I have always shied away from making absolute lists of resources. They are dated a few months after they are penned. I much prefer the enigmatic, socially tagged nature of a delicious account. Why take one person’s word for it, when you can see exactly how many people have found a resource to be a [...]
There is a new type of reputation out there. It lingers and builds long after you you have stopped caring about it. Managing it is hard. Too many elements to focus on, and too little time to maintain them all. So, you do what you can.You look for just the right resources to update at [...]
Like Jeanne Simpson, Karl Fisch, Anne Davis, and Darren Kuropatwa before me, I decided it was important to flesh out blogging rules for my classes. I took much guidance from these four fantastic resources, but because these limits will most affect my students, I believe that they should be the ones to establish the rules. [...]
I posted a little while ago about an interview that I did with a Ning.com creator. My post focused on my technology Wish-List for the classroom, but they have finally posted the entire interview. If you would like to take a look at all of my long-winded answers, you can find them at The Ning [...]
Early last week I was asked by Yoz Grahame (a lead developer of Ning.com) to answer a few questions about how I was using web 2.0 tools (and specifically Ning) in my classroom to be used in a post for the Ning Blog. I was quite surprised and a little flattered that people are actually [...]
A former male 8th grade student of mine has been e-mailing me consistently ever since he figured out that I really love to read my students writing. He has been sending me a few stories a month for about six months now. I read these really crazy pieces and say that I want more, always [...]
Today, in class, I asked my students to think of the best and worst prompts that they could be asked to write about (most authentic and least authentic). I was impressed by the sophistication of their responses, but I was particularly intrigued by one response in the category of least authentic prompt. It came from [...]
In order to build community support for technology use in the classroom, we must make the community aware of the technology, but we must also educate the public on all sides of the issue. A lot of parents seem deathly scared of social networking mostly because they don’t understand what it is. If we inform [...]
I have spent a great deal of time over the last year talking about Authentic Writing in the classroom. I have written a few papers on this subject, but I am most interested in the practical application of this idea. I am in the process of creating a Lesson Plan Wiki for next year, and [...]
The wiki has been keeping me pretty busy. Version 1.0 of idiosyncratically useful websites will be ready in a couple of weeks. I plan on actually letting people know about it then. I am still struggling, however, with all of the excess great ideas from other people. I wish that I could clip things directly [...]
