Kudos to Will!
<via> Dave Winer
Dave Winer points to Will Richardson’s article “Blogging and RSS- The “What’s It?” and “How To” of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators”.
Will talks about the boom in blogs, referring to Howard Dean’s weblog and the effect it is having in the Democratic presidential race.
Then he moves to education and tells howTim Lauer features the latest in news and events as collected from a series of separate Weblogs that are hooked together using RSS. Tim’s school is Meriwether Lewis Elementary. Will explains how this makes the school’s Web site a timely source of information and it allows a number of staff members to contribute in what is a more distributed content creation model.
Next Will explains his weblog use of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees as follows:
We had selected Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees for our Modern American Literature curriculum, and I decided to use a Weblog to carry on our conversations about the book outside of class. Since we were probably the first school in the country to study the novel, I wondered if the author might be willing to join my students in our online discussion. To our great surprise, she did, and my students got the benefit of a 2,300-word response to our “big” questions about the characters and the plot in the book [http://weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/beesbook]. In addition, we set up a Weblog for parents of my students interested in reading the book for themselves, and about a dozen parents held their own discussions in parallel to my students [http://weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/beesparents].
I remember following this weblog and having to run by the bookstore that day to purchase the book to read! Great use of weblogs!
Then he features Pam Pritchard and her good work mentoring a new teacher and her use of audioblogs. Go to the article to read her good quote about weblogs!
He moves on to RSS - really good writing- kudos to Will! Go read the whole article! I love to see educational webloggers publishing!
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