Even if my recent “Politics Around the Web” posts have turned you off, I hope you noticed that they are a model of a very simple activity for any number of classes – current events, politics, science and math news, more – that want students to read and exhibit critical thinking about what they read. I say “simple” because all it takes is a Google News account, a Diigo account, and a blog.

This screencast shows you how it works, compliments of screencast-o-matic and Blip.tv:

Finally: read comments and leave your own without leaving your Bloglines BETA!

Finally. See the whole blog from your RSS reader (how could you go a week without new papa and writer extraordinaire Scott Schwister beaming at you from his blog? How can you miss my latest “Iraq War Costs” sidebar widget and all the other furniture I arrange for your edification and comfort?).

Better still – and this is the revolutionary moment in RSS history I’ve been waiting for, seriously – read both posts and comments in your aggregator window – and leave your own comments there too. What a time-saver and idea-expander, all in one tweak. Check out the beauty (and click both images for larger view):

Note that you have to use “3-Pane” view, “Preview” tab.

Regular readers know I don’t often blog about tools anymore (and long-time readers know I cursed Bloglines for a solid week over their ImageWall last summer, until Bloglines graciously listened and compromised). But this one deserves trumpeting from the rooftops – because finally, RSS Readers are not conversation-stoppers. THANK YOU, BLOGLINES BETA.

(And I know, I know – shared feeds on Google Reader, etc. But that doesn’t add anything that del.icio.us doesn’t already offer. And I’ll take a good comment thread over another post-only view any day. Blogging is about conversations. Don’t believe me? Check out the 20 comments in the “Science, Religion, and Goodness” post, or the 20 more in the “Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher” post – that’s where the meat is.)

[Welcome to Beyond School's new home, by the way. This is my first post since leaving Blogger. If you subscribed to the old "BS," please update your feed by subscribing to this new home on my own WordPress install. I'm excited to learn more about customizing WordPress by administering my own blog. You can expect to see many new things in the coming weeks.]

It’s only natural that the K12 Online Conference presentations feel uneven to some of us. Each presenter has a different background, level of experience, set of priorities, agenda, audience. Some hit me, some don’t.

Dean Shareski hit me on this biting Seoul Saturday morning. If a lot of the more tech-oriented presenters are the Henry Fords of this Digital Revolution, Dean is more of a William Morris. Aesthetics is the focus of his “Design Matters” presentation, and if you only watch one K12 presentation, this is the one I’d recommend. It puts the ghost back into the machine.

Dean asked for feedback from his viewers, so I gave the below on the comments section of his K12 Online presentation page. I’m pasting it here because it’s the beginning of a new project for me: The Campsite Seminars, I’m calling it for now. Or maybe I like this better:

Walden 2.0

Here’s the comment:

Dean asked for feedback as we watched, and I assume that means feedback here, though it’s strange to be first. Anyway, here’s mine.

I like Dean’s opening point: much classroom-created content (the majority?) suffers from poor design – “cheesiness” in the worst sense (think Kraftt).

(Warlick’s keynote touches on the same idea with his “competitive information products,” though the worker-drone connotations of “products” still irks me, as it focuses more than I would like on economics and money-making, more than on aesthetics and character, I would argue – but anyway….)

Christian Long’s interview suffered from poor audio quality, so I couldn’t understand much of it (we’ve all experienced the wrath of the techno gods, so I sympathize). I did catch, though, the exploitation of simple walking distance and space between buildings as a learning opportunity, and that resonated. Our own campus is very restricted by its hilltop, woods-surrounded setting, which is the opposite of the example Christian used of having to walk a mile between buildings: we’re too cramped. But WE DO HAVE THOSE SURROUNDING WOODS. That’s fascinating in this new light. I’m picturing possibilities of assigning students – in small groups, so the discussions are not diluted by too many voices and not enough time – to take voice or video recorders of whatever sort into the woods to record conversations in that setting – I can’t help but hope that the setting would influence the discussions in interesting and more thoughtful ways. Have them discuss a theme from our reading of King Lear, for example, or whatever topic might benefit from the meditative openness of a wooded setting. Recording these discussions – video seems more desirable, when I think about it – would allay most fears of “unsupervised” students in the woods. Take the footage back into the classroom and quick-edit these “campsite seminars” into short films. I’ll have to try this. It’s literally “Beyond School”

Dr. Schwier: “Does it work? Is it beautiful? Is it powerful? Is it inspiring?” This is refining my “campsite seminars” idea above. I said “quick-edit” those seminars just now. Why rush? That way Velveeta lies.

Why not assign them to be voice-overs for iMovie projects that add BEAUTY and FORCE via film, stills, music, titles? Yes, yes, yes: let’s aim for brie and camembert.

In fact, I’m seeing now that two or three class sessions of this new mode of “class discussion” – sitting on the pine needles under the autumn trees – might be best, to give students time to adapt to talking in natural surroundings, in “nature’s temple.” Talk about “educational architecture” – how about the dome of the sky over a canopy of pine?

(I’m liking this very much, Dean. Thanks for this very innovative angle. Much of the K12 conference so far has been school-2.0-as-usual, if you get what I mean.)

At 12:00 now: Planning. I’ll play along with my Campsite Seminars whim above, and apply the rest of your presentation, when possible, to it. Consider this a “teacher think-aloud.”

So the Seminars – I think they’ll actually work better for something more relevant to my students than Shakespeaere (which they and I love). I think, instead, it will work for the classroom blogging “Capstone Project” I’m currently launching with them.

The idea of that project for my high school seniors – so close to the end of their 12 year sentence of infantilization in schools – is to help them learn about whatever their passion, and their possible future (a)vocation, is, by reading real-world bloggers who share their passion(s), and writing about what they read on their own blogs.

They’ve already created their blogs, and this weekend, are composing their “about” pages and searching for feeds about their passion(s)/interest(s) on Bloglines (I still haven’t found a better feed-searching engine than Bloglines’). They’ve claimed their blogs on Technorati, embedded Sitemeter and Clustrmaps. Now they’re ready to connect.

The problem I think I’m fighting, though, is that they don’t understand the magical potential this project offers them to make connections with people in the world of kindred passions. They’ve never linked to a writer in a blog post, and seen that writer turn up a day or two later in comments.

They’ve been too busy writing 5-paragraph essays – or homework-assignments-as-blog-posts, which is the New Abomination – about irrelevant subjects to tired teachers all their lives to write about what they love to real-world readers – so they just don’t get it. They don’t know how to dream, how to let themselves be visionary; and they don’t know how dreams and visions can become realities through connective writing.

So, in short, I’m trying to introduce them to the world beyond school, but they’re so “studentified” they seem unable to see this as anything but homework because, after all, I’m a “teacher,” and they are “students,” and all of this is happening in a “school.”

Sheesh.

So I think these Campsite Seminars are better suited to serving as a “retreat from school” in both the spatial and the psychological senses. I want them to think – possibly for the first time, since so many of them are so constantly addled by the pressures of “schooliness,” the homework, the SAT’s, the college applications, the school spirit jive, on and on – about which world they want to enter when they leave school forever – in seven short months.

So back to you, Dean: How do I plan for these 70-minute retreats into the woods to bear fruit? [Clicks “play”….]

“What’s the purpose of your movie?”
–Hm. In an attempted nutshell, to figure out:
1. What makes you tick.
2. What you want to become.
3. Which is what you will read about on blogs and other sites.
4. And what you will write about…
5. For an audience you want to attract.

Okay, that’s about as far as I’m going to take this here. I see Dean asks for feedback on his blog, and on the wiki he made for this, etc, and suddenly feel like my students when they’re dealing with my tendency to have a million sites for classwork

Dean, it was a very valuable presentation. You got beyond the tools and beyond the generic edublog talk.

Thanks for that.

For more on the quest for the student blogging grail, see these posts:

Photo credits:
Cheese Wrap by chrissam42
French Cheese by Zeetz Jones
Tokei-ji by Raiden256
Art Nouveau by Face It

Technorati Tags: k12online07cl09

Google Reader keeps formatting – italics, picture resizing, etc. Bloglines doesn’t. I work on those italics, blast it. (And Bloglines readers, that “work” was italicized.)

Why I don’t like any reader I know of right now:

1. They don’t include comments (I know you can subscribe to comments, but it ain’t the same).
2. Readers miss coComments and other side-bar widgets. It’s like entertaining guests without furniture.

Anybody know any readers that show the whole blog, not just the post, in its window? Please drop a comment!

Pageflakes – your free student and teacher start page

• I am a complete idiot for not reading Will Richardson religiously. Pageflakes for students and teachers is powerful stuff.
  – post by cburell

Weblogg-ed » Using Pageflakes as Student Portal

• A gem from Will Richardson on classroom use of Pageflakes. I see a migration coming.
  – post by cburell

Extracurricular :: For technologists who do their homework : July 2007 : THE Journal

• From the article:

  The benefits of integrating technology into K-12 education are being demonstrated nationwide. Here is an illustration of the quantitative impact Texas’ Technology Immersion Pilot has had on the Floydada Independent School District. – post by cburell

Borderland » Blog Archive » Teaching the Controversy

• Note the “habits of mind” approach to ‘teaching the controversy” instead of “indoctrinating.”
  – post by cburell

New Tools for Schools

• David Jakes‘ excellent intro to web 2.0 for teachers wiki.
  – post by cburell

How-to RSS: Macromedia Flash (SWF) Movie

• Nice, but too long?

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Better Writing from Text Messaging and Blogging Teens Annotated:

University of Glamorgan, Learning Zone Annotated

• Note the implied demotion of the academic essay as the scholarship of the future.
  – post by cburell

Universities: The learning mould is smashed – Independent Online Edition > Higher Annotated

• The entire article is fascinating. Here’s a snippet:
  – post by cburell

The undergraduate curriculum has been criticised for being too superficial a way of learning, relying as it does on the student essay and examination. Warwick wants to change that and bring some coherence to what is known as research-based learning, an issue that is moving fast up the higher-education agenda. Until now, research and teaching have been separated. “The two activities will be brought together,” says Dr Neary, who is a sociologist. “What we’re developing are programmes and practices where students are working in collaboration with academics on their own research, on the academic’s research or on a piece of extra-curricular research.”

But why the futuristic play space? “If you are redesigning teaching, you have to redesign the places where students work,” says Dr Neary. “This is a room that is designed for movement and play, maybe for lectures, maybe for group work. It’s not technologically determined.”

Not all the students have taken to it. They seem to have mixed feelings about their new modernist play space, which is costing £2.5m over five years. “Some of the students are very interested,” says Dr Cath Lambert, a lecturer in sociology and academic co-ordinator of the Reinvention Centre. “Some regard it in a playful way; others were quite threatened when they first came in. They didn’t know where to sit. In a conventional classroom, you put your books on the desk and sit at the front whereas when you walk in here you say, ‘Whoa, where do I go?’”

The centre, which is part of a collaborative project with Oxford Brookes University, is doing its own research via a questionnaire into what the students think of the space. Some of them think that it has made the interaction between students and lecturers less hierarchical, according to Dr Lambert. The academics who use the centre are very positive, mainly because those who choose to use it for their classes have to want to do so – and to develop what Dr Neary calls “a progressive pedagogy”.

Those involved in designing the new room are determinedly idealistic. The designers took a deliberate decision not to have any tables in the room because tables force students to sit in one place and not move about. Tables create a barrier, according to Neary. Having no tables means that people can feel closer to one another. “This room is driven by the dynamics of the relationship of collaboration,” says Dr Neary. “There’s no place for the teacher. It’s open and democratic and dynamic.”

Apple Learning Interchange 2007 – 1-1 Learning Annotated

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Home Annotated

Madison, Wisc. – March 14 – More than 200 business, commerce, government, and education leaders from throughout the state gathered at the Madison Convention Center for a Summit on 21st Century Skills. Wisconsin recently joined the Partnership for 21st Century Skills to support efforts to revise academic standards and ensure that the state’s graduates are prepared for family-supporting jobs or postsecondary studies.

Summit participants focused on three key questions:

• What are the knowledge and skills that today’s eighth-grade students need to learn to be prepared to enter the workforce now as well as five or 10 years from now?
• What are the 21st century skills that will sustain and grow a vibrant, global economy?
• What are the strategies and actions on which business and education can collaborate to increase Wisconsin’s educational competitiveness?

The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users » Slacker Manager

• Excellent guide to getting the most out of your del.icio.us (though it doesn’t include combining it with Diigo).
  – post by cburell

Way to Wiki / Good things

• This is a nice wiki featuring different uses of wikis from classrooms around the world. Worth checking out for ideas.
  – post by cburell

An invitation to you to snoop in my new history class website’s pages laying out step-by-step instructions for how to set up and use all the tools listed above to do research.

All feedback is welcome. I’m especially keen to hear if anybody can suggest improvements in the process I use to subscribe to del.icio.us tagged searches. I’m new at it. It seems cumbersome to me.

The burn-out I mentioned in my last post showed in the sour title. Apologies for that (and shame on me–life’s too short for sourness). I did “breathe,” as Barbara advised in a comment, and sleep in Saturday. Mental hygiene seems about done; frustration tolerance, refueled.

Especially in light of the email I woke to from Bloglines this morning. I hope they won’t object to me posting it. It only seems fair to share this, since I didn’t spare them the “petulant frenzies,” to quote Zappa, of earlier posts.

Short version: Bloglines has done good. Here’s the message–quite gracious:

Hi
Thank you for your input in the [image feature] matter. We at Bloglines went
back and came up with a solution that I hope will still allow your
students to use Bloglines and not be exposed to adult content. Basically
we moved the [image feature] to a new domain [URL omitted] and
have contacted all the major 3rd party filter sites to add this domain
to their adult lists. More information can be found at
[URL omitted].

In either case, I’m sorry about how long it took for us to get matters
settled. I hope that this change may save you some of the hassle of
rebuilding your lesson plans, but I understand that your students do
come first. Thank you again for choosing Bloglines as your original
choice. I hope that you may come back to try our service as we roll out
new features in the future.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best
[dloc]

So thanks to Miguel and everybody else who read my post and took action by going to the Bloglines forum and/or their own edublogs, and expressing their views. And thanks to Bloglines for problem-solving.

I said it earlier, and still find it true: for finding RSS feeds, Bloglines so far seems vastly superior to Google Reader (though GR is still in Beta). Their “find similar feeds,” “search for posts/feeds,” and other features are unmatched by Google Reader and Netvibes. (I will say that I like GR’s “tagging” system, and hope Bloglines adds this.) So I don’t know….

I may bring my students back to Bloglines. I may let them choose what reader to use. Again, I don’t know. The focus is supposed to be on locating, evaluating, and managing information, not comparing different web 2.0 services. It’s the literacy, not the technology. And all of this teapot tempest has distracted me and my students from that vital point.

But good on Bloglines for their solution.

Wait. I haven’t really checked it out. Is it a solution? What do you think?

Final thought: it’s interesting what a few people with a few blogs can do these days. In the last month, both ePals and Bloglines have listened to us bloggers and actually problem-solved with us. Sort of gives you hope, it does.