I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.

The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.

Cohen’s blog is also where I first heard about ScholarPress, which provides two (so far) cool educational plugins for Wordpress.

The lesson plans are available here.

Online writing tools that allow for asynchronous and/or collaborative writing can help improve the fluency and reflection of student writers in all disciplines provided the instructors facilitating the use of these tools have a clear and practical understanding of the tools (through personal use and experience) and have established specific goals and protocols that logically relate the use of these tools to the larger objectives of the curriculum. The main advantage of these tools is that they provide an authentic audience for the writer. The best use of these tools occurs when the writer is able to explore ideas and topics in which he/she has a personal interest within the context of a network of others who share those interests that has evolved around these writings. On the other hand, the mere addition of these tools to classroom practice will not, on its own, add any educational value, particularly if the tools serve only as digital substitutions for pen-and-paper work. All of this is easier said than done.

Any thoughts or critiques are appreciated.

• No papers: I love that I don’t have to carry around folders full of papers, some of them difficult to read or missing names, etc. Also, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to collect papers or missing one student’s submission. With Google Docs, all the writings are in my account, typed, and tied to the student who created the document.
• Collaborative assignments: These are obviously much easier using Google Docs, and the collaborations can even occur across classes. Besides providing for easy critique, I like playing the “fool me” game with various forms of writing. For example, I had students write two summaries: one of a belief that strongly hold, the other the opposite of that belief. If other students couldn’t tell which was which, then their summaries were sufficiently bias-free.
• Critique: I ask students to share most of their work with me and two other students as “collaborators.” That allows us to read and insert comments, and students get our notes as soon as we make them. I find myself making more substantive comments now that I can type them out. I also make fewer mini-corrections (because that’s more difficult than by hand), but I think that works as an advantage. Instead of correcting every comma, for example, I might say: “You’ve got some comma problems, particularly with comma splices.” Then the responsibility is on the student to look up the problem, find the errors, and correct them … or at least talk to me in person if he/she doesn’t know what I mean.
• History: Not only does each document have a history of revisions, but if students keep their files tagged with a course folder, they have a history of all their writing in the course. At the end of the course, when I ask them to write a metacognitive reflection of their development as writers, they’ll have all of their work on hand to help with their reflection.

Some problems and suggestions:

• Display names: The names beside the documents are listed as “ukonia034,” etc. I had the students change the display names, but this doesn’t seem to be fixing the problem. Anyone know why?
• Organization: I’ll admit that keeping track of all the files is a bit more difficult. In the paper version, I keep a folder for each section and clip together all the student papers for an assignment. I know I can do this with folders and subfolders, but I wish there were a way to automatically filter documents from certain users into particular folders.

Still, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks so far. Anyone else using Google Docs class-wide and have some tips?

It seems to me that substantial progress of that sort requires two steps:

Step One: Agree on the problems (… which is a ton of work: exactly what are the problems, for which populations, under which conditions, and what are the actual causes of these problems?)

Step Two: Agree on the solution (… I don’t think we’re ready for this step, yet.)

I think a lot of confusion and anger is generated in the “edublogosphere” because some people are talking about the problems, some about the solutions, and some about the solutions before really identifying the problems … and it’s not always clear who’s doing what at any given point. I include myself in that. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep it all straight.

What I think is very interesting is the whole experiment: can a million monkeys typing, err, I mean, can a whole bunch of teachers and other interested parties argue their way, through various online exchanges, towards a clear delineation of the problems facing education and then propose effective solutions to those problems? Is the ‘net even the right place for that kind of work? Do you see this actually happening anywhere online? Can it happen “nowhere” … that is, somewhere in the intersection of all the blogs and networks?

I’d like to think real progress is possible outside of particular institutions, but I worry that the prolonged study, research, and careful attention real solutions require might need a more structured environment. Any thoughts? Anyone want to propose a “preliminary cannon” of education-related readings that might help with that progress?

It’s a rainy afternoon here, so forgive the overly-Romantic ponderings.

Image: “Rainy Day” by Cati Kaoe

We’ll be relying on three main tools to meet our technology needs:

1. a Google account (to take advantage of some of their “Google for Educators” offerings)
2. a Wikispaces page
3. a CMS portal running on a Joomla platform²

Google Account
We’ll use this mainly for Google Docs and Google Reader, and the iGoogle home page. Creative writing students will be required to use Google Docs for their drafts and writing workshops, and other students will be encouraged to use it as a helpful backup.³ English students will be asked to read a vareity of blogs relevant to class work and their research projects, and all students will be encouraged to use iGoogle as a personal portal to their online work.

WikiSpaces Page
We’ll be using the wiki page as a presentation platform: students will post individual or collaborative products to the wiki–products that usually have their origin in earlier work in the blog, forum, or Google Docs.

CMS Portal
We’ll continue to use the Joomla-backed WSHSBeyond site as the “home base” for the students’ online work. Through this site, students will have an extensive profile system (where they can connect with one another and plan projects), an individual blog, and a forum. All of this will be available only to site members, creating a walled garden to allow students to develop their work safely and to appease the concerns of the administration. Final products will be posted to the wiki.

I spent most of last week updating Joomla to the latest version and installing / configuring some new components. Our soltuion relies mainly on the Joomla release, Community Builder profile system, Azrul’s MyBlog and JomComment, and Fireboard’s forum.

If you’d like a more complete overview of the Joomla site, I’ve created and published a Google Doc with screenshots and notes called “WSHSBeyond Overview.”

Research
We hope students will learn to approach research as an ongoing process of reading (texts, articles, blogs, etc.), note-taking (bookmarking, collecting notes, and creating annotated bibliographies), and reflecting (writing). We’ll also introduce online tools that help this process: reading using RSS feeds (blog readers and mashups); note-taking with Google Notebook, del.icio.us, Diigo, and Carmun; and reflecting with blog-writing and draft creation (shared with project members through Google Docs).

Volunteering
So that’s our current tech plan for the new school year. What will be very different, and potentially very interesting, is that I won’t actually be teaching this year but will instead be serving as a “volunteer ed-tech” consultant. I’m curious to see how the other teachers will use these tools, and I’m looking forward to the chance to work with some of the students in a distance learning / online teacher capacity.⁴ I’ll be going into the school during the second week to introduce the students to the various tools, and may visit occasionally after that, but most of my interaction will be online this year. I’m sure I’ll be writing about what this different approach is like as the school year progresses.

1. Though many other edubloggers have been writing about the technology plans, no one that I’ve been reading has been as thorough as Clarence Fisher, and his posts helped me to clarify my thinking. Thanks, Clarence!
2. I considered OpenAcademic’sDrupalEd carefully, but decided that it was more than we need. Woodbridge High already offers online grade reports through EduLink, and last year the school purchased an account through SchoolFusion, which supplies individual teacher pages, integrated calendars, club and sports pages, etc. What we didn’t have through either service was any sort of true community, which meant very little interactive, Web 2.0-ish tools. Our solution, then, supplements the school’s current solutions, whereas DrupalEd seeks to be a fairly complete solution.
3. Creative writing students will be required to upload/save their current drafts in Google Docs and share it with instructor every two weeks. When we have workshops, students will be required to share their current draft with other students at least two days before the workshop date so that other students can read and prepare comments for the workshop. We hope this will solve a long-standing problem of overwhelming paper piles and missed copying deadlines.
4. For example, I know, and have taught, many of the students in the creative writing program, and I’m looking forward to seeing their writing this year and providing critiques when they request them.

Simplicity
I want the web presence to be as simple as possible, both for users and for future site administrators. While the current site is useful as a front-end, the user tools for site members could be more intuitive and integrated, and the back-end is fairly involved.

The site is built on Joomla, a tool I’ve used in the classroom effectively and, up until recently, was the only tool that allowed me to build a fairly comprehensive social network before social networks were everywhere and freely available. However, Joomla required that I install the software, add components and modules, configure them to work together, and theme it all to appear seamlessly integrated. Now, I can create the equivalent in Ning with a quick sign-up and a little time on the “Manage” tab.

I’m not condemning Joomla–nor am I praising Ning–but I am finding that the benefit of having complete control over the software and content doesn’t seem to be worth the cost in labor anymore given the many web-based offerings that are emerging … at least for networks intended to be used by “adults.”¹

Collaboration
I want to take advantage of the best “Web 2.0″ offerings so that NVWP can “practice what it preaches” digitally. By this, I mean: the workshops my colleagues and I have developed with NVWP have promoted asynchronous and collaborative technologies as powerful tools to help improve the teaching of writing. It follows, then, that NVWP’s online presence should incorporate those technologies. However, the question quickly becomes: which technologies should we offer? Which really becomes: which technologies do NVWP Teacher Consultants (TCs) want and/or need, and which will they actually use? Which leads me to the third item.

Reality
When I first added interactive components to the site, I was driven more by what I could create than by what the TCs actually needed. However, I thought the site could lead by example: by offering all of these collaborative tools, the site would compel TCs to use them. This proved not to be true, and other Technology Liaisons in other project sites reported the same things. Apparently we couldn’t make the horse drink.

So now, I’m trying to redesign and reconceive the online offerings: easy to use and maintain, collaborative, but offering only what the project and its constituents (TCs and parents) actually need and will use.²

Tentative Plans
Based on what we’ve seen in the past, responses from teachers, input from the board, and thoughts of other Technology Liaisons, here’s what I know we need:

• Main Website: with static information about the major components of the project, but also with occasional news, announcements, and related articles (probably in blog format); I will probably use WordPress to meet this need
• Mailing List: for parents to receive updates on the offerings of the Young Writers program, with the ability to subscribe and unsubscribe directly (without the need to contact the project); I will probably setup a “subscribe by email” option through Feedburner that delivers blog posts in the Young Writers category
• Directory: so that TCs can update their contact information themselves and find other TCs if necessary; I have no idea yet how I will meet this need … help!

That’s it. As for all the other collaborative tools, social networking options, etc., I’m beginning to think: maybe they don’t need it.

I still believe that some of our TCs would take advantage of additional collaborative offerings: a discussion forum or extended profile options or the ability to form groups. Ning can offer these things, but it seems like overkill for directory needs and too limited in the number of potential regular participants for collaborative needs.

This makes me wonder if the project should be providing these solutions at all, or if instead we should only suggest other tools and communities, pointing TCs to Google Docs, WikiSpaces, or Classroom 2.0, for example (since there is no official National Writing Project social network of which I’m aware).

Teachers, TCs, Technology Liaisons, or any other interested readers: got suggestions, recommendations, success or horror stories, etc. related to this little debate? I would love to hear from you. What do teachers need and/or want? Which of those should an organization like NVWP attempt to meet? Which tools best suit those purposes?

1. Many (most?) districts still want student networks to be hosted and maintained privately for security reasons, which I can understand, and which is why I will probably continue to use Joomla or DrupalEd for the classroom.
2. Again, I’m thinking here about a professional web presence that meets the needs of adults. My questions and possible solutions would be different if I were thinking about students.

The idea is that anyone can be a “teacher” on the site, which predominantly means creating and offering “courses” from which others can learn. You don’t have to join the site to view public courses, but as a site member you can interact with others in the course and be invited to private courses. You start by joining the site and then building courses on topics about which you have some expertise. A range of technologies are available for you to use in building the course, and quality courses will make best use of them and link to helpful outside resources. These courses become part of your “school” … so I could direct interested learners to “Hoefler’s Public School,” for example. Users can even create groups that combine “teachers” and resources into “super courses.”
In addition to the natural incentive of sharing what you know with others, teachers can also earn money based on the popularity and ratings of the course. The money comes from ad revenues, and Zee assures me that the focus here isn’t on “making a quick buck.” (The company’s attention to detail, solicitation of opinions from a range of potential “teachers,” and long-term vision have me leaning in the direction of belief.) The monetary incentive combined with the rating and commenting from users should encourage quality courses, as should the persona that a “teacher” develops over time.
As a learner, I can browse or search for courses, “enroll” in courses that interest me, and work my way through each one at my own pace. In the process, I can interact with other learners and the teacher through comments and discussions. (In addition, TTeach will eventually offer “live” courses to premium members.) The connections I make within a course can also carry beyond the course, which becomes part of the learning network and a way to find other quality courses.

As an important side note: the excessive use of “quotes” throughout this post is intentional and connects to an important distinction about TTeach. While it is about teaching, learning, and education–and the site even bills itself as “School 2.0″–TTeach is not meant to be tied to any traditional educational institution. If you’re a homemaker with no education who wants to create a course on “Perfect Pastries” (because you’re a mean baker) or “Molecular Biology and Gardening” (because you happen to be obsessed with both gardening and molecular biology), you can do it. If you know your stuff, and your course is interesting, people will sign up and give good ratings. This also means that TTeach is not in competition with any accrediting agencies. This is about learning for learning’s sake from people who know and care about something you want to know and care about.
Zee described the basic workings of the site as something resembling a blend of the concepts behind Wikipedia, YouTube, and Yahoo Q&A, though it’s not merely a copy of those technologies. As the site is still in development, and some aspects involve creating new technology solutions, I’ve been asked to hold back on the specifics. I can tell you that each user will have his/her own homepage (which acts as an extended profile), and that the homepage includes a blog, a method for presenting your bio and “teaching” credentials, a list of the courses you’re “taking,” and a list of the courses in your “school.” Also, the layout and look of courses will be fully customizable. In addition, users can take notes and annotate the courses using tools supplied by the site, so no need for external note-taking systems.

I still have a few questions/concerns, the first of which is copyright. Who owns the content created on TTeach, and what regulations will be in place to prevent others from just “stealing” my course material and presenting it as their own? Zee didn’t yet have an answer for these questions yet, but the company has considered these issues. The other big question is, of course, will the technology be able to actually support the vision? Zee seems confident, and I hope he’s right.

The last thing Zee shared with me was TTeach’s goal to share their revenue not only with teachers on the site but with potential learners. Already they have plans to create centers in Ghana and the Sudan consisting of computers open for learners to come in, sit down, and learn from the TTeach site or create a course to share their own expertise or experiences. TTeach will also be dedicating five percent of their revenue to creating new centers, and another five percent for a scholarship program to accredited universities.
It’s easy to be pessimistic and cynical about all this, and certainly that position seems safer, but given what I’ve heard so far I’m climbing out on the limb of optimism. I’m very encouraged by what Zee had to say, and hope the reality of the project follows his vision. (And just to be clear: I’m in no way receiving any kind of compensation for this post.)
So when will the first demo be available? Look for a limited release mid-May.

For a few years, I’ve been using Joomla (previously Mambo) to run an “interactive” website for students in AP English, humanities, and creative writing classes at my school: WSHSBeyond.com. This provided some “social” web work before the term caught on. Now, with additional extensions, the site provides a pretty excellent (though not perfect) social learning environment.

In case there are others searching for a way to move their students online, I thought I’d give an overview of what’s great and not-so-great about using Joomla as a solution.

WHAT WORKS WELL

First of all, Joomla can provide an excellent “walled garden” for students, and it’s particularly suited for creating a social network built around a discussion forum. Here’s how we use it:

Profile System: This is the heart of site (thanks to Community Builder). Each student has a profile to collect their work on the site and their links to other sites. In our install, students use the following tabs:

• Comments: Like most social networks, students can leave comments; I don’t attach any “assignments” to this–I think building a genuine community is part of the point.
• About Me: Provides text boxes for students to share information. (An early requirement in the course is to complete the “about me” tab in a way that reveals the student’s personality and interests). These areas allow for HTML, so that opens up room for even more creativity.
• Contact Info: This tab mainly provides links to other off-site pages, such as the student’s Google Reader Shared Items page, del.icio.us archive, and Elggspaces profile.
• Course Info: Students list other courses they’re taking.
• Profile Gallery: Students can upload images.
• Connections: This works like the “friends” feature of most social networks.
• Blog Entries: This tab collects all the blog entries students submit to the site blog.
• Forum Posts: This tab collects all the forum posts students submit.
• E-Writings: This extension allows students to upload their writing, leave reviews and ratings, and discuss the writings in the forum.
• MyBeyond: This extension allows students to create HTML pages or to build other pages that collect RSS feeds, mp3 files, and images. We plan to use this as a way to construct an ePortfolio that collects the student’s “best work” throughout the year.

Members List: Students can browse through all the members of the site, sort by grade level or class, or search by name.

Messaging: Students can send on-site messages through each other’s profiles, or send emails through a form to other students. The actual email address of each student is protected in both cases. Only if a student replies to another student from their email account will their email address be revealed.

Forum: We use Joomlaboard to run the forum. It’s simple but effective for our purposes. Each post shows the student’s avatar and links back to his/her profile. The forum uses BB code to format text and insert links, and students can attach image and text files to a post as well as “subscribe” to topics to receive emails about new posts on that topic. Only the “Course Forums” have an assignment attached to them. The other forums are available for students to use or ignore (another aspect of building community). We allow posts to appear immediately without approval, but the option to approve each post does exist.

The assignment for the English 10 and English 11 forums are similar: pay attention to popular culture, the news, your friends, etc. and make connections between these things and the theme for the course. In English 10, the theme is “perceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness” in cultures around the world; in English 11, the theme is “perceptions of American cultural identity” as defined by various groups.

Our course forums are open to the public, so feel free to stop by and read what they’ve been saying.

Site Blog: We give students “author” privileges and use the “submit news” feature that comes with Joomla to create the site blog. Currently, we use this as a way to allow students to post about topics that will interest most of the users of the site, or for teachers to post site announcements or other information that students may find interesting or helpful. The only limitation is that each post sent from a student must be approved before it will appear. However, if you’re using Joomla as a walled garden, that might be perceived as a benefit.

Wiki: We use MamboWiki, which is really just a bridge install of MediaWiki. It’s a nice, seemless install and was our main wiki for a while. However, I’ve recently moved away from this because the requirements of using MediaWiki code to format the page is sometimes more hassle than it’s worth. I understand the value of learning this (since it’s what Wikipedia uses), but I also think MediaWiki (and Wikipedia) should move to a WYSIWYG format.

WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED

While this is great for the most part, the limitations of the wiki and the blog are my only complaints about using Joomla.

Wiki: I still use the MediaWiki installation to create individual pages on the site that students can edit (for example, the “Help Using This Site” page). For the class wiki, though, I prefer WikiSpaces because they are so much easier to use. Unfortunately, this requires another login for students, but the ease of WikiSpaces seems worth it for me.

The Blog: The site blog allows anyone to comment (with links totheir profile). However, as I mentioned earlier, only “authors” and above can post, and these needto be approved by admins before they appear. This is good if yourconcern is for a walled garden with screened content, but not so great ifyou want to run Joomla as a multi-user blog platform (and the OpenWP bridge doesn’t quite cut it, either). Instead, my studentsalso have accounts on the “eStudio,” an Elggspaces site for their personal blogs and filesharing (over which they have genuine control). To make the connection between the main site and their personal blogs, students list their Elggspaces URL on their main profiles for easy linking, and include their Elggspaces feed on an RSS page in their MyBeyond tab. Again, though, this is another account and login for students.

Other than these two limitations, Joomla is pretty great. Perfect would be an integrated wiki as easy to use as WikiSpaces, with individual blogs fully integrated that were completely customizable by users and generated independent feeds (with podcast/videocast capabilities) like Elggspaces. (I keep trying to convince my programming friend to help me make that perfect tool, but he works 50 hours a week already!)

If you do give Joomla a try and discover some other ways to use it, I hope you’ll leave comments here or send me an email. Also get in touch if you run into problems, just want to share experiences, or are looking for ways to connect your classroom with others.

Happy webbing!

When I hear teachers bemoan the use of the internet to “cheat,” I wonder what kinds of assignments they’re giving that are causing the problem. I firmly believe that if a student can “cheat” on an assignment, then it’s probably not a very good assignment. (This is not to say that all my assignments are good. But I am working on it …)

If cheating means finding information and collaborating on a product, then I encourage my students to cheat and often show them how by helping them find the resources they would normally use to “cheat” with. I show them how to use IMs, wikis, and social networks to “cheat” through collaboration. Then I push them further, sending them links to academic articles in their RSS feeds related to the work they’re doing. In other words, I encourage them and help them to collaborate and find the information they need.

Why should I try to restrict their access to information? I don’t see myself as a censor, and I don’t believe in the restricting of knowledge. Why should I work to hinder their collaboration when the online and business worlds are moving towards more and more collaboration? When what we need more of in politics and international relations is exactly collaboration? And why fight a battle that I know I will lose anyway … particularly when I believe it’s the wrong battle to be fighting?

Some things to consider (courtesy of Karl Fisch):

• Current estimates suggest that a week’s worth of The New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
• Current estimates suggest that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 X 10 to thefactor of 18) of unique information will be generated worldwide this year. (That’s more than the amount estimated for the last 5,000 years combined.)
• The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years. For a student starting in a four-year college, half of what they learnin their first year will be outdated by their third year of study.
• More than 3,000 books are published … daily.

So … who’s going to memorize all of this, anyway? How many bitsof information does a student need to swallow before we deem them “educated”? And how often will we have to revise that number given the exponential growth of information?

What I want my students to do is learn how to work with the information and with others, to think through the information and interactions, to assess, to analyze, to read critically … and then to speak about or write about what they find and the conclusions they draw, to openly acknowledge the help and inspiration they received from others, and then to attempt to synthesize the information or extend the ideas.

We need to shift our understanding of what it means to be educated. We need to stop trying to restrict information and limit collaboration. An education should consist of much more than an accumulation of facts gained in isolation.

If I’m helping students collaboarate and find the information, then they’re not competing against me; instead, we’re working together towards a common goal. I want to be a guide and facilitator. My challenge to the students comes not as a guardian of knowledge or opponent to their collaboration. Instead, I challenge their thinking, their conclusions, their methods. I facilitate, mediate, guide. I focus on their “why” and their “how” … not their “what.”

(These ideas connect to my concern with the filters in place in schools that block access to huge chunks of the internet and nearly all the onlines tools that allow for collaboration … but that’s for another post.)