Someone recently emailed me…here’s the crux of the challenge they face:
I feel that personal control of a hosted wordpress MU or even the edublogs account in my own name, as opposed to working within the administrative control of my district.
I want to be able to link an online portfolio [like Scott Floyd is planning in White Oak ISD] to the work done to demonstrate what I accomplished with them.
It’s a fantastic, real life situation. Fantastic in that it serves as an opportunity to explore different solutions. I’m reminded of this quote:
Transparency has become the order of the day. People want the opportunity to shape a company’s products and services.
Steve Borsch
principal, Marketing Directions Inc
People want the opportunity to shape a school district’s products and services. It’s only natural that this be true in K-12 districts, just as it is in “real life” outside of school. It is easy to forget–for the folks in “power” in school districts that others aren’t, as someone so eloquently put it in today’s Classroom 2.0 2008 Wrap-Up conversation, We have to remember, students won’t engage in the battle, they will just be doing it — outside of class! The battle, of course, refers to this idea that schools have that they can just legislate compliance by controlling the means of publication…but, fortunately for us, those means are no longer in their hands.
After all, if I don’t like YOUR rules, I’m going to go make my own web site. It takes all of 2 seconds.
In an earlier comment, someone called me on my switch to Blogspot/Blogger vs. Edublogs. LKB wrote:
If blogger is blocked, and if kids under a certain age can’t use Google, why did you go with blogger? I had real trouble with the new advertising in edublogs this fall, and hear that wordpress is doing the same kind of thing. With edublogs you can prevent the ads by joining for about $50 a year. I loved it when it was free and ad free, but can’t use it now. I like Google for personal use, but can’t use it with my younger students (under 13). That said, what suggestions do you have?
In response to that, I made the following points, which I’m going to update a bit.
#1 Best Option: Host Your Own District Solution
Professionally speaking, the best solution for K-12 students and educators who want to blog for education/work purposes is to host their own (e.g. Using Apple Blog Xserve, WordPress, b2Evolution, Moodle blog function for students). This gives the District control over the content and the ability to have learning conversations about how to best support instruction with blogs, wikis, etc. and deal with account management. It is the walled garden approach.
Remember, what you do IN school with students, what you use to further the ends of a K-12 education for the students entrusted to your care MUST be under the control of your school district. That is, if they want to provide a boring grey interface that fails to engage students, that makes them jump through 20 hoops to get the job done, then that is what must be.
Why? The reason is simple…you work for them and unless you’ve received special dispensation, you have to use/do what they tell you.
Ok, that adherence to policy reminder aside, work to change the rules. The reason we’re supporting blogging and using Moodle in my district isn’t because the network folks want to do it. It’s not because the C&I people woke up one morning and said, “Hey, this is wonderful stuff.” It’s because I’ve bull-doggedly advocated for the presence and use of these tools in teaching and learning environments. It’s been several YEARS since I introduced blogs into my District and worked over one winter break to make things work with b2Evolution. Here’s my 2005 post, a venture out into the unknown:
I’m working on setting up 3 class blogs. I’d planned to do them all in WordPress with multiple installs, and stop the outside world from looking in on the blogs by using .htaccess file…but, an easier approach might be to use B2Evolution.
Wow…incredibly easy to setup, and user management is powerful. It’s like a multi-user version of WordPress with lots of extra features. And, it also comes with built-in templates (not a lot, but nice ones, nonetheless).
So, I’m going to setup blogs using B2Evolution instead of multiple installs of WordPress.
Anyone know of a reason why NOT to use B2Evolution?
But what happens if you’re not me? Before that, I’d spent 3 years getting our own servers setup and building the trust and relationships needed to support those servers. Simply, it’s taken YEARS to get to where we are now…and widespread acceptance of blogs for teachers is numbered in 200 new teacher blogs (about 3000 teachers) since we launched the initiative in October, 2008.
Why has it taken so long to get going? I think it comes back to building trust and relationships. We can disintermediate central office but we do so at the risk of excluding the very people that must be a part of the conversation we so desperately desire to have and refer to in our blog entries.
If control is what is desired, then ask for the rights to a server you can support. Failing that, get official endorsement of running everything on your own server. In my experience, I would not choose to allow hosting student work–blog entries–or teacher instructional materials (which the District owns the copyright to under “work for hire”)–on a third party server.
Remember, this is a journey…and it will be a long time in coming. Short-term gains affect your students, long-term your district. Change 1 class at a time, or 1 district and 3000 classrooms (or however many teachers you have)? Your choice.
#2 Best Option for Districts:
The next best set of solutions includes paying Edublogs.org, November Learning Communities, Gaggle.net to do the account management and blog handling. The District gets the control but doesn’t have to provide the support (just money) and/or account management which can be a bear for some districts.
I suspect that many school districts will want option #1 but settle for #2 because they lack the staff. However, this is an excellent area for growth–too bad the economy is shot–and you may end up being the person responsible for implementing option #1. At worst, be a leader in forming the committee for Request for Proposals (RFP) development for option #2.
What do the rest of you think? Is the walled garden approach (Option #1) still viable?
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Another Think Coming 
It’s good to know that someone is paying attention and is interested in what we are doing in White Oak ISD. Like everyone, we have a ways to go with our plans, but we started early and strong. There is nothing like having truth on your side, and for some reason Marco Torres lays it out for my administrators like no other. Once they heard him speak (in different times and settings), they knew right off that the ideas we had and the direction we wanted to take our district in technology use is/was the right one.You are correct, Miguel. It takes time to make it all work. Not everyone is as lucky to have a superintendent come in and say that technology is an important component of what the district is going to be doing. All of the stars align just right only on rare occasions. Years into my work on this, I finally had that from the superintendent, to the curriculum director, to the school board, to the chief of technology, and to most of the campus administrators. There is no way to accomplish large goals overnight. I was blogging using David Warlick’s system years ago with my middle school students. Now we have our own WordPress MU system and an opensource YouTube-style server to support the media portion. We spent nearly a year trying to figure out how to podcast efficiently and effectively with PC equipment (years back, mind you) only to see that the MacBook and Apple podcast server was the best option for our situation. Now we have MacBooks on every campus with one campus being a one to one with the teachers. We even extended it into a high school Final Cut Pro program that is both physically on-campus and virtually in our online high school. For a 2A district, that’s a big deal. Again, none of these things occurred overnight. They took time and teacher/administrator buy-in. The advice you gave is pretty well spot on. I would add one thing. I do not remember where I heard the saying, but it has stuck with me. It is a rule you have to keep in mind when working with others. People will not change if they do not see the need for it. Our district and campuses are Exemplary and Recognized. Why would we need a change like what I was proposing? I took our mission statement and basically showed them that we cannot effectively meet that goal(s) without our students being better prepared in using new technologies. Sure, our kids are blowing the top off of the state minimum skills test, but is that what we want them to brag about when they leave our district? Is that going to get them to and through the programs and challenges they face when they leave our district? Our students cannot do “it” if our teachers are not doing “it” in the classroom. The “it” has changed from year to year, but there is a strong focus on technology integration as a tool, a piece, or a cog in teaching and learning instead of a piece of equipment that kids just take AR tests on and not much else. Things have just grown from there. When you give your staff permission to try new things and even fail (it’s how we learn best), then great things come out of it. One last word of caution: Do not throw statements out there that cannot be backed up. Know that what you are saying is as accurate as it can possibly be. It will help you gain credibility and, in the long run, will prove your wisdom in many more instances to come.
It’s good to know that someone is paying attention and is interested in what we are doing in White Oak ISD. Like everyone, we have a ways to go with our plans, but we started early and strong. There is nothing like having truth on your side, and for some reason Marco Torres lays it out for my administrators like no other. Once they heard him speak (in different times and settings), they knew right off that the ideas we had and the direction we wanted to take our district in technology use is/was the right one.You are correct, Miguel. It takes time to make it all work. Not everyone is as lucky to have a superintendent come in and say that technology is an important component of what the district is going to be doing. All of the stars align just right only on rare occasions. Years into my work on this, I finally had that from the superintendent, to the curriculum director, to the school board, to the chief of technology, and to most of the campus administrators. There is no way to accomplish large goals overnight. I was blogging using David Warlick’s system years ago with my middle school students. Now we have our own WordPress MU system and an opensource YouTube-style server to support the media portion. We spent nearly a year trying to figure out how to podcast efficiently and effectively with PC equipment (years back, mind you) only to see that the MacBook and Apple podcast server was the best option for our situation. Now we have MacBooks on every campus with one campus being a one to one with the teachers. We even extended it into a high school Final Cut Pro program that is both physically on-campus and virtually in our online high school. For a 2A district, that’s a big deal. Again, none of these things occurred overnight. They took time and teacher/administrator buy-in. The advice you gave is pretty well spot on. I would add one thing. I do not remember where I heard the saying, but it has stuck with me. It is a rule you have to keep in mind when working with others. People will not change if they do not see the need for it. Our district and campuses are Exemplary and Recognized. Why would we need a change like what I was proposing? I took our mission statement and basically showed them that we cannot effectively meet that goal(s) without our students being better prepared in using new technologies. Sure, our kids are blowing the top off of the state minimum skills test, but is that what we want them to brag about when they leave our district? Is that going to get them to and through the programs and challenges they face when they leave our district? Our students cannot do “it” if our teachers are not doing “it” in the classroom. The “it” has changed from year to year, but there is a strong focus on technology integration as a tool, a piece, or a cog in teaching and learning instead of a piece of equipment that kids just take AR tests on and not much else. Things have just grown from there. When you give your staff permission to try new things and even fail (it’s how we learn best), then great things come out of it. One last word of caution: Do not throw statements out there that cannot be backed up. Know that what you are saying is as accurate as it can possibly be. It will help you gain credibility and, in the long run, will prove your wisdom in many more instances to come.