Hide the Blogger “Next blog–>” Nav Bar

Hi…my name is James…and I have used Blogger…

Hi James

This is my Blogger story…

I made a blog with Blogger.  It is sponsored by Google. It is very easy to start, but…

it has one flaw. 

It has a navigation bar at the top of the blog. It seems very innocent.   It has a simple link that says Next Blog». I clicked the link. It took me to another blog. I clicked it again. It took me to another blog. I clicked it three more times. It took me to a porn blog. That was when I decided that I would not use it in my school or recommend it to other teachers.

I have been looking for a solution for a long time. I found Blogger’s salvation. It is the code that hides the navigation bar. I found it on the web site for an eMINTS teacher. (I don’t remember who.) That let me this blogspot actually gave me the code to hide/unhide the nav bar. That was fancier than I wanted. I just wanted to get rid of it, so this blogspot worked better. Edit the HTML on the layout part of the dashboard and paste in this code after the template section:

#navbar-iframe {display: none !important;}

I once again feel safe in recommending Blogger to fellow teachers as a starting blog. I don’t have to worry about the navigation bar. Thanks for the code!

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From Analog Textbooks to Wikibooks

The textbook industry holds a strangling monopoly on public education in the US. A handful of huge publishers produce a very large majority of the textbooks in this country. That is a huge chunk of money. With large amounts of money comes large amounts of lobbying to hold on to the large amounts of money. The lobbying money buys influence to maintain the status quo of buying textbooks. Web Fryer addresses textbooks in his blog post

Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Sorry honey, you can’t believe everything you read in your printed science textbook

WE ARE WASTING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN OUR COUNTRY PURCHASING PAPER-BASED, ANALOG TEXTBOOKS WHICH ARE OUT OF DATE AND OBSOLETE, IN MANY CASES, THE MOMENT THEY ARE PRINTED. We do NOT need to purchase ANY more paper-based textbooks in our schools. Instead, our school districts should be purchasing laptop computers for EVERY student which permit them to access up to date, multimedia and multi-sensory information online: Holding the OLPC! Unfortunately, the textbook lobby and textbook industry continues to maintain a virtual stranglehold on VAST quantities of public funding for education in the United States.

Spending the textbook money on laptops and then using online textbooks would be a step in the right direction toward School 2.0.

I just started an online textbook with my 3rd grade class. We are doing a research project on famous inventors. We will then take the research an put it into a Wikijunior page. Wikijunior is a children’s book division of Wikibooks. Wikibooks is a community dedicated to collaboratively creating a free library of educational textbooks. It is a sister project of Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the world seeking to become the sum of all human knowledge.

You can find our Famous Inventors book in the “under development” part of wikijunior. It was easier to set up than I had expected, but I had to spend some time reading the help sections to make sure I was following their standards and for help with the wiki code. The day after I had set it up, I noticed that someone else has already added a couple inventors to the Table of Contents. We had previously produced these projects as powerpoint presentations. However, I wanted my students to make a more permanent contribution to the wikipedian community. We are creating free online textbooks that will be open and accessible to other children all around the world. I just introduced it to my students today, but they were excited about the idea. I think they will also be proud that by making a wikijunior book, they have made a contribution to the world at large.

There are not nearly enough Wikijunior books. I encourage you to make your contribution. Add to an existing wikijunior book that is in development or start your own.

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Is School 2.0 a school reform pipedream?

Politicians, Edupolitians, and other education pundits who are in charge of education reform live so far from the classroom, that they are a world apart from the reality of the classroom.

Will Richardson said in
Weblogg-ed » URGENT: 21st Century Skills for Educators (and Others) First

But
here’s the thing that’s giving me the most angst. (Hey, I haven’t been
too angsty in a while, have I?) For all of the experts and scholars and
pundits who were staking out a part of the conversation about
educational reform, I couldn’t help leaving there wondering how many of
them really have a sense of the changes that are afoot here.

They all have to get their agenda into the mix.  Forget about what is best for the student.  They all have sound byte answers for what schools should do, despite what teachers know is best for kids.

Schools don’t need a vision of teaching by testing.  We need a vision for schools that involves sound pedagogy, purposeful and personalized learning through technology, and a student-centered curriculum.  The current culture of education reform in the United States excludes the terms pedagogy, technology, and student-centered.

Some of my fellow teachers say, “Oh, no.  It’s one more thing to do in an already, overflowing school day,”   I agree that it can be overwhelming.  Rather than more curriculum being piled on from on-high, we need to whittle down a bloated curriculum to allow time to do what is important - teaching our students to think.

Teaching thinking takes time.  Of which we don’t have enough.
Teaching thinking is hard.   For which we don’t have enough energy.
Teaching thinking takes courage.  To which we must go beyond the basics.
Teaching thinking is essential.  Of which we must do do for our kids.

I think Will was talking about a change beyond the everyday, to deep learning.  I think we live in great times where we will see great change, but the scholars in the ivory towers aren’t close enough to the ground to see the nature of the change.  Web 2.0 is coming and the tools will amplify the change in teaching like nothing we have seen since the industrial model of education.

Is this what School 2.0 will be, or is it just a pipedream?

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HB1314 in MO, USA seeks to Criminalize Social Networking with Students

Did a little more research into a post I did last week called Missouri is Criminalizing Social Networking with Students. Here is an except from a summary of the bill.

HB1314C-PROTECTIONS FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN

By January 1, 2009, school districts must establish policies on teacher-student and employee-student communication, to cover oral and nonverbal communication and appropriate use of electronic media, with a policy covering use of social networking sites to prohibit teachers from maintaining a work-related Internet site unless it is publicly available on at least one open-access network and to prohibit a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access to current or former students.

Does that mean that my Think.com site that is password protected to protect my student’s safety would be illegal? Would it then have to be publicly available to every stranger on the internet? Or does it just mean that it has to be maintained on our district network, which is one more hassle for an already overworked IT staff?

What does “open-access network” mean?

162.069. 1. Every school district shall, by January 1, 2009, promulgate a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communication. Such policy shall contain at least the following elements: (1) Appropriate oral and nonverbal personal communication, which may be combined with or included in any policy on sexual harassment; and (2) Appropriate use of electronic media such as text messaging and Internet sites for both instructional and personal purposes, with an element concerning use of social networking sites no less stringent than the provisions of subsections 2, 3, and 4 of this section. 2. As used in this section, the following terms shall mean: (1) “Exclusive access”, the information on the web site is
available only to the owner (teacher) and user (student) by mutual explicit consent and where third parties have no access to the information on the web site absent an explicit consent agreement with the owner (teacher); (2) “Former student”, any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated; (3) “Nonwork-related Internet site”, any Internet web site or web pages used by a teacher primarily for personal purposes and not for educational purposes; (4) “Work-related Internet site”, any Internet web site or web pages used by a teacher for educational purposes. 3. No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related Internet site unless such site is publically available on at least one open access network. 4. No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student.

I still don’t know what the pivot term Open Access Network means? I seems to have something to do with wireless internet access, but what does that have to do with social networks?

I also have privacy concerns about legislating school district policy
restricting my online, non-school related activity. If I allow my
students’ families to access to pictures on flickr
of my non-school related summer vacation (which would be restricted so
that stranger out there couldn’t see my children) I would be breaking
the law. What? <:o It is not directly school-related, but it
would be off school-time and it would allow my student’s families to
get to know me better. I would never harm my students, but this bill
treats me just the same as a child abuser. I understand that intent of
the bill, but that restriction goes too far. It is an unconstitutional
restriction on the control of my privacy. I do not leave my privacy
right at the school-house gate when I enter or leaver the school.

This legislator doesn’t seem to understand how social networks work in schools, and so seeks to ban it all. This bill tries to shape the future of School 2.0 by preventing it instead of directing it.

The two prohibitions on non-school related and school related web sites need to be taken out. This would then be a pretty good bill.

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Missouri is Criminalizing Social Networking with Students

Missouri State Teachers Association: Missouri Teachers and Social Networking

Missouri Representative Jane Cunningham is sponsoring a bill that would, in part, ban teachers from sharing password privileged profiles with students they’ve taught within the past two years. No penalties for doing so are outlined in the proposed legislation, however.
Take a look at this article. Opinions are welcome!

Whoa. Wait a minute!  You mean, if I use a social networking site for my class, I would be breaking the law if I did not delete their accounts at the end of the year?! 
  Social networks are not inherently evil.  They are web pages, that could be powerful educational tools if used correctly.  When did educational tools become criminal?  This is fear-mongering.
  I use Think.com, a password protected social networking site, to teach internet safety.  It is password protected for the safety of my students.  My students want to know what will happen to their writing  and work they had created throughout the year.  I allowed them to keep their accounts and their work.  Those who do continue to log on, can help me teach the next year’s students about internet safety. 
  I have serious free speech concerns about this bill.  I have to agree with NEA’s position on this.  The password protection is for my students’ safety, not my privacy.  This bill is wrong-headed and steeped in fear.  Am I the danger to my students and former students, or is some unknown stranger? 

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