Next Big Project

One of the challenges of being a tech facilitator at a HS with 800 kids is economy of scale: there's no opportunity to meet meaningfully with everyone; in small groups, it takes too long, and in large groups people's attention wavers. So I have to find ways to facilitate change through other means.

Next year, we are going to require our Freshmen to begin to keep blogs, and my next challenge will be to roll this out for 200 Freshmen in the first week of school. So far, along with the other members of the committee, we have made some decisions:

-The blogs will be public. This is important...the essence of a blog is about broadcasting your thoughts to a public audience. So rather than try to maintain some sort of overarching control over access, we will work with the kids in counseling groups throughout the year to help them learn about voice, audience, appropriate digital behavior and digital security.

-We will make Blogger available, but not require those with previous blogging experience to use it. Since Blogger is under the general umbrella of our school google.apps account, it will be easy to set up some standard settings and create digital resources to help first-time bloggers get started. But if someone is already a blogger, they can continue to use their own blog.

-I will introduce the blogs, and guide the kids through setting them up, at the pre-school orientations. In early August,  I meet with the kids in groups of 20 (ten different meetings over a couple of days) and help them map their network drives, set up accounts, school folders, etc. I'll lengthen the meeting times from 30 minutes to 45, and also help them set up their blogs.

-I will leverage my Student Digital Leadership Team. The SDLT are an empowered and enthusiastic group of kids who run a help desk, teach parent sessions and pitch in wherever there is a digital need. I'll have them work with the Freshmen in the orientation sessions to ensure that they get their settings correct and are able to get started.

-I'll spend time this year creating a digital archive of 'helpy files' for assistance. The SDLT will be starting their own blogs in a few weeks, so they can assist with this. My intention is to have a well-populated resource bank before school starts in the fall.

Watch this space: I'll keep everyone updated as this project moves along. If any of my millions of readers have any good resource files on how to get kids to blog successfully, or how to set up blogs for groups of 200 students, pass them along!