Room With A View

As I finished up my last post this link to a short clip of Seth Godin talking about blogging was sent to me. It’s well worth the minute and a half of your time it takes to watch it.

I’ve been getting a wiki/blog server ready for the staff at my school. Imagine my surprise when Paul Boutin at Wired posted Twitter, Flicker, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 suggesting that blogs are done. They’re so 2004.

Boutin suggests that it’s difficult for the individual writer to be noticed when the blogosphere is now full of “organized” or “professional” blogs like those found at The Huffington Post or Engadget. (He doesn’t mention Wired.)

What he suggests may be partially true but what he misses is that blogging is not just about being noticed by a lot of people. Blogs are about thinking and about creating what Ewan McIntosh calls small passionate communities.

Over the years I’ve written in many forms and in many places from newsletters, to emails, to my .Mac site, to listserves, and blogs. None of them generate much traffic but that’s okay. They all serve a purpose. They’re all about community.

At the moment one of my favorite places to write is a group blog that’s only for those of us that are setting up a new Leopard server. I use it to post what I’ve done and what I still need to do. On any given day my posts are read by no more than four people but that’s okay. I like to write it and I look forward to reading the comments members of my group leave. Writing the blog is helping us move forward and get the server ready.

Blogs are about a simple technology that meets a need and creates community. I don’t see that going away any time soon.

This article by Jeremy Clarkson is a couple of years old but it’s certainly “current.”

Thanks to Gary Stager for pointing the way to the article.

Schools often have pockets of innovation. These pockets are lead by one or two like minded people. Sometimes others follow their leadership but it’s difficult for these pockets of innovation to spread to an entire school. Unfortunately, once these leaders leave the innovation flounders and dies. I’m not thinking only of innovation in the area of technology. Over my career I can think of an innovative environmental program and literacy programs that failed once the lead innovator moved on to a new school.

I heard Robert Landau speak at an Apple sponsored event last night. Landau is the new Head of the Western Academy Beijing. He was reflecting on his time at the International School of Prague. He commented that schools need to look at innovative systems rather than innovative personalities. It’s a bit of a sound bite/catch phrase but it got me thinking.

There is room for innovative leaders. They play an important role in schools but to bring about long lasting change schools need to tie innovation to their curriculum in such a way that the change won’t be lost if a few key people move on.

If nothing else, Landau has forced me to dust off my old copy of Fullan for a little weekend reading.

I came across this post regarding the important of teaching kids to take notes effectively. Learning to take notes whether on paper or electronically is a basic skill we need to teach.

China Cup Baseball tournament is happening at my school this weekend. We have visiting teams from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. We’re using Cover It Live, Google’s Picasa, and Blogger to live blog the event. It’s been a fun mashup experiment. The first game was last night and we had “viewers” from as far away as Sydney, Australia and Boston, Massachusetts.