NWP colleague Kevin Hodgson is a guiding light in many ways. For several years now, he has sponsored the Youth Radio project, a podcasting project connecting classrooms across the nation and world as students share topics and projects from their own classrooms, neighborhoods, and regions. It’s been my privilege to connect with the YR project [...]

I’ve been working fast and furiously to keep up with all the changes happening at Edublogs.org. I’m pretty sure James Farmer never sleeps in order to keep up with the updates, enhancements, fixes, and forum discussions. So here’s a link to my latest Intro to Edublogs Manual. It’s pretty complete, but I plan to keep [...]

Amazing what can change with Edublogs in the course of a week! I considered deleting my previous post with its link to my “updated” EB Manual, which as of today is is already very much outdated, but decided to leave it just as proof of what a dynamic application and community the Edublogs.org is. Hope [...]

I just finished updating my Introduction to EB Manual and have included an Edublogs Widget Glossary. It’s hard to stay ahead of all the enhancements James keeps sending our way;-). I still have a few questions about James’ speedy method for creating student accounts, but am heading into The Edublogger and EB Forum right now [...]

As I move through the 31-Comment Challenge (ok, I’m behind), I’ve been thinking about ways to help students improve their commenting skills. Via Donna DesRoches‘s “Blogging and Reading Comprehension Strategies,” I found a great free resource to provide some scaffolding for young bloggers: Comprehension Strategy Posters provided by ReadingLady.com. The posters are available in both [...]

I’m at the Sacramento COE this morning for Dave Warlick’s Preparing Students with 21st Century Skills workshop. Opening comments are by SCOE’s Ben Anderson delivering his Educating in a Google World – To catch the full flavor, and Ben’s engaging sense of humor, you need to watch his slide show, which included a live Skype [...]

A highlight of my recent trip to Denver for the NWP‘s Urban Sites Conference was meeting Alexander Jefferson. He was on the same flight from Sacto to Denver. I spotted him at the baggage pickup zone. It probably seemed like an idiotic question, but seeing an African-American gentleman wearing a Tuskegee Airman jacket, I had [...]

As I continue on into Days 4 and 5 of the Comment Challenge, I realize what a valuable opportunity this project is for observing how a growing group of people, from around the globe and from all walks of life, come together to form a community. And I now understand how coComment works. Unlike the [...]

Since today is already May 4, I’m doing a little crunching to catch up on the 31-day Comment Challenge, following the guidelines in the wiki. Day One Activity: The kick-off is a commenting self-audit and a reading activity: 1. Answer the following questions: How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? [...]

I’m joining the 31-day Comment Challenge, which I first read about this morning in my friend Kevin‘s blog. In a way, I think Challenge organizers Kim Coffino, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, and Michele Martin have added structure to a direction I’ve been moving in the last year or so – moving away from reading “first [...]