Interesting Results of Weblog Use for KM

Rick Klau over at Tins has had some experience in the last months trying to implement a K-Log at his company. A K-Log is a network of weblogs used for knowledge management. I have always thought that this would be something important for the Chicago Teachers' Center to employ, as knowledge is our most important asset. So far I have not been able to generate much participation. Rick has some intersting insights:

Bottom line: we learned a lot about how we want to share information internally. Noone in the company had a bad experience with their weblog. Some gravitated to it, while others found themselves more as a "consumer" of information rather than a "producer".  This experience provoked a number of excellent conversations about what kind of information would be valuable inside the company. Sales people started thinking about what they did that might be useful for product management; development started thinking about what marketing was working on that might make them more effective.

Read the rest of his story here. -Steve
11:15:31 AM    

What Works Clearinghouse

Here is some more news that relates to the No Child Left Behind act and its requirements for the use of "scientifically rigorous" interventions.

The "What Works Clearinghouse" has been established and is being headed by Dr. Larry V. Hedges of the University of Chicago. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is a national project, created in August 2002 by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement, to meet this need. Through a set of easily accessible Web-based databases on what works, the WWC will provide decision-makers with the information they need to make choices based on high quality scientific research. The WWC will develop standards for reviewing and synthesizing rigorous research and will provide its findings in accessible, straightforward language through the following user-friendly, searchable online databases.

Read about the WWC at www.w-w-c.org. -Steve
10:33:26 AM    

Achievement Gap Un-American

While the gap between black and white students continues to grow, the dollars that No Child Left Behind act will follow only those progrmas that meet "scientific rigor." Rod Paige said, "We know how to teach reading, yet we still waste time . . . with systems that don't meet scientific rigor. A large majority of our children are not being educated well." This means that the programs that organizations like the Chicago Teachers' Center provide to schools will have to meet certain government criteria if we want federal dollars to support them. This could mean a drastic shift in the way we, and other universities, do business with local school districts. Read the whole article about Paige's address here. You can also read about what "scientific rigor" means here. -Steve
10:01:15 AM    

And You Thought No One was Paying Attention....

[Alterego] is a weblog dedicated to discussing "edublogs" (which are just weblogs used in education). I have linked to their weblog a couple of times (see especially An Edublog Manifesto in the Making where I link to their vision of edublogs). It appears that they also have started keeping an eye on ADEPT's work at the Chicago Teachers' Center as they reference us in a recent post. If you have not had a chance to look at the weblog over at [Alterego], it is well worth a look. They have lots of interesting links to examples of edublogs as well as thoughtful posts on this emerging technology.

We were also noticed by a local friend over at Whittier Elementary School, Albert Delgado. He just dropped us a line to say he was in the cyber "neighborhood" so to speak. I asked him what kinds of ways they use technology in their school and he responded by saying:

We are starting first off with authentic projects to use this technology with. Starting off with more thought. Our first project, a teacher project, is in regards to 'science talk" ELL students in an inquiry centered classroom. We have besides our two sixth grade, some UIC professors and folks from Che Che Konnen Project out of Mass. They are part of the TERC hub. We are putting video to DVD for teacher research purposes.

And we thought that we were only speaking to ourselves. Its good to know that we have friends and colleagues out there working on similar kinds of problems.--Steve
10:08:14 AM    

An Edublog Manifesto in the Making?

Our article examines how Weblogs offer a way to initially cloister, organize, assess and criticize, and then re-distribute knowledge and information for the purpose of convening a community that will then function to amass knowledge, each member sharing, collaborating, redistributing and redefining themselves in the act of knowledge production. Members of weblog communities enter into apprenticeships with one another that constantly enhance intelligence in knowledge spaces because the guiding principle is that we don-t know everything so we are looking to "the other" to complete us, and therefore complete the community. (Read the entire proposal here) By Barbara Ganley, Catharine Wright, Sarah Lohnes, & Hector Vila. [Center for Educational Technology]
10:03:36 AM    

What Does "Scientifically-Based Research" Mean in Education?

One of the issues important to the work of the Chicago Teachers' Center as a whole and ADEPT in particular is that our work has to be based in "research." That has meant many things in the past, but according to the Department of Education, it means something quite specific now. They have published tantalizingly little so far about how this will affect funding, but to see what they are discussing now, read this article and the links found in it. We need to make sure that the methods CTC loves to use in the classroom or in schools as a whole take this evolving definition into consideration.
2:36:57 PM    

Blog-Talk at CTC

1:34:03 PM    

Center-Wide Data Collection:
A Possibility

The Chicago Teachers' Center needs a Center-wide system of data collection and program evaluation to better describe the outcomes of our work in the communities we serve. We collect data program-by-program with no effective way of bringing that information together to examine and talk about the impact of CTC. This data collection is often haphazard, responding mostly to funders' questions, providing managers and front-line staff with little useful data about what is working and what they need to change to be more effective. In addition, data is stored in isolated databases that are not shared, and we are never able to link it in any meaningful way to the accounting system. This means that not only do we lack key management information about cost-benefit relationships to support our decision-making, we also lack the ability to ask and answer specific questions that support CTC's priorities.

ADEPT has been discussing a process for creating a centralized and automated data collection system to streamline the reporting process, provide answers to questions important to improving CTC's work, and allow us to talk about our impact on the community. Read More...

11:17:58 AM