A Reading Suggestion: Concrete Classroom

Check out @concretekax's recent post and the comment discussion revolving around the 'Education Lobbyist Platform'.

Thoughtful stuff. Would love to see your comments over there on Michael's blog. Where do you stand on his proposed education platform?

My (Current) 19 Favorite Education Blogs

I read a lot of education blogs. And from all corners of the ed spectrum, both in terms of policy and instruction. Here's a list of the folks currently topping my blogroll; these are the ones I make sure to keep abreast of post-by-post.

Subscribe! Enjoy!

1. Andrew B. Watt's Blog: Watt is the Jon Krakauer of the new paradigm in education. He's a writer who sees both the beauty and the danger inherent in our expedition into the digital mountain ranges. He's honest and and critical and he writes about this stuff with a poet's knack for succinct detail. Strongly recommended.

2. Free Technology for Teachers: Byrne publishes a mind-numbing plethora of tools for teachers on a daily basis. Here's a recent -- and representative -- highlight entitled 'Beyond Google'.

3. Moving at the Speed of Creativity: Wes Fryer's work is always a substantive treat. His recent posts from China have been eye opening; especially his recent post concerning proxies and web filtering on the Mainland.

4. Dangerously Irrelevant: One of the standards by which a blog should be measured is the extent to which it galvanizes conversation among its readership. With his merging of singularity theory and ed leadership, McLeod never fails to catalyze discussion.

5. Sustainably Digital: This is a new blog that I've been following ever since reading a great post there on Super Mario and the Scientific Method. Good stuff; will be following this one with much interest.

6. Concrete Classroom: Michael Kaechele never fails to prove that a true teacher is always an artist of learning. Check out his students' recent work with Lego Robots.

7. Open Thinking: Alec Couros' blog is where I go when I'm itching for new ideas. And, we once had a Twitter conversation where somehow we (or at least I) confirmed that the future of education had something to do with Holodecks. How cool.

8. Ideas and Thoughts: Shareski is a generous blogger. His posts, Tweets, ideas, and thoughts have kept me up way too late on way too many nights thinking about the present and the future of education.

9. elearnspace: With Siemens, it's all about the links -- nuggets of information for your perusal and debate. An elegant blog.

10. Digital Education: Where Ash and Manzo demonstrate that mainstream ed journalism ain't all bad.

11. Magistra's Musings: I'm sure I'm not the only educator who really came to realize the power of Twitter through Mahoney's work; and with the wiki she's created to help teachers harness the power of a Twitter network, I doubt I'll be the last.

12. The Fischbowl: Fisch is a legend. Perhaps you knew.

13. SpeEdChange: From the 'constantly challenging your preconceptions' department, Socol is probably my favorite blogger. His recent work on Twitter as Liberation Tool should be required reading in every ed school in this country.

14. Nashworld: Nash is a one-man instructional make-over machine. Check out his 'Four Pillars of Technology Integration'.

15. 21st Century Learning: Nussbaum-Beach is an ed blogger always bringing provocative ideas to the table. Her recent post on Digital Education and the 'Fabric' of Community is one such post -- full of important questions.

16. EducationalInsanity: Somebody, please tell Jon Becker to blog more.

17. The Edublogger: Sue Waters regularly posts on issues specifically related to the concerns of blogging educators. Great information from a great educator.

18. Weblogg-ed: Often stunning posts by Richardson. Definitely a source of frustration in the ed tech community is the fact that we can't force Will to blog several times a day.

19. Design 4 Learning: When a guy who writes a post like this calls you an educational anarchist, you know you're doing something right! [BTW, originally this was a list of '18', but I thought you all needed a little something 'extra' in your lives... enter Dean Groom.]

This list is in no way meant to be inclusive of all that's out there. As I said, there are a bunch of blogs I read that I don't mention here. But as for what's been topping my blogroll recently, this is it.

Please do subscribe to these, and please leave ideas for blogs I should be checking out!

One End Result: an example of a student translation via a Tweet test and thoughts about the nature of what a blog means in terms of end-of-year review

Here's an example of the final result of one student's translation from the Twitter-enhanced Latin test. Not too shabby for a Latin II student.

This is the first of two paragraphs... my comments back to the student are in brackets; I post my edit as a comment to the student's blog post and then record the grade in my PowerGrade online gradebook.

No paper.

LATIN:
His rebus adducti et auctoritate Orgetorigis permoti constituerunt ea quae ad proficiscendum pertinerent comparare, iumentorum et carrorum quam maximum numerum coemere, sementes quam maximas facere, ut in itinere copia frumenti suppeteret, cum proximis civitatibus pacem et amicitiam confirmare. Ad eas res conficiendas biennium sibi satis esse duxerunt; in tertium annum profectionem lege confirmant. Ad eas res conficiendas Orgetorix deligitur. Is sibi legationem ad civitates suscipit.


ENGLISH:
Persuaded [you got the participles; good job!] by these events and moved deeply by the clout/authority [good -- 'clout' is really the sense of 'auctoritas', though it is often translated as 'authority'] of Orgetorix, they prepared to gather what they needed to be sent out onto the field [they began gathering the things they'd need], to buy the greatest number of mules and carts [in English you can render better by putting -ing on that infinitive: 'buying as many mules and carts as possible'], to do a large amount of planting ['facere' has a broad semantic range: try 'sowing' (think about using an English word that describes better the 'making/doing' being expressed in 'facere')], in order to have enough/sufficient supplies for their journey, and to confirm peace and an alliance with the citizens [in this context, likely 'tribes'] close by. Two years was enough for these things to be led [I'd like you to reconstrue this sentence -- let's go over in class]; in the third year, they confirmed their motion of departure [lege -- 'by law' or 'by decree']. Orgetorix was chosen [nice, you got the passive correct] to prepare these things. He undertook the mission of the citizens upon himself. [Again, bring this up in class; we'll reconstrue together]

In addition, by blogging all of this, the student gets to keep a record of the Tweet-transcript, the final draft, my edits, and the grade on the assessment.

Come preparation for the final exam, the student will be able to go over a record of everything done in class by reviewing the blog. This is beneficial in two ways: first, there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel and handout end-of-the-year review sheets because, in effect, the students have been creating their own reviews throughout the year on their blogs. Second, rather than get a review sheet that reads like a page from a textbook, the students are actually able to review from their own work and work they've collaborated on with fellow students. The result is that student draw not just on prior knowledge, but on prior experience.

The blog itself is essentially a record of experiences interacting with the content of the course.

TechCrunch

Added TechCrunch to my Tech Blogs blogroll after reading back-to-back funny posts. The first about Andrew Keen's terror in the face of the possibility that Web 2.0 might not be about profitability; the second about the spot on the soul of Apple: the Mighty Mouse.

Good stuff.

Examples of Student Blogs

I've added a few examples of 'student paperless-ness' to the sidebar here on the TeachPaperless site.

Included are clips from a paperless term paper as well as student blogs and projects. I left them in micro-versions just to give you an idea of some of the things you can do with blogs. Experiment widely with your own class blogs and tell me what sorts of things you've come up with.

What About Digital Plagiarism?

A reader writes:

I am very wary of turning in essays on a blog, simply because there is so much plagiarism going around. It would both put hundreds of essays out there, for students to copy, and for students to submit via copy/paste. Granted, it's not difficult to plagiarize on paper, but with paper, there is no option to "delete entry." The evidence is there, turned in by the hands of the students.

I've actually caught more cases of plagiarism since going paperless. Every now and then, I take classtime with my students to run Google checks on anonymous blogged essays their peers have turned in. Inevitably, we find copied work. Rather than bust students and deal with it in the standard disciplinary way in the event we do discover fault, I use it as a means to show them how easy it is to discover plagiarism in the digital world. The kids learn quick and I've never had to do this more than once with any class to completely discourage digital copying. It's actually quite a bit more difficult to do that with just paper.

And as for the concern over "delete entry"... let's just say that few things you ever write online actually disappear. And if it's a blog, and you've subscribed to it, you actually get sent a copy directly to your inbox or newsreader. The writer can't take it away from you.

With paper, there are no accusations that the teacher may have manipulated the essay, through a word processing program.

Most blogging apps leave a time-stamp and author signature on the post. Consider that one safe-guard to any accusations. It's got the student's name on it and it's got the exact time and date that they posted it. Just refuse to accept any work that's not posted with a time-stamp.

Easy.