Blogbinders.com is a link I found on Peter Ford’s site.  It is so cool. You can turn your blog into a bound book.  Peter’s right, it could have great implications for education.  I’m thinking how much fun that will be to give to my 85 year old mother who is still blogging away at Vera’s Corner! 

Now I know that there is no way I can get to this conference in Switzerland, but one can dream…

Seb posts on a Symposium on personal Webpublishing and Weblogs at EdMedia 2004  Listen to these topics….

• Personal Webpulishing practices and conversational learning by Sebastian Fiedler and Gabi Reinmann

• COLLABOR: Cooperative Learning and publishing by Hans Mittendorfer

• Integrating Webpublishing tools in higher education by Priya Sharma

• Observational Learning in Personal Webpublishing by Sebastien Paquet

• What can be learnt by reading weblogs? by Lilia Efimova

• Weblogs and learning culture by Oliver Wrede

• Blogging and reflective learning by Adrian Miles

Wow!  I want to hear each and every one of them. Seb also pointed us to EdMedia 2004 Symposium proposal (pdf) which contains a more complete look at what they are going to present.  The whole presentation looks outstanding.  As I said, one can dream……. so I will have to count on Seb to fill us in later with as many details as possible. I learn so much from him.  His weblog is an excellent learning source.

Yesterday Dave Winer called for a vision for the next generation of blogging tools.  At my last check he had an incredible response – 93 comments and growing!  Wow!  Some of the requests, if implemented, would be fantastic. It just has my mind clicking. Check them out to see if you can think of anything to add.
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I came across an interesting site from from Yahoo! Picks called Memeorandum with the tagline…Fresh brewed news plus stewing views

This news site takes the most-linked-to-stories and then displays comments from bloggers on the topic. No attempt is made to separate so-called “straight news” from op-ed, editorial, or other pieces that disclaim objectivity. Any judgment of fairness is left solely to the reader. Memeorandum was created and is operated by a media amateur with no party affiliation or political experience and the site states efforts were made to include voices on both sides.

Hmmmm. This could make for an interesting assignment for students.  Pick a news item and then try to find two opposing weblog views. Or better yet, pick a news item and then write two posts that include two opposing views.  Hmmmm… other possibilities abound…..

Nancy of blahblahbog has empowered some of her elementary school teachers with weblogs and they are blogging away and showing their students how to make connections with comments. Her post here tells about these creative California bloggers.

The Mozart Concept/Question Blog comes from Miss Gomez’s second grade class. They’re blogging about poetry, the arts in their school, meanings of words, and animals who camouflage and those that don’t and why!  What fun!

Learning is Fun is the interesting work of a third grade teacher and her class. They have just finished a language arts unit on imagination. On her first trek blogging with her class she poses the following question: What is imagination and how do you know?  You will have to check out some of their clever answers.

We’ve Got a World of Ideas comes from Mrs. P’s 5th grade bloggers.  They are sharing idioms, comparing states, and will be collaborating with my Wrinkles group. Hooray!

It is so good to see some more elementary sites emerging on the scene.  Good work, Nancy!

Soon I’ll be spotlighting some of the weblogs coming out of the online session Creating and using weblogs in ESL/EFL.

Came across an interesting bit of information <via> PC World.

I usually just do quick searches on google.  A quick search on Feedster looked very promising though. I’ll be using it more. What have you found to be the best search methods for weblogs (other than other weblogs, of course )?

I think Will and I must be on the same wave length with comments. Yesterday on his Journalism 2 weblog he assigned his students Something Different.  He asked his students to go on a quest……. ”to read their colleagues Weblogs and find some real gems that the rest of us can benefit from.” His students are ”commenting away” and making some really astute observations.

I loved reading the comments his students made and guess what!  I am going to take some of the comments back to my Wrinkles students as good examples. There were so many good comments and I could only pick a few. All of his students need to know that every single one of them had good things written, but I only have a two hour session.  I have probably tried to squeeze in too many already.  Choosing was definitely not easy. Here’s the lesson, Learning from other student voices!,  for my students.  It’s going to be fun! There will be a whole lot of learning going on!

So Will’s students are being teachers again, although indirectly this time.  That is what is so cool to me – using the different voices to learn from each other.  We just have got to get more students voices in this whole mix. Will is doing a super job with his students. The students themselves are wonderful writers. They’re fast becoming one of my favorite reads.

I just noted Will’s post today where he follows up and reminds his students of the collective greatness of his class and how they need to encourage and continue to share. This is what educational weblogs are all about.. the voices.