It Was Amazing

Kristin Leclaire (who needs to blog more often) just posted about her 10th graders reading The Kite Runner. I wrote about this last year, but this year she knew about Rob ahead of time so could plan a little better. As Kristin writes:

I explained that our contact, Rob Dodson, had contacted me last year after reading my class blogs, and that he was a military officer stationed in Afghanistan. I had invited him to become a part of our discussion this year, and he immediately accepted the invitation.

Kristin goes on to describe the interaction Rob had with her class, and the effect it had:

For the first time in my teaching of The Kite Runner, students were genuinely, authentically interested in the cultural background of this book.

. . . Ask any of my 4th hour students how they liked The Kite Runner, and their faces actually light up as they respond with an enthusiastic, “It was amazing.” And it was.

Go read her post for more details, and here's one post on her class blog where Rob addresses some student questions.

As I've said many times before, why aren't we doing more things like this?

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor . . . Tonsils

Maura Moritz's daughter just had her tonsils out. Being the good Mom that she is, she's staying home with her until she's feeling better. Being the good teacher that she is, she didn't want her class to lose out on valuable instructional time. They were scheduled to do a fishbowl with live blogging over Fahrenheit 451, so what to do?

Well, it's a fishbowl with live blogging. The first thing she can do is participate in the live blog (period 3, period 4). The second thing she can do is Skype into class so that she can see and hear the in-class fishbowl discussion.





Just one more example of how Skype is becoming more and more valuable in a school setting. Tell me again why Skype is blocked by so many school districts?

Warrior Work 10-13-09

I often write on this blog about various things that teachers and students in my school are doing. But I find that I don’t always post as often as I could because I want to write a well-crafted, meaningful blog post to go along with each one. Since I can’t always find the time, or the necessary wisdom, to do that, many things that I could share end up not being shared.

While I still plan on writing those more meaningful posts when I can, I’m going to try to do a better job of just quickly sharing links in occasional “Warrior Work” posts like this one. So, here goes.

Anne Smith is wondering about writing conferences:

With increasing my student numbers in all my classes, this semester I have had student conferences at every single off hour plus before and after school, so I know that the conferences are meaningful. I am just wondering if I need to focus more on the preconference or post conference. Maybe I should let the kids pick which one works better for them?

Students react to the poem “Invictus”:

Choose a line from it that captures the theme of the piece, makes you think about your life, America, our freedoms, etc.

Breaking the Frozen Sea:

According to Franz Kafka, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” What you think this quotation means? Which short story or personal essay (“Lamb to the Slaughter,” "Born of Man and Woman," "The Lady or the Tiger," "The Utterly Perfect Murder," "Fish Eyes," "The Scarlet Ibis") has broken the most “frozen sea” inside of you?

Post Puritanism:

Pretend you’re living in the decades following the Salem Witch Trials.

You’re well educated (obviously), and, as such, you have the power to recreate society.

What concerns would you have about the way the past decades were governed?

The way community was formed?

The way people were punished?

How people gained and maintained power, etc.?

What might you change?

Soldiers’ Bodies:

Should the U.S. military put soldiers in harm's way in order to rescue or recover other soldiers? Why or why not?

Periodic Trends

Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

Will and Bud both have thoughtful posts up about "the speech" next week. I'll just point you to some fifth graders at East Elementary in my school district who will be watching the speech and live blogging it. They'll watch, ask questions, and - knowing their teachers Chris and Niki - have a meaningful discussion about working hard and the importance of a good education.

Huh.

I Hear Arapahoe Singing

Last night Kristin Leclaire asked her American Literature class to write their own version of Walt Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing." Their poem is called "I Hear Arapahoe Singing," and each student in the class contributed his or her own verse using the class blog. In an email, Kristin shared that "in class today, we analyzed our poem, and many students realized that all of their verses emphasized the insecurity of the individual but the strong, driving force of our pride as a united school."

Please consider heading over to their class blog and leaving them some constructive feedback.

Fifty-Nine Minutes: A Student Teacher Blog

I blogged previously about Randon Ruggles, a student teacher that’s working with Anne Smith and Kristin Leclaire this semester. Well, Randon has started a blog, Fifty-Nine Minutes (great name, btw) to document his experiences as a student teacher. As he told me, “I thought that it would be a great way to reflect on my student teaching. Besides, if I’m asking the students to do it, why shouldn’t I?”

Here are a few excerpts of what he’s written so far. From his first post, back in early December:

Wow, let's just say that after meeting with my teachers I know that this will be a great experience, but on the same side of the coin I am a little nervous. This is an awesome school and yes, I do have some experience, but I am still just that - a student teacher. Nothing else, and nothing more. I have written lesson plans, taught before, and I love interacting with students. This is going to be amazing, but at the same time I don't know what I am going to do.

Each day I will see my students in fifty-nine minute blocks. I will be teaching four periods and be seeing probably around 120 students I am responsible for daily (the real number is still TBD). I can't wait, this is going to be amazing. I actually get to plan, teach, and lead the class.

When I look at it though, it comes down to is this:

I have fifty-nine minutes
...to teach.
...to connect with my students.
...to engage my students.
...to make a difference.

Fifty-nine minutes starting January 5th, 2009.

No more, no less...fifty-nine minutes.

While I would quibble with the statement that he only has fifty-nine minutes with them (we aren’t restrained as much these days by the bell ringing, learning can continue after the bell, plus of course how much interaction he can have with them outside of class), I think it’s a timely (pun intended) reminder for all of us that we need to make those minutes count for our students.

From First Day at AHS!:

All in all though, the highlight of my day (besides the principal coming and talking to me at the end of the first day) was when Anne told me that a student sitting next to her commented to her during the lesson - "Where did you get this guy, I like him." That just about did it for me, I'm hooked, sign me up to a life of teaching.

It will get harder, Randon, but keep that enthusiasm, our students deserve it.

From Day Two:

The whole point for these students, and really any students that we teach at AHS, is for them to go change the world. Yes, at first it sounds a little cheesy, your 9th graders are going to go change the world, but no they really are going to. That is the challenge ever 59 minutes that I am in that period, in that classroom, I want to change them, challenge them, and encourage them to go out and change the world into a better place. So today we did this activity from The Last Lecture called "The Crayon Activity." I had each of the students take a crayon and then put their heads down and contemplate life as a child, when it was simpler, and when they had childish dreams. I encouraged them that even now, they are 9th graders, that they can still accomplish those dreams. Don't let anyone stop you and continue to push forward. Anne, my cooperating teacher was pretty impressed I guess. I think I even inspired her. The highlight was when she told me one of the lines I told the students - "When we stop dreaming, we stop changing the world." It was another good day of teaching 9th graders. Tomorrow I get to challenge them to actually put their words where their mouths are and really start to change the world with their position paper.

Nothing wrong with cheesy. I think sometimes as educators we shy away from things because others might judge them “cheesy” or “touchy-feely.” Students are people. Teachers are people. And school should have a purpose beyond simply scoring well on the CSAPs. (Of course, I might be a tad bit biased here.)

From Day Three!:

How Anne teaches this class makes me want to return to high school and take my senior level English class again. I can't wait to take over this class in a few weeks. They will probably push me the hardest to be the teacher that I always hope that I can be. The 9th graders can and do push me, but I feel some sort of pressure from these seniors. A good pressure to perform, to teach them, to challenge them, and to not let them down their last semester of their senior year. It will be a challenge that I can't wait to reach head on.

Last semester seniors can be a challenge, and I think senior year is one that many schools – including mine – need to rethink a little. (Randon does have the advantage that I believe he only student teaches for twelve weeks, so he won’t have seniors those last few weeks after spring break/prom.) But I'd like to see my school look at what other schools have done to make senior year more meaningful and relevant for students, there are a lot of good ideas out there.

From Day Four!:

There was one point today where I did not give clear directions on how to break up into groups. The students thought it was a little silly, but in the end I apologized and took the fall for it. It's always a learning experience, right?

For good teachers, I think every day is a learning experience. It never stops as long as you keep teaching (or at least it shouldn’t).

From Day Five!:

After class I really considered my fifty-nine minutes with them. Was it effective? Did they really learn the material? Are they actually prepared to start this essay? I honestly did not think so, and I voiced this concern with Anne . . . Tomorrow I will evaluate and look at how can I break down the steps and really get these students from their really large topics down to something small that they can actually research and write about. I need to take them from a topic the size of the world and bring it down to something the size of Denver - hey, that's a great analogy, I just might use that on Monday! Then from there I need to model, model, and model some more. They need to see what a true example looks like. I need to stop talking through examples and start physically writing them down for the students. Randon, don't be afraid of the blackboard - just because it's not a whiteboard or electronic doesn't mean that it will hurt you!

Think. Plan. Teach. Reflect. Learn. Adjust. Improve. Repeat.

Considering heading on over to Fifty-Nine Minutes and leaving some comments for Randon. Based on his early work, I think this might be a blog you should subscribe to. Of course, Randon, that means you’ll need to continue blogging after you finish your student teaching . . .

Getting a Jump on Student Teaching

Kristin Leclaire and Anne Smith are going to be mentoring a student teacher for the first half of next semester. Randon is coming in from out of state (Wartburg College has a program where they place student teachers in the Denver Metro area) and, like many student teachers, won’t have much of an opportunity to get the lay of the land before he starts.

So, to try to get a jump on getting to know the students, Randon developed some questions for them that Kristin and Anne then posted on their blogs. (Leclaire English 10, Smith English 9, Smith English World Literature). The questions varied slightly depending on the class, but here’s what he asked the students in English World Literature:

1. I (Mr. Ruggles) have never lived in Colorado. What is your favorite thing about Colorado
2. What do you like about English Literature?
3. How do you learn best? In what concrete, specific ways?
4. What sorts of activities in the classroom have been really meaningful to you?
5. What sorts of activities outside of the classroom have been really meaningful to you?
6. What are you passionate about?
7. What sorts of things will you be participating in or doing second semester (Either inside or outside of AHS)?
8. Next semester we will be looking at The Picture of Dorian Gray. What do you know about this book?
9. What is your favorite thing about the people of England or the country of England?
10. What is one thing I (Mr. Ruggles) should know about this class?
11. If you were teaching the class, what is one thing you would change?
12. What is one thing you want to accomplish on the first day of class second semester?
13. What are you really motivated by (besides your parent/guardian and receiving good grades)?
14. What is one thing you want to know about me (Mr. Ruggles)?
15. Finally, what one character in a movie or a book are you most like at this point in your life? Why?

Take a look at the three posts and how the students responded to the questions. I thought this was a great way to start to get to know the students and the culture of the class, and for the students to start to get to know Randon.

The Evolution of an Evolution Discussion

We are currently teaching the evolution unit in Biology at my school and I wanted to share a couple of interesting changes one teacher made this year. Jesse Craig started the discussion surrounding evolution with a live blog, where students could share what they knew – or thought they knew - about evolution. This was before they had talked about it in class at all. A little bit later he continued the conversation with a post around the idea of a spectrum of beliefs, asking students to try to place themselves on the spectrum and share their beliefs.

A little further along in the unit, when the kids had a little bit more scientific knowledge, Jesse set up a live blog with one of his former professors at Hastings College. This was from 8:00 – 8:30 pm our time one night, and he made the professor a panelist on Cover It Live so she could see all the questions coming in. The process wasn’t perfect, Jesse tried to pick and choose questions to approve to keep the conversation somewhat coherent (there were well over 300 comments but he only approved a small subset), but the professor could see all of them and sometimes chose to respond to ones that he hadn’t approved (which meant only the student that asked the question really knew what she was responding to). After talking with Jesse, we’re thinking that perhaps next time we might have the professor ustream her responses. This would allow her to respond more naturally and not be slowed down by having to type her responses. We’d still have the kids live blog their questions (and/or perhaps submit some questions in advance), but she could reply more “naturally” for her. All in all, though, it worked pretty well, and we had a good turnout among the students considering it was 8:00 at night.

Separate from his Biology classes, Jesse and two other Biology teachers also made guest appearances in our ninth grade honors English classes. They were discussing Inherit the Wind, so the English teachers invited the Biology teachers in to talk about what it was like to be a modern day Biology teacher. While some of those students were also in Biology, most were not. It was a rare chance for us to teach/learn cross disciplinary (and I’m frustrated with how rare those chances are, but that rant is for another time). Interestingly, several of those ninth grade English students who were not in Biology also participated in the live blog with the professor from Hastings College.

So, nothing revolutionary here. (Do I dare say it was evolutionary?) But another interesting example of ways to use some of these tools to broaden student thinking. First, it allowed them to explore their thinking and beliefs about an often controversial topic in a way that felt safer for most students than having to say it verbally in class. Then they were able to state where they fell on the spectrum of beliefs, again in a way that felt fairly safe. As they began to learn more about the science of evolution, they were then able to converse (at least to a limited extent) with an “expert” from the college level. Now, Jesse is pretty darn knowledgeable himself, but – just like a parent giving advice to your own child – often hearing it from someone other than your classroom teacher resonates more. (I think bringing in “experts” virtually is something we are going to try to do more and more of at my school.) And finally, for a few students at least, the ability to think about evolution in the context of history and literature.

So, I think there’s a lot more we could do with this, but it was a great start. The other interesting part, for me at least, was that I had nothing to do with it. Typically a teacher trying something new like this would ask for my help with the tech side, but Jesse just ran with it. I think that’s a very positive sign that perhaps we are slowly getting past the idea that these are “technology lessons” but instead are just good teaching and learning.

Macbeth, Music, Mathematics, and Teaching: Can a Good Teacher Teach Anything from Anything Else?

I recently posted about Anne Smith’s classes creating musical compositions to represent characters in Macbeth. I think you should take another look at the comments on Anne’s post, as the discussion has moved in several different directions since then.

After many comments discussing the process and merits of using music to think more deeply about a literary work, Gary Stager asked this question:

So, do you think one lesson from this experience might be that a good teacher can teach anything from anything else?

The students had some interesting thoughts about that. Some of those thoughts touched on the subject of mathematics, including this comment:

In math, there is one answer and one answer only.

That led me to ask a question about whether the students all agreed with that statement and asked them to think about a couple of "math" problems. Since then Gary chimed in briefly again about math, and Sylvia Martinez has stopped by a couple of times to add to the discussion, but the students have really done the bulk of the commenting.

I think it would be worth your time to read through the discussion (set aside some time, as there are currently 194 comments) and perhaps add a comment with your perspective on the various topics.

Live Blogging AWNM – Round One

As I mentioned in a previous post, four sections of our ninth graders are reading and discussing Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, including live blogging and a videoconference with the author. They are also live blogging with various folks from my learning network as they discuss the six senses that Mr. Pink believes are critical for success in the 21st century.

Last Friday was our first attempt to bring in those outside live bloggers and – for the most part - it worked very well. In the spirit of sharing what works – and what we struggled with – here’s a quick summary.

What Went Well
The technology worked surprisingly well. Sometimes when we’ve done live blogging previously (just the students in the class), Blogger has blocked our IP address after awhile because they thought we were spamming comments (sometimes 200+ comments in 50 minutes that are coming from one IP address). Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

MeBeam worked pretty well, with the only problems being a software update that messed a few folks up, as well as some firewall issues (more on that below). We used MeBeam to stream the audio/video of the inner circle discussion out to the live bloggers. That way they not only followed the comments on the blog, but were able to hear the conversation in the classroom. For those that hooked up their own webcams, it also allowed the students to see what they looked like. (We decided not to bring their audio in, figuring the students had enough to concentrate on.) We used a Logitech webcam for the video, and a Blue Snowball microphone for the audio, with the Snowball pulled into the middle of the discussion using a 15-foot USB extension cable.

As usual, the students did a really nice job with the both the in-class discussion and the live blogging discussion (with one exception that I’ll talk about below). Our remote bloggers were incredible. Thanks to Dean Shareski, Darren Draper, Julie Lindsay, Jeff Whipple, Sharon Peters, James Folkestad, Sylvia Martinez, Karen Janowski and Tim Stahmer for your participation, your probing questions, and your willingness to devote time to this. We - and our students - really appreciate it.

What Didn’t Go Well
MeBeam updated their software a couple of days before we did this. As part of that upgrade, they implemented a “motion detection” system so that people didn’t use up their bandwidth with a webcam pointed at a wall or something. If it doesn’t sense any motion for about 10 seconds, it kicks you out of the room. But that meant that if folks trying to tune in to the MeBeam broadcast didn’t have a webcam connected, it booted them out. Luckily MeBeam still has their “original style” available that works without the motion detection system. I found that out the day before, but didn’t get that communicated to everyone in time. Since the feedback from the remote bloggers is that hearing the in-class discussion was really helpful, that was not ideal for those folks that couldn’t connect. Hopefully this week we’ll do better. Also, at least one remote blogger had firewall issues that wouldn’t allow him to connect to MeBeam. MeBeam uses Flash and a pretty standard port, but apparently not standard enough.

While for the most part the student discussion was really good, they did get off-topic a little more than I expected. From previous fishbowl discussions I’ve seen them conduct, they usually do an excellent job of staying on topic. I think the difference was mostly because it was a non-fiction book, and that threw them a little bit. I wanted them to focus mostly on the concept of Design, but they spent more of their time on right brain/left brain issues. I still think it was a great discussion in all four sections, but that’s something we can hopefully improve on this week (focusing on Story this week).

What I Still Wonder About
Sylvia gave us some thoughtful feedback asking if we had thought about exploring the science of right brain/left brain a little bit more, since the extreme dichotomy of “the left brain does this, the right brain that” has been somewhat discredited. (My reading of the science is that each hemisphere is still “specialized” and operates differently, but that the interplay is very complex.) To be honest, I was more focused on the six senses and not the science, and wasn’t that worried about the science because Pink was using it as a metaphor, not a scientific “fact.” For me (and this is just me), I want to explore the usefulness and applicability of the six senses to today’s students, both in a school setting and beyond. I feel like schools are pretty “L-directed” (to use Pink’s term where he tries to avoid the “left brain” idea) and that we need to incorporate more “R-directed” activities and even policies into our schools. Not everyone agrees that that is the case, of course, but I think it’s worth exploring. But Sylvia’s comments make me question whether we should’ve expanded this project even more to include the science, and I wonder how we could’ve done that effectively (or possibly could do it effectively in the future). So if folks have suggestions – or links to good resources that explore this further – please leave a comment.

You can read Anne Smith’s and Maura Moritz’s reflection on how last week went, as well as posts by Darren, Julie and Sharon with their thoughts. If you’d like to read through the live blog posts, here are the four sections (Period 2, Period 3, Period 4, Period 5). And Dan Pink has chimed in with a question for our students (on Anne’s class blog, on Maura’s class blog).

Overall, I think it was a very successful start to the project. We’re hoping that with some tweaks to the process (like sending better MeBeam instructions to the remote bloggers) and a reminder to the students to stay more on the topic of the particular chapter they are discussing, that this week will be even better. This week we’re looking forward to hearing from two of our school board members, Dan Maas (our CIO), Kristin Hokanson, Miguel Guhlin, Ben Wilkoff, Lori Soifer (a school board trustee in Michigan), Christian Long and Jim Gates.

Think Pink: A Whole New Learning Experience

Maura Moritz and Anne Smith have just begun an interesting project with four sections of their ninth grade honors language arts students (Maura's class blog, Anne's class blog.) The students are reading Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, discussing it in class, and then writing a thesis driven persuasive essay built around one of Pink’s six senses (Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, or Meaning).

As part of their discussions in class, the students will participate in a fishbowl discussion with live blogging. This is something they’ve done previously (although this is the first time with a non-fiction book), but this time they’ll have some additional participants in their live blogging – including the author. When the students discuss and live blog Chapter 7 (Empathy), Daniel Pink will be live blogging it with them. In addition, after finishing the entire book, the students will participate in a live videoconference with Mr. Pink.

Since Mr. Pink is presumably a very busy guy, he will only be live blogging that one chapter with the students. So we’ve invited a few other folks to live blog the other “Sense” chapters with the students. This includes local folks like our superintendent, our CIO, and two of our school board members, but also includes a variety of folks from around the world that are members of my personal learning network. (Thanks to everyone who agreed to participate. We didn’t want too many and tried to get gender balance and at least some geographic distribution, but of course time zone differences cause some problems there.)

As the students progress through their study of the book and its related concepts, they will also keep a Personal Learning Journal (some will do it online, others will keep it more private). They will:

reflect on the process of reading AWNM, relate the book to your own personal lives through a variety of reactions, reflect on your brain assessments, the AWNM video, as well as try one suggested activity within each Sense’s portfolio (Design, Story Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning). Also, we will ask you to reflect on how each Sense applies to you personally through your classes and life.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, at the end of each "Sense" chapter Mr. Pink includes some suggested activities that help the reader explore and/or develop that sense further. The students will each choose one of those activities for each chapter, complete it, and then reflect upon it.

When it comes time to write their persuasive essay about one of the Senses, the students will complete a "Wikified Research Paper." They will:

publish your paper in a wiki format, allowing you to use links in your argumentative paper to your actual research and go beyond the limits of the usual typed paper. Students could add data, photos, audio and video links, etc.

The students will also use the wiki for the entire writing process.

I, of course, love this idea, and am excited to see how it goes. As always the first time you try something, I expect there will be glitches along the way, but I still anticipate this being a wonderful learning experience for our students. Whether you particularly like Pink’s book and agree with his arguments or not, I think most folks would agree that these are important concepts for today’s learners to think about. This project will allow them to think much more deeply about these ideas and hear a variety of viewpoints from around the globe – I commend Maura and Anne for taking this on. I particularly like how they close their description of the Wikified Research Paper:

Before you submit your paper, think about this. Normally you would turn your paper in to your teacher and your teacher would provide the commentary and grade your paper. This paper is different. You are producing this paper for the world. Is it good enough for the world to read? Did you submit your best work?

It's a Different Era

I continue to find the Rocky Mountain News’s approach to the read/write web very interesting. Today’s paper was a case in point. John Temple’s column (he’s the Publisher and sporadically blogs himself) talks about their version of “live blogging.”

Our Washington correspondent, M.E. Sprengelmeyer, had the idea to plant himself in the middle of the stream of candidates flowing through the first state to vote in the first presidential nominating contest. His goal would be to chronicle what it takes to land on the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Denver or the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

. . . M.E. arrived in Iowa on Easter Sunday and has been a writing fool ever since . . . The guy has written more than 160,000 words on his blog and more than 130 newspaper stories since he arrived in Iowa. The Des Moines Register was so taken with his approach that it wrote a story about him.

. . . We've experimented with live blogging on major news stories before, such as the excellent work by Jeff Smith, David Milstead and Sara Burnett on the trial of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio. The goal with M.E.'s blog was to go even farther, making it clear that the blog was the center of what we were doing.

The result is not just that the Rocky has provided, in my view, a perspective on Iowa and the presidential race worth paying attention to. It's also that we're going to approach other major stories in a similar way, starting with the Colorado legislative session beginning next week.

Traditionally, we've had one reporter cover the House and another the Senate. This year, we're going to have one reporter blog throughout the day, under the direction of a seasoned political editor, Jim Martin. Some of the accounts from the blog will be edited for the next day's paper, just the way we have with some of M.E.'s blog postings. The other full-time legislative reporter will focus on providing more depth and insight into the goings-on under the dome.

In addition, we'll also be sending knowledgeable beat reporters to the Capitol to report on stories falling into their area of expertise. So you'll likely hear from our environmental reporter or energy reporter and many others as issues on their beats arise. Developments they cover will make their way onto the blog before they're published in the paper.

On another, sadder note, the lead story in the Rocky this morning was about Major Andrew Olmsted, who was killed in Iraq on Thursday. Major Olmsted had been blogging for the Rocky since May (when he was in training) and since July from Iraq. (Update: His full last post posted posthumously on his blog.)

His goal was to share his front-line experiences with the American people.

The Rocky has also had YourHub for quite some time and I just discovered an offshoot of that titled YourSpace:

Welcome to Your Space. In this section you can submit photos of your baby, pet, or your latest vacation. It's also a place where you share news about your community through our partnership with YourHub.com.

We encourage you to have fun. That's why we give you the chance to vote on your favorite photos submitted by RockyMountainNews.com visitors. This is just the first step in what we hope becomes a major part of this Web site.

Have suggestions about what you want to see in this area? Send us a message at talktous@RockyMountainNews.com

At the end of Temple’s column he talks about sharing stories with two other papers in Colorado, but then says the following – which I think applies to the newspaper’s foray onto the web as well:

It's a different era. When editors from these papers sat down with us to discuss whether it would benefit their readers more if they shared stories and photographs than if they kept them to themselves, the answer seemed obvious . . . If we help one another, we actually help our readers.

I do have one suggestion for Mr. Temple – the online version of his column didn’t link to the different blogs he mentions (and the print version didn’t include links either). That seems like an obvious thing to add. (Back Roads to the White House and the Nacchio Trial are available, they apparently don’t have the link up yet for Live from the Colorado Legislature.)

I will continue to watch the Rocky with interest, as they seem to be actively going after using the web to provide a better product to their readers.

It’s an Honor Just to be Nominated (again)

Update 12-9-07: I'd like to thank the Academy . . .


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The 2007 Edublogs Award nominations were announced over the weekend. They have expanded to 14 categories this year – I encourage you to check them out – there are again quite a few blogs that I haven’t looked at before. Vote early, vote often.




Yes, this blog was nominated again this year, this time for Most Influential Blog Post (for Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? – I did not see that one coming). Much like last year’s nomination, I feel honored to be in such good company. Also much like last year’s nomination, I think I might rank my post as #5 out of 5 in the category (but at least it’s in the top five!).

Don’t get me wrong, I think we’re doing good stuff around here and the conversations around that post were helpful as we explore how best to meet the needs of our students. But the other four posts in this category are stellar – I encourage you to read them:

• Gone Fischin’ - from Scott McLeod’s blog Dangerously Irrelevant. (OK, I might be a little biased about this one.)
  



• How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci - from Kris Bradburn’s blog Wandering Ink.
  



• How to Grow a Blog - from Konrad Glogowski’s Blog of Proximal Development.
  



• The Ripe Environment - from Ben Wilkoff’s blog Discourse about Discourse.

Now, I will admit that it’s nice to see that three of those posts have a Colorado connection (mine, Scott’s and Ben’s) – apparently we have an outsized influence on the world (well, at least the edublog world). That fits in nicely with this year’s New Year’s resolution.

Thanks to all of you who nominated the post, whoever you are. Don’t forget to vote (and more importantly, check out all the thought-provoking blogs)!

LPS Community Conversations Blog

Shift does happen. Dan Maas, my CIO, started blogging about a year ago. Now my district has launched an LPS Community Conversations Blog:

The LPS Community Conversations Blog, which can be accessed on the home page of the district website, provides yet another way for LPS key decision makers to hear from students, parents, employees, and community members. Periodically, a new topic will be posted, and fellow bloggers are invited to share their thoughts and converse with one another on that topic.

When you go there, they are careful to list some disclaimers, which is probably pretty smart:

This blog is dedicated to community conversations about important issues in education. Please feel free to leave your comments. The postings found on this site will be in the form of questions to the community and do not represent a position statement by the district. Similarly, comments left by members of the community also do not necessarily reflect any positions of the district. Further, LPS reserves the right to remove comments that are inconsistent with Colorado law or district policy. LPS may disable this blog in the future.

The first post is about high school graduation requirements – it will be interesting to see how many comments they get.

I still have lots of questions about how best to build community – I think we are simply too large and too much a part of the greater Denver metro area to do that effectively – but I certainly applaud my district for using technology to solicit additional community input.