Comments on: Online Work-Flow For School Newspaper Defined

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:44:10 +0000

Kevin, it could indeed have an RSS feed. (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and allows all published updates to a site to be received into a single user’s webpage such as Google Reader [see http://reader.google.com for more details].)
About comments, the reason we don’t allow any is online child predators and pedophiles are known to take months cultivating relationships with children (see netsmartz.org for more about this). I know it is a wonderful motivator for anyone to see comments (me too!) but as a precaution to make sure a relationship doesn’t develop online with a stranger, it’s best to keep this option closed.
Instead of comments, we could have an online feedback page, that generates an email to a central location which could then be vetted by a teacher before being passed along. That’s something we could grow into.

Thanks for your thoughts!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:31:06 +0000

Thanks MK for taking time to comment. 2nd graders not giving any information at all about their school doing wikis about animals and geography is one thing. We will need to adjust a little for 4th and 5th graders writing news stories about their school. They could take unique pen names or use their initials (They could pick their favorite writer’s name). They could call the school by it’s mascot rather than the name. They would never need to say the city. Pictures could not show the school name (like on the wall of the cafeteria). But other than that they could cover the day to day news, along with comics, poetry and other sections they may have, unfettered by the confidentiality restriction.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:28:32 +0000

Will it be RSS’able (not really sure if that is a word or not)? And why no comments? I understand the security issues, but I feel the ability to leave comments and dialog about the piece is a powerful aspect of the whole blog idea. The author gets a different perspective through the comments and the readers can engage with the text. Could you do moderated comments or something similar?

By: MK

MK — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:30:46 +0000

My 2nd grade class has created and used 2 wikis outside the firewall. They use nondescript logons–Student1,Student2, Student3, etc. and are able to log on from home. There have been no issues with them giving any personal information. As a matter of fact, they comment on it when other contributors do it.

As a reader, I’d prefer an online version, too.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:18:07 +0000

Rob, Thanks for thinking about this.

By: robhatch

robhatch — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:16:18 +0000

What a great learning opportunity for everyone involved. But to print out the paper not only kills trees, it kills all the future learning which would happen online from your students learning to do a better job as they read one another’s stories and shared with school children in distant lands. You could have incoming communication if it was filtered through a teacher. That way your students get direct feedback from their readers. There is nothing more powerful as a motivational source than that.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Thanks!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:09:44 +0000

Mark is that you? Thanks for the thoughts. As it turns out you are right on the money. Our DIT will not support such a box, even though there are several running throughout the county, so your thought to put it on an outside hosting solution is a solid idea.

By: mylearningspace

mylearningspace — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:07:03 +0000

This sounds like a great project. Go with the online solution. You have no idea how many more interesting things become available to teachers as soon as they allow their students online. One can control them, with little knowledge, so your teachers who are inexperienced with blogging need not worry.

By: MGammon

MGammon — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:04:22 +0000

Your approach seems sound. I think going with a properly hosted server is a better solution than stringing up a workstation to your network. Who’s going to service the workstation? Will your IT department service a workstation running your own software? You will have to use Lenux and I don’t know of many IT departments that would take that on. Perhaps yours is big enough. I would suggest you go commercial and leave your home gown solutions to the blog setup and not hosting.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:12:33 +0000

Great thinking there M

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:11:41 +0000

Dave, Thanks for the thoughts!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:08:50 +0000

I think wordpress is the way to go unless you are thinking about using a content management system like Moodle. That would allow for wiki pages and differentiated roles, but the editing is a bit harder if your 4th and 5th graders are not sophisticated online users. If they are used to blogs like blogger and wikispaces as you say, wordpress is the best option. I’m all for open options and letting the online side of the newspaper be seen, it opens possibilities you will not know until you venture upon them. Things like sharing long-distance learning with schools in other states or countries or continents. Sort of like what “Early Elementary Teacher” is saying, but long distance.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:55:57 +0000

Those are some good ideas and it is clear if there is a way for every grade to get access it could easily be used as a learning tool. This could be another argument for having it online so the kids in all grades could read it.

By: Early Elementary Teacher

Early Elementary Teacher — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:20:14 +0000

Will you have a comics section? My students who are emerging readers will want to be able to follow along, too! My students with siblings will be bursting with pride to show/read their older brothers’ and sisters’ work. Maybe some number and word puzzles/riddles that students create, too. Or jokes! My students love telling and reading jokes. Oh and the weather is a good section for images that support the text. Did you want more feedback on the tools rather than the content? Great idea.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:30:08 +0000

Actually, #4 is incorrect. If you decide to take the newspaper outside the firewall, it is a relatively easy process to export the blog from the installation and import it to another. As to backup, it’s true you won’t be able to use the automatic system in WordPress but it’s not that tough to do backups other ways.

While I’m a big advocate of students publishing to the whole wide world, sometimes you have to start the process in a relatively close environment while everyone gets comfortable with the concepts.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:42:14 +0000

Tim, I bow to your knowledge, and you are correct. However, the backup system costs money and needs to be implemented manually on a daily basis. If we lost a month’s work there would be a lot of upset students. Porting the entire operation from the inside to the outside solution also holds some risk.
But I take your point, sometimes one has to start off slow. But all of the 5th grade teachers have used blogs with their students for several years. A couple of the 4th grade teachers blog, so they know how it works.

By: Input from 4th

Input from 4th — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:36:09 +0000

Creating an outside of the firewall newspaper format blog will be so powerful for these kids. We are already cutting and pasting into a format – why not just have each student contribute directly to the page (with our supervision, of course) and remove the middle man – aka US! Also, this will be more up to date information that they will go back to check. Check from WHEREVER they want. We can still print it, just as we wanted, but now we add an element without doing all that extra work for it.