blogs.edu
Also see: Re: Blog.edu
Some remember summertime free lunches as a social program created by the Black Panthers in the public schools. Since I was one of those kids eating the free lunches I remember it a little differently. It�s a great example of a program that makes use of public schools infrastructure to help the disadvantaged. Blogging has that potential too.
Blogging can accomplish several things in the public school system, especially for the poor.
A program like this would need national governmental support. There are a few small blogging communities for public educators but without a national effort, and national participation the voices won�t be diverse enough to be a real discussion. Children need to be able to communicate with other children in America and understand that they are not alone the same applies to teachers and parents.
The easiest way to do this is to eliminate the traditional pen pal system and replace it with blogpals. Then give all public school teachers access to the national blogging system and have the unions encourage teacher participations to have their issues heard.
Who can help make this happen? Does it have potential? I�d like to hear more thoughts on this.
March 2nd, 2004 at 4:34 pm
I think that the idea is great, however, I think that some issues that will become a problem are the same issues that have primed your mind to think of this possible solution. My first concern is the children. These kids will need computers, internet access, and computers skills. In many of the ‘lower income’ areas and schools this is non-existent. The government WOULD need to step in, but they have needed to step in for quite some time now and have not. Second, who will be reading these blogs to address the concerns of the teachers and students? I understand that it could be a form of digital protest, but if public protest has no result, celebrity frontmen, etc. what will this accomplish besides being another outlet. I may sound pessimistic and believe it or not I’m a very positive person, but I see too many of the same obstacles that need to be overcome. For instance, if somehow the schools got highspeed internet connections with computers and trained to students (and some teachers) when will the kids be able to post and read others inputs? Will a class session be added? Will students need to stay after school or come early? (not gonna happen) I could go on but….just my opinion.
March 2nd, 2004 at 4:47 pm
You may be suprised to know that many innercity schools DO have computers and high speed internet access, I’ve visited several in the past two years. I was also part of the generation that got shinny new apple machines when they started their education efforts. The problem is not putting computers in schools, its finding uses for those computers that will engage students!
To answer your question about who will read it.
First and foremost it is a conversation between students. It is a conversation among teachers. This is why I suggested eliminating the traditiona l pen pal system. It is an opportunity for parents to get involved and see what their children and teachers are dealing with on a daily basis. Then if others outside the education system want to get involved then so be it.
March 3rd, 2004 at 6:24 am
Hi Ejovi,
Great post, and a great vision for what could be. I think blogging in some form has a great deal of potential in schools as well, and we’ve been experimenting with them at my school for three years with mixed success. We’re lucky to have a lot of connectivity and resources for hardware in our community, so we haven’t had to overcome many of the challenges you mention in your post. But I think a couple of challenges for every teacher and student in just about every district is time and the need to find a comfort level for writing in public. I think if current statistics are any measure, those two issues cause the demise of the 90% or so of blogs that fail, and I’m not sure how we change that in education. Weblogs are great for certain disciplines and certain academic situations. But try as I might, I haven’t found a way, yet, to make real blogging about the sorts of issues you raise workable in a school situation. Especially k-12. Still, if we could help make writing more meaningful through the use of Weblogs, it could go a long way to improving what ails the education system by bringing more readers and mentors and significant others into the conversation. I hope we get a chance to talk at BloggerCon, and please drop by my site at http://www.weblogg-ed.com and poke around if you get the chance. Best, Will
March 3rd, 2004 at 9:43 am
It’s a pretty good idea. From my point of view, the high school journalism class should host the server, with help from the computer science class. The journalism class gets to function kind of like the editors on slashdot.
However, that leaves the junior high and elementary schools out. Perhaps it should be a yearly project, for the two classes to add one more school to their network. You would need to get the school administration to sign off on letting the kids spend time doing the work - but other than that, I don’t see a problem.
March 3rd, 2004 at 10:46 am
I like the spirit behind your ideas, but I think you overestimate the extent to which teachers and students are burning with a desire to communicate with their peers around the country. First off, we have unions, professional organizations, conferences, mailing lists, magazines, etc. which already represent our interests, give us opportunities to network, keep us informed about issues. Teachers cannot and should not blog about the substance of most of their work–their students, any more than doctors can blog about their patients or lawyers blog about their clients. So discussion gets tied to the policy level, which is all well-trodden territory.
On the student side, yes, blogs can and will make students write more, and writing for a real audience is a good thing. But kids already write on the web on their own sites, so the blog pal idea in school may be a lot less sexy to the kids than you might think.
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