It’s surprising to me that in 2010, there are still big districts that are blocking all Web 2.0 apps — wikis, blogs, etc.  These are some of the most powerful tools we have for differentiating instruction.

I have to think these decisions are being made by people who aren’t in charge of instruction and who are mainly motivated by wanting “no problems.” (And as I always say, if you want no problems, just pack the computers away or don’t even by them.) I restate my offer here to talk to leadership teams at these districts about the benefits of these tools and the ways they can be implemented safely. Please let our teaches and students have the tools they need for 21st century learning!

Are whole categories of tools blocked in your district? Do you know who is driving policy on this? Have efforts been made to revisit these policies? What are the barriers?

Find more videos like this on Classroom 2.0

There is a very interesting discussion going on at Classroom 2.0 and at OpenEdWeb about policies related to the use of participative web tools in the classroom.

Think about your own AUP. How does it address things like student publishing on wikis and blogs? Log-ins? Teacher moderation? Instruction on Internet safety and responsible use?

Many AUPs don’t deal with these issues. (If you have or know one that does, PLEASE post a link here. We are looking for good examples.)

Take a minute to read the draft here and add your comments. It’s a thought-provoking exercise. (Plus it’s a great use of CommentPress!)

There are so many great technology tools…wikis, blogs, Google docs, podcasts, Moodle sites, VoiceThread, and on and on. Sometimes it’s difficult to know which tool to use for a given project or activity.

The best way to approach this problem is to always start with the question “What are the instructional goals?” and then to think about how to accomplish those goals. Sometimes the answer will be technology; other times it may be paper-and-pencil, f2f group discussion, or something else.

Here is a grid that outlines the main differences between things like wikis, blogs, document sharing, etc. with some thoughts on which are best suited to different classroom activities.

If you have your own tips to share about how you choose which tool to use for different activities, post your thoughts here to share with others.

I spend a lot of time talking to people about the benefits of blogging. Students writing for a real audience and purpose leads to better writing, more motivation, critical thinking, collaboration, yada yada.

However, there are some admittedly sticky issues around student blogging. This week I had a chance to work through some of these in collaboration with a progressive district that is encouraging teachers and students to use blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies to develop literacy and critical thinking skills. Some of the issues we’re talking about are:

• How do you set up student accounts without having student email accounts?
• If you want students to go beyond commenting on teacher posts to creating their own posts or even hosting their own blogs, how can that be monitored?

Many of the common blogging tools don’t really address these issues. I’m a big fan of WordPress, so I started there. WordPress.com (they host) requires a valid and unique email address to get an account. WordPress.org (you host) will accept a bogus email account, but it’s a hassle to have a large number of blogs on it. On either of these, if a student is administering their own blog, there is no automated way to see their work.

Some other popular blogging services (e.g. Blogger) are blocked in many schools, making their use less than optimal. Other blogging services that strive to be safe for students (e.g. Class Blogmeister) limit administration and primary authorship to teachers. Others charge a fee. Some school blogging platforms that are free aren’t open source, meaning that they may or may not be free or even available next week. Other free services are less than reliable in terms of being up 24/7.

In the course of all this, we looked at WordPress MU, the multi-user version of WordPress. This works like Wordpress.com in that any registered user can create a new blog easily on the fly. (This works by setting up a domain with a wildcard, for example, *.blog.someschool.edu. Then if a student creates a blog, it becomes jsmith.blog.someschool.edu.) And the administrator can easily monitor and manage all blogs under the domain. The only drawback is that you have to host it yourself, but it really isn’t very difficult. You just need a box with Apache, MySQL and PHP.

The interface is very slick. It has all the things I love about WordPress plus a whole suite of useful admin tools.

I’ll post some updates as we get into using this more.

(Sidenote on student email: A pretty usable workaround on this is the Gmail trick. If your teacher gmail account is ksmithteacher@gmail.com and a student uses the email address ksmithteacher+kjonesstudent@gmail.com, all email to that address will go to you at ksmithteacher@gmail.com. That allows you to register students for services that require a unique and valid email without maintaining or needing to monitor an email account for them.)

Kudos to the NSBA for a forthcoming report that urges schools to relax restrictions on the use social networking technologies at schools.

It’s about time that educational policymakers (and politicians) recognize that these technologies are important tools for differentiating instruction, engaging students, and developing important new (and old) literacy skills.

I’ve been reflecting on how we teach and learn…not with students, but with colleagues in professional development.

Unfortunately, many of us (myself included) don’t always model the use of the strategies we know are most effective for learning. Many PD workshops or presentations are the typical “sage of the stage” fair. And I’ve heard from several different teachers in master’s programs about how dry their graduate courses are.

Good teaching and learning involves students being engaged and active in their own learning. Technology isn’t a necessary component of this, but it can certainly be a useful tool.

As I’ve started incorporating tools like blogs and wikis in workshops, I’ve found that many participants are more engaged. A large part of this is providing options (differentiating instruction). Some people would rather post to a blog; others would rather write notes on post-its; still others would rather just sit and talk. I’m even starting to see the value of Twitter and virtual environments as learning tools.

Everything we can add to the mix provides more tools to reach learners, whether they are peers or students, and that all leads to more engaged learning.