Workshop Blogging
Topic: Blogging Basics
I used my new blog during a workshop yesterday. Click on the link to see the digital immigrant examples people posted. It took just a couple of minutes to explain how to post a comment. Once we finished, we used the comments for a discussion.

I used Blogger.com to set this up because I wanted to model a free tool that was ad-free (Tripod's free blog tool isn't). However, I discovered that to post a comment to this Blogger blog, people either have to sign up for an account or post anonymously. Tripod allows posters to identify themselves without setting up an account. Is there something in the Blogger.com set-up that I missed?

The Committed Sardine Blog
Topic: Blogs for School Leaders
For some time now, Ian Jukes has offered an online newsletter called the Committed Sardine. A couple of months ago, it faded into CyberSpace. Then tonight it reappeared. The Committed Sardine has been reborn as a blog.

Published fairly regularly, Ian collects articles about technology use in schools, writes a commentary on each piece (or invites other tech leaders to do so), and then puts it out there. An interesting read!

Blogging your Brainstorming
Topic: District Communication
Last week I used this blog to gather ideas from participants in a workshop I conducted in Minnesota. It worked really well!

I plan to continue doing this, but decided it might not be such a hot idea to use this blog for that purpose. So I've created a new blog using Blogger.com. The sole purpose of this new blog will be to offer participants an opportunity to share ideas and create an archive they can return to at a later time.

I thought about making a new blog for each group, but I'm not certain that it's a good idea to litter the cyber landscape with a bunch of single purpose blogs. Also, participants can then review not just their own ideas, but also input from folks they've not met or worked with.

I think I see lots of potential here. Particularly in terms of giving a voice to those adults (and students, for that matter) who never speak out in large groups.

Weblogs: The Possibilities are Endless
Topic: Classroom Blogging
Today is Pete and Sandy's last Blog Wednesday in the series. They're finishing up with a
look at a blog resource from Anne Davis. It's called Weblogs: The Possibilities are Endless. This site contains notes from a NECC presentation that she and Sandy Peters did last summer. You'll find great discussion and resources here about teaching with blogs. A great blog to share with teachers!

VOIP
Topic: Emerging Technologies
I've run across several interesting emerging technologies that don't necessarily relate to blogging, but that may be of interest to school administrators, so I'm adding a new topic.

I'd heard of VOIP (using the Internet to place voice calls), but hadn't paid much attention to it. Now that I live on an island where my cell phone doesn't get a signal and the best long distance rates I can get are 8 cents/minute for domestic and 75 cents/minute for international calls, I'm suddenly very interested! My brother (a true geek) told me about Skype. This free program allows you to make computer-to-computer calls free anywhere in the world. The Skype out feature enables you to make computer-to-telephone calls for 2 cents/minute, again anywhere in the world.

It works best with a highspeed connection. You also need a headset with a microphone (about $20). In addition to working on the island, it was great when I was in a remote spot in Minnesota earlier this week, couldn't get a decent cell signal, but did have a high speed Internet connection.

It also has a conference call feature, which is why I think administrators who aren't dealing with some of the issues I face might still be interested.

New Blog for School Leadership
Topic: Blogs for School Leaders
A new blog is starting up. The School Technology Leadership Blog is sponsored by STLI (University of Minnesota) and is touted as being a one-stop source for school technology leadership issues. It's got just a few entries now, but there are plans to monitor a wide range of online resources and post information there. Check it out!

Mozilla's Firefox Browser
Topic: Blogging Basics
I downloaded an RSS Reader a while back. It works well, when I remember to open it! My brother just told me about a free browser, Firefox, which has the capability of setting up live bookmarks. So it's an RSS Reader, but not a separate piece of software to remember. I downloaded it and it works really well. It's also supposed to help avoid some of the security issues found with Internet Explorer. You might want to check it out.

A Book about Blogging
Topic: Classroom Blogging
It?s Blog-Wednesday again!This week, Sandra Gluth points us to a Blook:

"Well... here is an incredibly helpful blook (book about blogs) written by
fifth grade students from J. H. House Elementary school in Conyers, Georgia.
This is a must-have for any teacher even considering using blogs in the
classroom."

(Mac users - I had trouble getting the blook to load in both Safari and
MSIE. However it did work when I tried FireFox... )

Blogging in Workshops
Topic: Blogging Basics
I decided to try using the blog to gather information from participants during a workshop. The post for November 14 posed a question about multiple measures that I wanted to have them respond to during the session. In the past, this would have been a large group brainstorming session. This time, I asked them to talk in pairs or trios, come up with ideas, and then post a comment to the question. Despite the fact that only 3 of the 70 participants had heard of a blog before (and none had used one), they were able to do this with about 3 minutes direct instruction on how to make the post. Besides providing everyone an opportunity to contribute, and the ability to use the responses right then to have a brief discussion, there's now an archive that participants can return to later. I'm going to do this again! And everyone wanted to learn more about blogging in a future session!

How Do You Measure Student Growth?
Topic: Classroom Blogging
There's a great deal of emphasis placed on standardized test scores as a measure of students growth. However, there are many other indicators of student growth that, when considered along with test scores paint a more accurate picture of what's happening at your site. What are additional sources of data we can use?