Hello all,
I found the quote that Doug sites in his message below very interesting. I too,
love my Bloglines RSS reader.
But this is what I really want to know and I posted this exact same TARGET just
about a year ago which got exactly 0 responses. Do any of you know of RSS feeds
that are out there that would be of interest to members of a school faculty?
Of course I'm interested in library, technology oriented blogs, but I really want
to find blogs that might be of interest to content area teachers--blogs for science
teachers, math teachers, art, p.e., music .. you get the idea. I'd love to be able
to demo use of a blog reader at a faculty meeting at some point in the future.
I will post a hit if there is interest.
Also ... sorry, I know that I've posted a LOT of Targets of late.
Thank you,
dave
Dave Wee, Librarian
Harvard-Westlake Middle School
700 North Faring Road
Los Angeles, CA 90077
dwee@hw dot com
"The fact that she had a nut for a head made it hard for her mind to grasp new
ideas."
~~ Miss Hickory, Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, 1946 ~~
________________________________
From: School Library Media & Network Communications on behalf of dougj
Sent: Thu 1/25/2007 4:43 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [LM_NET] District filtering of Web 2.0
Hi David and others,
Here is a telling post that was left on my blog:
"I think that an essential skill should be setting up and using an RSS
reader. Honestly, the greatest staff development has not been the 100+ hours
I have sat in classes over the past four years, it has been the 15 minute a
day reading of my bloglines account.'
"For, therein lies the key to my personal transformation as a better teacher
and a meaningful contributor to this global conversation."
I am always dismayed when we confuse the medium and content. Do we ban music
players because some music contains bad language? Do we ban motion pictures
because the bulk of them are frivolous? Do we excoriate cell phones because
most conversations are made up of "uh, huh...uh, huh...uh....uh, huh...."?
From the post above, at least one teacher sees blog reading as means of
improving her professional practice. Much of Web 2.0 is not of educational
value as is much of the Internet (or print world for that matter). Mine the
gems.
My sense is what many find distressing about blogs and wikis is that they
give _everyone_ a voice. That creates an virtual anarchy of opinion and
potential authority. For those who see that only "experts" as defined by
conventional credentials ought to be heard, I expect this is uncomfortable.
All the very best,
Doug
Doug Johnson
Director of Media and Technology
Mankato Area Public Schools
Box 8713, 1351 S Riverfront Dr.
Mankato MN 56001-8714
Phone: 507-387-7698 x 473
E-mail: dougj@doug-johnson.com
Web: www.doug-johnson.com
Blue Skunk Blog: http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/
Become the thing that replaces you. - Kathy Sierra
> On 1/25/07, David Lininger <tss003@tnp.more.net> wrote:
>> Doug Achterman wrote:
>>
>>> In a lunch conversation with Joyce Valenza yesterday, we both expressed
>>> our distress over the number of people who mentioned that their
>>> preference for the
>>> listserv was based on the fact that blogs were blocked in their
>>> district. Others mentioned that any websites that included a wiki were
>>> also blocked.
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure that I completely agree with blocking ALL blogs or wiki
>> sites, but I can certainly understand the thinking behind such decisions.
>>
>>>
>>> It seems to me that this is a major battle that our profession MUST
>>> engage in--
>>> and win. Social software applications such as blogs and wikis, not to
>>> mention
>>> interactive multi-media platforms like SecondLife, are fast becoming
>>> critical
>>> tools in 21st century teaching and learning.
>>
>>
>> How so? Most of us teach in schools that reference "education" in our
>> mission statements. How do these tools specifically relate to education?
>> Are ALL of these blogs and wikis really useful for education, or are
>> they just there?
>>
>>> Yes, there are real
>>> safety issues
>>> with social software, just as there are safety issues with lab equipment,
>>> automobiles, and even bicycles. But in each case, the advantages of
>>> their use
>>> far outweigh the risks.
>>
>>
>> So what are the advantages that outweigh the disadvantages and risks?
>>
>>> So what do we do? We teach safe and
>>> responsible use. If we throw up our hands and do not engage in these
>>> technologies because some
>>> uninformed techie tells us we can't, we may as well give up any claims
>>> to being
>>> instructional leaders. As information specialists, we need to not only
>>> embrace
>>> such technologies; we need to make it clear to the educational
>>> community that
>>> banning their use concedes that we are willing to deny teachers and
>>> students
>>> their greatest educational opportunities.
>>
>>
>> We also need to be careful that we don't promote something that turns
>> out to be less than helpful technology. Some of you are old enough to
>> remember laser disks. Those a bit older will remember beta/vhs battles.
>> I'm old enough to remember four-track/eight-track tape players.
>>
>> Both four-track and eight-track tape players disappeared after only a
>> couple of years because they were replaced almost immediately by
>> cassette tapes. Beta, even though it was technically superior to vhs,
>> lost out because of some poor marketing decisions, and vhs is being
>> replaced by dvd. Laser disks never really caught on, and were replaced
>> by dvd.
>>
>> Librarians, as a group, tend to be early users of new technologies, and
>> sometimes we push for something that turns out to not be able to deliver
>> what was promised. When that happens our credibility is reduced.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I am not implying that those who posted about blogs vs. listservs are
>>> throwing
>>> up their hands in response to district filtering. Their posts merely
>>> prompted
>>> my thought that we need a concerted effort to fight this battle. How
>>> about a
>>> toolkit of resources, presentations, etc. that library media
>>> specialists can
>>> download to use in their own districts? Come to think of it, maybe we
>>> could
>>> start brainstorming this on a blog. Hey, Joyce, maybe you'd like to
>>> host this?
>>
>>
>> To be honest, I'm not a fan of blogs, because they are more difficult to
>> use than a listserv. As someone else pointed out, I suspect that blogs
>> will go the way of newsgroups (anyone remember those?). A wiki might
>> actually serve a limited purpose (I'm thinking about students writing
>> their own reviews of books), but someone is going to have to review
>> every single post before it goes up. Do you have the time to do that? I
>> don't.
>>
>> Lest someone think that is censorship, just talk to the school
>> newspaper, yearbook, or television news sponsor, and ask them how much
>> they review before it is published. Why is it reviewed? Liability. In
>> our lawsuit-happy society, we have to make sure that nothing is
>> published that can't be defended in court. The vast majority of our
>> students will not abuse our trust, but there will be a few who will.
>> Would YOU want to have even a small amount of cyberbullying on something
>> you were in charge of? Of course not. Cyberbullies, like all bullies,
>> know that they are doing wrong - they just choose to ignore that
>> inconvenient fact.
>>
>> I'm not opposed to new technologies, but we need to be sure that the new
>> idea is actually an improvement over what we already have.
>>
>> --
>> David Lininger, kb0zke,
>> MS/HS librarian
>> Hickory County R-1 Schools
>> Urbana, MO 65767
>> 417-993-4226
>> tss003 at tnp dot more dot net
>>
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