This article from the American School Board Journal takes on a level of educational blogging that I haven’t seen before — the Superintendent blog. It frames the edu-blogging with the story of a Florida Superintendent, Clayton Wilcox, and his blogging experience.
In one posting, Wilcox asked the community to react to the handcuffing incident and to the video. More than 400 comments were posted within 24 hours, says Kevin McGeever, city editor of sptimes.com. McGeever removed a few comments that were profane or otherwise coarse, and wrote an item on the blog two days later explaining the deletions. His posting inspired an additional 830 comments within a week.
Wilcoxs post beginning that sequence seems innocent enough, but given that he is superintendent of a 114,000-student school district, it also could be called fearless. Please know that the police were there at the request of school staff, the superintendent wrote. It is not our position or my intention to judge their actions. … I simply am asking you for your reactions to the video and for your suggestions as to how we can deal with future incidents like this one.
It’s a really well-written article that mentions Will Richardson (of course) and also mentions the attempts to redefine the web as the Read-Write Web which is great. And it talks about how blogging about our schools can change the way we look at, talk about and learn at our schools:
Blogs can be places to have honest, open dialogue about issues of the day, says Anne Davis of the Instructional Technology Center at Georgia State University, who trained Hooper and her students on the use of blogs. Change can come from good discussions, and when the discussion is public you are inviting the input of others. But weblogs are not typical websites most people are used to using. It takes time to see the potential.
Congrats to the ASBJ for a great article, and congrats to Superintendent Wilcox for having the courage to blog.
