EduBlog Insights

Today I am wandering away from the K12 Online 2007 Conference because I know it will be there for my return. Just one of the great things about that conference which I consider to be one of the best around!

I am enjoying browsing through the Edublog 07 Awards nominations. I have not seen a lot of them but happy to still see several favorites of mine listed. As I have said before you never have all you would like to see listed but I love the spirit of the awards in recognizing the edublogger community. This year they are releasing a list of all nominations via del.icio.us shortly so that you can check out all the entries that did not make the list this year. Good move and we appreciate having more good sites to check out.
Josie Fraser and James Farmer are hosting it this year. They are having to make some difficult decisions right off the bat with having to decide to limit all polls to one vote per IP. I appreciate all their efforts to make this a celebration of edubloggers. It is a lot of hard work on their part and they are most appreciated!

Congratulations to all the finalists! All the nominees are listed on this page. Voting will conclude on the 6th December and the awards ceremony will be on the 7th (in Second Life). You can get a subscription to the awards feed here to be updated on additional news and information.

I’m back in the K12 Online 2007 Conference sessions. My day started off listening to Brian Crosby’s keynote, “The Why’s and Wherefores.” It was awesome! Of course I loved hearing and seeing the fifth graders as that age is the group that I have done most of my blogging projects with and they are the best!

He zeroed in on some new and engaging ways to use the tools of blogging, digital video, online video conferencing, wikis, and Flickr.

He pointed out the lack of audience or having reasons for students to think critically about their work as one obstacle in our classrooms. Also the lack of voice for student concerns and opinions was another obstacle. Blogging lets students share their work and get feedback. They get heard. They are amazed at how many others are reading their work and this gives them a new sense of ownership that challenges them to improve. I like the way he put it so let’s spread the word! I’ve seen that myself over and over and it is empowering for learners. I couldn’t agree more.

I love what he said here:

The kicker is the feedback they can receive about their thinking. Having them blog stories and poems is a powerful tool but what if you have your kids write about their understanding of a topic in reading or science or math or history or a current event or even a field trip or investigation. Now others can question them and force them to think deeper and support their thinking. What a great opportunity to teach students about the ethics and civility required in questioning and discussing the topic with others.

and there’s more….

If motivating the students to write and care about their writing is an obstacle for you, blogging just might be the thing you’re looking for.

Next Brian focused on the higher learning skills like designing, editing, and analyzing that the media of digital video affords. His slant on the importance of creativity is crucial and he points us the Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on creativity. Don’t miss that!

What I liked best about this presentation is how the student work was front and center. He showed great examples and explained one evaluation part where students had to have another studentwho was not directly involved with their movie help evaluate it. Students were to get feedback from them on their understanding as they plowed through each clip of the movie. That’s putting the students into their own evaluating and learning frame. Be sure to check out his students’ work. It’s inspiring.

His use of Skype to make Celeste, a leukemia student an integral part of class is yet another example of his using the tools to make a difference. It is inspiring.

His use of wikis and Flickr to create community service projects not only enhances their learning but puts them on the path of becoming life-long learners. What could be better?

Brian ends with this thought provoking question:

What obstacles can you and your students overcome with these new tools?

Thanks Brian for such a thoughtful and inspiring presentation.

I have pushed everything to the side and I am determined to spend some time on K12 Online 07 this week. What a joy! Many have taken off for the holidays and we have a little down time. The research is on hold until the beginning of December so I am surfacing for a bit.

I selected Karen Richardson’s presentation “Crossing the Copyright Boundary in the Digital Age”. She starts off with a video giving a clear and concise overview of the contents of her wiki. The wiki includes a humorous yet very informative spoof of copyright by Eric Faden that includes a series of clips from Disney movies. Then she includes a copyright quiz by Hall Davidson that will let you know your own understanding of copyright laws. Then it moves into a great introduction to Creative Commons. You see a movie and this link will take you directly to a search engine to find Creative Commons licensed materials. The next part gives you a tour of places you can find copyright-friendly materials like Wikimedia Commons and Internet Archive. Then she moves into open education resources commons like Yellowstone National Park, National Archives website, and the Library of Congress. I have been spending lots of time on all these sites this morning - it is a terrific resource. Go follow her links to see all the resources.

Karen has created a dynamic resource that will be so helpful to all of us. These are a “must-see” for all educators. Thanks Karen for providing such a timely presentation. I know I will be using it a lot with students and other educators!

Photo credit: joy from Tigr’s Photos

I have been in so many new and different learning environments over the past 5 years and I have to say that it is an incredible journey. I still can remember the day I was introduced to blogs back in January of 2002. I remember thinking hmmm, this has possiblilities. I wonder how I could use these to get kids involved more in writing. Little did I know then how life-changing this journey would be.

I am currently working every moment we can schedule with Ewa McGrail, the professor here at Georgia State University on all the research data we compiled from the project last year. It is incredible the amount of data we have. We have submitted one article already, have lots more to work on. We are currently working on a book chapter. It takes a tremendous amount  of time and heavy thinking  as we analyze the data, continue transcribing and searching through the materials, the interviews, the podcasts, and many other records. Writing is grueling because you want to be so thorough and get the words right to capture the moments and truly portray what happened. Again I am learning so much and just processing all that is quite a lot. Sometimes I have to just step back, catch my breath, and say yes we can get this right. Ewa is teaching me a lot and great to work with as we try to schedule as many moments together as we can. That’s the other part - getting our schedules to work together when we both already have lots else going on at the same time. We both have it as a high priority and would love to be able to have this part full time but that’s not the real world, right? I still struggle with just what is OK to blog about and what is not. Anyway I just wanted to let you know why I am so “absent” from blogging lately. I am thankful I could be a part of something like this. We need more research in this area. As I cull through other research I am amazed at what I am finding that somehow escaped me before. As I said the learning part is absolutely awesome. I will get back to my normal blogging in time but right now it’s just too much.