Beyond School

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

The conversation about managing real student blogging - public, connective, prudent, real-world network-seeking - continues in the comments to my last post. Again, for RSS folks, not to be missed if this is a concern of yours. So I’m again posting the latest round of comments here. Doug Noon starts with a good challenging question, I return serve somewhat weakly, then (let’s mangle the metaphors) Diane Cordell knocks the tennis ball out of the park for a home run with this idea: blogging should be treated like driving. You have to take a “Driver Training” course before you’re “licensed.”

I think that’s brilliant. So the next step: how do we design that “blogger training course” most effectively?

Here’s the thread:

Doug Noon // Nov 11, 2007 at 4:18 am

I agree with you that the big issue for working with kids in a public forum is prudence. This would be no different than if we were preparing them to “go public” in any medium. We want to help them look their best, make a good impression, etc. Too much prudence, of course, can kill good writing.

The problem in evaluating how much, and where, prudence should be applied is that it’s a question of values, and there could be wide variation in terms of the audience the student wants to address. I can imagine some cases in which I’d be at a complete loss to help a student with the issues that might arise if they were trying to reach an audience that I didn’t understand at all. The coaching metaphor is useful since there might be a need for exploratory discussions about a student’s intentions. Blogging, as I’ve said before, is a social practice. If the subject matter is left wide open, the teacher’s role would shift from technical expert to something more like mentor, I suppose.

I really like the idea of putting the kids onto the idea of connecting with other bloggers and to identify a focus for a blog. Doing that is key to making blogging work. So what do you do when a student chooses a topic area with an audience whose social norms you might find objectionable? As you say, the issues would differ with the students’ ages, as well as their interests.

2 Clay Burell // Nov 11, 2007 at 8:28 pm

Hi Doug,

Your question: “So what do you do when a student chooses a topic area with an audience whose social norms you might find objectionable? ”

It’s an interesting one, and thanks for bringing it up. I expect you know things like this will be as rare as any other problematic event in student blogging - in my experience students show good judgment about their blogging and commenting 99% of the time - so you’re probably tossing that question in because we also all know that that 1% of poor student judgment threatens the whole enterprise. That’s why it’s worth finding these questions, to me - not because they will be common occurrences, but because even single occurrences can be damaging.

So if a student chooses “a topic area with an audience whose social norms [I] might find objectionable,” what should I do?

FIrst, I’m having a hard time thinking of an objectionable social norm. I guess a classroom blog for neo-Nazis, bigots, and other hate-groups fits the bill. (Is that what you had in mind?)

So if that happens - if Bobby decides to “blog for Hitler,” for example, and attract an audience of world-wide neo-Nazi bloggers - what an interesting situation. Seems like more of a “teachable year” than a “teachable moment.”

I’ve got a less extreme case (sorry for the meandering): teenagers can get awfully revealing about their private issues - eating disorders, suicidal tendencies, etc. Things we adult self-publishers typically have the good sense to keep to ourselves (I’ve never, for example, posted about my taste for pet-food*).

So suppose a student writes about wanting commit suicide. You’d think simply deleting the post from the blog, when you (the teacher) find it, solves the problem. But that’s not true, is it? My earlier comment about WayBack Machine not caching most sites failed to account for this fact: any RSS aggregator will have that post permanently, even if it was deleted from the original blog.

So where does that leave us?

What do you (anybody) think of an idea I’ve kicked around now and then: a “probationary” period of blogging in which all posts are submitted “private” - viewable only to “friends”, basically - until the individual blogger has shown he/she has the good sense to keep dirty laundry and damning information private?

I don’t like it - it’s based on mistrust. The opposite approach, like a hockey game, would be to allow all to play, but put any offenders in the “penalty box” if they show poor judgment.

No more time for the moment - have to prep for school tomorrow - but do want to add that in the extreme cases (the neo-Nazi, e.g.), that “teachable year” would involve asking the parents to be involved, and the school admin.

Which points to the conversations about the “social nature” of blogging both you and Diane mention. Mature students should understand the affiliation of their own blogs with their school, their family, their teachers, their classmates. Or they should understand it once it has been discussed and digested in the classroom.

Thanks for the input. Helped. Have to run now.

*obviously a joke — isn’t it?

3 diane // Nov 11, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Clay,
There are many activities that come with age and maturity prerequisites. Given the age of my Current Events students, getting a driver’s license immediately springs to mind!

The new driver must be at least 16 (in my state), take a mandated course about the dangers and responsibilities of driving, pass a general knowledge test, practice, then receive a license with limited privileges.

For the blogging analogy, I would keep the instruction and maybe some initial guided practice. Since your students are older - almost legal adults, I think you could probably “grant” them full blogging rights after that.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if blogging became as desirable as drinking (a lame but vivid analogy, suggested by my recent PowerPoint experiences!) and students did it with or without our “permission” because they wanted to!

–I think I see one high-value wiki worth making here: “Blogger Training School.” How to make it short and to the point? Toward key “courses”:

1. Prevent Theft: Lock Your Identity!
Do not reveal:
full name (unless parents okay it)
birthday
SSN or non-US equivalent
home or school address
phone number
[YOUR SUGGESTIONS HERE])

2. Buckle Up: Don’t Hurt Yourself!
Do not reveal, in words or images:
your mental illnesses (suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, bigotry, racism)
your hateful side
your rude side
your spoiled side
your immature side
your criminal record
your craziest party stories
your sex life
your sexual fantasies
your high-level cursing skills
your grammar and spelling weaknesses
your inability to distinguish self-publishing from a chatroom
–anything else that would knock you out of a job or college. DON’T LET YOUR BLOGGING HURT YOU! WEAR A “MATURITY BELT.”

3. DANGEROUS DRIVING: DON’T HURT OTHERS!
Do not:
attack others by name (attacking ideas can be okay, but not people - especially by name. What if someone did that to you?)
attack others generally
post images that could hurt others
reveal information that could embarrass you, your family, your school, your friends, or anybody else in the community (again, criticizing ideas is possible without embarrassing people)
leave hateful comments
bully
spread rumors
slander people

That’s as much as I have time for right now.

Diane Cordell adds these tweets from Twitter, before I close:

Driving out of lanes: loss of focus in writing. Failure to observe signs: blog courtesy violations!

What about “improper signaling” or “failure to signal” when posts are improperly tagged or not tagged at all.

Your additions?

Photo: Entering Hyperspace by Eole on Flickr

In a post last month I mentioned seeing the need for short video presentations about web 2.0 in education, and posted a snippet from a parent presentation I gave at our 1:1 Apple Laptop School launch. That snippet focused only on the motivational power of a simple ClustrMap on a blog.

Here’s another one: Less than three minutes, it’s about how blogging can transform a person who does not write into a person who writes daily - because of the connective nature of authentic, self-directed, passion-based (or, for the lukewarm, interest-based) blogging. I use myself as a case in point.

This clip makes me chuckle because I loved standing with my school administrators on stage, talking to parents of a neurotically grade-obsessed culture, and announcing quite non-chalantly: “I don’t like school. I like learning, but I don’t like school. I want to take students beyond school and into real learning.” I wonder how such a thing sounded to Confucian ears.

I conclude with a brief pontification on the fact that homework scribbling is not writing.

I’ll also post this on the “Teaching Gallery” page of this blog. (And stay tuned for more “Cut the Crap” movie-making tutorials here, and on the “Cut the Crap” page.)

Here it is. Criticism is welcome, since this is part of my own project-based learning about multimedia production.

JoonPyo, whether he realizes it or not, gives Sam Harris some competition with his “God Did It” post, in which he constructs a decent hypothesis on the historical and psychological origins of religion, and its survival in the world today. Nice style, nice argument, though no connectivism with other writers, which damns this fine post to the status of a tree falling in the forest, or the sound of one hand clapping (but one thing at a time - he’s finally putting some effort into his writing, and probably producing better stuff than he ever did for teacher assigned “writing” - a.k.a. “homework”). Here’s a snippet, though you’d enjoy the whole thing:

As we learned more about the world, and more scientific ideas replaced superstition, the need for multiple gods disappeared. We realized that weather couldn’t be influenced by praying, so we got rid of the rain god, and the sun god, and whatever other god there may have been.

Today, most religions are monotheistic. There’s just God himself. But why do we still need this god? Because we cannot answer the questions I posed at the beginning of this post. We don’t know where we came from, or why we’re here so we just explain it away as an act of God. God put us here. God did it.

While I have no issues with Joon’s religious skepticism, his skepticism toward the merit of Apple compared to Microsoft and PCs is something I do indeed take issue with. He attacks Apple for being incompatible with most Korean websites, when really, I’d argue the issue is that Korea is shamefully out of touch with international standards of web-compliance as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Why blame Apple and Firefox for the bad code used across the board by Korean web-designers? Like Korean conformity and xenophobia generally - and these are uncontested givens about today’s Korea - Korean digital practice is out of touch with the world. Since Joon is interested in a future in the tech industry, maybe he can drag Korea out of its isolationist cage and align it with the world’s best practices. Korea has a need for a digital rebel and visionary - maybe Joon will fill that need after high school?

Joon also shows a lamentably passive conception of the uses of the internet:

….unless you’re using IE, you’re stuck with a non-functional website. As a Korean, using a Mac severely limits my web surfing. I can’t buy things from an online mall. I can’t use online banking services. I can’t play online games. I can’t even check my e-mail if I’m using a Korean service provider. The list goes on.

All passive (okay, gaming is active, but you’re still not creating any content yourself): all Web 1.0. More ammo against the “digital native” superiority argument. The young form habits and comfort zones too. Joon argues for Active X as the solution to Apple and Firefox, but doesn’t address the fact that that solution comes at the expense of all the viruses, malware, spyware, and so forth that we Apple and Firefox users are blissfully unconcerned with.

If any of you evangelists for the old religion (churches, mosques, etc) or the new (Apple) want to visit Joon for some proselytizing, you’ve got the links

Since this is a perennial issue, I’m sharing this letter to parents about our student blogging launch in my AP Literature class. It’s important to realize that this approach is tailored to the age group of my 17-year-old seniors. They’ll be considered adults in a few short months, so I designed this parent approach with that fact foremost in mind. (This is not to say the letter wouldn’t work for earlier grades. I think it should be considered from maybe age 12 and up, since it discusses maturity and good judgment in managing your online identity, and that’s a discussion we all know has to happen as early as is reasonably possible.)

What I like about this approach is that parents can choose the level of privacy - name, image in photos and/or videos, comment moderation - for their “child” (we have to come up with a better word for the young adult offspring of parental units).

Another thing I like is that it doesn’t use the unfortunate term, “blogging.” It uses the label “connective reading and writing” instead. To me this is far from hair-splitting: it’s a way to separate my pedagogical purpose from the abomination of “blogs as on-line diaries” - god in heaven, the world can do without these - or, worse yet, “blogs as the new way to turn in homework” (god in heaven, students can do without these). To bang that drum again, blogging to answer teacher or textbook questions is not real writing, not authentic learning, and (usually) not relevant to students - but is a great way to make them hate blogging as yet another “schooly” imposition and drive them, as I wrote about so tirelessly several months ago in my “How Teachers Can Kill Student Blogging” series, back to their Facebooks and Myspaces for real writing.

By calling it “connective reading and writing” (and I tried to very briefly define and explain how revolutionary this is in the parent letter below), the emphasis is instead placed on self-directed reading and writing - and creating networks of interest with real-world writers by discussing their writing, linking to it, commenting on their blogs, and hoping to attract them to form a relationship by commenting back on the students’ blogs. This type of blogging is more properly considered “project-based learning,” the way I’m doing it this year, because I’m framing the 7-month blogging journey as a goal-oriented project: “I want to read real-world bloggers who write about x, write about my responses to what they write, and develop a network (or ‘community of interest,’ or whatever buzzword you like) with such people over the next 7 months.” That’s not just writing on a computer. That’s reading, writing, thinking, and connecting with a real-world purpose - beyond school. So that’s a project. They can learn so much more from others in the blogosphere than they can from us teachers about so many real things banished by the factory curriculum.

(But they still have to get it. And that’s a battle, since they’ve never had to get anything but how to study for the next test, or plan the prom, or be a cheerleader. Here, again, is the “envisioning your blog’s future results” activity on Google Docs as my best effort to help them “get it.”)

One last point before I paste the letter (and here’s its link on Google Docs, which you can freely use and adapt): anybody who’s following the idea so far might be wondering, “But how are you going to manage remembering the privacy levels chosen by the parents for each student? That seems like a nightmare.”

Here’s how: use Diigo. That’s what I’m going to do, anyway. Diigo now allows us to leave annotations (”stickynotes”) on web pages that are not attached to any highlighted texts, but just float on the page as a little yellow speech bubble. So I’m going to put a private, floating stickynote on each student blog’s homepage telling me the privacy levels chosen for him or her. It looks like this:

–hover over the speech bubble, and it shows you your annotation, eg.: “full name, pictures, videos okay, self-moderated comments,” or whatever.

So here’s the letter. If anybody wants to suggest changes, or collaborate on them, I’m all ears.

______________________
Student Name

Parent Consent for Student Weblogs

Dear Parent(s),

As part of the 21st Century Literacy initiative in the high school, your child is required to practice a new form of writing called connective reading and writing.

What is Connective Reading?

Connective reading involves finding writers on-line who specialize in a subject (or subjects) chosen by each student, and subscribing to those writers via RSS (Real Simple Syndication), and regularly reading those self-chosen writers’ new articles in the students’ RSS reader.¹

What is Connective Writing?

Connective writing involves students writing, on their weblogs (”blogs”), about the writers and ideas ideas they read in their RSS readers. When writing about these writers’ articles, students will make hyperlinks (basic web links) to the articles they are writing about. And here’s where the power of 21st century writing comes in: the writers your child links to will quickly discover that they have been written about (through a site called Technorati), and in most cases, will visit your son’s or daughter’s weblog to read what they wrote. Why is this powerful? Because: if your child’s writing succeeds, the writers they’re writing about will comment on your child’s ideas and writings; and in the best cases, some of these real-world writers will take an interest in your child - after all, your child shares an interest with them - and will become mentors, guides, and supporters of your child’s learning through regular visits and “conversations” on your child’s weblog.

How Do Students Benefit by Connective Reading and Writing? Self-directed Learning, and Networking.

In short, it’s a way for your child to read more about subjects they have a genuine interest in; to learn more about that subject through reading about it; to write more - and better - in order to attract readers in the world who share their interest; and to develop a real-world network of adults with expertise in the subject your child wants to learn about.

Choose Your Child’s Level of Privacy

By school policy, your child will not be allowed to reveal personal information such as address, birthday, phone number, or email address. However, opinions differ about the use of a student’s full name, and about images of students in photos and videos - so we are offering you choice in these areas.

Please read the brief “for and against” summaries about names and images below, and check the option you prefer:

a. Name: If the student’s full name is used, his or her weblog will show up in Google and other search engines. Pro: For talented writers with maturity and good judgment, this can be a benefit, as a sort of “online portfolio” of the student’s work. Con: For students with less maturity, skill, and/or judgment, showing up on search engines may not be desirable. A “first name only” might be a better choice.

CHOOSE ONE OPTION ONLY:

___ MY CHILD MAY USE HIS/HER FULL NAME

___ MY CHILD MAY USE ONLY HIS/HER GIVEN NAME, NOT THE FAMILY NAME.

b. Image (photo or video): Pro: Like sharing your name, sharing photos and videos of yourself - an “author” photo, a “greeting to readers” video, for example - can be helpful in establishing connections with readers. We like being able to connect a face to a writer, to see and hear the writer on occasional video or audio clips. Con: Similar to use of full name, students with less maturity or poor judgment should perhaps not publish images or videos of themselves.

CHOOSE ONE OPTION ONLY:

___ MY CHILD MAY USE HIS/HER IMAGE AND VOICE IN PHOTOS AND VIDEOS

___ MY CHILD MAY NOT USE HIS/HER IMAGE IN PHOTOS AND VIDEOS, BUT MAY SHARE HIS/HER VOICE IN AUDIO CLIPS

___ MY CHILD MAY NOT USE HIS/HER IMAGE OR VOICE

c. Screening (”moderating”) reader comments: In connective writing, reader comments are the way learning networks are formed. While rude or inappropriate comments from the world are extremely rare, they are still possible. One option is for teachers to moderate (”screen”) all comments on a student’s weblog articles before he/she sees them. A second option is to allow students to moderate their own comments. A third option is to simply not moderate comments at all, and let them be published as soon as readers leave them.

Student Moderation: Pro: encourages responsibility, ownership, and maturity; Con: sensitive students might be unable to deal with inappropriate comments (remember, these are extremely rare).

No Moderation: Pro: Readers like to see their comments immediately after they submit them, which encourages more commenting; Con: rude or inappropriate comments (e.g., “spam” or uncivil remarks) might appear without the student’s immediate knowledge.

Teacher Moderation: Pro: shelters students from the possibility of a rude or inappropriate comment; Con: treats students like children instead of mature young adults.

CHOOSE ONE OPTION ONLY:

___ MY CHILD MAY MODERATE HIS/HER OWN COMMENTS

___ I WANT TEACHERS TO MODERATE MY CHILD’S COMMENTS FOR THEM

___ MODERATION OF COMMENTS IS NOT NECESSARY

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at [ EMAIL ADDRESS OR PHONE NUMBER HERE].

Please print your name, signature, and date in the spaces below. And thank you for your cooperation.

[SIGNATURE BLOCKS HERE]

¹ Want to know more about RSS readers? Ask your child to show you his/her Bloglines account. You might decide it’s a powerful tool for staying abreast of the latest information about your own interests - many professionals around the world now use RSS readers in their daily professional life to remain competitive and up-to-date.