All or Nothing? Will responds to my comment on an earlier post of his which went:
"...What I've been struggling with is finding a balance between the districts desire to ensure quality content on the site in terms of appropriateness and correctness and a process that will not be so cumbersome that teachers or staff members wouldn't be willing to post to the site. With the help of my redesign team, I think we've come up with something that will work.
When someone creates a news post on any of the dozens of Weblogs we'll have running, we'll configure that site to send notifications to that person's supervisor and to our Public Information Officer who can review the content right in the e-mail and reply to the author with approval or changes. Once the author receives those approvals, she goes back and publishes the post. When someone creates a story on a site, notification will be sent as usual, but the author won't link the stories to anywhere (since that's pretty much the only way anyone will know they were created) until she gets approvals back. For now, all commenting will be turned off, so that shouldn't be a problem...." [weblogg-ed]
My comment was, in short 'Quelle Point?' which as well as being bad French is probably also bad mood orientated given recent events... to which Will responded:
"...Yeah, I know we're not gonna be "blogging" here, at least not at the outset. But we are going to be enlisting 40 or 50 more people in the process. And we are going to be introducing Weblogs to teachers and students and parents which will most likely generate greater use in the classroom. And we're going to be showcasing the best practices of our teachers and students. And in doing so we're going to be able to communicate a heckuva lot more effectively with the people in our community by using RSS and group notification and more...
This is my reality and the reality of most public schools in America. There are concerns about how we present ourselves to our publics. There is unease with letting people express themselves freely on a district owned Web space. We want to protect our students who are, after all, still just kids. These concerns are legitimate. It is not the perfect fit for pure blogging. But so what?...." [weblogg-ed]
Which brings up for me one of the most relevant questions that I've ever faced professionally... if it goes 'half way' there, or 'adds value' which previously wasn't there but isn't really what you want... then is it worth doing? Now, the realist in me (small dude, tends to go AWOL fairly regularly) says that everything is compromise, there are no absolutes and it's all about little steps but experience tells me otherwise...
When I suggested a coupe de pedagogue (also bad French!) a while back I was kinda on these lines again, I figured that basically what happens is you can apply weblogs, rss, tools for expression and exploration to traditional classes and courses and they just don't work. In order to progressively use technology, we have to teach progressively. I know it doesn't work the other way round, it hurt finding out!
And so, while I agree with you entirely Will that you're adding a whole lotta goodness there and you're also working with the reality of your situation, I think that ultimately, in going with what I perceive to be reactionary fear around you, you could be shooting the whole thing in the foot because it just won't work as you suggest it and in doing so, strengthen the barriers... perhaps?
3:33:05 PM 
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