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RSS and Education: The Current Hype

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Eric Baumgartner discusses the Harrsch article and reflects on how he sees weblogs and rss being used in education.

The cool thing about being a maven is that, once you've established your rep and your readership, your readers start sending you content. This is the tipping point for weblogs: the content flow has reached a point where it becomes (relatively speaking) self-sustaining. Look at Barry's humor log. Most of his links are sent to him by his readers. [Designing Learning Technology ]

Joe Luft:Action Research Update

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Joe Luft has posted information about his action research presentation. One of the highlights of my year on leave from Portland Schools was having the opportunity to meet Joe and to spend a day in his classroom.

Yesterday, I presented a preliminary version of my action research study ("Weblogs: Creating Digital Paper for English Language Learners") at the Teachers Network Policy Institute before an audience of teachers, principals, and university professors. The most compelling parts of the presentation were the video clips of one of my students discussing how his weblog changed his attitude towards writing (the importance of a real audience, a sense of ownership of his writing space). For an audience new to weblogs, Pat's digital paper metaphor was quite effective. I received some constructive feedback afterwards along with several inquiries from a few principals... [Brooklyn BloggEd]

Munich Moves to OpenSource

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Seblogging: Dynamic Webpublishing, CMS and Weblogs in Education : by Sebastian Fiedler Today Sebastian Fiedler points to a Guardian article about the Munich municipal government's move from Microsoft to OpenSource software. The interesting thing here is that we are not only talking about server environments, but desktop software.

This past February I had the opportunity to visit with educators in Munich and Dillingen and it was interesting to hear several of the IT folks I talked with express resentment at the high cost of licensing Microsoft software.

The K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project is one solution that looks very promising for education. Portland has set this up in several middle school labs. The best implementation of this I have seen is Riverdale High School. A diskless workstation with a powerful office suite, web browsing and a graphical desktop environment that is easy to learn.

We hope to have a few 5th grade classrooms set up with this this coming fall.

Fan Fiction and Fotolog...

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'Harry Potter' Fans Wait Online, Fotolog and Sites for List Lovers

Writers of Potter fan fiction - stories that use Ms. Rowling's characters in new or expanded plots - are particularly tense.

Interesting piece from the Technology section of the NY Times about Harry Potter fans using sites such as Fan Fiction to fill the void while they waited for J.K. Rowling to bring out her version...

Also a bit about the use of Fotolog by a couple who are posting photos from an album they found in a junk shop in Brooklyn. The post images and then folks comment and make up stories about the images.

Hundreds more photos remain to be posted, so Natalie's online life will continue to unfold even as the person the site calls Real Natalie remains a mystery.

Mission Hill School: Going for Depth Instead of Prep...

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Going for Depth Instead of Prep Joe Luft points to this NY Times article about Deborah Meier and her work in Boston at Mission Hill School.

This is what Ms. Meier, 72, is fighting, "top down standardization," bred by state testing programs that she sees as pushing public education toward mediocrity. She is offended that many politicians leading the standardized testing charge, including President Bush and his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, (graduates of Phillips Academy in nearby Andover, Mass.), are products of private schools that are exempt from state testing. "It's like they're saying a safe, mediocre education is good enough for public schools. After 35 years, I'm not willing to settle for that. We can make city schools as good as good private schools."

Visit to Joe Luft's Classroom

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit with Joe Luft and the students and staff of Brooklyn International High School. Will Richardson also was there and we got to spend most of the day in Joe's classroom. As Joe has mentioned, it was interesting to share common issues and also unique situations.

Am heading back to Portland this afternoon. The visits to Providence and Brooklyn have been a great opportunity to think about schools as I begin to move back to a building after a few years in a central support role and also as I finish up this year on leave.

I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to visit with folks like Tom Hoffman, Joe Luft and Will Richardson,and am looking forward to seeing Will at NECC and meeting up with other educators utilizing technology in their classrooms.

Bloggers at NECC

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This past year, I have been on leave from Portland Public Schools, and have had the opportunity to work in Intel's education web group. The folks in the group are interested in learning more about the use of weblogs in education and have offered to sponsor an informal birds of a feather type meeting at NECC (National Education Computing Conference) in Seattle. I'm hoping to get an idea of the number of folks that are going to NECC and would also be interested in getting together on Monday evening (June 30, 2003) for an informal gathering of webloggers.

If you plan on attending NECC and would like to hook up with others, please let me know via a comment, trackback or email. Once I get a better idea of those interested, I'll finalize the location and then post more information.

A Web Server on your phone...

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Erik and Mark Baard: May 2003 Archives The personal server runs as a Web server on Intel's 400MHz XScale processor, and connects to PCs and wireless "information beacons" via Bluetooth and wi-fi. The device also takes advantage of the motes radio technology developed at UC Berkeley.

The personal server also makes efficient use of power: it can stream video for 4 1/2 hours without running out of juice.

Want said in a recent interview that the uptake in wi-fi, the introduction of Bluetooth into mobile phones, and the miniaturization of storage media will contribute to the commercialization of his new product. At the moment, the personal server is a stand-alone device, but Want envisions it becoming a part of mobile phones, eventually.