I’ve wanted to help this happen for the last five months. And I need your help to launch it with quality and good aim. Just a thoughtful comment consisting of a short list is all we ask.
First, a recap. Why re-write what was already obsessively written since May? So:
What would happen if we educators encouraged volunteer students to create a niche of learner edubloggers? That could be enlightening indeed.
– post from 6 May 2007
[Giving student presentations at education conferences] means less (next to nothing, I would guess) to students compared to their daily school experience, and their participation in the larger world generally. They should be participating in our edublogger conversations on an equal footing, as equal partners.
– post from 7 July 2007[L]et the star student-writers with forward-thinking parents be the first members of the type of “LearnerVoices” [blog] Scott Schwister is envisioning. And make it pay off, for both the students and the edublogosphere, by inviting those young writers into our dialogue, and not only commenting on their blogs, but asking them to comment on ours. That’s a reality check worth inviting. . . . Because we need to get beyond this stage of adult-centered edutalk. It’s time to bring in the silent - and silenced - majority: our students.
– post from 8 July 2007[W]e seem to be seeing a new milestone in the edublogosphere: the beginnings of democracy with the inclusion of our student Silent Majority. How freakin’ cool is that.
– post from 5 August 2007
The URL is bought, the WordPress is installed, and several student bloggers from different countries have agreed to contribute and serve as editors (feel free to pass an invitation along to any student edublogger you know to contact me here, by the way). We’re going to Skype this weekend to clarify the approach.
And that’s where you adult edubloggers can help. Since you’re the intended audience, it would be great if you could take a minute to look at this wonderfully tight list of categories from the aptly named A List Apart blog, and distill a list of the six categories you’d most like to read about in a collective student edublog.
Again, we’ll be laying the foundations this Saturday. You can help assure those foundations will be solid by leaving a thoughtful “list apart” of your own.
Comments beyond that list, of course, are welcome. If you were me, what other concerns would you have, what policies (if any) would you insist upon?
The target launch date is December 1. They’ll be reading you. I’m sure they hope you’ll be reading them too.
–
A special thanks to Scott Schwister and Scott McLeod here, by the way. His offer to support this idea back in August was somehow a tipping point for me.
(Apologies for the style. I’m overdue some sleep, but wanted to put the request out as soon as possible.)
–Image credit: “Megaphone Tank on a Barcode” by lyers on Flickr
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds
20 Comments
Hi Clay,
I like your idea and hope to get back here to give more thoughtful input…(I need another cup of Coffee)..But in reviewing the topics one that I really want to hear about from the kids is what tools work the best for them and how they apply them. this could fit in a couple of areas like process or it could be its own topic. In our work this year we have found that we need to expose the kids to tools they may not have seen but we also need to listen to them- what works, what is seamless… what do they want to use.
Thanks, Barbara, I apparently needed one _last_ cup of coffee before posting. Let me clarify: the “List Apart” approach of inviting contributions only about a small set of topics is the thing - not the specific topics used by that blog.
Put another way, what six generic “labels” (”topics”) would best focus contributors to give the types of posts readers want to read on an edublog written by students?
Clay,
Before I enter my list, I’d like to recount a conversation I had today. Knowing that you’re recruiting student bloggers, I raised the topic with one of my library regulars, who is an excellent student and a devoted writer. I showed her some student blogs on my Reader feed and asked if she would like me to help her get started blogging. [We have no student email accounts in our district - or in most of New York State, a fact which appalled guest speaker Joyce Valenza this week. I contacted our State Dept. of Education today trying to get a definitive policy statement on this issue. Email is mentioned in our Learning Standards. If I get no response, I’ll have to tackle the superintendent and BOE on my own]. The young lady informed me that she is not allowed an email address at home. Her grandmother, who works at the school, said that her granddaughter has a laptop but is not allowed to access the internet on it. I offered to discuss this with the parents and point out how blogging would benefit their daughter. These are the same parents who permit this 8th grader to date a junior in high school. I find their perception of “safety” to be skewed, at best!
Sorry - had to share my frustration and anger at the American public’s obsession with all the wrong dangers.
My list of student edublog topics:
-what catches and holds their interest in the classroom: interesting content, cool tools, a dynamic teacher, a blend of all three, something else?
-what issues in the world and in their hometown make students worry or wonder?
-what do they wish adults understood about students ?
-how will students be different (or not) from their teachers and parents when they reach adulthood?
-what do students wish they could understand or change about adults?
Given a “voice”, what do students want to say to us about themselves, their peers, their teachers/parents, their world?
Hey, Clay. Glad to see you’re publicizing it. In addition, I’ll be hoping to bring a couple of my blogger friends into the mix.
Anytime on Saturday works for me. However, 20:00 EST (GMT+5) would be best.
Clay,
I’m so excited about seeing this come to fruition!
After checking out “List apart,” I think you might just want to “borrow” some of those topics for learnerblogs.
How about “culture” of schools, “design” of schools, “content” of schools?
Those alone would be fascinating food for discussion.
I really am thrilled about what we will all gain from this project!
I’ve been thinking about this all day.
I would hate to unecessarily telegraph what you want the students to do. I’m always wary of adults urging students to proclaim how things should change, how they are different from adults, or other things they have relatively little experience in.
I keep coming back to the question of why you feel you need these topics. I’m imagining you like the way they focus the contributions on A List Apart. And I agree, it’s a good site. One of the reasons it works is because it’s by and about people DOING something, not just talking about how websites should be. So you have a great combo of sharing technical skills, job war-stories, art, and style. It’s also extremely well edited. It’s closer to a magazine than a blog.
So, I guess I’d like to hear from kids what they are doing, who they are, and how they got that way. Reflective stuff, real stuff.
If you want to encourage conversations around the topic of learning, I’d literally start with a single open-ended question, like, “how did you become the learner you are today”, something like that. I think having several people respond to the same question would be interesting, but only if the question is really open, not a leading question showing our prejudices about what we think they want to talk about.
I’m thinking out loud. I’m not entirely satisfied with this answer, so I’m happy to defend it or change my mind!
Sylvia, thanks. Challenges welcome. The challenge that I, anyway, am struggling with is simply ensuring quality reading is the end-product. Not an adult v. kid duality as much as a publisher versus low standards one.
The topics idea came in conversation really about focus for contributors and ease of organization through minimalistic tagging and categorizing.
The less restrictive way to ask the question would be: “What would the edublogosphere want to hear from students?” Something along those lines.
Do you see how this is more writerly, in the rhetorical sense (or simply marketing, in different-speak), than it is authoritarian? It’s really about wanting to assure quality from the outset.
So keep the ideas coming. They help.
Now I get where you are going. I agree with some of what Sylvia said about A List Apart. Just like we write about what we are engaged with so to the student voices need to reflect their reality.
I still standby my original idea… I really want to hear from the students about their tools for learning. How do they learn..what do they use…How do they contribute/create/ why? What new applications of technology do they see.
I think editing is the key to quality. And it’s an important part of the writing process. Since it benefits the writer and the audience, it’s especially appropriate for students.
I’m not sure I totally believe you when you say you are just concerned with the end product. I’m sure you hope that the students get something out of the process too!
The down side to editing is that the editor(s) have to speak for the audience. You just have to hope he/she has a good feel for what will be interesting to the reader. It’s a chicken and egg thing, since the readers will be attracted based on the material and point of view, and these may not be an instantaneous development.
So I would vote to go with a strong editorial hand and strong point of view, say it loud and proud, and stick to it.
I’d definately want to push through the first obvious responses from students. Yeah, OK, they love MySpace, texting, whatever — but why. I’d like to hear what happens in their lives that makes it work, stories, triumphs, tragedies, etc. Get inside their brains. I don’t need another place to hear about the latest product release, or feature list. I think an editor always asks their author to answer the “next question”, the one that is so obvious to you that you forget to say it, or the one that is going to occur to the audience. I think that’s why a blog is interesting. You get to see people think out loud over time. The ones who can do that (like you) are the ones I push to the top of my RSS reader. Not everyone can do that in a vacuum, they need editorial guidance.
I see you do it to the kids in your AP ning group. You are editing them in real time. It’s interesting and I think that model could work for what you are planning here.
Thanks, Sylvia - great comments.
You vamp you, what I mean by the “concern for the end product” thing (and you know the “vamp” thing is smiling) is that we don’t need a shoddy student edublog, so the end product will be one that has higher standards than just “I’m young and cutesy so I can just self-indulge and hit ‘publish’.”
There’s tons of solid gain from the process of meeting high standards for the end product.
Call it the view from the classroom: so many of my classroom bloggers - high school seniors too, mind you - produce such depressingly content-less stuff, I’m hypersensitive about precluding that. Youth is no substitute for substance
Dean Shareski’s k12 “Design Matters” sounded the call for quality in presentations. It’s rippling into my thoughts here.
Thanks Sylvia
yup, yup, yup. i’ve written about the same issues. Student voice requires guidance. It’s not just one-way sounding off followed by head-patting.
http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/07/08/what-is-student-voice/
http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/09/13/student-panels-sharing-authentic-student-voice/
I thought the idea was to assemble a group of articulate student bloggers and let them explore life and learning - this almost sounds more like an online magazine or newsletter.
How do the NYC students manage their very literate feed? Could we let the students “say their piece” then help them refine and focus their thoughts through comments, as we do with adult bloggers?
I understand the desire for a quality product, but wouldn’t want it to come at the cost of tamping down spontaneity or the free exchange of ideas.
What do the students themselves think about guidance/editing?
Thanks Diane - again, this post is requesting input in order to shape things, so consider it a sounding board instead of a bully pulpit.
The value of soliciting all this commentary now is that it will prime the pump, I hope, for the Skype conference with the invited contributors this Saturday.
I hope the NYC bloggers (invited) will be in on that talk.
But when you think about managing a blog of many contributors - from the readability end - you start seeing the need for conscious management solutions before the problems arise. (I went through this last year with 40 or so contributors on a collective history blog - unmanaged posting opens the gates to avalanches of posts in which some never even see the front page, for example.)
I really like how Scott McLeod organized LeaderTalk: one post a day from a rotating list of contributors, all of whose blogs are linked in the sidebar for those who want to read more from them. I like it for the “avalanche-prevention” aspect, as well as the “showcasing” effect that must come with knowing you’re only posting once per cycle: do you see how that would probably spur contributors to post their best stuff only - helping the collective blog maintain its content standards - and simultaneously attract more visitors to each contributor’s blog because of that factor?
Time for my walk. Open to more, please! (And my, I’m discovering some fine writers out there thanks to my twitterverse.)
Diane, one more thing - I just noticed you seem to infer that blog posts with comments (the “free exchange of ideas”) are at issue, when they’re emphatically not.
Of course the ideas will be freely expressed. Of course we’ll all be free to comment.
Clay,
I never doubted you - or your intentions - for a minute! I really am curious about how the New York City student bloggers are organized and how they manage to produce consistently superior postings.
Lacking your practical experience with this process, I guess I assumed that you would assemble a group of student bloggers and just turn them loose. On further reflection, I can see the impracticality of that idea!
Just don’t “edit out” their personality. I want to know that I’m reading, and interacting with, real young adults and not “idealized” or “sanitized” young adults!
diane
P.S. Thanks for the heads up - fixed my mail address.
Diane, thanks. It’s often less a question of “editing personality OUT” than it is of wanting to “edit it IN.” Don’t worry - I hope these contributors will be writers, not schooly 5-paragraph essay hacks. (Did you notice I’ve added “…and beyond “schooliness”" to my tagline?)
All the feedback coming from you all is so helpful. Thanks for taking the time.
Clay,
I DID notice “schooliness” my favorite new word that I learned from you and your students.
Are you a “20th century teaching dropout” because you’ve dropped into the 21st century…and beyond?
Watching you sift and refine, redirect and focus, your students’ work has helped me in my own fledgling blogging “career”.
Keep up the good work, all you KISchool-iless people.
Just a point of clarification in case it is important.unless Scott has made a change recently I believe he had scheduled 3 people per day - at first I found that frustrating because posts were coming to fast and furious… but the way it has worked out it has slowed some because not everyone has stuck with it or made it on time… but with duplicate people on a day there is almost always something new.
Hi Clay -
I am a fifteen year-old student very much interested in economics and education policy. Over the past two years I’ve spent some 200 hours researching and writing a 30,000 word analysis and policy paper on education. Perhaps a student critique of the paper’s proposals would be an interesting topic to coalesce around. Take care and best of luck. kah
Kah, give me an email at clayburell[at]gmail[dot]com and let’s hook you up with the students founding this.
6 Trackbacks
[…] ClustrMaps on “A Clustrmap is a Powerful Thing” (2-minute presentation)Barbara on From “LeaderTalk” to “LearnerTalk”: Global Student Edublog Coming Soon, Seek…diane on From “LeaderTalk” to “LearnerTalk”: Global Student Edublog Coming […]
[…] use of blogs in literacy development. The launch, now one short week away (knock wood), of the new “Students 2.0″ edublog featuring Kevin Walter, Anthony Chivetta (St. Louis), “Arthus Erea” (Vermont), […]
[…] have a privileged, behind-the-scenes view of the planning going on for the Students 2.0 edublog launch. These young adults - disguised as mere “students” - are so brilliantly fun, […]
[…] has been lots of discussion about realising student participation in the edublogosphere in the past year. Driven be a belief […]
[…] date. (He also mentioned not to ignore some of the big problems, many named here. Some suggested by Diane, but then Sylvia suggested to stay away… So we’re at a fundamental loss in ideals. […]