to engage two sessions from the conference, for a minimum of eight face-to-face hours and eight online conference hours.

Each participant will write a two-page reflection and keep a log of the sessions attended. The final face-to-face session will be a facilitated discussion about what was learned, the benefits of the conference, and the next steps for those involved in terms of taking their learning back into their classrooms. This discussion will be recorded and released as a podcast.

I'm excited about the class because it allows me to do two things that I think are pretty important: 
1.  Introduce smart people to new tools and opportunities.
2.  Take our time and do it right.

    I think so many of the professional opportunities that teachers are afforded are races, mere dips of a toe into the waters of potential.  There's lots to do and not enough time to do it.  Time is a precious, precious resource that is in short supply.  I also think that many of the tools that are influencing my network, and , frankly, me right now, encourage haste and speed and the like.  Twitter, on the short list of my favorite read/write web tools, can be reflective, but perhaps not richly so.  I wrote a tweet the other day that hasn't left my head.  I was thinking about how busy I've been lately - racing from one really interesting project to the next, knowing that the excitement wasn't a good replacement for the lasting learning that I knew just wasn't happening for me:

          Not much reflection, though - just lots of doing.  That's not sustainable.  Or worth sustaining.

I want sustainability.  I want reflection.  I think others want it, too.  we don't learn by racing.  We learn by doing and reflecting and questioning.  It's a recursive cycle, and one that doesn't happen enough for me.  I wonder if it's become too easy to communicate, in some ways.  Do I get so busy communicating that I haven't bothered to say anything?  (Does that even make sense?)
    Which leads me back to tomorrow.  (Man, I really, really buried the lede in this post, didn't I?)  Tomorrow, I begin a facilitated, slow and thorough look at the K12Online Conference, both the 2006 and 2007 editions.  Over the next four months, in two hour chunks, I hope to study and learn from the presentations of the last two years.  I want to dig in to the content that I felt whipped by so dang fast in late October when it was released.   This is what the conference invites, as  all the sessions are archived. 
    So we will.  I hope to use the class time as discussion time to talk about the different presentations, as well as an opportunity to think about how these different sessions might offer some ideas for change in our classrooms here in my district.   I'll be asking participants, on a voluntary basis, to share their favorites with the group in 15 minute "spotlight sessions."  These, I hope, will foster conversation and inquiry into new tools and classroom strategies.
    I'm interested, too, in looking for ways to connect folks from all over to my district's virtual classroom.  but before I do that, though, I want to meet the class and make sure they're comfortable with that.  Stay tuned for further developments. 
    If you've any advice, or even a "must see" presentation recommendation for these first time K12Online Conference attenders, I'd welcome it in the comments - we'll share your tips during our first session. 

A Belated Answer

    About a week ago, Brian posted:

Paul Hamilton  left this comment on my last post:

This week, I did a workshop for classroom teachers on using blogging in the classroom as one UDL approach for ALL learners. There were questions about the quality of posted student writing. So, here are my questions to you. Do you approve and/or edit every student post? How much editing do you do? How time consuming is the process? (I notice that you were working at it on a Friday evening!) Do you have any related tips for teachers who are holding back out of concerns in this area?

Since I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on blog responses, I'm going to answer now, as I was asked at the end of the post. 

    I've run blogs where I approve everything and others where my students had all the control of what got published and when.  I always approved material for our student newspaper (now defunct, sigh), in part because I wanted an opportunity to do revision and editing with each student, and in part because I thought the professional nature of the newspaper made sense for such controls.  When I taught speech via blogs, I was willing to let my students decide what they published and when.  We discussed appropriate behavior as well as that if they weren't sure about whether or not to publish , they could certainly seek the advice of their fellow students or their teacher.  Since their blogs were more for reporting research than they were for formal presentation, I tended to cut the students some leeway when it came to the "rules."  If it was readable, and approaching formal English (or, if you prefer, "acceptable public voice,"), then I let it go. 
    In two years of blogging with students, I asked one student to change a piece, once, and even he agreed, after re-reading, that he shouldn't have hit "publish" in the first place - but that he was frustrated when he made the post.
    The time involved with editing is much the same as with not editing.  I think it's irresponsible for a teacher to require writing and then to not read that writing.  (I don't mean read every word; teachers, though, should at least skim every post a student makes, for a number of reasons.)  So whether or not a teacher is editing prior to publication, or is reading after publication, the time factor is still there.  I would argue for making the time spent editing a student's work with a student a learning experience, akin to a writing conference.
     The trick, when editing, is to help the writer to become a better writer - and not to mask their student voice with your own teacher voice.  I struggle with that one every time I work with a student in a conference. I don't think we should edit every word or sentence for grammar and proper punctuation - but we should attend to egregious errors.  Your own judgment will help you to determine what "egregious" means for your students. 
    I hope this is helpful, even if it's a bit late.  You asked a great set of questions, Paul.  Thanks, Brian, for allowing me to take a crack at them. 

Quick Thanks to the Twitter Crew

    I wanted to send out a quick thank you to all the fine people who have taken the time recently to share their greetings and advice to the folks who have been in my sessions on Social Networking lately.  The Twitter ShoutOut ("Say hello to my audience, tweets!") seems to be one of the best all around hooks for helping people to see the potential of a world-wide network.  It's weird, and kind of wonderful, and something I never would have dreamed of two years ago, but I regularly count on my network, in various forms and permutations, to just be there. 
    I'm humbled by that.  Thank you for helping to teach me and my students and colleagues.  I don't want to take advantage.  I promise I'll continue to return the favor.  Isn't it amazing that we talk to the world, and the world answers back?

EdTechPosse Rounds Me Up

    I had the opportunity a couple of weeks back to sit in with the EdTechPosse as they recorded a podcast.  That podcast is now up.  I enjoyed the informal conversation very much - I hope you do.