About
Not long ago a colleague in the National Writing Project wrote to several teachers she is consulting with: “Just to let everyone know, the Wednesday evening Teachers Teaching Teachers sessions are amazing and definitely a fast track into some timely PD and community building!”
We hope this is true for a growing number of teachers. We like to think that it’s our perspectives as reglular classroom teachers that makes our webcast special. The main participants on the blog, podcast, and webcast are K-13 teachers who enjoy telling “new stories” about their classrooms. Our favorite question: “Can you tell us a story about that? Something that happened recently in your classroom?” Our motto: “Keep it real!”
Two teachers–Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim are mainly responsible for this blog, podcast, and webcast. Toward the beginning of 2006, a few of us in New York City began to meet via Skype. In the spring of 2006 we began webcasting with the help of Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier of WorldBridges. Every Wednesday evening at 9:00 EST (Americas) we get together and talk about our teaching. These conversations are archived as a podcast on this blog. Together we are searching for the most effective practices in technology, studying research, and improving our knowledge of new media by using it oursleves. We have two purposes: developing teacher knowledge and leadership in our own schools and districts and putting this knowledge and leadership to work to improve student online reading and writing through the use of blogs, wikis, podcasts and webcasts.
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Paul Allison [ allisonpr@gmail.com , Weblogs & Wikis & Feeds, Oh My! ] has been been teaching ever since he graduated from Hunter College, CUNY in 1983. After a few years in the desert (Utah), and a couple of years at the High School of Art and Design, NYC, he had a wonderful dozen years at University Heights Secondary School, Bronx, NY, where h
e learned that doing school better didn’t have to be the same-old, with more effort. After that, Paul worked with English Language Learners at the International High School in Queens for three years.
After 9/11, there was a lot of talk about doing meaningful work. At the same time, Paul was finding himself being seduced by new forms of literacy on the Internet. An opportunity to become a “studio teacher” of technology at East Side Community High School, NYC presented itself in the Summer of 2002, and worked there for several years. Currently Paul teachers English at eht East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens.
Another community that Paul is a part of is the New York City Writing Project. He was a participant in the NYCWP’s Summer Invitational in 1985, and he has worked for the NYCWP in various ways ever since. Currently, with Felicia George, Paul is the NYC Technology Liaison for the National Writing Project.
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Susan Ettenheim [ settenh@schools.nyc.gov ] has always been involved with the sharing of information from her first work days as a page in the Children’s Room at the local public library to work at Friends Seminary in the Media Center and then in the Internet and cable television industry managing website development and community applications. After ten years of involvement with technology initiatives in Community School District 2 it was time to join the team.
Susan earned a BA cum laude from Mount Holyoke College studying Art, Mathematics and Spanish Literature, a MA in Media Studies from the New School University and a MS in Education at Bank Street College of Education in a joint program with Parsons School of Design . She exhibited paintings and prints in galleries throughout the country and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting. Her work is included in collections at The Library of Congress and The Smithsonian Museum and as well as private collections.
Currently, Susan is having a lot of fun and finding great satisfaction teaching at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, M416 in New York City. Paul and the other teachers at the New York City Writing Project have been a great source of sharing and learning, a special precious time to get together and think through the adventures and experiences of the week. Her students challenge her and challenge themselves to push technology use to the next level, wherever that may take all of us.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Hi all,
I thought you might be interested in a new web resource targetting torwards the K-12 educational community. I’m sure you’re familiar with del.icio.us, which includes a huge number of links and resources that can be used in education. However, given the size and scope of del.icio.us, it is sometimes more difficult to discover educational resources mixed in with everything else. For example, the tag “games” could be used to define much more than educational links.
As a result, I recently developed EduTagger (www.edutagger.com), a social bookmarking service for K-12 learners and educators. You’re probably also familiar with Digg, which this system closely resembles, but Digg obviously suffers the same issues as del.icio.us from an educational context.
The reason i’m sending you this is for two reasons. The first is that i’m trying to get the word out so that it can achieve a “critical mass” appropriate for this style of collaborative user-driven content. The second reason is that the types of links and resources on EduTagger can be quite relevant to the readers and content of TTT.
To give you a little background, I’m currently working as an e-Learning Developer in a K-12 school in Australia, and one of my aims has always been to easily share interesting resources with the teaching staff. Additionally, a way for teaching staff to share those same resources with each other is surprisingly difficult. EduTagger is really one possible solution to these aims.
I’d also love to hear any comments or feedback you may have, and would be especially grateful if you would consider sharing a link to EduTagger on TTT to help grow the site to “critical mass” and receive further feedback and contribution from your readers. There’s already a number of great articles on TTT that could be particularly relevant on EduTagger.
It would also be fantastic if you considered signing up to EduTagger and sharing any links and resources that you would find useful in K-12 education, including TTT
Thanks for your time
Mark
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Hello All
You have a really good blog here. I thought you might be interested in adding your blog information to the new International Edubloggers Directory at http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com
It would be a great addition!
Patricia