An NYC media firm recently pitched Municipalist about a new series of silly videos about banking starring funny man Mo Rocca. Likely because of this post we did about Mo when he came to Washington last month. Mo, you are a funny guy. Enjoy the boatload of banking bucks.
The confrontation on Bob Costas's show between author Buzz Bissinger and sports blogger Will Leitch goes to the heart of just what blogging is, and what it is not. More from Bissinger here and more from Leitch here. The issue: What exactly is the value of blogging anyway, if any? And why do so many established journalists truly hate bloggers?
How many county planning commissions do you know that publish a blog?
The Cuyahoga County, Ohio Planning Commission's blog is the first Municipalist has found. It is a fast read. Lots of links. Very little analysis or opinon. Folks: Try adding some analysis and opinion. But we like it. Lots of categories for individual area municipalities or topics such as land use or environment. Great way for these communities to find out more about important local issues directly from the horse's mouth.
Bev Godwin, director of USA.gov, the subject of a Q & A by Municipalist in December 2007, is earning kudos for pushing federal agencies to explore use of Web 2.0 tools. The Politico is impressed, in a post about a training session Godwin played a major role in a few days ago:
These hard-working and dedicated public servants deserve a redesign of the federal regulations that govern the way government agencies are allowed to publish information and solicit public comment so that it catches up with the practices of the private sector.
The Politico estimates the total number of blogs published by public officials across the country at about 200. That number seems low. But perhaps it more closely reflects, as in Municipalist's experience, only the good ones. Or even the ones that are regularly updated. But it is true that blogging by local government players are more numerous and just better than those at the federal level. At least there seems to be an effort for the feds to catch up.
From Christian Science Monitor: the complicated story of blogging in Africa.
Library of Congress Blog celebrates its first anniversary. Municipalist profiled LOC Blog and blogger Matt Raymond here. LOC Blog has inspired and influenced other federal government blogs, as Raymond details in his one-year anniversary post. Congrats.
Debuting last week: The latest cabinet-level department blog The Fast Lane, the offical blog of the Secretary of Transportation. Who happens to be Mary Peters. The blog lists 12 top department officials who will contribute. During its first week, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley were guest bloggers. One issue: The official blog of General Motors is called FastLane Blog. Kosher to grab the name of another high profile blog? Or is the name of your blog not a big issue these days?
AP story here.
If the right honourable gentleman will yield for a moment, whilst I preen, snort and exclaim: The British press seems positively befuddled by the move recently by some members of the House of Lords to start a single group blog. The Yorkshire Post provides a generally positive review:
The idea, met with bemusement from some members, was to increase public awareness of what actually goes on in the hallowed corridors of power and hopefully show that the upper house has its finger firmly on a fully beating pulse. Yesterday, Labour's Lord Solely, one of the site's 10 committed and enthusiastic contributors, claimed an early victory, announcing the postings had already attracted 30,000 visitors and 600 comments.
These wacky lords love to blog about What It All Really Means:
"With all due respect," he says, can normally be translated as "That was rubbish" and when a peer responds to a colleague with "The noble lord makes an interesting point" apparently what they really mean is "I have no idea what the answer is."
This from one Baroness Murphy:
There is also a distinct lack of what I call “evidence based” statements. I have heard colleagues quote so-called research which sets any academic’s teeth on edge. I have an urge to stand up and shout ‘lot of tosh’ but the only way to challenge in a formal debate is to rise decorously and ask: "Could the Noble Lord/Lady point us to the source of this information?” which is invariably ignored.
This organization made the Lords Blog happen. Here in Washington, with hundreds of think tanks stacked up block by block, where is a similar effort? The pathetic blogging efforts of Congress surpassed by the House of Lords. For God's sake!
The Guardian also is impressed, awarding the Lords Blog its "Website of the Month." The Hansard Society links here to an audio interview of one Lord Soley, who calls the effort "a meeting room without walls."
[One teensy point to consider in handing out kudos for blogging: Members of the House of Lords are not elected.]
In following up yesterday's post about the need for K-12 school districts to have Web content creation (er, blog) policies for employees, I found a useful post here from Scott McLeod at Iowa State University. The comments following are interesting as well. One point in that string: Could it be better to simply avoid creating a whole new policy, and just tweak current policies? And McLeod links here, to a list of corporate blogging policies. Can public sector organizations actually learn from the private sector on this?
That actually is the headline of this story in today's Washington Post. Soooo much juicy stuff! The gist: Idiot 22-year-old public school teachers are shocked to find that the naughty photos, naked breasts, drunken details, and juvenile junk they slap on their "social networking" sites are actually objectionable to many grown-ups. Such as parents of these teachers' students. [A personal aside: Municipalist is a new father, and believes 22-year-olds belong in grad school, or getting coffee for an assistant press secretary on Capitol Hill, or something. Not in charge of a classroom.]
Of course, Municipalist loves the idea of blogging teachers, and believes those blogs should be open to the world. We are not fans of My Space and Facebook, however. They are infantilizing time wasters. They are retro and boring and to the extent grown-ups are using them today, demoralizing. Get a real blog, people!
One insightful tidbit from the piece:
"Local school officials say they have no policies concerning social networking pages or blogs kept by teachers. But they said that online improprieties would fall under general guidelines requiring proper behavior in and outside school and that sketchy Web sites would be handled case by case."
"General guidelines" won't cut it. School districts need to get on this. Yesterday. Be proactive, encourage teachers and administrators and principals and curriculum specialists to blog. What the Post story is about is not blogging. It's about exhibitionism.
For Weblogs Parlamentarios Argentinos, check out Diario de Gestion. If only the U.S. Congress were as wired.
Sooner or later, big federal agencies are going to get good at this. At that point, the fireworks should be entertaining. This post in Leadership Journal, a blog "sponsored by" the Department of Homeland Security, swings back at this recent editorial in the Times. The blog post is signed by Emilio Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who is the target of the Times editorial. Gonzalez calls one section of the editorial an "outright fabrication." Judge for yourself who gets the better of the exchange.
Does the Times care? Should it? Municipalist doubts it. Should the rest of us care? Better question: Can a large federal agency actually figure out how to make use of the Web to seriously and regularly and effectively strike back at critics in mainstream media?
Also: DHS Director Michael Chertoff joins in the media critique with this post from April 4, on a story the mainstream news media is burying. Chilling stuff. As are the comments.
This blog hit its stride with the postings from January 2008 about the behavior of the Fairfax County, Virginia public school district, after a student posted to YouTube a voice mail of a nasty telephone call he received from the wife of a school district bigwig. Our take, which nobody else had: Public institutions such as public school districts need to engage the public more, engage better, and use tools such as blogging, to head off such embarrassments, and not to appear like deer in the headlights the moment some kid shows he understands simple Web 2.0 tools much better than you do.
Municipalist recently compiled a list of our posts related to what we now call The Fairfax Shrieker, and here they are:
Part I: School district's tale: Why organizations need to learn about social media. Or else
Part II: Virginia school district shrieking wife: ABC has the audio
Part III: Eduflack on the Edushriek
Part IV: The Fairfax Shrieker: Getting it wrong
Part V: Weil on the Fairfax Shrieker
"Any bloggers here?" asked comedian Mo Rocca at the Radio & Television Correspondents' Association dinner here in Washington.
"Don't cheer, just rattle your inhalers and the keys to your parents' house."
Municipalist himself has undergone less than satisfactory experiences with hospitals over the last year or so. To say the least. So we were intrigued with news of a new Web site published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that allows users to search and find how their local hospitals fared in a large consumer satisfaction survey.
HHS has previously published hospital mortality rates and clinical measures of performance, indicating whether hospitals appropriately treated heart attacks, pneumonia and other conditions, but this is the first time the government has provided comprehensive data on consumer satisfaction, reports the New York Times. More info on the site here.
At first glance, the site is bland and uninviting, but it does offer plenty of info. Of course, no blogging element. Too bad. Blogging would be a great way to engage the public around this important data.
Hat tip: GRPR.
School board blogger Brian Wheeler, who co-presented with me and Jennifer Abel at National School Boards Association's annual conference in Orlando on Saturday, posted a PDF of his session hand-out. Lots of good information. Check it out. And email it to your pals, especially if they are school board members. Or ANY public official. [Jennifer Abel's review of the session itself is here.]
And here is a list of 10 tips for public sector bloggers that I put together from my work here at Municipalist.
Brian also includes a link to a useful primer on RSS, the technology that allows you to "subscribe" to blogs, which can then be aggregated on sites such as Bloglines, saving you from having to visit each and every blog individually. [The primer is by Waldo Jaquith, a blogger and Web innovator profiled recently on Municipalist.]
For a brand new blogger, school board member Fred Deutsch has plenty of thoughtful insight into what blogging is all about. "The benefit and the beauty of a blog is that my thoughts about education are not only recorded in a central place, but they’re open to the world to see and to comment," he told us. "And as a school board member, that transparency appeals to me." Plus, you have to admire a guy who admits to reading Blogging for Dummies.
Fred is a second-year board member of the Watertown, South Dakota public school district. Watertown is the fifth largest city in that state. Fred's five-member board governs a district that is home to 3,800 K-12 students who attend five elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school; and 1,200 students who attend a two-year vocational education institution.
Fred sent the following in response to Municipalist's questions about his blog:
During a recent lobbying trip to Washington D.C. for National School Board Association's (NSBA) Federal Relations Network, I was inspired by a few school board members from other parts of the country who blog with their constituents. After a little thinking and planning about what I wanted to do, my “School-of-Thought” blog was born.
Continue reading "Q & A: Fred Deutsch, Watertown, South Dakota school board" »
Will Richardson is certainly among the top thinkers, authors, and speakers about blogging in any context, but likely heads the lists of experts on blogging in the K-12 classroom. His book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms offers plenty of insight for any blogger. [Check out some video of Will speaking here.]
Richardson left teaching/administration two years ago and is now speaking, writing, consulting, and blogging full time. Most recently, he co-founded Powerful Learning Practice with Sheryl Nussbaum Beach, "through which we offer long-term, job-embedded professional development for teachers and administrators to help them understand and use Web 2.0 tools in their own learning practice," Richardson said.
What is the brief history of your blog? Also: Why do you blog? I started blogging about seven years ago and quickly began to focus my writing on how these technologies change teaching and learning. According to Technorati.com, the leading blog ranking service on the Web, mine is the number one educational technology related blog in the world, which is pretty amazing considering its very humble beginnings as the ramblings of a classroom teacher trying to make sense of these changes. I blog because it's a great way for me to learn, not just by reflecting on what I read and what I experience but by interacting with readers from around the world.
What has blogging taught you? How has it connected you to anybody or anything? Blogging is the foundation of my network which is the foundation of my learning these days. It has connected me to thousands of other people from around the world who are passionate about these ideas as well. It's taught me a great deal about the power of publishing and the importance of being able to connect to people and ideas anytime and anywhere I have a connection.
Continue reading "Q & A: Will Richardson, author, speaker, blogger" »
Here is a link to a rather breathless account of the packed panel discussion I hosted in Chicago in 2006 with several blogging school board members and one blogging superintendent. With a scintillating photo! Of the K-12 participants, two no longer blog, apparently: The superintendent, Clayton Wilcox, of Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), Florida, and Jim McNelis, of Skokie, Illinois. Still blogging is Brian Wheeler, a board member from Albemarle County, Virginia.
Brian and blogging board member Jennifer Abel of Charles County, Maryland, will participate in a panel hosted by me, Craig Colgan, at NSBA 2008 in Orlando Saturday.
Then, my friends, it is margarita time.
Here is a useful Q & A with Debbie Weil, author of "The Corporate Blogging Book." Public sector bloggers should listen up. For a quick read, Weil offers eight tips for corporate blogging in 2008.
