Texas in the house with Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast on doing digital make-overs - TTT186 -02.10.10
Posted by Paul Allison on February 28th, 2010
Texas in the house with Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast on doing digital make-overs - TTT186 -02.10.10 [53:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThis podcast is another in a series of Teachers Teaching Teachers shows to feature the authors of a recent outcrop of books on new media and literacy (Copyright Clarity: 184, 135, The Digital Writing Workshop: 172, 171, 170, Teaching the New Writing: 157, 156, 155, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools: 138) Perhaps we have the makings of a new discipline here, or at least a budding new branch on the tree of academic inquiry. See the National Writing Project’s list at Teaching Now: Digital Writing Books. What would you add to this list? Let us know by adding a comment below.
On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we were excited to have a conversation with Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast about their new book, Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons.
Stephens and Ballast guide teachers in how to successfully implement technology for writing across the curriculum and create engaging lesson plans. They outline four frames of writing–inside writing, responsive writing, purposeful writing, and social action writing–and present student-centered and inquiry-based reading/writing lessons to connect real-world writing to content area standards. The result is a state-of the-art resource for helping teachers teach every student to write inside and outside of the classroom.
Liz Campbell Stephens teaches graduate courses in Educational Technology and is Director of the Office of Educator Preparation at Texas State University-San Marcos. She serves on the National Writing Project’s Board of Directors and was Director of the Central Texas Writing Project for 11 years. She co-authored Technology, Reading, and Language Arts and has written numerous chapters and papers on technology and literacy. Liz is former high school English teacher and brings that experience to her work as a teacher educator, federal programs director, and consultant. Her research has centered on literacy, technology, and teacher education.
Kerry Ballast is a Teacher Consultant for the Central Texas Writing Project and a secondary English language arts teacher with 14 years classroom experience. She has worked with students in grades 6-12 to explore various forms of writing, both traditional and digital. Currently, she works for the Texas Education Agency.
We were also joined by English teacher, Joel Malley who teaches at Cheektowaga Central School District, near Buffalo, NY. Joel is also the Tech Liaison for the Western New York Writing Project at Canisius College. Troy Hicks had a couple of things to say as well. Troy is the director of the Chippewa River Writing Project at Central Michigan University.
Go to EdTechTalk to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.
March 29th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Howdy! Were you aware that there is an “Access Denied” message that pops up when someone tries to download the MP3 file on your podcasts? I was trying to download #186, as well as several others, on Monday at 6:19AM(CST) to no avail. Hope this is just temporary!
With appreciation for your great work,
Miguel Guhlin
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:59 am
Thank you for this insightful podcast. I feel more empowered to use technology in teaching writing now because of Liz and Kerry’s experiences of finding that technology can promote more engagement, motivation, and richness of text from the students. Education in the 21st century can not be a “same as usual philosophy”, but must move forward and embrace the new era of teaching with technology and all that it has to offer in enriching the teaching process.
Judi Buenaflor