Thursday, March 27, 2003

Manila Adventures. Well, it looks like Dave Winer is serious. Note the following from the Yahoo Manila Developers Group that he just started: I want all sites to be news item oriented, unless the user specifically opts for a non NIO site. Unfortunately most of the themes we have go the wrong way. I want them to be news item oriented because: 1. All the other blogging tools, Radio, Blogger, Moveable Type, etc are NIO. 2. The nice editing tools and the blogging APIs are also NIO. 3. A lot of the complexity of Manila melts away with NI orientation. I'm thinking some serious development of templates that would lessen some of the configs I currently have to make. And then there's this: So, after I get the theme done, I'm not totally done yet. I've budgeted about a week for a new page for managing your weblog posts, that works much like the "desktop website home page" in Radio, or the main editing interface of Blogger. I don't like the way Moveable Type does it, while they have lovely graphics, there are too many steps in creating a weblog post, their interface is klunky. I like simplicity, transparency. Now we're getting somewhere...no more News--Create News Item--Post to Home Page stuff? And did he say the "S" word. Hallelujah! Question now is should we all pony up with our Wish List for Manila for educators? I mean he IS doing this all for Harvard...we should at least be in on the potential trickle down. And on another note, he gives props out to Bryan Bell and his truly magnificent Kern site. (This is what I'm going to shoot for here.) But here is the really scary part...Bryan says: This completes the transition to Manilaú we started 2 years ago. The homepage was last on the list, because we decided to do it back to front. We converted every department in the organizations and nearly all of our client schools. I must have trained 300 people on how to manage their Manilaú site. Ahem...I've got some work to do... 6:21:02 AM

Weblogs: Facts Are in, Spin Is Out. (via JD) Title refers to a section on the third page of this NY Times story titled "Reporting Reflects Anxiety." Quote: But media experts say the rapid evolution of the form over the last week underscores a popular thirst for information that at least appears unfiltered by the anchors and editors of the traditional media. Bloggers are casting a wide net for information, drawing from radio, television, newspapers and even other bloggers from around the world. I don't think I've mentioned how absolutely cool it's been to be able to introduce Web logs to my students as a quickly becoming legitimate tool of news gathering and reporting. It may sound corny, but I think Web logs may do a better job of serving the gatekeeper function that the First Amendment gives the press if for no other reason that there is something less "produced" about the content. I know opinions abound, and that contradicts good journalism. But in this age of the message being owned by huge media conglomerates, we've been seduced into accepting mainstream news coverage as fact, when in fact it's all spun through the filter of corporate politics. If you don't believe it, witness the recent censoring of Kevin Sites by CNN, Josh Kucera by Time, and the news that Clear Channel has been behind the Pro-Bush/War rallies that have been cropping up lately. I'm more prone to believe the unfiltered, unpampered reporting that independent journalists are now able to accomplish. And the best part is that even though they may not have editors per se, there are hundreds of Web loggers cum editors out there just waiting to fact check and poke and burn their butts if they happen to be wrong. That's what should be happening in "Real" journalism. 6:21:00 AM

Adding to the List (Con't). One of the things I really hate about referrer logs is when something new pops up I can't help but start digging around and following links. I came in really early this morning to respond to my journalism class stories, but here I sit for half an hour looking new finds about Web logs and education. Sigh... Not 100% sure what this is, but the site name, bloggingcourse.com is intruiging enough. (No contact information that I could find through Internic either.) Looks like a class site, but not sure where or why. It did lead me here, however, to a site out of Australia that looks like it's carrying on a relevant discussion of e-learning at least with some mention and reference to Web logs. The author of this site is also an author of this 104-page .pdf titled "Blogs: Personal e-learning spaces." It's a little bit dated in terms of Internet time, but it highlights some of our usual suspects. Toward the end, page 99, the paper discusses their choice of blogging software used here, a site "dedicated to using reflective learning journals in a range of learning contexts" but that hasn't been updated for about a year. And so now I'm gonna have to explain to my students why half their stories didn't get read...and I haven't even checked my aggregator yet. Not enough hours. 6:20:59 AM

AAARRRRGGHHH!. This is what scares me most about Manila...Three times now my kids have been shut out of their sites because of this malfunction, and while I know how to get around it to access 98% of what they have, there's always some content lost. I've posted all over the place, but no one seems to know the answer. Really, really frustrating. Does MT have ANY issues like this? 6:20:59 AM

RSS Feeds and Tweaks. (via "Jenny") The Feed Room has a list of a variety of RSS feeds on a number of topics, and I'm thinking that someone who starts putting together even more comprehensive directories of RSS feeds might get a lot of traffic. I just downloaded and installed "David"'s RSS plug-in that allows me to create separate feeds for all of my departments, a tweak that really opens up the landscape even further in terms of how to incorporate this into my classes and the Web site. Now, if I could just find a way to get the aggregator to show more than 24 hours worth of stuff AND to organize it by site...c'mon Userland...you're getting so close! BTW, does Radio aggregate differently from Manila??? 6:20:58 AM

Changing the Tool?. "Sarah" weighs in with some good arguments for Manila, and "David" adds that the bottom line is making it easier. So let me ask this: If both of the front-running tools have their issues, then should I be choosing one based on my assessment of what the future may hold for it? From all accounts, MT seems to be getting more attention than Manila in development terms. But there is Kern, who is basically doing what I propose and who happens to have two of the major Manila players around working for them. And, that whole Harvard initiative that Dave is undertaking gives me a great deal of hope. He's using Manila. He's trying to implement schoolwide. I can't imagine that the Crimson-ites won't express the same concerns that we have(even though they are so much smahtah...) I would think that would bode well for development of the tool. On the other hand, the issues we have deal most with ease of use and intuitiveness, the basic building blocks of the whole system. Doubtful that that will become easier. This is a MAJOR decision for me now. I've gotten the superintendent's go ahead; I'm presenting to a board committee in early May. The planning time for this is enormous. Our current site runs on a UNIX box, but we're going to build the new site on NT. We have 3000 pages on our Web site, and I'm basically saying we start all over. We want to build an Intranet along with it. Gulp. Anyone have a quarter? Right now, I need to get some questions answered. Things like will MT Pro allow people to create their own sites? Like how do you get an RSS feed into a Manila page? Like, again, what can and cannot be templatized in Manila and MT? (I swear, the thought of having to go in and configure a dozen settings in Manila for each Web log makes me crazy.) More to come, I'm sure. 6:20:58 AM

Back to the Tool. George Siemens aptly boils it all down to this: ...most people seem to have a 10 second rule: If you can't explain it to me in a few sentences, I don't have time for it...question: do we adjust the tools? Or try and change the people? It is the question that I'm wrestling with right now, especially if we get the go ahead to build our Web site around Web logs (which the more I think about it the more practical it seems.) I think all of us Manila users have been encouraged by the recent smattering of development coming out of the Userland camp. And as I've said here before, I've gotten to the point where I feel very comfortable with Manila and feel like I can teach it fairly easily. (I'll find out again tomorrow when I start a workshop for eight teachers.) But "Joe" is right when he says: Lots of teachers won't take the time to learn it in anything close to its current form. Simply put, it's more than most teachers need and the learning curve for a teacher not fascinated by technology is too steep. (It seems a bit like trying to kill mouse with a shotgun.) It's too easy to disparage a teacher's grumbling about its complexity as laziness and fear of something new. Sure, you can get to the point where posting with Manila is pretty easy (i.e my journalism students), but beyond that it takes a whole bunch of time to figure out how this thing works. And getting back to George's question, will trying to change the people make it any easier or more effective? The tool would be a heckuva lot easier to change. Here's how my thinking goes: I like Manila, I know Manila. But... ...there's not a lot of consistent development of Manila, although as Dave attempts to infuse it at Harvard, perhaps he'll see the struggles people are having and really roll up his sleeves. As "Joe" points out, however, it's going to take some MAJOR changes to make Manila more intuitive (i.e. "New Entry" vs. News, Create News Item, etc.) Then again, in the scenario that I have in my mind, I'll provide the templates The only viable alternative out there right now is Moveable Type. I like the interface, and "Tim" and others have commented on the ease of use question. But... I haven't really used it (I'm going to get it installed this week come hell or high water) and "Joe" and "Sarah" and others seem to have abandoned their MT experiments. Either way, I have to make this decision fairly soon. 6:20:57 AM

Selling Web Log as Web Site. I'm glad that "Tim" and "Pam" are sharing their most excellent adventures in the creation and marketing of the Web Log as Web Site idea. I hope to be following in their footsteps. Here is a good examples of a basic teacher portal, and Tim's got his principal generating some really relevant content for parents. The fact that they've taken it on the road to the PTA is the part that is most interesting to me at this point because I've been thinking a lot about the marketing piece of this. It'll be one thing to get the idea approved, it will be another to get teachers and administrators and parents to start contributing. Also pretty cool is that Tim's got them using RSS to feed content to parts of the pages. This is my week to figure that out with Manila. That's really the coolest part of this when I think about how it might play out. 6:20:56 AM

Open Source godless commies. Slashdot of all places provides some much needed comic relief. Just a taste from Evolutionism Propaganda: The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism. This appears to be real. Is The Onion hiring? [Posted from my heathen iMac] 6:20:31 AM

Meanwhile over at the eBN Guest Bar.... Terry writes: The state of affairs in my senior English class is mirrored perfectly in the tie I wore today. I looked down at mine at the end of the day to find that it had completely twisted around, fat end and skinny end alike in some oddly appropriate protest against the status quo. So goes my new work centered around the weblog.   How or why would you do lesson plans when the work you do is project-centered?  How do you keep them in the building when your work takes you everywhere?  Why would you do research alone when you must do I-searches in order to get problems solved?  Some students have even taken to "doing lunch" in the room in order to talk over their projects.  This is not business as usual, but the dance of improvisation within form.  It's exciting in the same way that being onstage for the first time was. As usual, good stuff from Terry. 6:20:31 AM

Thought on MT, Manila, and killing mice with a shotgun. Good to see Tim's comments on reasons to use Moveable Type; Mainly cost, (none) and extensibility. which are echoed by the Stanford Blog Project. In preparation for the NYC Writing Project weblog workshop this week, I've been tinkering with my eBN site (content coming soon). Manila is a very powerful tool but it's not for everyone. Lots of teachers won't take the time to learn it in anything close to its current form. Simply put, it's more than most teachers need and the learning curve for a teacher not fascinated by technology is too steep. (It seems a bit like trying to kill mouse with a shotgun.) It's too easy to disparage a teacher's grumbling about its complexity as laziness and fear of something new. While this may be true for some teachers it certainly isn't for all. Tim Lauer's work points to some interesting possibilities with MT and MT Pro may soon make it an even more attractive option. It's telling to me that to publish something in MT you click "New Entry" while in Manila it's not quite that simple. The fact that we have to focus so much on the right tool and how we make it work leads me to believe we're still a long way from widespread acceptance. Folks are really pushing the envelope and doing some superior work right now and it IS fun ride to be riding the early wave. 6:20:30 AM

Looking out the front door.... A noticeable increase in security around the city today. Cops on the subway, in the stations, and checking cars and trucks crossing the Manhattan Bridge a few steps from my school. I suppose it makes us all feel safer but it's a grim reminder of the weeks following 9/11. 6:20:29 AM

New Palm Zire?. A new Zire?. Rumor that Palm is planning a new version of its budget Zire handheld that will run Palm OS 5 and have a color screen and a built-in digital camera. Read [Gizmodo] 6:19:08 AM

Enhancing Education Through Technology RFP (IT-03-010)

Information and Technology - Mr. James Boardman

03/24/2003

Informational

Superintendents,Co-op Directors,Secondary Principals,Elementary Principals,Middle School Principals,High School Principals [ADE Directors Memos] 6:19:07 AM