homoLudens

OR

‘In making the handle of an axe /
By cutting wood with an axe /
The model is indeed near at hand.’ - Lu Ji

Weblogs, also called “blogs,” are dynamic, easy-to-use Web spaces for writing, reading and publishing. The technology allows writers, usually called the editors, to easily draft, edit and publish writing to the Web, to store and update internal and external links to useful information sources, to organize work over time, and to collaborate with other users on shared projects.

For the last two and a half years, staff at Dr. Martin Luther King Academic Middle School have gradually implemented blog use, relying on  a particular Weblog content management system, Userland Software’s Manila. We run all of our many sites under the auspices of our partners , the University of California’s Bay Area Writing Project and the Office of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools. Our teachers’ and students’ use of Manila has increased dramatically, with good results for student learning. We’ve discovered significant advantages of blogs for our digital literacy program at MLK:

• Ease of use. With a bit of handholding, even the technologically reluctant are able to post content to the Web. More advanced users are uniformly pleased and motivated to do more by the user-friendly interface.
  
• Ease of deployment. All a user needs is a Web browser on an internet-connected workstation: at school, at home, wherever. (If it’s IE5.5 or above and on a PC platform, you get the extra benefit of a handy WYSIWYG editor.)
  
• Focus on content. Writing and reading are the goals, not designing snazzy pages. The whole issue of Web site design and updating is put to one side and emphasis is placed on the text, graphic, audio and video content of the page.
  
• Security and monitoring. Password protection and membership management make it easy to enforce appropriate use policies for teachers and students.
  
• Maintenance responsibilities are democratized. CTIs and librarians aren’t Web masters as much as web coaches.Teachers and students are capable of doing their own blog editing, design and maintenance.
  
• Collaboration - asynchronous, multi-authored, long distance - is simple for advanced beginner and intermediate users.
  
• Communication within the school, and from the school to parents and communities, improves.
  
• Documentation of completed tasks is made easier.

mlkLibrary Digital Daily Agenda http://interactiveu.berkeley.edu:8000/delaney daily agenda of projects using any and all parts of the library media center’s resouces great search engines for students and teachers public and purchased online databases the school chatRoom links to teachers’ project sites the librarian’s “take it anywhere” virtual office the library’s school year calendar a link to the local branch of the public library, providing automatic updates on research projects to the staff there and helping to organize the community in the development of the new branch building’s construction a recently launched (October, 2002) connection to a UC Berkeley-provided learning management system portal
	mlkNews http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/mlkNews First ever k-12 student-published newsBlog Voluntary staffing, after-school student involvement Multiple departments: Features, News and Events, Academics, Sports, Family and Community, Student of the Week & Diamond in the Rough, Columns, Editors & Faculty, FYI, Just Plain Tight Teacher-friendly pages for organizing assignments and timelines Easy use of WYSIWYG editor for inserting editorial comments in student writing Specially designed metadata content management allowing single posting of a news story to appear in two places on the Web log Evidence of surprising motivation of student writing Bi-lingual publication for parents
	mlkTechTale http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/bawp41 First site maintained by a partner teacher at mlk Used to publish the monthly Tech Tales, news of teachers and students using technology for learning, with links to actual resources used  Hosts collaboratively planned Webquest lessons for implementation in the lab Allows immediate design and deployment of Web-based resources to meet teacher requests Gradually adding links to teacher blogs and student work  Link to school chat room, used during school day to “instant message” between computer lab and library Installed Zonk board for in-house updates
	mlkDailyBlog’etin http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/mlkDailyBlogetin In beta-testing Actually two blogs, with one password protected for faculty access only Requested by school office staff to reduce their workload in hard copy publication Enthusiastically implemented by Curriculum Technology Integration Specialist as a first step in encouraging staff use of tech for content management In service series on use planned for Feb. and Mar. Full implementation in Spring semester
	Ms. Turnbull’s  Room http://www.sfedaccess.org/4/ Home site for one mlk 8th. grade Language Arts and Social Studies teacher Presently devoted to these projects: Top 10 Books List; Library Resource Wish List; I - Search topic brainstorm lists Assignements change daily, depending on class focus Teacher posts standards to some lessons On a password protected blog, all students have assigned Home Pages that link to drafts and final products
	http:www.bayareawritingproject.org/buildingPortola First ever school library - public library collaborative news site Editorship shared by school and branch managers Main page news format offers news and events of interest to the public library community Internal Rss page provides automatic updates on school assignments and projects that may involve public library use Navigation links to all active school site’s within the branch’s service area Special focus on current planning of the new branch library to be built on school grounds
	mlkLearningPortal http://edit.berkeley.edu:8000/bin/frame.pl?item=my_inst&m=BDDNrjWaUyVwpNLq Sample of how Manila sites can be nested within larger learning portal interfaces, in this case a Blackboard.com site hosted on a UC Berkeley server Access to learning management power for discussion board, group assignment, and whiteboard tools Access to teacher/administrator grading, attendance and testing software
	AnonymousStudentBlog http://www.bayareawritingproject.org/16/ Password-protected, parent-approved, teacher-monitored student blog  Beta-test of an ePortfolio, including drafts, revision and final products created by student Main page set for newsItem format so updates feed automatically to teacher Rss aggregator page News items can be set for department categories

There are lots of Weblog Content Management Systems available. Many are Open Source and free. At MLK and BAWP, we chose to use Manila, Userland’s Frontier product. Reasons:

1. It’s cheap.
   
2. It’s been around for quite awhile, with a reliable corporate commitment to development and support.
   
3. It’s widely used, with plenty of deployment in educational settings.
   
4. It’s being used by a partner California county office of education, where we can contract for support and service.

This from the Userland Website: “Frontier is usually licensed on a subscription basis for $899 per year. (It’s actually a little more complicated, updates are $899 per year, so you can keep using a licensed copy indefinitely, but only active subscribers receive updates.) ???There is however an Academic Licensing for Frontier, available at a substantial discount for students, teachers, and faculty who use the software under limited licenses for educational and other non-commercial purposes. To qualify for these prices you will be required to AGREE TO THE LIMITED LICENSE, submit proof of status in the form of a current student, faculty or staff ID, or tax document proving CHARITABLE non-profit status. The foregoing licenses are called ‘Academic licenses’ and all Academic Licensees may use Frontier for non-transferable, educational, non-commercial purposes only. If you qualify under and agree to the above additional terms to the standard Frontier License agreement click the Agree button below to proceed to the UserLand Academic Order form.

• UserLand Frontier 9.0 Windows Academic ($299/year) w/Manila
  
• UserLand Frontier 9.0 Macintosh Academic ($299/year) w/Manila:
  
• UserLand Frontier 9.0 Macintosh OS-X Academic ($299/year) w/Manila”

The digital literacy team at MLK knows that a guarantee of appropriateness to content is every district’s concern. We’re confident that Frontier’s built-in editorial preferences and our professional staff’s involvement in content publication will satisfy any district and other legal concerns. (I’m thinking particulary of COPPA and CIPA requirements here.) Additionally, Frontier can be set to create default Managing Editors out of the district office to oversee all of our site-based publication review. We’re committed to and experienced in explaining and enforcing Internet use policies to our staff, students and their parents/guardians.

Manila isn’t too complicated, but neither is it a no-brainer, even for the technologically saavy. Training needs to be reasonably paced, sufficiently deep, and obviously practical for classroom and school site application. Without continuing support, f2f or virtual, there is little chance of succesful implementation.

1. Orientation level:  Minimum four hours. See below for a sample training agenda. (This outline is based on, and links to, tutorial content provided by the blogTeam of the National Writing Project.)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   Time	Objective
   8:30-9:00	Introduction of Facilitators Weblog Tour (examples of applications) What are weblogs?
   9:00-9:45	Create and post a news item Create a story Link a news item to a story Use permalink with new items
   9:45-10:30	Make external links in news items or stories Edit the left nav bar
   10:30-11:00	Upload a picture Include a picture in a news item or story
   11:00-11:15 (includes a break)	Break
   11:15-12:30	Join a weblog (session Help site)  Change your password Participate in a weblog discussion Visit the Help site Questions/answers

   
   
   
2. Beginner level: Minimum of three days, 8 hours per day. Covers these aspects of Manila site use and management: What are weblogs?; Join & login to a weblog; Create and post a news item; Create a story; Link a news item to a story; Permalinks with new items; Hyperlinks in news items or stories; Edit navigation; Upload a picture; Include a picture in a news item or story; Change your password; Participate in a Discussion; Join and use a Help site; Appearance and Theme Variations; Editorial Preferences; Membership Management; non-News Item formats; Plug-ins; Themes; Discussion Group options; additional Advanced Prefs as time allows; Weblog tour (examples of applications for teaching and learning); Questions/answers.
   
   
   
3. Intermediate level: Minimum of eight days, 8 hours participation per day. Covers these aspects of Manila site and domain management: What are weblogs?; Join & login to a weblog; Create and post a news item; Create a story; Link a news item to a story; Permalinks with new items; Hyperlinks in news items or stories; Edit navigation; Upload a picture; Include a picture in a news item or story; Change your password; Participate in a weblog discussion; Join and use a Help site; Appearance and Theme Variations; Editorial Prefs;  Membership Management;  non-News Item formats; Plug-ins; Themes; Discussion Group options; Site Search Options; Syndication; Static Rendering; Plug-ins; Basic Template Design; esotericSettings; ISPThemes; ISPTools; metaData..

1. District level: One great big box would handle lots and lots of serving. Kern County runs a 2.4 Zion with an array of 15K drives, four drives configured in RAID10; 2 GHz of RAM; a 2 u Compaq rack mounted; with all the various power supply stuff etc. I was told they add a fifth drive as a ‘fail over.’ There is an issue of multiple domain names on one server. Frontier can be tweaked to allow hosting of more than one domain. This can be very handy for directories creation (E.g.: www.sfusd.edu/mlk/teachers), but that doesn’t come with the package.  Frontier consultancies are available through BAWP for such arcane matters, but the district shouldn’t need anything like it for awhile.
   
   
   
2. School site level - It’s difficult to determine this level of infrastructure. Minimally, a single internet-connected workstation would allow some creative Manila applications., Optimally, every classroom and work area in a school would have a pod of internet-connected workstations, allowing either small group or whole class access to Manila sites, depending on the size of the pod. Every teacher would manage multiple blog sites for direction of multiple classes and partner project collaborations. Every student would have a single blog site, a simple version of an on-going ePortfolio. 
   
   Building on the piloting efforts of MLK, we hope the IT department will be able to assist us in obtaining the small amount of hardware that we need to deploy a sufficient number of complete workstations to maximize teacher, student and community use of Weblog technology.

School sites would need to have one (two if backup is included?) person(s) designated as “school blog manager(s).” They are entered as managing editors (ME) of all blogs created for a particular school site by the Manila Manager. School blog managers would be required to successfully complete a designated level of  training. Each blog created within a school ‘domain’ could have any number of MEs, but all blogs within that school ‘domain’ would have the school blog managers as the primary and default MEs.