Surprised by Snail Goop (or, a Colleague Blogs)

Just a quick bit of strategic advice if you want to pull or push your school into classroom blogging: become the English department chair. Failing that, bribe the existing one to adopt blogs as part of the writing component of the department.

I’m the English department chair for our high school this year. Next year, I’m handing it over to Lori. surf snail

I’ve worked with Lori for almost two years now. We’re both English teachers, lovers of language and writing and all that jazz, and yet: I have never read her Writing. (I capitalize that word to distinguish it from teachery emails.)

Lori is in her first month of blogging, alongside her students. I’d say she considers computers in the same class of technology as syringes, toilet plungers, and dental drills. Maybe even the class just beneath them. But she’s trying.

Without knowing she did, she pinged me yesterday (did you know that’s what you did when you linked to me, Lori?). It was on her class blog, wherein she shared what she took away from an hour’s walk-through of blog-management tools after school with me that day.

I know I loved reading her. It’s fun to discover the style of a person you’ve always only been limited to knowing by mere conversation. I saw a whole different side of her, and one I can’t see often in department or faculty meetings, and other such high joys.

Bloglines — Beta Style. Wow is this little tool going to make my life potentially easier. Mr. Media Guru actually mentioned Blog Lines in December 2006. He demonstrated the joys in February 2007. He made me sign up in September 2007. It is possible I am a hard sell.

The joys of understatement. And she is a hard sell. My odds are better peddling nudes to Puritans.

However, for those of you who are ready, for those of you that are becoming snowed under trying to access individual student blogs, friend’s blogs, and the daily recipe blog, Beta BLOGLINES is the answer.

Thank you, Clay. I frustrate you trailing snail gloop into the techno world. But today’s light came on.

The joys of imagery: teachers trailing Gutenbergian snail gloop into the third millennium. I picture them with scrolls and quill pens. And typewriters. I love the image. (But why does she call it “techno world”? I’ll have to nag her about that damn technology she uses - all those pen and pencil things, and whiteboards, and overhead projectors. Damn technology. ¹ ) She hits on the reason I’m pushing Bloglines Beta over Google Reader for student blog management here:

Bloglines — the place to keep track of student’s new blogs. If I check my bloglines daily, like e-mail, I can see what is new, rather than accessing each blog individually. Then in Beta, a person can even comment on the blog. [emphasis added]

That’s to keep you Google Reader groupies at bay. Try commenting 200 posts in Google Reader before you advise it as the reader of choice to teachers you evangelize to. It’s easy to do with Bloglines Beta.

Then Lori closes with this lovely bit of honesty:

Could I write a post cursing when Mr.-Loves-Computers-and-Can’t-Understand -When-I-Don’t pushes and pushes and keeps introducing more and more and more new? Yes.

But I thank him and all others out there for the constant shared excitement in the face of entrenched teaching habits, thinking, and frustrations.

I think that’s cool enough for me to close with too. After saying, “Welcome to your new legs, snail-girl.”

(English teachers and others out there - especially any new bloggers - drop over to Lori’s blog and compare notes in whatever grand styles you wish. Lori’s from Montana or Wyoming - I always mix those two up - and has never taught abroad until last year. Clearly an adventurer, and a wry one.)

Photo by zenera

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Lori, I really think of it as reading and writing and communicating - you know, all that English teacher and human stuff - but on steroids. [↩]

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Written by Clay Burell

February 27th, 2008 at 4:18 am

Posted in 1to1 laptop, assessment, blogging, language arts, lessons, professional development, teaching, writing

16 Responses to 'Surprised by Snail Goop (or, a Colleague Blogs)'

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You’ve never been to Montana if your confusing it with Wyoming

[Reply]

J.D. Williams

27 Feb 08 at 5:22 am
Actually, I hitch-hiked through them both in my Kerouac / ’80s Beatnik stage on many occasions, but besides a peak moment in the Grand Tetons area, didn’t do more than admire from the windows of strangers’ cars.

I do remember the sky, though. And the wildflowers.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

27 Feb 08 at 5:32 am
Commenting within Bloglines Beta? How in the heck do you do that?

[Reply]

Harold Jarche

27 Feb 08 at 5:42 am
@Harold: See this post for the Bloglines Beta goodness.

It’s a little wonky, being beta, but the workflow comes.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

27 Feb 08 at 5:50 am
Thing is, Google Reader is synchronized with Gmail. I don’t have to sign in twice. That makes a big difference for those of us working from online.

Benjamin Baxter’s last blog post..There’s No Academy Award for Outstanding Performance at an Open House

[Reply]

Benjamin Baxter

27 Feb 08 at 8:04 am
I have a teacher who decided to jump into the blogging. We decided to use a blogging website hosted by epals. We got permission forms signed from students and I started my presentation to the sixth grader. To test the waters, they introduces themselves to each other and wrote comments. Today was the teachers day and she prepared a lesson on point of view with three pages of flip chart notes. Then she turned to her students anxiously waiting to get their finger on the laptops. For the next fifteen minutes, she had them blog about what they learned from the notes. Not once was their a piece of literature connected to her presentation or a discussion about a something they had read.

When the right moment came, I left the room and went back to my cave (office) and wept. I want to blog about the experience, but she reads my blogs.

Bill

Bill Gaskins’s last blog post..Time to Celebrate

[Reply]

Bill Gaskins

27 Feb 08 at 8:12 am
@Benjamim: I think you miss the point. You can comment on blog posts within Bloglines Beta. The time saved doing that, instead of opening each student blog in a separate browser window - which you have to do with Google Reader - far outweighs the time spent singing in to Bloglines.

But I never have to sign in to my Bloglines. It doesn’t automatically sign a user out when it’s closed. So it’s not an issue at all, really.

Until Google Reader allows a) the ability to read _comments threads_ as well as posts (comments are often better than posts, especially on my blog), and b) the ability to leave comments as well, it’s a mere reader.

Bloglines Beta has upped the game. If GR is smart, they’ll steal this idea fast.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

27 Feb 08 at 9:39 am
@Bill. I weep with you. How do you like ePals? I found them so restrictive and walled they drove me nuts. But I remember they opened up some since then. This was a year ago.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

27 Feb 08 at 9:41 am
I’d love to see my English teachers starting to use blogs in their classrooms. Many of my English teachers are the most open to using technology? Does anyone know of any videos or tools that are web based that can walk them through the process?

Charlie A. Roy’s last blog post..Survey Monkey a New Web Tool

[Reply]

Charlie A. Roy

27 Feb 08 at 11:06 am
@Charlie If you click on the Tech Tutorials and Google Video and YouTube links in the “My PD Resources” sidebar, you’ll find lots of short tutorials on using Wordpress and Wikispaces. David Jakes and Wes Fryer have lots of good resources on their blogs too.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

27 Feb 08 at 11:17 am
Thanks Clay!

Charlie A. Roy’s last blog post..Survey Monkey a New Web Tool

[Reply]

Charlie A. Roy

27 Feb 08 at 11:33 am
Clay,
It is not my favorite. It was a difficult decision based on my school climate and our school filtering system. I have a lot word to do at my school and district. It will take time to get where you are in your school.

One Step at a Time

Bill

Bill Gaskins’s last blog post..Another Terrific Thought from the President Elect of NCTE

[Reply]

Bill Gaskins

27 Feb 08 at 7:56 pm
[...] I came across Clay Burrell’s posting about another teacher, Lori, in his department who started blogging. It’s not just about [...]

Teacher expression in blogs « PhD Learning Curve

29 Feb 08 at 6:29 am
Actually, while the feature is nice I think it is badly implemented. The greatest feature of Google Reader is that it really is efficient… pure content. If you want the comments on something, you can always just follow the comments feed. To comment, it is easy to just click the article title, which will take you directly to the post comment form. Of course, if you want the full beauty (or ugliness) of sites, you can alwas just use Firefox to subscribe to feeds.. (laughs)

Arthus Erea’s last blog post..Amateur Education

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

7 Mar 08 at 7:21 am
Arthus, I agree it’s wonky - I believe I even say so in the post - but again, maybe you have to be a teacher needing to comment on, say, 40 or 50 posts to appreciate Beta Bloglines’ “comment in the reader” feature.

Until you have that experience, you won’t know how good Beta Bloglines feels. We’re not talking about your non-teacher’s occasional comment here and there.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

7 Mar 08 at 7:34 am
Each to his own, I guess.

What I want to see is a service which actually hooks into some sort of Microformat so that commenting can be enabled while still having the benefits of minimalism and lightness. (I bet someone at Google’s putting 20% time into it)

Ask Google if you don’t know what a microformat is.

Arthus Erea’s last blog post..Amateur Education

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

7 Mar 08 at 11:37 am