NECC: What do Eleanor Rigby and Amelia Bedelia have in common?

They’re both part of some fantastic educational blogs that I had never heard of before an hour ago! On my way back from the panel discussion I swung by the poster sessions. Jon (a colleague) had told me that there was a blogging one that I thought I would check out. I had no idea that it would just blow my mind.

We’ve all heard about Will Richardson’s Secret Life of Bee’s project, right? Well, this school took that idea and RAN with it. They got a grant and had an author visit every single month last year. After the visit, they hooked the author up to a private blog on Blogspot.com and allowed the students to ask the author questions. One author answered over 100 different questions from students. Teachers also blogged discussion questions that students answered through comments online. The project sounded so fantastic that I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it before. Turns out, they kept the entire thing password protected and private. It’s really too bad, because it sounds like such an amazing project, any school or teacher would benefit by being able to follow it along throughout the year. I grabbed a business card from the person I spoke to, but unfortunately it just has an email address and not a web site. Great idea though and fantastic project. I’ll write more about it once I have some links.

I was just walking away from there to check some email and grab a soda when I the title to another Poster Project caught my eye, “The Eleanor Rigby Project.” I’m a slight Beatles fan (I have a tattoo of Jon Lennon on my arm), so I thought I’d see what it was all about. The project itself looked incredible. Basically it was a project dealing with social conscience, in particular homelessness. Learning about it, reading about it, and trying to do something about it. Students wrote letters to newspapers and magazines and created some incredible displays that she had at the booth. I’m looking forward to learning more about it from their web site. The project itself sounded fantastic, but it turns out that she also employed blogging as a means for reflecting about what they were learning. The blog was completely public and one day that had a comment from someone who was homeless! They had the opportunity to ask him questions and he took the time to answer them honestly. EXTREMELY powerful stuff that can only occur when a blog is public.

Two fantastic ideas that I’d never heard of before. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you realize that you’re only seeing a few of the trees in a much larger forest. I got both of their information and definitely plan to try to bring aspects of those programs to my school.

1 Comment(s)

Brett Moller
6/28/2005

Hey great blog here…. Being from Australia I couldn’t get over to NECC. I am saving the $$ for next year though. Just got into the whole blogging, podcast things. I am planning on what I am referring to a “BETA” projeect for our next school term (2 weeks away). My kids are going to be blogging away on different issues. Should make this interesting. I would love to get as many people as possible checking it out and commenting as we go. Given that US teachers are on a break now for a while thought it could be a good time to start. I see a bunch of potential here for education. David Warklicks blog about NECC has been great!!! Please visit my site at http://www.brettmoller.com

Thanks,

Brett

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