wild world of wikis advice

From the Edublogs awards, a couple of great tips. This first one is from the Teacher Blog of the Year, The Tempered Radical. He has an entry that discusses his guidelines that he's developed with his students over the past four years that have addressed the administrative fears of inappropriate postings and subsequent fallout.

I was also amazed to see that a middle school teacher took her class into Second Life! I haven't explored what they did, so can't speak to its usefulness, and it's not the direction I'm heading, but it was interesting to see that it had happened.

Since I'm running out of steam, I don't actually have more tips from the awards, but wanted to remind myself to go back and look a little deeper. Actually the wiki award for an AP Econ class looked killer, though I leapt away from it quickly as the rap music automatically comes on (kinda loud) and I didn't want to wake my family. I'm just grateful that Joyce Valenza is as resourceful and communicative as she is, and that I had a chance to catch up on some of her posts (gotta go back for those student-produced math videos) which is what alerted me to the edublog awards in the first place.

whoa, authors views and science!

Here's a great clip, well, I mean, a link to a 2 minute video on AuthorsViews about Diane Swanson, author of Nibbling on Einstein's Brain and A Crash of Rhinos, A Party of Jays. I really like the part where she talks about how she marvels at the intriguing real characters that nature creates, and that's part of why she loves writing nonfiction books about the natural world.

Also, nonscientifically, I strongly recommend Allan Stratton's video about Chanda's Secrets, which is about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Well actually it's about family and cultural taboos and love and integrity, and also AIDS.

elem sci podcast

Wayward Son has posted a great little 4 minute podcast about an Outdoor Science camp that some of his students participated in last spring. I might not get the specific link right, so once you get to his Closet Chronicles blog, see the podcast in his post about #7.

1.0 support of 2.0 tools

So it struck me--to support new folks with 2.0 tools, we ought to provide little mini pamphlets in hard copy to help negotiate through certain tools. I've been musing why, aside from one of our science teachers, none of the scili folks are updating their blogs. (And, ironically, the one who was updating and exploring got blocked by Blogger as a potential spammer! He was guilty of posting his own photograph of a beautiful bird! But I digress.) I know that one reason is overload, and another is lack of clarity of the Next Step, which might not come till our January meeting. But, I also harkened back to when I first started the School Library Learning 2.0 tutorial, and I remember initially printing out the instructions, sometimes repeatedly as I would misplace them (I know, sorry trees, but in general I'm pretty conscientious about only printing what I really need, and of course recycling.)

We had not initially considered introducing bloglines but I think that will be the first written instruction we will offer, rather than rely on pointers to instructions on the web. Claire had drafted an email to send out but even she found it a bit long. Claire, if you're reading this, what do you think?

kindergarten fair reader

kindergarten fair reader
Originally uploaded by bcctdd

The Kindergarten Fair on Saturday was a bustling center of exploration, networking and general hobnobbing. I had brought a book of my own to read, thinking not many would actually want to discuss libraries--but could not even read one page because I found myself in nonstop dialogue with prospective BUSD families. Delightful!

Time: the never-ending story

As unimaginative as the subject line of this post is, I can't think of a more creative way to express my frustration with the never-ending whine of feeling like there is not enough time to do everything I want to do.

Some notes to self:
1) buddy up the blogees officially, i.e. the lib and srt could pair up to comment
2) each person would probably appreciate a bloglines account (Estella mentioned this yesterday at the kindergarten fair, and that she had mentioned it to Claire). When I went through the 23 things initially, I was concerned with getting through everything, but since I was not a blog reader, the usefulness of bloglines escaped me. Now, needing to monitor both the csla folks and the scili folks, bloglines really should be renamed lifeline.
3) each cluster (science, library) might also like a group-authored blog.
4) after initial surge to get a blog up and running, there needs to be a reason to press forward. This aspect was inadequately addressed in our scili launch, I fear. The csla 2.0 folks have their own internal commitment to progress through the whole 23 thing tutorial, but we have asked much less from the scili collaboration, at least initially. Also, in our launch session, we didn't really present the blog as a tool to keep track of one's own learning. Because it got written into the grant as a "science notebook" feature, what little time we had to discuss it got narrowed down to that application. Now I really feel a need to backtrack, or broaden, the discussion with the library crew to use this time to explore and learn, and not to feel like they have to have an immediate kid-interactive project, though ultmately that is what we hope will make sense.
5) policy issues (with the Board, etc) must be flushed out and clearly articulated

OK that's all for now.

Scrambling

So, I am going to resurrect this, my initial blog. I will use it to track my process second time around with School Library 2.0, this time in a deeper learner/coach mode. I am part of the "peer cheer" team for CSLA's winter fun, and also for SciLiBerkeley, the science + library departments collaboration for Berkeley Unified School District.

My first time through the 23 Things, there were some elements I totally short-shrifted. I addressed all 23 of them, but not all very thoroughly--I hope to rectify that this time through.

For example, I managed to figure out how to post a link to my google reader and my bloglines. The bloglines one will alert me when folks update their blogs, and the google reader is if I'm in the mood to check in on the few blogs I sometimes glance at... I'm not an avid reader of blogs.

I look forward to this adventure!