The Edublogs Magazine

Each week we will take a look at some of the news, hot topics, rumors, and gossip flying around the Edublogs Network of blogs. If you have a juicy bit of Edublogs news, please email us at Edublogs Magazine.

As I went prowling around Edublogs and edubloggers in general, here are some of the juicy tidbits I turned up.

Educon 2.0: There is a lot of talk about Educon 2.0 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 25-27, 2008. It’s an education conference that explores the future of schools, especially where teaching mets reality on the ground, not fantasy. Are you attending? Been blogging about it? You can track more information on the event through Hitchhikr.

Educating the Edublogger on Edublogs: Sue Waters on The Edublogger has been turning out the tutorials for Edublog users. So far, she’s released How To Add Your Photo to Your Blog Side Bar, Tips For Doing A Blog Makeover, and Getting More Out of Widgets!

Release of the Horizon Report: It’s the talk of the edublogosphere. It’s the 2008 Horizon Report (pdf). Rumors are that we’ll have a summary of it here on Edublogs Magazine soon. Stay tuned.

Hiding Behind Your Blog: Cool Cat Teacher showcases a teacher brave enough to tell the school principle that she had a blog, and it turned out great!. This is a topic near and dear to Cool Cat’s heart as she says in Why Should You have to Hide Behind Your Blog. There are still a lot of teachers fearful of reprecussions, and there is nothing wrong in blogging anonymously, as long as you are doing it for the right reasons. It’s a tough call. What do you think? Are you blogging about this? Does everyone know who you are behind your blog?

Flat World, Ebooks, and Flickr and the Library of Congress: This week, Kevin’s Meandering Mind covers Two Million Minutes in the Flat World, the book by Tom Friedman and a documentary on the emergence of math and science in China and India and, the concern about lack of these skills in the US. An interesting combination of perspectives on the subject. He also brings up ebooks and the announcement that the US Library of Congress has joined with Flickr to put thousands of photos from its archives up on Flickr.

An Educational Resource a Day: Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day covers sites for learning more about language studies, specifically ELL, ESL and EFL. This week’s goodies include Schoolr, Student Self-Access To Websites Of The Year, The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers, Last Day For Educational Blogging Survey, Songza, Vocabulary Games, Evaluating Teachers, Tour Through Time, The Best Websites For Beginning Older Readers, and Medline Plus, among many others. His site recommendations cover the gamut and are helpful for all teachers and students.

Flixn, Martin Luther King, and Interesting Class on Copyrights: Yes Tech! had a teacher with a new webcam asking about how to use Flixn and gives a few insights. In honor of the holiday, some web resources on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are offered along with a very strange lesson in Weird Al Gives Lesson About Copyright.

Learning to Teach and Blog: Reflection 2.0 is about Kate Olson, a new teacher, and she makes a good point in her post on finding interesting web tools each week, Jing + Tumblr = Great Day, about the frustration of images not fitting within the WordPress Theme. In theory, WordPress Theme designers are supposed to take image width and column width into account in their designs but they don’t always. Remember, WordPress blogs automatically give you a choice of a thumbnail version or full-size version of all images you upload to your blog. Other posts by Kate included Humbled by a Widget and Learning As I Go, more lessons learned along the blogging way. Good for you, girl! Keep learning. We love learning with you.

Teachers Training Teachers Presents Spin The Globe: Graham Wegner of Teaching Generation Z was invited to be on the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast with Doug Noon recently discussing their project, Spin The Globe.

Bringing Blogs to Elementary Students and Wired Wednesdays on Always Learning: Always Learning has started offering the details on helping elementary students learn how to blog. In Learning to Blog: The Elementary Way and Blog Pals: Adventures in Blogging With Third Grade, some great tips, course outlines, and advice is offered to help others bringing in blogs to the classroom. In The Technology Toolbox: Choosing the Right Tool for the Task, the author creates a chart that shows which tool is the right one for the task. A work in process, it’s a great start to helping other teachers figure out if a blog, social networking, or other web tool is the right one for their project. Another exciting announcement came in the post about The Future of Learning in a Networked World which covers the Teach and Learn Online organization from Australia and New Zealand, and includes the announcement that every Wednesday will be “Wired Wednesdays” where the Professional Development program will host an after-school PD session on the whys of 21st century living. How exciting!

Being a Globally Connected Teacher, Child Safety on the Web, and Comparing Schools from 1977 to 2007: Chris of Betchablog recalled the magic of being a “globally connected teacher” in In Real Life, detailing the power of social media like Twitter, Skype, and blogs to connect with people all over the world. In Data lives Forever, we get another lesson that children have to learn early “the full implications of something as seemingly harmless as putting their photo online. They often don’t realise that, just like The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, once something goes online it is near impossible to remove it.” Chris continues with Wrapped in Cotton Wool about the struggles of keeping children safe on the web while allowing them access to modern technology. In an interesting “joint post” with Sue Waters of The Edublogger, they wrote Making your photos worth 1000 words about integrating Flickr with Picasa. To lighten things up for the new year, Chris shares a funny email called School 1977 vs. School 2007. It’s funny because it is so right on.

Bringing Cell Phones to School - Principals Insist! Leonard Low of Mobile Learning talked about Principals Trying out Cell Phones, summarizing it with:

Wow. Educators having a dialogue with students and discussing mobile phone manners and ethics? Might those students get insights into the acceptable use of mobile technologies (useful for the rest of their lives, no less) that they wouldn’t otherwise get from a blanket ban on mobiles at school?

He continues with his fascination with Barcodes in ZXing Open Source Barcode Library discussing ZXing, an open source Google Code project that he says could become one of the most flexible readers available. He also talks about how to create a free SMS auto-reply learning tool which allows students to SMS and receive “on-demand learning and support information on their mobile phones” which is a nice round off for the week with his most recent article on principles and cell phones.

Exploring Educon: The blogger at Not So Distant Future is starting a series of post on the Educon conference, including “Conversations That Matter“, a look at what many considered an excellent session by Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez on “Influence Without Authority” which looked at the Future Search process. Earlier, the blogger covered the issue of personal learning networks and moving them into the professional practice of teachers in “Keeping It Real” which seems to be a hot topic around the edubloggers circles lately.

This is just the first of many walks around Edublogs looking for what our favorite bloggers are covering. If you have a bit of Edublogs gossip to add, please contact us at please Edublogs Magazine.