The Classroom

During spring break I took a day just to mess around on my computer.  Yes I had a million other jobs that needed to be done, but I really haven’t had anytime just to do techie things, and I was starting to feel out of the loop.  The stuff I found made my imagination just soar!

Now it’s no secret that I’m a huge supporter of the WordPress blogging platform.  I don’t usually “preach the joys of Worpress” during my inservices because I personally believe that everyone should always have a chance to make up their own minds, it is my software of choice.  WordPress comes in many different flavors from the hosted WordPress.com, to the host your own WordPress, or even the multi user WordPress Mu.  It is this last option that currently has my attention – and has exciting possibilities for the classroom.

WordPress Mu (pronounced mew) is a program that a person can download for free and install on a webserver of their own, or to any of a number of webhosts you can purchase space from (personally I like using Tera-Byte for web hosting…).  Using this software you can set up multiple user accounts with access to as many blogs as you’d like, all from one convenient interface.  Your users would just go to one log-in page, enter their information and be able to post/edit/publish/comment/administer whatever blogs they have access too, depending also on their access levels.  Pretty basic stuff once it’s all set up (and setup isn’t that difficult really… I’ve been asked before to create a vid cast showing how easy it is to do… and one day, I promise I will).  Now this isn’t what I’m excited about.  I’ve been using this setup with different schools for a couple of years now.  The really cool stuff is coming down the pipe….

All versions of WordPress allow users to enable plugins to add features to their sites.  These are just mini programs designed to add functionality to your blog.  For example: on the Classroom I’m using an enhanced Tag Cloud plugin (to allow me to change the colour and order of my tags), a spam catching widget (too stop spam comments from ruining the site) and the Share This plugin (to make it easier for people to add articles to their social bookmarking sites, or e-mail a post to their friends).  There are hundreds of different plugins out there – and as I’ve joked about in the past, give me a good programmer and an engineer and I can get WordPress to wake you up and make you eggs every morning if you’d like.  And it’s thanks to these plugins that magic is going to happen.

Allow me to switch gears for a moment and talk about social networking.  Social networking is becoming more and more popular as they allow people to connect and easily share everything over the net.  Some of the more popular SN programs include Facebook, Myspace, and Ning.

Now I know I’ve just sent up a bunch of red flags in the minds of some educators.  Facebook is dangerous!  We can’t let our kids use that or anything like it in school!   In fact a lot of school boards all over the world automatically block these sites and programs, so that kids can never access them from school.  I have always had a problem with this.  In Edmonton we take our kindergarten students to a place called “Safety City“.  Here students learn, in a controlled environment, the safe way to cross the street and to interact with vehicles.  Most people would say this is a great idea and totally endorse the idea.  We also train some of our upper elementary students as “Patrollers“.  These students watch over the little ones, making sure they cross the street safely and obey the rules of the road.  Again, a great idea.  Well if we train our children to follow the rules of the road in such a manner, then why don’t we for the information super highway???  We don’t totally ignore the fact that we have roads and traffic – blocking all views of it from our schools, then expect them to handle themselves responsibly when they leave our doors and are no longer our responsibility.  Then why do we do that for some of the more “dangerous” aspects of the ‘net?

People can (and have) argue that you “need” to be able to cross the road in our society – you don’t need to use the Internet – and especially facebook.   But that’s not totally true!  Companies are starting to use Web 2.0 tools as part of their regular business practices, and that includes social networking.  It’s a quick and effective way to share/distribute information and stimulate discussion.  As a part of my professional practice I am a member of the Ning Social Network Group Classroom 2.0.  I get feedback from teachers around the world on how to use Web 2.0 tools effectively in my classroom. So why don’t we teach our students how to use these tools in our classrooms?

The simple answer is control.  We can’t control who sees our sites, and how can respond to what our children are doing.  As I said before, Safety City is a controlled environment.  We need to set up the same type of system for our students with social networking. Enter Buddypress.

Buddypress is a series of plugins for WordPress Mu that will turn this blogging system into a social networking platform. It’s amazing.  When it’s released we will be able to custom create our own social networking environments and have complete control with who has access to the information posted.  Also because the the system is plugin based we don’t need to enable all the features.  Extended profiles for example may not be something you want to have your students do (though from an internet safety education stand point – this is where most students mess up and get hit by the proverbial truck on the information super highway…).  You have total control.  This system would be hosted on your servers, with you as the administrator.  Any one caught abusing the system, you block them.  They can’t just make a new account because you’re in control.

This idea gets me really REALLY excited.  But wait – we’re not done yet!

Both WordPress and Buddypress are owned by a company called Automattic.  Automattic also makes a forum program called BBpress.  This forum software can be configured to work with WordPress logins (though it can get a bit tricky at this point).  They are also developing another plugin for WordPress called Blicki which will allow your blog to have wiki features.  I am totally Geeking out about this!  When everything is all said and done you can have a school website 100% under your control where staff and students can login with one username and password and have access to blogs, forums, wikis, and a social network.  All of which can easily be managed from one admin panel.  Now doing this would not be for the tech weak of heart – but for those with some web skill this has some major possibilities…

But wait I’m not done!  Using other plugins like Custom Branding and by creating your own WordPress Themes you can totally configure the site to meet your school’s needs!

Let me just try one more time to explain what you’d have..

1. Blogs and all the great things that go along with them including podcasting
2. Wikis to use as a collaborative creation environment
3. Forums to have all questions answered
4. Social Network to teach students how to safely use the technology, and provide a move collaborative online environment to help them learn together.

Now I know the system wouldn’t be perfect, and there are always challenges when working with any technologies…  but the potential for educational value is enormous.  I haven’t even started on the differentiation that could come from this.  This is big!  But only if we have the imagination, the desire, and the resources to make it happen.  Thanks to Automattic – the resources part just became a little easier…..