Tim Lauer: Education Weblogs

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:21:02 GMT

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...

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:21:00 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:59 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:59 GMT

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?

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:58 GMT

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???

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:58 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:57 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:56 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:31 GMT

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]

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:31 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:30 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:20:29 GMT

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.

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:19:08 GMT

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]

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:19:07 GMT

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]

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:27:43 GMT

Palm Wi-Fi. More new Palm Rumor info. According to rumors posted in Brighthand's Discussion Forum, the Palm SG is developing a model that looks like the Tungsten W but includes built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking. It is also supposed to have 64 MB of RAM and Palm OS 5. Like the Tungsten W, it [palm - Feedster Search Summary]

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:27:43 GMT

New Palm Wi-Fi Model?. A WiFi Palm?.

Some more speculation that Palm will introduce a version of its Tungsten W handheld that has built-in WiFi instead of a GSM/GPRS cellphone.
Read

[Gizmodo]

Recently, rumors and speculation have been rampant about the Palm Solution Group's plans to release new handhelds. The hardware part of Palm Inc. had been expected to announce new models earlier this month, in time for the giant CeBIT tradeshow, but clearly this didn't happen. Yesterday, a company executive said that the Palm SG will announce at least one new model in the next few months.

In a conference call yesterday, Judy Bruner, Palm's CFO, said, "We are planning a Spring product launch. Remember we launch products in the Fall and the Spring, but the launch will be in the second half of the quarter." Palm's current financial quarter starter March 1 and ends May 31, so new products can be expected between April 15 and the end of May.

Ms. Bruner made this comment while discussing when new revenue might start coming in so, of course, she said nothing about the nature of this handheld.

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:27:41 GMT

Iraq. As War Tops News, Parents Unsure About What to Discuss. With the yearlong buildup to war in Iraq finally over, parents and educators are figuring out the best way to help children grappling with global issues. By Lisa W. Foderaro. [New York Times: Education]

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:27:40 GMT

Palms and doctors.

US Testing Bioterror Alerts on PDAs [Palminfocenter]

The US Government is testing a system to notify doctors and healthcare providers utilizing PDAs for transmitting urgent information about biological agents. The three-month pilot test is designed to gauge the best ways for federal officials to communicate with front-line clinicians in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

The project will evaluate the use of a system created by ePocrates, the nation's largest physicians' handheld network, for sending an urgent "Doc Alert" message to more than 700,000 front-line clinicians, including more than 250,000 physicians?more than 40 percent of the practicing physicians in the United States. The test message will contain a special memo on the highest threat (category A) biological diseases/agents, which include anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola. The message will also include Web links for clinicians to go to for additional information about diagnosing and treating the conditions caused by the biological agents. Clinicians will be able to save this information to their PDAs for future reference.

The pilot project will be managed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and is designed to complement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's existing Health Alert Network, which was created in 1998 and is used by the Department to communicate directly with more than 25,000 public health officials in the 50 states, eight U.S. territories and seven large cities.

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:27:39 GMT

Palm OS Blackberry type machine. Palm-powered BlackBerry clone.

New BlackBerry-like two-pager from HuneTec that runs on the Palm operating system. The H5000 looks eerily like the BlackBerry 6710, and has a built-in mini-keyboard, 8MB of RAM, and a monochrome, rather than color, LCD screen.
Read

[Gizmodo]

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 23:00:44 GMT

Web Logs from "Embedded" Journalists. Not a great deal of Web logs, but one cruise through some of these sites and it is apparent how much the Internet is changing journalism. What I am most struck by is the interactivity that journalists are practicing with their readers. Readers are getting their questions answered right from the ground. That's pretty amazing, I'd say. Once again, the Christian Science Monitor is leading the way. But I'm happy to report that New Jersey.com actually has a Web log running for breaking news. (This sets me up for the use of the Newswire site, which I'm planning to crank up again this week.) Unfortunately, CNN pulled the plug on Kevin Sites War blog. And there is much discussion among fellow Web loggers about it. J.D. Lasica, who runs a great online journalism related Web log, has a pretty good rundown of the debate. Personally, from what I can tell, Sites may not have been as clear as he could have been to CNN about what he was doing. But regardless, there is no doubt that what he and other reporters are starting will change the way major events like wars and disasters and more are covered. 9/11 started it, but that was pure reaction. This time, people have thought it out. And there is no better coverage of this war than what you can find on the Web.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:44:11 GMT

Aggregator Tweaks. With the slight hope that there might be someone listening, here's a little wish list for the Manila aggregator:

Allow for the limiting of some feeds to no more than the first five lines...for many sites, I don't need to see the whole post. I would want to be able to see the whole post from a student Web log, though.

Sort by site rather than time...I like reading everything by one author in one place. Especially if I am aggregating student sites.

Cache the posts for, say, five days instead of 24 hours...again, from a teaching standpoint, I may not be able to check in every day. And I may want to have an easy way to read previous posts. Anyone else?

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:44:10 GMT

includeHttp, viewRssBox, eTc. If I'm going to create a Web log as Web site that has things feeding from and to every which place, I think it's time to roll up my sleeves and start learning some more Manila. Trying to figure out how "Pat" funnels "Terry"'s column at the "eBN" site. I get that it's the RSS feed of a separate Web log that he has set up for Terry to post. And I'm also guessing that he uses the includeHttp macro to do it, though I may be wrong about this. Bryan Bell talks about using it for the Kern site, and I know there are some limitations. He uses it in conjunction with the printFriendlyLink macro, and I can get it to work on the Prefs-Advanced page here, but not on the home page. I think there is a CSS element that Pat is using too because I can get it to work but the text is all screwed up. Tried the viewRssBox thing too, and that worked better. It actually may be what Pat is using. The only problem is I couldn't seem to reduce the column width...hmmm. If anyone wants to take a look at my play space and send some help, have at it. So much to learn, and when I have the time to play, I make some baby step progress. I still wish I could find the manual.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:44:10 GMT

The New Journalism. BBC reporters throughout the Middle East are posting to this collective Web log. There's something really fascinating in the way this has been put together, and it just adds another chapter to the Web log as J discussion.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:44:10 GMT

Yeeeee Haaawww. How cool is this:

Two new server-level preferences were released today for Manila's News Aggregator feature. The first is used to allow managing editors of Manila sites to subscribe to any feed they want by URL, without having to ask the server manager to subscribe the server to the feed. The second allows server managers to automatically subscribe to all Manila sites on the server, making them available for subscription by Manila site managing editors.

Now I know I have no life, but I cannot wait to get into class tomorrow and turn them loose on this. News4Sites has a whole bunch of aggregated feeds that lend themselves perfectly for my kids' beat work. Just that fact that Jake is back at work with all of this makes me very happy, especially since my idea for Web log Web site seems to be moving forward. Thanks for the pointer to Greg, who I know won't mind when I quote his e-mail observation that this is:

Sounding more and more like a classroom dream... All students with blogs. All sites have a pointer to the news aggregator for that class. All students able to easily see who has updated recently, which will foster competition to maintain their sites. Instructors can easily keep on top of students blog activity by using their own aggregator page for their class(es)

The Web based aggregator I've been wanting built right into Manila? Very neat. Now if they can just tweak the read out a little bit...

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:41:15 GMT

Historical Perspective on casualties: Battle of the Somme. Quote: "With the winter weather deteriorating Haig now brought an end to the Somme offensive. Since the 1st July, the British has suffered 420,000 casualties. The French lost nearly 200,000 and it is estimated that German casualties were in the region of 500,000. Allied forces gained some land but it reached only 12km at its deepest points."

Comment: Off topic and I haven't really commented on the war to this point, but I'm struck by how few casualties there have been to U.S. and British forces. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British had about 20,000 men killed.