Comments on: On the Stager and Richardson UStream “Bootleg”

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:29:00 +0000

Diane, sorry for the late reply. Chris’ comment here points to where I wish we’d take our blogging even amongst ourselves - to how the new practices are looking as we explore them in the classroom.

Unfortunately, many people who blog about the tools are not teachers, so they can’t rise from theory to practice. The theory is nice and all, but again, we pretty much get it - and get how infinite the variations can be. What we need is snapshots of how those variations are playing out in our classrooms.

By: Clay Burell

Clay Burell — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:24:16 +0000

Hi Chris,
I’m so glad the parents and admin at my school see publication as a positive thing. All the parents in my senior class gave consent to full name, picture, video, self-moderation of comments - in other words, of treating their young adults like young adults.

As for the tools thing - yeah, jeez, we can only use so many in a year anyway. Jumping from one to the other is like eating a twenty-course meal by swallowing each dish whole. We need to digest more slowly. I’m still trying to hone my blogging approach from last year, for example.

Gotta run, as always.

By: Chris Watson

Chris Watson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:51:59 +0000

Also wanted to comment on the “burnout.” I do get burned out talking about tools. There are tons. And they’ll be more, and they’ll be cooler. Today, my I assigned a project that has groups of students creating multimedia reading resources for The Woman Warrior (2-3 pages for each group; it’s wonderfully dense). The first step was a brainstorm, then a statement of vision for their project. I found I had to continue to tell them not to think “We want to do a Comic Life project,” but to think more like “We want to create a comic book with photos and dialog.” Concept first then the tool. I think that’s also a fundamental issue for 1:1 school professional development. Instead, what’s motivating my own blogging are the instructional possibilities afforded by technology as a concept. I find myself blogging about what’s happening in my class; the technology part is means. And that brings me to the question of privacy that probably all our respective schools are dealing with. If we really want to talk about instruction, we’re going to want to share student outcomes and examples on our blogs…BTW I haven’t watched the video yet either.

By: Edublogosphere: Thoughts « Freelance Techie

Edublogosphere: Thoughts « Freelance Techie — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:39:47 +0000

[...] Standards, Student Voice, Tokenism, web2.0 Well I noticed an upstream amount of posts on this subject here. However I whole heartedly disagree that blogs are a ‘fad’ and going to die out any [...]

By: Cathy Nelson

Cathy Nelson — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 04:12:07 +0000

Clay and Diane –Diane has made some VERY valid points w/o even watching yet. Kudos Diane.

By: diane

diane — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:31:17 +0000

Clay,

I haven’t watched the UStream yet, but will leave a quick comment on two of your points.

First, I think that some of the “blogger burnout” is due to frustration at the lack of interest shown by many of our colleagues in exploring all the tools we are so excited about. One can only be a voice in the wilderness for just so long… And some of our conversations are getting stale because we’re mainly communicating with people who are already convinced of the value of what we “preach”.

Secondly, I do feel excluded by some of those “top tier” edubloggers you mention. If they won’t respond to comments in their blog and don’t choose to follow me on Twitter, our “conversation” never gets started, and I’m left feeling out of sorts and out of the loop.

I’ll refrain from commenting on the rest of your posting until I have time to listen and judge for myself.

After all, “A LITTLE knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

diane