For awhile I thought that FrontPage would kill CyberEnglish in the same way that video killed the radio star.

We’d been using FrontPage as the web editor for our students to create their websites since 2001, but FP is no longer supported by Microsoft. Also, our server was a Microsoft system set up to do live editing on the server, and if we moved to an open source web editor, we’d need to find some way to ftp pages, or whatever the lingo is for publishing. Also, our security is tight. We adhere to the extremely stringent Wisconsin Open Records Law in our school, so whatever new tool we decided to use, it would have to keep us in line with the law.

I have wanted to move to blogs for quite awhile,  and a convergence of factors this year propelled us somewhat last minute to do just that.

We installed WordPress MU on a local server (when I say we, I don’t mean me). My CE9 colleague and I and a brilliant technology teacher in our district worked on customizations. It has taken us awhile to manage it all, but this week our students were blogging like crazy. And they love it.

Moving to WP MU and blogs did give us some advantages over websites:

• Students can login to their blogs from any Internet computer. They can create new posts and submit for review. This means they aren’t “confined” to the school building or the school day to accomplish their goals. This is great for students who need more time as well as for students who are absent. Students could not edit their websites from home.
• I can edit my classroom blog anytime. I can only edit my www.mshogue.com website from home. Sometimes I want to publish up-to-the-minute announcements. I can use my blog for that.
• Peers, teachers, parents, mentors, or anyone, can post comments on our blogs. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to move from static websites to blogs. Comments connect us. When students generate content (a book review or a journal post) and publish it, a comment means someone has read their work and is engaging in conversation about it. This means a lot to them and for me continues to drive a wedge into our old idea of audience. I want student to write for everyone, not for me, so that eventually, they’ll write for themselves.
• As the teacher, I have much more administrative control over the blogs than I did over the websites. This is nice for our tech specialists. They don’t need to devote as much time to us as in the past. On the downside, it means I devote a lot more time. C’est la vie, I guess. No system is perfect.

There are some disadvantages to using Blogs over Websites:

• A blog is a truly linear looking format, whereas students websites were a bit more fluent. That is, there was a more natural “back and forth” linkability in the websites. This class of 2013 has not had the Website experience, though, so they don’t know the difference. They love their blogs.
• Our students can only edit posts and pages prior to publishing. They cannot go back to revise once a page or post is published (made public). This is a tremendous disadvantage in teaching a recursive writing process, but is a fact we have to live with due to the law. Because of this situation, students are encouraged to compose in Word first, to run spell check, to share with peers when needed, or teachers when needed–all before submitting for review. The blue submit for review button is one we only click after serious consideration. I’ve told my students that they don’t want their work wandering out in the world sleepy-headed  in its jammies. They want what they write to go out in public well dressed with its hair combed and its face fresh. They get the idea. We will work hard on knowing when to push the blue button.
• There are limits to how much students can customize. This is good and bad. I like how their websites of the past were truly unique. I’ve had over 500 CE0 students in the past and each student created an individual website. No two were the same. This is not so with blogs. This year, students can choose from about 20 themes. We upload the themes for them to choose from; they can’t go out and get their own. We will try to add more later, so the choice is wider. Most students are happy with the variety of themes. Others wish they had one all their own or that they could customize their theme.  The upside of this limitation is that students really won’t have a reason to play around with customizing, which some did to a distracting degree in years past. It is true that messing with code is good play because we can learn a lot from doing it. But if our goals are to write and communicate, then the theme is secondary to that.
• Getting things set up in the beginning took an incredible amount of time, probably 30 hours, no joke. In the future, this work could be done in the summer, not during the school day like this year. Also, in the future we won’t have to learn as we go or create lessons as we go. We’ve already done this–next year should be a breeze.

Right now, despite the time it takes to review and publish, I am pleased with the change. What’s more important, my students love blogging. Their cyberjournals sound a lot like their peers’ from the “old days,” which means that while the tools have changed, the pedagogy has not. We still learn best by making it public, by passing it on, and by peer review.

Times have changed.

I find myself in the mentor role again, as we have a new part-time English teacher, who is not only new to our school, but new to teaching as well. What I admire about Addie is her unflappability. Truly, she seems always so calm. This is a good thing because, as you all know, the first year of teaching can be nuts. But also, I need that influence. I am easily “flapped.”

Addie has begun a blog, at my urging, to reflect on her professional development. Plus, she will be my CyberEnglish9 teaching partner this year. I know that teachers must use the tools they hope to teach, and she is excited by the prospect of using technology tools in her English classes.

What does it mean to mentor in the 21st century? It means that my role is not so much to give a tour or to explain fire drill procedures or to talk about the importance of parent teacher conferences. This is all important stuff, of course. But, it is much more important to help Addie in other ways.

• explore Web tools, like blogs, wikis, nings, Google tools (docs, reader, etc.)
• join Diigo and engage in social bookmarking
• join EC ning and explore ideas with a diverse, energetic group of English teachers from all over
• help her integrate her ideas for integrating technology into our classroom (photo story, podcasts, and more)

Mentoring means teaching, but for me, at least, it will also mean learning, and I look forward to a fun year.

from Jessica A.

In all the classes I have ever had, we have never been able to have a great opportunity like this one. The only things we have ever created to reflect ourselves would just be posters or essays. I’m really looking forward to this class, partly because it isn’t the same English class I have every year.

There is a novelty involved when we put a computer in front of students each day in an English class, so there is, initially, excitement or expectation that the class will be fun. Ted, Pat, Nancy and I address this in our article, CyberEnglish. Even once we start really working on reading, writing, and thinking, and that fun turns into serious business, students are still more engaged in our work than they were in my traditional English classrooms.

The other thing I love about what Jessica writes is the idea that she’s able to create something that reflects who she is. In seven years of student webs (over 600 students in that time), no two were ever really alike. Each one reflected the personality of its author. We live in times where substance always trumps style and serious beats silly, hands down. And while I do want my students to be serious thinkers and writers, I also love that their websites allow them to be playful, creative, and expressive.

from Charlene W.

. . . we hardly ever write in this class. We type almost all of our assignments.

This is one of my favorite recurring comments. Several students say this every year. It proves to me that students don’t equate writing with typing. When students type, they are writing. Also, the act of typing improves the fluency of writing. I can get my thoughts down faster with a keyboard (even as slow as I am) than I can with a pencil. I still write with pen/pencil, but I can be more fluent with a keyboard. Think of how this may be even more true for someone who “grew up” with a keyboard.

Not only does the keyboard improve fluency, but it facilitates revision so well that revision becomes the natural companion of composition. With computers, we don’t compose first, revise second. We compose/revise, compose/revise, compose/revise–all at once. Just watch, without commenting, someone writing on a keyboard. There is a lot of backspacing and deleting going on just as the keys put words on the screen.

from Jeff B.

In my old English classes we worked with a lot of grammar, and spelling words. We also read stories from a literature book while using different reading strategies. But in CyberEnglish we will be writing a lot and publishing it on our own websites. In CyberEnglish we use computers pretty much all the time. It organizes our different pieces of writing rather than just writing an assignment on a sheet of paper and worrying about losing it. From my past experiences with English my classes did some group work and group discussions, but in this class it seems more like we do things individually. My other English teachers stood up in front of the room and talked and discussed points and hints. It seems to me that in CyberEnglish the teacher tells us what to do and where to find it on the CyberEnglish cite. So, it makes us have to work and find things independently for ourselves.

I am not even sure I explicitly made the point that I expected individual responsibility from students, but that is one thing I am hoping for. This student seems to intuitively know that CE = independent learning. Not that I’m not there for them, but CE is designed with so many choices and variables that the teacher cannot possibly direct every single aspect of learning. It has to be individual. Self directed learners know how to find what they need to know. My CyberEnglish site empowers students because I publish everything I can to help them learn.

from Kaitlyn L.

Never before have I had a class that specializes on writing more than grammar.

Maybe this is perception is attributable to a high school model (over a middle school model) and not simply CyberEnglish, but I like it anyway, because, I really do think we focus on writing. We write all the time: fun creative pieces on Fridays where we play with genres and perspectives, expository paragraphs, literary analysis essays, multigenre research papers, self reflective cyber journals, and more.

When we need to address conventions errors, we do. But grammar worksheets are not going to help students write better. Writing for a real audience will.

from Kelsey T

… in CyberEnglish9 we are learning new ways to use the computer by making our very own website. We even publish our work on this website. This pushes me to do better work on my assignments and really put time and effort into them, because I know my peers can see my work and what my peers think about how I write means a lot to me.

Yes! Make it Public. Changing the audience changes everything. Others have written/studied how publishing makes writing authentic, but only web publishing is really authentic. A class anthology is great, and peers do see it, but on the web anyone could see it. Now, in reality, do our students have a huge following for their school assignments? No, but more of their peers see their work than otherwise. Teachers peek in. Administrators sometimes have a look. And so do parents. The audience is vastly different when we publish on the web, and because of this, students stop writing just for the teacher and start writing for themselves.

Please visit the students’ websites and their cyberjournals and send them an email if you’re inclined to comment on their work. They’ve been told they have a global audience, but that is only real if they have contact with people who are interested in what they’re doing/saying.

But, of course, it’s so much more than that. I revised an old assignment, something I had been using since 2001, called Intro to the Internet. It relied on Ted Nellen’s assignment as a starting point. The new lesson has some of the same objectives as the old, but the new one is more relevant and, I think, a better springboard to 9th grade CyberEnglish.

One thing missing from the new lesson? True collaborative writing, which we could do at Google docs IF we were permitted. Everything in its own time, though, right?

Oh, and there’s a cool wordle in this lesson, too. I love that tool.

It would be cool to hand the Wordle out (nothing more, not even the title) to the class before reading have students in groups come up with the following:

• What is the story going to be about?
• Who might the main characters be?
• What will the setting be like?
• What is the tone of the story?
• What words might we need to define?
• What questions do you have about anything so far?
• Whatever else you can think of . . .

The groups should save their predictions and revisit them in journals during and after reading.

I think I will try this idea this fall and see what happens.

I read your blog frequently for inspiration to share with our English teachers. Today I went to it to mine for free advice. Since I didn’t see any posts alluding to this question, I thought I would ask you directly.
What qualities do you think are necessary for an effective English Dept. chair in the era of Cyber-English? I’ve just been approached to consider serving as an interim English Dept. chair this year and would really appreciate some insight from someone not even remotely connected with our school.

This is such a great question, Pam, and it hits home with me. I was department chair at our school from 1995-2003, when our principal decided department chairs were expendable. CyberEnglish, for me, was born in 2001, so I had two years to be the kind of person you’re asking about. I failed dreadfully.

For one thing, when we began CE, or when I began CE, the rest of the department believed that CE would have two main results:

• force teachers to change the way they teach (they would have to learn new technologies)
• create a division in the “fun-ness” of classes, CE being the fun class and the others being the “boring” classes

I truly think that the rest of my department at that time felt threatened by CE. I was treated with some subtle hostility, and my protection mechanism was to retreat to my sanctuary and do what I knew was right. I had few tools to help me convince my department, other than my anecdotal experience that CE works.

If I had been in the same place today, I would be engulfed in a rich, tech savvy Internet community that is screaming the value of technology integration. There are so many resources to support CE now, that my gentle bombardment of the department with the truth would be impossible to write off as the ravings of a English teacher turned computer geek.

I think of the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts by Will Richardson that is so compelling about using Blogs and Wikis. Bloggers like David Warlick, Bud Hunt, Ryan Bretag, Ted Nellen, Gail Desler, and Scott McLeod are voices that cannot be ignored.

Studies from PEW/Internet and the National School Boards Association give credence to what CE teachers know and do in the classroom.

Videos like Pay Attention and Learning to Change–Changing to Learn (posted in Polliwog Journal) help teachers see that change is NOT an option.

The CE department chair no longer needs to feel alienated. I imagine that in many districts the directive to change is coming from administration, not just the department chair. In a way, the situation in 2008 is perfect.

And yet, the main thing is to (and I hate this phrase) “walk the walk.” The CE department chair must be a teacher for the department so that they can be teachers for their students. The CE department chair must use and play with all the new tools. She/he must read the blogs, must read the books, articles, surveys, etc. She/he must have a passion for technology in education, but especially in English where it so perfectly aids teachers in their academic goals to increase language arts skills and higher order thinking.

I am no longer department chair, but in the past few years I have had more success than ever in convincing my department that integrating technology is imperative to our success. Our roadblocks now come from other, less manageable sources (see my post on blocking).

Best of luck to you, Pam.

Thank you Ted Nellen for the link to this video, “Learning to Change-Changing to Learn,” which is further validation of everything I believe about the future of schools. I am so proud to be a CyberEnglish teacher, which I owe again to Ted and his vision.

We’re a revolutionary classroom, and yet, we are not anywhere near where we could be or should be. And our classroom only engages one quarter of our students for one year.

Nonetheless, I am excited to be a teacher in the days when people are actually talking about radical and true change in schools. We think we’re past the one room school, but we’re not. We’ve got big box schools instead. One building, isolated from the world, isolated from community, teachers isolated from each other, with books that are prescriptive, with curriculum that is so standardized that it stifles creativity.

Arrggghhh! No wonder kids are bored. School is such a drudge compared to their outside-of-school life.

The teachers and leaders in this video say some really smart things that every educator should not only be listening to but also finding ways to make real changes for the students in their own schools:

• We have to develop a narrative that sustains 21st century learning.
• Kids are very rich content developers today through their social networking sites; they’re big communicators through email, instant messaging, and text messaging, and yet all of those things are banned from their schools.
• [Schools of the future are about] relationship, community, connectivity and access.
• The “nearly now” [Facebook, Twitter, etc.] is a great place for learning–allowing time to reflect, retract, research.
• We’ve got a classroom system when we could have a community system.
• Skills of future call on [students'] artistic abilities, abilities of synthesis, ability to understand context, to work in teams, their multidisciplinary, multicultural, multilingual abilities.

And my favorite:

• “Now we’re looking at a whole different range of schools that are producing ingenious, collaborative, gregarious, brave children who care about stuff like their culture and to build schools like that is a whole other challenge . . . . it’s a very exiting time for learning. It’s the death of education but the dawn of learning.”

The idea of “ingenious, collaborative, gregarious, brave children who care about stuff” is a heartbreaking idea. It’s heartbreaking because this is how kids are born. This is who they are as children before they go to school.

It is a moral imperative for us to make our schools worthy of them.

The true test of its value is the positive feelings it engenders in students. Most groups go into the the six week adventure with some little excitement but mostly trepidation. In the beginning, the “to do” list seems overwhelming. But at the end of that six week period, there is a great deal of satisfaction in having done a good job.

Students commonly report in their self assessments that once they get going, there is plenty of time for everything. They also report that they loved their interview experience. For some, the interview experience is emotionally meaningful.

“Old” Skills

• writing hypertext (creating links to extend, support, or clarify ideas)
• creating folders, pages, and saving files in FrontPage
• designing readable, user friendly Websites
• writing expository prose in 3rd person, stating claims and supporting them
• writing multigenre to add depth

“New” Skills

• interviewing a primary source
• researching a topic using print, Web, and electronic database sources
• notetaking
• weaving secondary source material from research into text
• citing sources in text
• creating annotated bibliography
• preparing a photo in Photoshop Elements for the Web

And more. . .

• teamwork and collaboration
• time management (meeting deadlines, making and keeping appointments, etc.)
• organization of materials and resources
• email and phone etiquette

In the future

• find more topics for which primary sources are available (WWII veterans are leaving us daily)
• use Web 2.0 tools to help students truly experience collaborative writing process

Please visit students’ sites: Links to students’ projects for 2008