Room With A View

While attending David Warlick’s Gaming Session at Learning 2.008 last week it struck me that what I write and what most people write on their blogs is in danger of becoming info noise. It’s like white noise. With white noise, discrete sounds are present but they blend together so that each  sound is indistinguishable from the others. In the same way, thousands of blog posts blend together to make them indistinguishable–info noise.

These thoughts were further solidified with the NY Times article How Many Web Services Can One Person Use?

Tagging may help. I think David nailed it when he started his session by giving us the tags he’d like us to use when blogging or tweeting about his session. It may not save our writings from being lost in the general info noise of the web but it would at least help those attending the session find each other’s work. It would help create what Ewan McIntosh calls “small passionate communities.”

Can’t think of much to say except watch this.

I know I’m a little behind the times but I just downloaded Firefox 2.0 for OS X. I love the fact that it’s got a spell checker built into it. I’ve always disliked writing in a browser, preferring to write posts in Word and then copy them to my blog. With a built in spell checker, writing directly in Firefox just got a whole lot better.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I usually teach my students that the writing process goes something like this: plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish. I also teach them that it doesn’t really happen exactly in this way but it’s a good guide to help us as we write.
I also, mentioned that since starting the wiki my students are not following the writing process. It’s more write, publish, write some more, publish, revise a little, publish and so on. I’m not sure I like this. I’m concerned about the quality of the writing my students are producing. I think the quality of the conversations going on in my room and the collaboration is fantastic—better than before the wiki—but I’m not sure about the quality of the writing that my students are publishing. They are so keen to publish that they seem to have forgotten the processes I’ve worked hard to establish with them since the beginning of the year. I went in search of some answers to my concerns. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any research on the subject of writing conventions but I did find a summation of several studies about blogs. Miranda Bella wrote the summary. Here are some of the key points.

• Students put more thought and effort into their blog writing because they know they have a wide audience for their work.
• Students can strengthen their reading skills by reading blogs.
• Students that are quiet in class come alive on a blog.
• Some teachers are concerned that the casualness of blogs means that students don’t pay enough attention to writing conventions.
• There are concerns that students’ work can be too public when published on the web.

Bella, M. (2005). Weblogs in education In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved March 2, 2006, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/blogsined/start.htm

I’ve created a monster! Well not exactly but it feels like it. I’ve created a monster of marking. My class and I have started a wiki. I’m not ready to post the wiki’s url. We’re not ready to go public yet. We’ve only been working on it for a few weeks yet I’m having trouble keeping up with everything that’s happening on the site. In the past 24 hours there have been over 80 posts. Most of the post have just been minor changes but still I’m trying to keep track of them all.

I’ve noticed a couple of interesting things so far.

First, several of my students stay up too late. The wiki lets me see the time students post their work. Last week a student posted at 10:29 p. m. They’re fourth graders!

Second, one of my students was absent today. He wasn’t feeling well yesterday so I wasn’t surprised. When I checked the wiki tonight I see that he posted at 8:45, 11:25, 12:30, and 15:15.

Lastly, the writing process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing has gone out the window. The kids are writing, publishing, revising, publishing, and writing some more all at the same time. I’m not sure if this is a good thing. More later.