Teachers Teaching Teachers

 Collaborating in the Bering Sea - TTT101 - 04.23.08 [57:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this podcast Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are joined by John Concilus, Director of Educational Technology, and a student from one of the schools in the Bering Strait School District. John introduced himself a few weeks ago by responding to an earlier podcast with a “Comment and Invitation for Collaboration.”

Learn more about the Bering Strait School District and their work with technology. Then this Wednesday, April 30, join John Concilus again, plus a teacher from Brevig Mission, AK, Ginger Crockett, and others. Woody Woodgate and a colleague may be joining us as well. (Maybe we’ll finally find out more about that seal hunt.)

We are excited to continue our connections with teachers in Alaska, and in particular we want to learn more about “place-based education.” Here’s what John said in a recent email:

We’ve already decided at the budget meeting to move forward with
our Digital Foxfire program next school year. I’ll have more information about this
by Wednesday, but will have a form set up by then for having potentially intersted
partner schools sign up.

Where’s Brevig Mission? Check out this map, and use the zoom to find where you are in relation to Ginger’s school.

Brevig Mission School map

 Making Space on Youth Twitter - TTT100 - 04.16.08 [38:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just before the second issue of Space was published, Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison, from the New York City Writing Project, were joined by:

• Kevin Hodgson, a sixth grade teacher from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project
• George Mayo, an 8th grade teacher from Maryland, and one of his students Pablo, an editor of the second issue of Space.
• Chris Sloan, a high school teacher from the Wasatch Range Writing Project in Salt Lake City, and one of his students, Dane
• Hannah, a student from the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia

Join the fun!

1. Listen to this podcast, as we bounce ideas off each other and plan future collaborations.
2. Please share Space, Issue #2 with your students.
3. And register your students at Youth Twitter.

2008space - via kwout

Chat Log

 From elgg to Drupal? TTT99 - 04.09.08 [69:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For this webcast, we invited Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cormier and Gail Desler to talk about social networking and what platforms make sense right now. Of course behind all of this talk about Drupal and Edublogs were questions that we are asking about about how we in the, ah… Teachers Teaching Teachers, Youth Voices, Personal Learning Space, Youth Twitter … group of teachers might want to continue working together … and how the software decisions we need to make this Spring can support our hopes and plans.

 Learning to be Unschooly - TTT98 - 04.02.08 [44:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Earlier this month, on Youth Twitter, a student in South Korea, Soojin wrote, “just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete.”

A bit later, Hannah, a student in Philadelphia, answered on Youth Twitter, “I think Alan’s survey is a good example of how not to be ’schooly’. Students should ask questions of each other and interact.”

Wow, we thought this would be an interesting conversation on Teachers Teaching Teachers. Perhaps we could have more of a Students Teaching Teachers show.

We invited Soojin, Hannah, Alan, a student from Queens, NY, Lindsea, a studnet from Honolulu, and Ben, a student from NYC to talk about the possibilities and problems with http://youthtwitter on our live webcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers.

What a great a conversation we had about Youth Twitter, and blogging, and social networking and blogging-beyond-school.

OH! We also invited some of the students’ teachers. Their insights were invaluable.

We were excited to have Clay Burell, Madeline Brownstone, and George Mayo join us for this conversation as well.

Here’s the first paragraph of a blog post that Soojin wrote the day after the webcast. (Click the link to read the whole post, and the responses.)

Enjoy! And pass this podcast on to your students for inspiration.

Unschooly-Youths Conversations Reflection

Posted on April 4th, 2008 by Soojin

April 3^rd, 2008 10:00 AM GMT+09, something new happened to my life. Well, yes to quote me that was my “first time Skyping for real-purposes” and, of course, “with bunch of White-people” that lasted more than an hour hosted by a group called TeachersTeachingTeachers (not to forget mentioning Clay Burell’s impression that it was more like StudentsTeachingTeachers :-). Many feelings crossed my heart. Oh well, yes, I was pretty nervous at first I won’t deny (so childish!). And at the same time I was very honored to join this group of 9 out of 6 billion, members consisting of Clay Burell, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim, Madeline Brownstone, Lindsea, Hannah, Alan, Mr.Mayo, and Ben, talking about the leading form of education that all world will eventually have (sorry that I couldn’t link all names; please tell me your addresses). Paul told me during the conference that my tweet in YouthTwitter: just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete was one of the key inspiration for opening such meeting. Actually, when I decided to tweet that I was afraid if I offended anyone in YouthTwitter but I decided to become honest because I wanted YT to improve. I’ve been blogging since last year, connected since about a month ago, and now I made a difference. Very meaningful.

No Music No Civilization » Unschooly-Youths Conversations Reflection

Image by Lindsea

 Foxfire for the Firefox Generation - TTT97 - 03.26.08 [45:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This podcast begins with a focus on the work of two technology teachers and two students from The Baccalaureate School for Global Education (BSGE) in Astoria, NY. Madeline Brownstone and Shantanu Saha describe their two-year technology curriculum that has students doing global, multimedia projects.

Madeline and Shantanu have been working with schools here in the US through the New York City Writing Project and World Bridges/EdTechTalk. And their students have been participating in a project with a school in the Netherlands with iEarn.

More recently their students have also begun working with teachers and students involved with the Horizon Project, which was founded by Vikki Davis and Julie Lindsay. Listen to hear how these teachers and students integrate these national and international projects with the curricular expectations of a technology concentration that leads to an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma.

That might be enough, but Madeline and Shantanu and their students also found wonderful ways to relate their work to the collaborative study of rural culture that is being planned by Lee Baber in Virginia and Woody Woodgate in Alaska. Woody tells his students that they are natives of Alaska and the digital worlds.

In this podcast we explore all of these ways of connecting urban, rural, global, and digital youths!

 Has digital storytelling changed writing? TTT96 - 03.19.08 [63:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This spring Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are experimenting again. This time with Hypertextopia. We have just begun to explore with our students how writing changes in this online environment. To learn more, we invited Mark Bernstein and Jeremy Ashkenas to have a conversation with us.

• Mark Bernstein has been Eastgate’s chief scientist since 1987. He has developed Storyspace and other hypertext software, and he is the publisher of wonderful hypertexts.
• Jeremy Ashkenas is working on Hypertextopia as a part of his final project for his undergraduate degree at Brown University.

We were inspired to invite the spunky programmer/publisher to talk with the upstart literature/computer undergrad after reading through this recent thread on if:Book. Listen to learn more about hypertext writing online, and join us at Hypertextopia!

Chat Log

 Locating the Tyranny of Filtering - TTT95 - 03.12.08 [45:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s happening in small, geographically dispersed schools in rural Alaska. Three people are responsible for doing it for over a million public school students in New York City. An independent school in Milwaukee uses the same software that is being used in NYC to do it. In Colorado, an outspoken opponent of it was recently hired for a district level job, and now he is on a small committee that gives the thumbs up or down. In North Dakota, a secret password is emailed each week to a group of thirty teachers who can then undo it in their schools, when needed. In rural Virginia, a teacher carefully measures her arguments for the educational benefit against the possible risks each time she requests for it to be undone. Because so many schools do it in so many different ways, the developers of VoiceThread have to work overtime to keep their Web 2.0 tool available in public schools.

In September, Wesley Fryer “observed from China that the level of content filtering / censorship enforced by the central, totalitarian government was actually LESS severe than the content filtering enforced in many U.S. public schools” (Content filtering in Communist China versus an Oklahoma school » Moving at the Speed of Creativity).

Really? Do the descriptions in the first paragraph accurately represent the tyranny of filtering in U.S. schools today? Or do teachers have more power than we often exercise? It’s become too easy for educators to represent filtering as if it’s something that oppresses us. What if we find that the enemy is us?

From the discussion captured on this podcast, we can sketch a much more complicated picture of how filtering really seems to work in U.S. schools:

• Woody Woodgate is a one of nine local “site techs” in his district in Alaska. Since the distance between these schools makes it difficult for the district tech administrator to get around to all nine schools, the site techs have access to the filter. When a teacher needs to change it he or she finds the site tech in the building and requests a site to be unblocked.
• In New York City, it turns out that one of the three people managing the filter for over a million public school students has been a friend of alternative, progressive education in the city for many years. Olgierd Bilanow, now a system engineer for the NYC Department of Education, agreed to have a public conversation on this podcast about how the filter works in NYC, and how he sees his partnerships with teachers. Olgierd and his colleagues have almost never turned down a request from a school to have a filtering category (e.g. social networks) opened up. However he also points out that he has more requests to block sites and categories from schools than he has to unblock them.
• At Matt Montagne’s independent school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teachers merely have to send an email or make a call to a help desk to get a category or a site opened. Filtering doesn’t seem to be a problem at Matt’s school, although he still wonders what it would be like to not have a filter at all.
• Bud Hunt is still critical of any school or teacher who wants to use filtering to control students or to avoid problems with what students might do on the Internet. However, Bud still remembers the mixture of embarrassment and frustration he used to feel when he was a teacher and one of his students or he would hit on a blocked site, but he has also seen blocking from the central district’s point of view, now that he works for the district as an “instructional technologist.” Bud sits on a committee of four people in a school district in northern Colorado which approves or disapproves requests from teachers to unblock or to block particular web sites. Bud never votes to block a site. Bud’s advice: Find out who is doing the filtering. They’re probably frustrated with the filter too!
• As the District Technology Coordinator for a school district in North Dakota, Craig Nansen manages the filter for all schools in North Dakota from a central office. Craig says that North Dakota’s filter is user friendly for all of the schools. All a teacher has to do is give Craig a call and a site can be unblocked in about 30 minutes. Craig also provides a password to teachers each week so that they can turn the filter off when they need to during the day.
• Ben Papell and the other good folks at VoiceThread realized that filtering would eventually make it impossible for teachers to use their tool in the classroom. They created a protected space, Ed.VoiceThread where teachers would monitor their students, and where we could argue that because it is educational material, it should be unfiltered.
• In rural Virginia, Lee Baber has formed a strong, trusting relationship with the IT guys in her district. They have learned to trust her requests because she always backs them up with strong arguments about the educational value of opening any particular site. They also know that she will moderate the students work online.

It’s true that these seven examples — and the conversation with these people that you can hear on this podcast — provide little more than anecdotal evidence, but at least it’s enough to begin to question the typical picture of filtering in U.S. schools.

Maybe it’s time to start singing with Joe Hill: Don’t Morn-Organize!

Chat Log

Original image: ‘End Tyranny‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/19074862@N00/82189385 by: Kerry Released under an Attribution License

 Music in the Classroom - TTT94 - 03.05.08 [72:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Recently, Lee Baber and Elderbob Brannan facilitated a 6-week session for the Electronic Village Online. I Got Rhythm: Music in the Classroom.

In today’s multi-literate world, music plays an important role. It is one that is often over-looked or neglected in the classroom. With the advent of Web 2.0, Music has taken an even more significant position. Whereas it was once only the subject matter of those who were music majors, it now expands into many relavant areas of expertise. The ability to either select the proper music for a piece or to create music to stand alone, has become a common driver for most students. We beleive that the instructor, though not a music theorist, can offer a variety of resources and information to help students pursue this drive. It is our intent to explore ways that music can be made available in a classroom situation.

EVO 2008 Call for Participation wiki / Music

One of the prizes they found during their class was Joseph M. Pisano, a music professor whose enthusasiam and knowledge bubbles out in this podcast!

Listen to Dr. Pisano, then pass this one on to the music educator in your school. Also check out his blog: MusTech.net

That’s not all! Hook your favorite music educator up with Dr. Pisano’s campaign, Me Blogger. His goal is to inspire 100 Music Education Bloggers (ME Too!) before 2009. He would like to invite any music educator to become a ME Blogger today. “Join Our “Global Conversation” about music, education, and technology!“

Chat Log

Lee Baber: I graduated from University of Maryland in Interdisciplinary Studies / Production Management. I worked for the University helping to manage the Recording Studio, as an audio engineer and editor for the Ethnomusicology Department, the University live events, and with National Geographic and General Electric producing audio for presentations and photographer feature tours. I am currently in the James Madison University Educational Technology Graduate Program working on a 21st Century aligned cognate. For the last 8 years, I have been working for Rockingham County Public Schools as a Computer Literacy teacher, playing professional banjo with Ben “Cooter” Jones and Cross Creek, and working with Worldbridges. I am co-manager for EdTechTalk’s Teachers Teaching Teachers show and Youthvoices network. Skype: lbaber Twitter: leebaber SL: Laurie Carson YM: leebuddyleeb

Elderbob Brannan: My first college experiences were as a recipient of a music scholarship. I loved Jazz, Big Band and Rock and Roll. I was a product of the 60’s. As the music began to shift, so did my personal and professional tastes. Unfortunately, those taste did not fit into the military routine that I was soon to be injected into. After the service, I continued my interest in music right up to today, but more as an enthusiastic supporter than a professional player. Lee and I have been discussing an effort to help instructors bring music into the classroom for about a year now. I think both of us see this project as just one step in the establishment of a community of practitioners. We certainly do not know it all, but we beleive we can offer an environment where a musical community can grow and thrive.

 Open Curriculum Meeting - TTT93 - 02.27.08 [74:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Imagine, if you would, your department meeting webcast live every month or so. At it’s core, that’s what we aim for at Teachers Teaching Teachers, and there’s more. In this podcast, we go back to the basics, back to the making public our private curriculum discussions. Five National Writing Project teachers and two guests joined together to check what our students were doing and what we were thinking. We work together with a group of sites:

• Youth Voices social network of 9th - 12 grade bloggers
• Personal Learning Space - social network of 6th - 8th grade bloggers
• Elggplans Wikispace - a wiki where we gather collaborative plans
• Youthwiki Wikispace- a wiki for youths to share multimedia in galleries of work
• Youth Bridges - youth podcasting network
• Youth Twitter - a safe, twitter-like blogging network for students

The curriculum we build together is beginning to be gathered together in places like these:

• 10 self 10 world questions
• 12 steps to a post with image, comments, and reflection
• Be a blogger - Self Assessment Guide
• Be a blogger! - Hypertext version

On this podcast Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, from New York City were joined by:

• Chris Sloan, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Bill O’Neal, Trenton, New Jersey
• Lynne Culp, Los Angeles, California
• Mike Sansone, Iowa
• Jim Sigler, Missouri

Enjoy!

 Many Voices for Darfur - TTT92 - 02.20.08 [37:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Listen to this podcast of 8th grade students from Maryland and Virginia talking about Darfur.

Then go to Many Voices for Darfur with you students and have them add their thoughts.

Thursday and Friday, March 6 and 7, 2008

Many Voices for Darfur

For 48 hours, starting at midnight Eastern standard time on March 6, 2008, many student voices will be collected in the name of those suffering in Darfur. Be sure that your voice is among them. Men, women, and children in the Darfur region of Sudan are dying. The Sudan militia and Janjaweed are responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths and 2,500,000 displaced refugees. You can learn more about the genocide taking place in Darfur by visiting the Many Voices for Darfur Wiki. Once you have had a chance to learn more about Darfur, please post your comment to one or more of the following prompts below:

1. If you could visit the camps in Chad and sit down one-on-one with a refugee who is your age, how would you explain what you or others are doing in your country to spread awareness and make a difference?
2. Write an open letter to Omar al-Bashir pleading your case for the Darfur region of Sudan.
3. Write an open letter to leaders in your country to make a case for government support of international efforts in Darfur.

Please read these RULES and GUIDELINES before posting your comment.

Chat Log

 Tagging, Tumbling, and Mathcasting: TTT91 - 02.13.08 [39:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a jam-packed thirty-nine minutes, where we explore the power of tagging, teachers using tumblogs, mathcasts, VoiceThreads in health, speech, history, math, music, technology, and EFL classes. Join Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Susan Ettenheim, and VoiceThread’s Ben Papell (Yes, he’s a “regular” by now), as they welcome these fresh voices, fresh at least to us at Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Carla Raguseo, an EFL teacher and Computer Lab coordinator at A.R.I.C.A.N.A., a Binational Center in Rosario, Argentina
• Carla Arena, a Brazilian EFL teacher, teacher trainer and site content manager at A Binational Center in Brasilia, but she’s on a leave right now.
• Jeremy Brown, a Special Education Teacher at the Medow Hall Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland
• Judi Epcke, a teacher and Technology Integration Specialist in Northbrook, Illinois
• Tim Fahlberg, founder of Mathcasts, after 11 years as a math teacher.

Carla Raguseo and Carla Arena talk to us about their 6-week class with the Electronic Village Online, “Blogging for Educators:”

How can teachers spice up their classes, raise students’ interest in various topics and get them to express their thoughts freely? How can they engage students in interactions with each other as a group? This six-week online workshop aims to introduce participants to different ways in which blogging can be integrated teaching. It will provide hands-on opportunities for educators who are new to blogging to set up and develop their own blogs, as well as to explore the worlds of possibilities provided by different kinds of blogs. By the end of the workshop, participants will have experimented with creating and enhancing blogs, posting and editing entries, inviting members to their blogs, and commenting on one anothers’ blogs - using either Blogger or Wordpress platforms. Participants will also have explored blog comment management, template personalization, tagging (labeling) and really simple syndication (RSS).

blogging4educators wiki

Jeremy Brown and Judi Epcke describe their adventures with “tumbl’n teachers.” Who are tumbl’n teachers?

(from a twitter conversation)

* J. Epcke: How would you describe our tumblr group to other teachers?

* J. Brown: tumbl’n teachers is like a digital bulletin board, where educators interested in the use of technology in the classroom can post resources as well as ideas or examples of how they integrate technology.

* J. Epcke: How did the group start?

* J. Brown: I discovered tumblr through my del.icio.us network. While exploring the tool, I came across the Groups feature and thought I would try it. So, I created a group and then started inviting other educators on twitter.

* J. Epcke: How can someone join?

* J. Brown: Anyone can join by either sending an e-mail to techieteacher+tumblr[at]gmail or DT on twitter (techieteacher).

tumbl’n teachers

Tim Fahlberg, discusses his passion for Mathcasts. What’s a Mathcast?

Good question! Mathcasts are screencasts (screen movies) of writing with voice that focus on mathematics. It’s easier to understand what mathcasts are all about if you experience one or more of them: Here’s a mathcast by Colleen King, math teacher and creator of Math Playground?. It’s part of the K-7 Mathcasts 500 Project (500+ mathcasts for Kindergarten - 7th grade math) on our Math247 wiki.

Math247