I am in Myrtle Beach, SC at the Suth Carolina 2007 Educational Technology conference. Here is a quick picture I snapped…

I’ve finished one session about effective presentation design and have two more tomorrow. Fun! Updates later, this is from a couch in the lobby and this mac is hot!

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By the way, Bryan…

I’ve been staying at a Courtyard by Marriott and was pleasantly surprised when I fired up the Macbook and found nice, speedy, and above all, free wifi. All for under $150 per night.

Woo hoo!

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It’s been a whirlwind couple of days. I drove a few hours to Myrtle Beach, SC for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators conference. I did a presentation about blogging.

I don’t think I am going to present about blogging any more.

There is so much to talk about, and such a wide variety of experience levels walking in the door. You have to discuss everything from which platform to use, whether to allow comments, the legalities, the all-famous AUP, whether to allow comments and what to do if a student cyberbullies from home on your blog, etc etc etc

I am just not sure blogging with students is an all together good idea any more. I have a post in draft that’s been there since the last time I presented on blogging in March, let’s see what it says…

For the last two days I have been presenting on a variety of topics at the SC ETV headquarters for a teacher technology workshop. I presented on blogging, podcasting and wikis. My podcasting session and my wiki sessions were great!

My blogging session was awful.

My fault? Not sure.

Most of the teachers came in interested in having students publish work to the web in the interest of sparking conversation, not as a daily journal. So yes, Jeff, I get it. I understand blogs.

My issue with this whole deal is the lack of an appropriate online tool. Here’s what I mean, and remember, we’re talking STRICTLY about student blogging, not teacher blogging, not admin blogging, nothing else outside of students with a blog as an outlet for writing and conversation.

There are a few ways to pragmatically “do” this blogging thing. I am looking for a broadly implementable idea that can be administered by a teacher who is not super tech-savvy.

1. Blogger. I rule blogger out based on the need for kids to have an email address to sign up. I had a few teachers in my session concerned about that. The next blog button is also notoriously inappropriate.

2. Wordpress - Good platform, and clearly my platform of choice. Not too many teachers have any clue how to install something on a shared server, nor do they have shared server space to begin with.

3. Wordpress mu - Same issues as Wordpress, except now  the teacher has to administer the blogs. Not a bad thing in certain situations, but most classroom teachers do not have the time/expertise/desire to do this.

4. DrupalEd - Good platform and good organization. Same issues of teachers not having sufficient time/knowhow and shared server space.

5. Moodle - probably the best, since it can create a walled garden (which I support only in the context of our increasingly litigious society and frightened administrations) and yet some blog posts can be set to allow the world to read them. Naturally, with such flexibility comes an incredible amount of administrative headaches, not to mention the installation would knock any non tech-savvy teacher out of the running.

But Chris, what about some of the newer web-based tools? Ok, here you go…

6. Class Blogmeister - by far the teacher favorite with the teachers I’ve spoken with. I have heard it’s not being developed any more, and I emailed to try and get a login and never heard back. This is one that could use a team to come along and push development. The design is right in terms of permissions and the like.

7. Imbee.com - I don’t want an entire social network for my kids. Tell me they would not be distracted…

Ok there are others, but I am not sure they offer what I believe to be is the proper mix of teacher involvement and student freedom of expression. This post more than anything is designed to allow me to explain where I am in terms of student blogging. If I choose to do it next year it will be in the context of our Moodle installation.

What do you think?

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If you haven’t seen what Steve Hargadon’s been up to, go read up…

Here is my info, for those curious…

Craft, Chris: ‘Open Source Blogging Solutions for Publishing Student Writing’ in B308 at 12:30 on Tuesday
Tag=n07s845 Blog Posts / Blog RSS / Flickr / Flickr RSS

Technorati Tags: necc, necc07, necc2007, n07s845

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So thanks to Jeff, I got the idea to publish where I’ll be at NECC. I think it’s a neat idea so we all can see where we’ll be. Come find me, to shake hands. Don’t stalk me. That would be weird.

Next to the titles in italics is my reasoning for attending this session.

Sunday, June 24
5:45-7:00pm
Opening Keynote - well, duh. It’s the first session, I thought it may be interesting.
GWCC Murphy Ballroom
——————————

Monday, June 25
8:30-9:30am
A Computer on Every Desk? Now What? - I’m going to stalk Jeff, pure and simple. Hear that big daddy? I’m heading your way…

GWCC B207
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
11:00am-12:00pm
Daring Conversations: An Actor Shares the Voices of Students - I’m a bit of an actor myself, so I am curious to see what she does…

GWCC Murphy 1
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2:00-3:00pm
How Virtual Worlds Help Real Students: The River City MUVE - since I did so much research on these guys, I want to hear what they have to say…

GWCC Murphy 1
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
3:30-4:30pm
Classrooms and Libraries for the Net Generation - this is purely to see Doug Johnson in action, well, and to get a better idea of what the future of libraries looks like, and maybe run into some librarian friends (Hear that, Cathy?)

GWCC B212
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
4:45-6:15pm
SIGTE (Teacher Educators) Business Meeting - This is my network, and I won a scholarship through them.
GWCC B204
—————————————————————-
Tuesday, June 26
12:30-1:30pm
Open Source Blogging Solutions for Publishing Student Writing - uhh, well, I’m presenting this one.

GWCC B308
NOTES: Speaker
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2:00-3:00pm
Linux Solutions for Thin-Client Computing - this is to see Steve Hargadon and check out k12ltsp.

GWCC B308

That’s it, I have to leave Tuesday after this session I think. We are flying out on that Thursday for Peru, so I have to get home and packed. I will be arriving Saturday morning in time to drop by the edubloggercon.

See you all around NECC!

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I’ll spare you the it’s-been-crazy-with-the-school-year-ending apologies, but it’s been crazy around here. Heh.

Listen, I’ve been working on my presentation for NECC in the open source lab. It’s on Open Source Solutions for Student Blogging (or some catchy title like that).

I created a one-page comparison of Moodle, DrupalEd, Wordpress and Wordpress mu.

Take a look at it, would you? Help me proof it, see if there are errors, etc.

necc_handout_v1.pdf

Thanks!

Chris

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This is a presentation I gave to the College of William & Mary, for Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, who is teaching the class. She gave me a list of topics, and I chose one that I am particularly passionate about, presentations. I use PowerPoint and others regularly, and have some strong views on it. Here is my presentation…

Here are the notes, taken from the W&M wiki page on me.

Stock Xchng - www.sxc.hu
Garr Reynolds - www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html
Slide Share - www.slideshare.net/cmcraft
My presentation on Slideshare (or watch it above) - http://www.slideshare.net/cmcraft/dont-read-to-me-a-presentation-on-presentations/1

I recorded the audio portion and will be posting it as a podcast soon, maybe later today!

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I have been thinking about doing some presenting. 2007 seems to be shaping up as a year to do just that. To that end, I have been thinking about ways to follow up with conference attendees so that the conversation that begins during the presentation does not end once time is up. This was sparked by a webinar I attended with Will Richardson in which he used a wiki to present. I thought about how easy it would be to make changes, encourage discussion, etc. I am not one to blindly copy anyone, so I embarked on my own thought journey, and here are my current thoughts and the various options as I see them…

1. PowerPoint/OpenOffice Impress/Keynote - The first and most obvious option is the standard laptop/clicker/screen presentation. I could spend lots of time preparing a rockin’ presentation to give with really colorful photos and engaging videos and loud music. It’s no secret, I can put together a snappy presentation. That seems too much like the old school. It seems very unidirectional and does not seem to support follow up. I suppose that if I were so inclined I could post the presentation to slideshare and then incorporate that into a wiki for folks to use as follow up. Still, it seems more like a look-what-I’ve-done-you-comment scenario. Useful, but appropriate in all situations?
2. Second on the list is the presentation wiki. I have noticed a few folks doing this lately, and it seems like a good idea. I notice, thought, that mostly the one editing the wiki is the owner/presenter, not the crowd. I wonder if that is based on the learning curve that some conference attendees have towards editing a wiki? Or is it the sheer lack of follow up? Or could it be the nature of conversation? The latter is clearly where my thoughts have been because I rarely edit someone else’s wiki. I can not imagine being an attendee at one of David Warlick’s sessions and then editing his co-learner wiki. I know the wiki levels the playing field and that I have as much to say as anyone, but for me that is intimidating. Not only is it imtimidating, but I question the level of interaction. Sure, I get to make an edit of a wiki, but does that really become a part of the conversation? Would anyone know I contributed if all I did is fix something? Would anyone know unless they checked the revisions page? I don’t begrudge the wiki by any stretch, but if the blogosphere is all about the conversation and flow of information, a wiki seems to me still to be centered around one person. I am certainly aware of the discussion page on most wikis, but that seems tangential instead of integrated. Not sure what I really think here, just sort of rambling. As you know from earlier posts, I am a strong supporter of the wiki, but my uses are when there are a number of collaborators, not one person developing content and others just adding bits and pieces. I give kids a blank slate and the work cooperatively. Maybe I am drawing too much of a distinction here, but I see one.
3. So I keep thinking back to the old days of Moonshae Isles BBS, which ran on Major BBS. I was ten years old, and this was all the 300 baud dial-up rage and there was a game called Fazuul that was text based and fun! We walked through that game together for hours at a time, all the while tying up my own phone line and not really caring because I was forging relationships in a new medium. Thinking back to those memories coupled with thinking about a new semester of teaching Latin has me pondering the use of forums (message boards) for conference presentations. Before you go accusing me of being “so web1.0″ hear me out.

Forums provide a threaded discussion, keeping conversations very linear. Now I am not saying that all conversation needs to be linear by any stretch, but forums would certainly offer a question-and-answer scenario that may prove to be very useful. Now wouldn’t it be something to take the forum and make it the center of the conference presentation? What if a locked, sticky, introductory post was the first to be shown, and then the audience is walked-through the contents. Then imagine if they could go home and walk through it themselves, and then post questions directly below it? I think that may encourage more people to participate as opposed to walking away frustrated.

I am thinking more and more that an internet forum (i.e. phpbb) would be a great way to keep the conversation going. I am thinking of one central forum with different conferences listed as the subtopics. Maybe something like this…

• NECC 2007
• Drupal
• Wordpress
• ETV 2007
• Blogging
• Wordpress.com
• Edublogs.org
• Podcasting
• Gcast
• Odeo
• Wikis
• Wikispaces
• Wetpaint
• SCFLTA 07
• Blogging
• etc etc

This just seems to me to be so logical and wonderful. That way if someone from a particular conference had a question about a particular piece of software, they have their own spot to go and post. I would start each conference with a new topic and blank slate. But, if attendeed wanted to, they could jump around and see what other attendees have posted under those respective topics.

Ok, let me have it. Is my logic flawed? Looking at Tim O’Reilly’s definition of web 2.0, it seems like the trusted forum (or fora, as is the correct latin plural) is a solid web 2.0 idea. My installation of phpbb (more on that later) will not be AJAX’ed quite as much as the traditionally referred-to web 2.0 tools like Google’s App Suite, but nonetheless it fulfills the core principles of web 2.0 such as:

• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I will be able to try the winning tactic out at NECC, on Tuesday, 6/26/2007, 12:30pm– 1:30pm, because I will be presenting in the Open Source Lab. The title of my presentation is Open Source Blogging Solutions for Publishing Student Writing. Needless to say, I am super nervous already!

So, dear reader, which of these tactics do you think bodes best for follow-up conversations?

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