21 Classes Blog

Thanks to Konrad Glogowski I just came across this wonderful blogging tool entitled 21 Classes. His post on this communal blogging mechanism is well worth the read. This blogging interface allows students to develop the look of their own personal blogs, connected to a larger classroom portal. Glogowski writes:

I want my students to be able to say “This is where I write about things that I am interested in,” not “This is my school blog.” In other words, perhaps it’s time to liberate my students from the mindset of uniformity imposed upon me by the school and, instead of telling them to come to an online place that I have chosen, ask them to give me addresses of their own electronic spaces. Instead of saying, “Bookmark this URL, this is where all our blogs are going to be,” I could say, “Give me all your URLs - flickr, facebook, myspace, blogger - wherever you are - so that I can put them into one OPML file for all of us to share.”

He recognizes the difficulties that many schools would have in allowing teachers to take this approach. But I wonder, have we reached a time when technological savvy educators should be bucking the trend even if it's through a back door? When schools tell us that our students should not be using Flickr or MySpace should we suggest our students consider doing it on their own?