Gail Desler :: Blog

http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/delicious-network-whats-your-account-name/

Alan’s great post about del.icio.us titled “Tagging It to the Next Level” has me thinking about how to better use it as a way of tracking the reading of the community. Since you can create your own network of users based on their account names, I’m thinking I could add to my network anyone who consistently saves links to relevant stuff and then offer up the RSS feed for the results. (The feed does not appear to be working right now, however.) It would also be good to know the account names of people in the community so we could use the for:xxxxxx (where the xs equal the account name, i.e. for:willrich) tag so we could send links to other people’s accounts.

If you’re game, leave your del.icio.us account name in a comment below. At the very least, it might help you set up your own networks…

technorati tags:del.icio.us, connective_reading, Alan_Levine

http://elgg.net/patrickd/weblog/117338.html

So Karen McComas and Gail Dessler, both Writing Project teacher consultants, have started posting a bit within this eLgg community. My gut tells me this might be just the tool for continuing or branching out the work we did over the last few years with Youth Voices, a high school-based student blog community. And it's, in my estimation at least, incredilbly affordable: looks like $1000 for 200 users, bare bones. It won't be easy to find the $1000, only because k12 money is never easy to find, but I think I can do it. Trying the interface here with teacher friends is helpful. It would be fantastic to do a trial run with students before the school year. I've got at least five from Galileo who say they'd do it. I bet we could get a few more from Lompoc, Elk Grove and Sacto. With the evidence of good student reflections and evaluations, it would be that much easier to get the money, maybe even some extra for tweaking for special purposes. (Dave hinted in a comment on Karen's blog about a k12 adaptation in the works. And there's a special purpose tweak example: permalinks for comments?) I'm wondering if it's appropriate to enroll students within this trial installation? And if not, I wonder if we could get a trial install - bare bones - for use for June and July? By then we'd know if we wanted to really deploy it in August.

http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/flock-is-fab/

I’ll agree with Clarence…Flock is my new browser of choice, and that just after a few hours of playing.

It took me absolutely zero time to configure it so I can blog right to my Word Press site, save bookmarks in del.icio.us, upload pictures to Flickr and (thunder and lightning) read my feeds all in the same space. I mean for the first time, I am seriously thinking of retiring my Bloglines account. Whoa! I mean the aggregator alone is worth the switch. It makes saving posts easy, gives you all sorts of options for reading what’s new (like creating your own columned newspaper interface), allows you to bookmark and blog with one easy click (which I know Bloglines has but without this elegant workflow), and just feels so integrated with the whole package. I’m taking the opportunity to REALLY focus my reading even more by trying to keep to 75 or fewer feeds. And I’m having to make some really tough decisions because I do want to expand my reading to include some non-ed stuff and relevant searches. We’ll see.

The blog interface has a spellcheck, let’s me add tags really easily, and has a spellcheck. (Did I mention that?) It’s also got a cool little clipboard/web snippet tool that I can dump stuff into for later use. My goodness…

At any rate, score one for convergence.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more as I play, but I have to say at first blush, this is a very, very cool tool.

technorati tags:Flock, convergence, browsers, blogging

http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/mosh-pit-as-classroom/

(So this is my first post using the Flock browser blog posting interface. After an hour of using it, I’m loving the browser…we’ll see how this goes.)

Kathy Sierra writes about the “Mosh Pit as Innovation Model” and I’m wondering about a “Mosh Pit as Classroom Model.” I mean, check out the Old vs. New chart that she includes and read it as an educator.

Old Classrooms vs. New Classrooms

Linear and slow vs. networked and quick–we need to create learners that are nimble and nomadic, able to take responsibility for their own needs.

Proprietary knowledge vs. shared knowledge–We need classrooms where it’s clear that we all own the knowledge and that we all benefit when it is freely shared and remixed.

Ideas as advantage vs. ideas “paid forward”–what a cool way of thinking about it, but isn’t this the way science has worked forever. Here’s what I have discovered, and I give it to you to discover even more. That’s what we’re beginning to do in every area.

Mentors vs. micromentors–every student can network with more narrowly relevant teachers outside the classroom.

Learn by reverse engineering vs. lessons learned benfit all–What could that concept do to standardized assessments? What if the entire class, collaboratively, had to pass the assessment? Just a thought…

Progress by “Shoulders of Giants” vs. progress by “Mosh Pit”–Hey, we already have the teacher as DJ concept. And if in this world of crazy fast information and knowledge, only the “we’re all in this together” approach is going to work.

Wisdom of experts vs. wisdom of crowds–This might be the toughest nut of all for educators, expecially, I would think, higher ed types. But look at Digg and Technorati and all of the other ways that reputation is moving away from the individual to the group. We need classrooms that tap into the power of socially constructed knowledge and ideas.

The rest of the post is amazingly good, as are the comments, but much that validates the thinking of our community.

technorati tags:classrooms, Kathy_Sierra, learning, read/write_web