Waves in the Blogsphere

I was checking out the blogs in my RSS feed this afternoon and noticed a posting on weblogg-ed regarding the AP and charging for quotes copied onto blogs from their content. I remember thinking, ooooh, then my kids started asking for things and, I moved on.

Later I was checking out my newsletters from Edutopia and ended up at a reference to the same posting from today. Okay, that caught my attention even more. I was excited about the Edutopia article regarding online book discussions (Blogging is History by Helena Echlin) and started thinking about my next posting and how it would relate to the same topic. My students are doing similar things and it's awesome. . . but that will now be for another day because I followed the blogsphere to a whole other topic: ethics, quoting and blogging.

The Circle of the Blogs
This is one reason I have come to love blogging, because it fits my ADD mind. That is also one reason I am not keen on it, because it doesn't necessarily help me tame my bad habits, but I digress again...

While reading the article, I noticed a reference in the article to a blogging site I had not heard of: drupal-ed, so I clicked a link to check it out. I found a small description which was sort of the "front door" of DrupalEd, but there was also a link to Bill's Blog and I wanted to see what this site was like. Well, Bill's entry for today referred to a comment made on Will Richardson's blog (weblogg-ed) about the new policy from the AP, so of course, I clicked the link and was taken back to Will's posting and the comments made about it - Full Circle.

It is amazing to me how vast and yet how small the blogsphere can really be sometimes. How much the ripple effect can carry over here is also amazing to me; one ripple like the AP and all of a sudden there are waves all over the place.

One Educators Reaction
I don't know what will happen because of this policy and I certainly cannot wax as eloquently about as the others I read from today, but I do know that this is a type of debate that makes me excited about using this medium with my students. They should know that they are part of the world and that there are things going on out there that they can speak about and maybe start that ripple effect for some positive change. They could also use this for reasoning out possible outcomes, I mean what would happen if many other places followed the AP's example? Many bloggers would be cut short or have to dig deep in the pockets. $12.50 for Five Words?

WHOAH - I'd be a millionaire by now, if I had anything valuable enough for anyone to copy; but wait, then that would bring them back to maybe read more of my stuff..... and I would feel pretty good about that and might have taught someone something along the way...... hmmmmmmm.

Or maybe, we could just use the barter system. Five words for five words. (oooh, that was five together, could that qualify?)

Wow, when it comes down to it, who does own words that are posted in the universe of the blogsphere??? I suppose once I send them out there, I make the choice to share. As I tell my students: "Use your powers for good" and "Never underestimate the power of words in the world. Once you put something out there in words, it can be used by whomever hears or reads it. How you will be portrayed is no longer up to you, unless you choose your words carefully."

Those are all my own words in those quotes, so I suppose I'll just charge myself an Oreo to use them and call it a night.

Learning to Blog

I'm new to blogging and trying this out. I orginally created a Barto's World at Edublogs and am figuring out how to best use blogs for me and for my students. I am not very "blog savvy" and found that I really struggled some with the first one, so we'll see how this one goes. So far, this one has been easy to use and not quite as slow as when I tried posting and creating on the other. Anyone else have any recommendations for easy to use blogs, that are still somewhat "protected"?

What to do?

I face a challenge with my blog I think. I work at a school for students with learning differences (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADD/ADHD and combinations of these). We have created a wikispace which for me serves a few purposes: opens communication between home and school, supports those with organizational issues, supports some of the written expression/reading needs and provides students and (ultimately) our school community some space to be connected.
My dilemma is walking the line of confidentiality and privacy. I love highlighting the awesome things my students do and are capable of and find that it is important to do so. Their self-identity is often built on negative experiences or focused on their challenges. So my dilemma is that I am excited about the concepts of edublogs, being able to express the awesome things (and challenges) that are happening with my students, etc... but I have to be careful about protecting their privacy. With only 23 students in our school, it is often clear even without names who is who.....so how do I best balance the obviously supportive environment the electronic world has to offer with showcasing their talents and giving credit for their hard work with protecting their privacy within their special education labels?