Update on Workshop
Topic: Personal Blogs
Well, the workshop was yesterday. Interest is high, people registered to set up their blogs. Someone did ask about finding personal interest blogs. Thanks to Tim's comment last week, I suggested starting with blog directories on a free blog host.

Now comes the real work. One district person has volunteered to do some blogging with the principals on issues they need to be working through anyway. They said they were game, and that I could lurk. I'd love to see them take off with this.

Workshop blogs
Topic: Personal Blogs
On Tuesday I will be having a group of administrators set up their own blogs. We'll be using them that day as they work on developing personal vision statements for technology use at their sites. Before starting, they'll have an opportunity to review several existing school, classroom, and administrators blogs.

Knowing that the average blog lifespan is 2 months, and also that there are thousands of blogs out there with just one or two entries and nothing more, I'm wondering how to hook them into continuing to use the blog. I realize that they need a compelling reason to continue. It helps that we're doing this based upon their request to try it out.

How do other PD providers entice workshop participants to stick with it? All ideas welcome!

Podcasting
Topic: Emerging Technologies
I've been meaning to post something about podcasting for quite some time. I'm glad I waited, because now David Warlick is blogging about Podcasting. Check it out!!!

Skype Catching On
Topic: Emerging Technologies
A while back I posted something about Skype- a free download for both Windows and Mac that allows you to call computer-to-computer (free) or computer-to-telephone (about 2 cents/minute) anywhere in the world. I've now tried both the Windows and Mac versions and both work well- although if you need help with the Mac version, you're pretty much on your own. The online live help people are good with PCs, but don't know Macs.

Now I see that Will Richardson is also interested in Skype as a classroom tool. You might want to read his postings on Weblogg-ed, How Ex-Skype-ing and Podskyping Solution. As a teacher, I see exciting possibilities. As an administrator, I see some issues that may need to be dealt with before having kids Skyping.

Digital Accents Aren't a Bad Thing!
Topic: Blogging Basics
Last week during a workshop I asked participants to do an activity that I've been using fairly often. After discussing the concept of digital immigrants and digital accents, I had them blog examples of their own digital accent. One person was totally stumped! She got the idea that having a digital accent- even a fairly mild one- was a negative thing. Didn't want to share any ideas about how hers might manifest itself. After reading what past workshop participants have contributed, she did allow as how she prints her online calendar.

I find myself thinking about the barrier this may create for this individual. A digital accent isn't a bad thing- it just is. If we can't recognize that, it will be difficult, I think, to understand why it sometimes gets in our way.

Blogging Principals- Workshop Experience
Topic: Getting Started
Yesterday afternoon I worked with a small group of principals with whom I have worked in the past. I'll be meeting with them several times during the winter and sping and wanted an online tool for staying in touch between meetings. I also wanted to share a new tool with them, so blogging seemed to be the ticket.

Within an hour, not only had they each set up a blog to communicate with me, but they had figured out how to invite other members of the group to subscribe to the blogs and how to upload graphics. Not bad for a group where only one person had heard the term 'blog' prior to the meeting!

It'll be interesting to see how this goes!

Blogs for Reflective Practice
Topic: Personal Blogs
My experiments with having participants blog responses to questions posed during workshops seem to be working well. Tomorrow I'm going to take the next step and ask a group of principals who have never blogged before to create personal blogs to use a tools for reflection during the winter and spring.

This is a group I've worked with previously. Their skill range is quite broad. Last year we used an e-mail list to stay in touch between workshops. I'm curious to see how they will respond to this environment. I think I've planned for most contingencies. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I may have them use my workshop blog to post responses to the initial workshop activity as well...

New Blogging Tool
Topic: Blogging Basics
MSN just released a beta version of a blogging tool called Spaces. I heard a piece about it on NPR yesterday. It seems that Microsoft is trying hard to position this for families and has some built in filtering that, for example, disallows certain words in blog titles.

The reviewer liked the tool overall, but did take exception to the user agreement which apparently states that Microsoft owns (and may use) the content of blogs created using Spaces.

Has anyone tried it?

Teaching Writing Using Blogs
Topic: Blogs for School Leaders
Administrators who are looking for examples of how teachers are using blogs as a teaching tool will want to check this out: nwpHelp Blog.

The blog examples linked here are categorized by grade level and/or program type.

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?