ASTE Day 1...retroactive post

Well if the IRS can impose retroactive taxes, I guess I can write a retroactive post to my new blog. After an intense four days of a fantastic conference on the Integration of Technology into Education. Well my first three hour session from 9am to 12pm I tentatively went to a session on Blogging to see what it was really about. I had heard about blogging for a while, even had signed up for an account on Blogger.com and EduBlog.com, tried creating a blog on both sites, but after both attempts of trying them came away going what was the big deal. I have read a few blogs, seen one or two that might have been worthwhile even subscribing to as an RSS feed but was not seeing why blogs were so popular. But after seeing that blogs have grown and mature over the years to something elegant and graphically appealing to the eye, the ability to easily add pictures, video, and is editable html wise as well as being able to embed widgets, yet even a technophob could create one in under 5 minutes now mean that Blogging truly is ready for "Prime Time". I sat in a session today where two teachers from the BSSD school district basically runs their entire web site using either a Blog or a Wiki as their frame work for their web site.

Here is their home page which is a wiki:

http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/Main_Page

Here is their home page which is a Blog:

http://www.bssd.org/

Now why are they using both forms as two different home pages, well they are both easy to crate new content in but have different feels and different uses. Most of the teachers are running a blog as their own teacher page. Students are creating content and posting it online and they are seeing exponential growth year over year as the students are creating more content faster and at a high quality of work, usually better than what they would have turned in by hand.

So this is the true birthplace of why I started to blog. Seeing the source of the power that is the driving force behind an entire district of students and teachers thousands of miles away from the nearest mall, they are CREATORS, PUBLISHERS, ARTISTS and most important of all LEARNERS. Students are no longer using their school hallways as their audience, but now they have the entire planet as their audience. That is the true power of the Internet.

So the old saying "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword" needs to be changed, or wikified to "The Internet and Technology is changing the world forever."