Seems like the tougher things get, the more frequently the obstacles come flying at me - the more often I find myself saying, "thank goodness for the kids." Been saying it a lot lately.

My birthday was last week, and there was no school, as usual, in honor of it (November 11th) - ha. My third graders came up with a wonderful card and a bag of sweets that took my breath away. We were all pretty happy. Thanks, everyone!

Later that day one of my students presented me with a handcrafted birdfeeder, made out of recycled materials and a lot of ingenuity. Of course I put it out when I got home. Thanks, Eilis! By the way, the birds liked it, too.

There has been a flurry of activity lately on a couple of edtech email lists, wwwedu (Andy Carvin's long running list), and ednet2 (which I recently began moderating) that is making me nuts. Words are gushing forth once again about internet filtering and internet safety. More books are written, studies done, and committees are formed. There are government agencies and task forces popping up every day.

They are all based on fear.

Every single email post and response fans the flames of that fear. Most all of the people talking have good intentions, but I am so tired of nobody seeming to get that they are making things worse.

I suggest the formation of a new government task force:
The Internet Potential and Promise Task Force

Put a few billion behind something like that, and let's see if we don't end up with a better result.

This will sound so corny, but I just don't care. What happened today at school was a dream come true.

This is my fifth year blogging with a third grade class at roomtwelve.com. When I started, in the fall of 2005, there were not a whole lot of elementary classroom blogs out there. But once we got rolling that year, I began to think about the future of the writing my students were doing. What would happen to all those articles, the comments, the conversations? My students struggled with this as well. At the end of that first year, I wrote in Rugged days :

The kids really want to blog. Yesterday we talked about next year, when they won't be with me, when they won't have their beloved blogs, and so on. There were tears as I explained how I would phase them out. Lots of good questions. They were grasping at straws, trying to wrap their heads around how the blogs could still exist, live on, somehow remain. This phenomenal response is unlike anything I have seen in 25 years of teaching.

As of today, nine students are missing from a very long Room Twelve Alumni List, and that is the dream come true. I managed to transfer every word from their third grade blogs to their new fifth grade teacher's classroom blog. Every single blog post, comment, and conversation from their third grade writing experience is back with them, so their new teacher can to continue to facilitate and guide their growth as effective 21st century writers.

Tomorrow they finally rejoin that journey. I have dreamed about this happening for over four years, and I could not be happier.

The transfer of bodies of work like that, held in databases, referenced and hyperlinked all over the Internet, is no small feat. I held my breath as I sat next to their new, young, fifth grade teacher, each of us logged in to our classroom blogs. I went through the process of making students "orphans", making them available to their new teacher, and then watching him "adopt" them into his new classroom blog. Several came with over 50 pieces of writing. Not exactly like walking down a school hallway to offer a thick manila folder of writing samples to a cringing new teacher who may or may not ever look inside - never mind share with another person....

This transfer was unbelievably exciting - for both of us.

One person is responsible for this, David Warlick. My hat is off to him for having the vision, for putting in the countless hours developing and debugging an incredible tool, and for caring about our kids' education. Thank you David, for Classblogmeister.

Last Friday, on the third day of school, I introduced my students to our classroom blog. I barely had time to show them the login process, go over the Bloggers Contract, and give out passwords. We ran out of time.

Over the weekend, one student published an article, and another started one and saved it to finish later. I had not showed them how to do this - they just figured it out - from home.

My students are are third graders, 8 and 9 years old.

I've been doing this long enough to realize that every year my next group of third graders comes into my classroom a little more facile in dealing with technology, but this was really, really surprising.

Tonight, a third student submitted a blog post. They are so ready.

It's been nearly 2 months since I last wrote here. I spoke up some on Facebook, and a little on Twitter - as I continue to figure out the best way to converse about teaching and technology - and still have a life.

Some tech stuff just keeps on coming:

• My school continues on Facebook.
  
• August 14, 2009: the 15th anniversary of my school's presence on the web - picture on the right is from the first home page, in 1994.
  
• August 24, 2009: my school starts a Twitter account
• Sept 1, 2009: my third graders from last year become Alumni, and a new group of third grade bloggers starts up at roomtwelve.com, my fifth group of bloggers.
  

Lots more happening of course. School starts two days after Labor Day. I'm still here, leaning forward.

Hard year in the classroom
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Two of my five XO laptops, that had a particularly rough year. The one on the left (Jude) lost the "F" key - somehow it just tore off eventually, and I replaced it with a piece of paper and some tape. Works fine. The XO on the right (Arbor Heights) had a student actually fall on top of it in a wild moment in the classroom. Still works fine, I have the broken off piece, and need to find the right kind of glue (hobby shop trip, for sure).

Mr. A's Art Show, 2009
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Some of my artwork from 08-09 on display, moments before they were all given away to my third graders - who were reminded of the artists we studied this year (that did not become famous during their lifetimes, and whose paintings are now worth millions!)