Teachers Teaching Teachers

 Joyca Valenza on PowerPoint Reform and Gail Desler & Sue Waters on Edublogs - TTT110 - 06.25.08 [65:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Joyce Valenza talks about reforming PowerPoint in the first half hour of this podcast. She provided this resource as well: Reforming Powerpoint. (Also of interest, perhaps: DavidByrne.com - Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information.)

In the second half of the show Gail Desler and Sue Waters decsribed the teaching community around Edublogs.

Enjoy!

Chat Log

 Cybercamps, Summer Invitationals, Institutes, and Workshops - TTT109 - 06.18.08: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We invite you to join us as we reflect on Writing Project Summer Institutes and other professional development opportunities we have or will be facilitating for our colleagues this summer.

Please take a moment, go register and leave your comments over at our Teachers Teaching Teachers room on http://friendfeed.com/rooms/ttt and take a look at some of the sites we’ve been collecting there for this Wednesday’s live webcast.

Hear what Bud Hunt (Colorado), Mary Meyer (Prairie Lands Writing Project), and Bonnie Kaplan (Hudson Valley Writing Project) have been up to:

• Blogging with Summer Institute 2008
  A blog for integrating technology into the Hudson Valley Writing Project’s Summer Institute. Bonnie Kaplan, technology liaison will be with us on TTT, Wednesday night, June 18.
• Writing With Technology
  Mary Meyer will be with us on Wednesday to reflect on this work.
• CyberCamp 08
  Bud Hunt’s work in his district over the past couple of weeks. Bud will be with us (an maybe a participant or two).

What are you doing to bring 21st century literacies to your Writing Project or in your district or school this summer?

Also listen to Julie Conason and Paul Allison on this podcast as they talk about the 3-week institute they are planning for the New York City Writing Project.’

Lee Baber checks in on this podcast as well. Stay strong Lee!

Photo: Uploaded to flickr on August 16, 2007 by Wesley Fryer

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 Planning all out in the open - TTT108 - 06.11.08 [67:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this podcast you’ll hear Felicia George, Bill O’Neal, Susan Ettenheim, Cheryl Oakes, and Gail Desler as they help Paul Allison and Julie Conason think about this Summer Instutute for teachers in the New York City Writing Project.

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Youth Space

Using Web 2.0 tools to build
social networks for learning
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New York City Writing Project
Institute for Literacy Studies
Lehman College, CUNY
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Summer Advanced Institute
Mondays - Thursdays, 9 - 2
June 30 - July 17
______________________

How can we use technology to put the voices of youth at the center of the curriculum?

Spend 12 days this summer with other New York City Writing Project teachers who use technology in their classrooms. Share the ways we use the Internet to make student-to-student connections. Learn about a curriculum currently being developed and collaborated on by teachers across the nation. Explore how we use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other tools to inspire young people to do research into their own questions.

Find out why Creative Commons Man is our superhero!

Facilitators: Paul Allison and Julie Conason
Location: Lehman College, CUNY
Participants will receive 3 graduate credits or a $500 stipend.

Chat Log

 What have we learned this year with VoiceThread? TTT107 - 06.04.08 [69:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Join Matt Montagne, Ben Papelle, Susan Ettenheim, Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Bill O’Neal, and Hannah Feldman in a reflective conversation about where we have come this year, and where we want to go next year.

We especially look at how to move beyond our initial infatuation with VoiceThread to a more long-lasting relationship that emphasises what VoiceThread probably does best: inspire, generate, and build online conversatons.

Here are a couple of VoiceThreads that were made back in February 2008. Many of us used these to prepare our students for the Many Voices for Darfur project that George Mayo and Wendy Dexler organized in the first week of March 2008.

I present this pair of VoiceThreads as an example. By comparing the presentation that I, Paul Allison, made (top) with the of the kind of collaborative space created by Bill Ferriter (Darth Tater) and his 6th Graders in North Carolina (bottom), we can begin to understand the constructive critique that we build up to on this podcast.

 What's new about creating projects in the digital age? TTT106 - 05.28.08 [62:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Except for our colleagues in the the Southern Hemisphere, many of us are either already enjoying the summer holidays or we are looking forward to them coming soon. Teachers often use this time to relax and reflect on their work. We collaborate with other teachers in summer workshops and catch up on professional reading. Summer Invitational Institutes are the heart of the work for National Writing Projects across the country. What a better time to stop and take a look at a new book by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss? Their book, Reinventing Project Based Learning was published earlier this year, and many of us will be using this book to guide our project planning processes.

To learn more about this “Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age,” we asked Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss to join us on this podcast. The magic of doing this live allowed us to also include Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA and Gail Desler, Technology Integration Specialist for Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento, CA. and Tech Liaison for the Area 3 Writing Project.

Enjoy the conversation! And don’t forget to check out the chat and our FriendFeed room that has many of the links that are mentioned in this podcast.

Chat Log

 Connecting to Place-based Education in Alaska - TTT102 - 4.30.08 [68:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The ice has melted, many are off fishing, and schools have graduated their seniors in the rural areas of Alaska where our guests for this podcast are from. But our colleagues in Alaska have already begun planning for the next academic year, and on this podcast, you can find way to connect with them. In this podcast, we focused on the “Digital Foxfire approach to Placed-based Education” that seems to describe some of the work in the schools in Marshall, Alaska and in the Bering Strait School District (BSSD). Our guides for this conversation were:

• John Concilus, Director of Technology, BSSD
• Ginger Crockett, teacher Brevig Mission, Alaska
• Woody Woodgate, who will soon be working for the State of Alaska’s Education and Early Development Department
• Flora Evan, Language Arts teacher, Marshall, Alaska

Listen to the podcast, then connect! Click Read more (below), and see what they are cooking up in the Bering Strait School District. Add your thoughts to their survey, and click Contact. We’ll see you there.

Digital Foxfire 2008-2009, we want your feedback

Curriculum and Instruction efforts next year will place additional emphasis on solidifying what has been called our “Digital Foxfire” approach to Place-based Education.

This is not a single project, but rather an approach to integrating technology as a vehicle for place-based education, and then being able to connect students to the idea of sharing the “alternative products” of teaching and learning with an authentic audience.

Sharing takes place through:

- Writing Products: School website and district blog entries, Strait Talk publication in print, Wikipedia contributions as demonstrating mastery of concepts, posters.

- New Media Products: Webcasting, podcasting, vodcasting.

- Archiving Place-based Content: Digitizing existing BSSD publications that record our place, our culture and our people. Indexing, and making those contributions visible through our wiki system.

As part of the Digital Foxfire Archive, we are hoping to put together webcasts that feature what is going on in our schools, and which allow our students to both share out their “place”, and learn in real time about other places.

These events would be held roughly every two weeks throughout the school year, and teachers and / or their students will be able to participate in one, several or all of them.

What we need help with is channeling this into something that will be flexible enough for teachers to see as a realistic outlet for student work done in the BSSD curriculum in ANY Content Area, or combination of Content Areas.

First of all, we’d like your help in selecting next year’s themes. We believe that broad themes, inclusive enough to be used as common thread across grade levels and teaching styles, would be best for encouraging meaningful exchange.

Note: The shape, flavor, age range and direction of your contributions are not in anyway constrained. We will help you think about, and create something that is above all an engaging set of learning activities in your classroom!

Chat Log

 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!

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