The Savvy Technologist » Blogging

Another kid blog

Tim Wilson — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 04:55:51 +0000

Not to be outdone by other bloggers and their six-year-old kids, I set up a blog for my son Jacob recently. We’ve posted some artwork, a bit of keyboarding practice, and two podcasts so far. He’s done all the work with a little help from me on some HTML markup and audio editing. Who knows, maybe he’ll want to install some Google AdSense ads to supplement his weekly “paycheck.”

Blogging/wiki workshop at TIES

Tim Wilson — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:35:16 +0000

I had the pleasure of presenting a full-day workshop on Saturday at the TIES Conference. The session, Introducing the Read-Write Web: Weblogs, Wikis, and RSS, has an accompanying wiki that we used to track questions and resources that were mentioned during the workshop. Feel free to check it out for any nuggets that may be useful.

ties2005

UThink at the U.

Tim Wilson — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 18:10:20 +0000

Besides my day job as a tech integration guy, I’m a Ph.D. student in Learning Technologies at the U. of Minnesota. Imagine my surprise when I received a notice via email of a lunchtime presentation about the U.’s UThink project, a free blogging site for faculty, staff, and students. I’d never even heard of it.

Apparently others have heard about it because, as of its 1st birthday on April 12, UThink has 1,231 indvidual blogs, 2,200 blog authors, 17,654 entries, and 12,486 comments. Shane Nackerud has more information in his post at the UThink site. I think this paragraph is especially interesting:

Overall I am thrilled with the success of the project so far, especially considering that we really haven’t advertised its existence. It has been fun just watching UThink become what it is supposed to become. I must admit that I am surprised that graduate students are the dominant bloggers on the system given the sheer number of undergraduates at the University. It seems that undergraduates are sticking with tools like Xanga or Livejournal for their personal blogging needs probably because of issues like the lack of anonymity on UThink, or because they simply don’t know about UThink. A side effect of graduate student dominance on the system though is that UThink is much more “academic” than I would have expected. Blogs on the system have more of an academic tone than I thought they would have. This, of course, is wonderful and it provides UThink a solid niche in the ever expanding blogging market.

I get a little green when I think about how much freedom the U. has because they’re not working with the under-18 crowd. Some quick browsing at the UThink Blog Directory turns up quite a few topics that would never be acceptable for high school students blogging on an official school server. That said, I would love the chance to give it a try with our students anyway. You never know until you try.

Hopkins grad blogging in the NBA

Tim Wilson — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:50:09 +0000

Hopkins High School grad Kris Humphries was drafted 14th overall by the Utah Jazz last year. He is maintaining a blog at NBA.com chronicling his rookie season. It looks like he’s not exactly on a blistering blogging pace, but I have to cut the guy a little slack. I have a hard enough time blogging regularly, and I’m not traveling from city to city every night.

It’s interesting to look at the NBA Blog Squad roster. They’ve compiled a pretty diverse list of players, journalists, and fans. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the NBA really gets blogging. None of the blogs have any feedback mechanism at all. You can’t even email the author directly. If the NBA wants to generate genuine interest in the league through blogging, they’re going to have to create real blogs that will give the fans they’re reaching out to an opportunity to participate. This looks like 99% marketing and 1% blogging to me.

Employee blogging

Tim Wilson — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:05:38 +0000

I moved this blog from our server at school to my own server at home in part because I wanted to make sure that whatever I write here is less likely to be misconstrued as the official word from my employer. Not that I have anything critical to say about my school district, but I always felt a little uncomfortable with the old setup. It seems like most of the other edubloggers I read have made the same decision.

Even though I’m hosting this site myself, I still feel like I can’t speak completely freely. (I have to stress again that I’m not harboring any bombshells.) Bloggers who write about their work must feel this all the time. I don’t have any particular insight here, but I’d be curious to know how other bloggers deal with the issue.

Blogs vs. forums

Tim Wilson — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 13:42:23 +0000

We support Weblogs as well as online forums for our teachers here at Hopkins. I’ve had several teachers ask me lately about the difference between the two so I thought I would describe them here and ask readers for their input too. For the record, we use Movable Type for Weblogs and phpBB for the online forums.

Movable Type (MT) is certainly one of the most popular Weblog platforms. The MT FAQ explains the terms of use, but the bottom line is that MT is free (but not open source) for K-12 schools. To install MT you need access to a Web server that can run CGI scripts and an SQL database of some kind.

There are many examples of electronic forum software, but I see phpBB frequently. It’s open source (licensed under the GNU GPL), featureful, and written in PHP. Like MT you need a Web server and SQL database.

So how do you decide what tool to use with students? If you want your students to publish to a large audience and have a space on the Web that they can call their own, then a blog would be ideal. If your purpose is more focused on intense interaction among the students in your class and you would like to ensure that only your students are involved in the discussion, then forum software like phpBB is just the ticket.

Security and privacy concerns seem to be pushing teachers toward forums lately. Most schools aren’t willing to give students freedom to publish as they wish on the Web. Maybe that day will come eventually. In the meantime the wide-open nature of blogs puts them far out in front of most schools’ acceptable use policies.

Blogging the vote: 2004

Tim Wilson — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 20:20:21 +0000

Having been tipped off by Will Richardson’s post at Weblogg-ed.com, I had a look at The Blogging of the President: 2004. This looks like a really interesting resource for social studies teachers who will be focusing on the presidential race over the next year. Perhaps teachers could encourage or assign their students to post a comment to this blog?

Talking about blogs with the curriculum coordinators

Tim Wilson — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:59:26 +0000

I’m taking my “tech moment” in the curriculum coordinator meeting today to discuss weblogs and how they might be used by our teachers with their students. I think I’ll point them to Will Richardson’s blog and his long list of Weblog resources. I wonder how fast I can explain RSS and make it understandable?

Blogging in social studies class

Tim Wilson — Sun, 09 Nov 2003 03:47:17 +0000

Dr. Siri Anderson, a social studies teacher at West Jr. High here in the Hopkins School District, is doing some great things will blogs in her geography and history classes. Her blogs World Geography Times and History Happenings are a great example of using the weblog medium to communicate class activities and provide a place to collect student writing.

Dr. Anderson’s students are doing some great writing as they journal about the Civil War in history class and take on the leadership of a country in geography class. Cool stuff.

Blogging and fair use issues

Tim Wilson — Sun, 28 Sep 2003 14:49:53 +0000

We know that teachers must respect copyright when they prepare materials for their courses, but what about their weblogs (and Web pages by extension)? There’s an interesting post at the New Media Journalism blog at Seton Hilll University on Fair Use and Blogging.

How much text can you cite from another website in your blog before you’ve crossed the line and entered into copyright infringement? Is it okay to post an image you didn’t create in a blog? Even if it’s just for window dressing? Does the “educational” use of blogs in our journalism classes give our bloggers greater freedom and protection to cite text and post multimedia?

The author includes some interesting links to fair use resources online. I think we all know that the Internet is not a copyright-free zone, but it’s good to get a reminder.