Interactive Communications and Simulations with Jeff Stanzler - TTT118 - 08.20.08 [55:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Our guests on this podcast were:
Jeff Stanzler. University of Michigan-Flint and Ann Arbor, School of Education, Interactive Communications and Simulations, USA
Kurt Hansen, government teacher, Bishop Hartley High School, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Abbi Gee, English teacher, Da Vinci High School, Jackson, Michigan, USA
Traci Gizzi, social studies teacher, Winston Curchilll High School, Livonia, Michigan, USA
Listen to learn about the web-based simulations and writing projects
hosted by the University of Michigan’s Interactive Communications & Simulations group. With the help of university student mentors, students in classrooms around the world are trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli Conflict, or are exploring modern China, or bringing historical figures to life as they debate the world’s responsibilities in Darfur. Hear from teachers and a former university student mentor about an array of projects your students can join as soon as this fall, which offer fertile ground for exercising their creative imaginations, writing with a purpose, and sharing their ideas with an engaged audience of peers.
Thinking about Classroom Blogging with Sarah Hurlburt - TTT117 - 08.13.08 [70:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
In the midst of planning a re-launch of a school-based social network, Youth Voices, we happened upon a paper that clearly and fairly described the problems many of us face when we blog with students in our classrooms. In her paper in the June 2008 Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT Vol. 4, No. 2), Sarah Hurlburt discusses some of “frustrations and puzzlements” that many of us have had in using classroom blogs over the past several years.
Sarah articulates our reasons for wanting to set up a site like Youth Voices. Many of us have felt the gap between the promise of blogging and the results in our classrooms.
The point at which the instructor feels [classroom blogging] to have failed in some way, is when these individual written elements fail to interconnect – when the social element, upon which instructors place high hopes for a subsequent critical element – fails to materialize.
Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim invited Sarah Hurlburt on to our webcast to continue the dialogue about blogging, and we were joined by elementary school teachers, Lisa Parisi and Linda Nitsche.
Enjoy the podcast, and read Sarah Hurlburt’s paper.
Also, we invite you to help us re-launch http://youthvoices.net on Wednesday, August 27, 2008. Join us, right here at EdTechTalk at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times.
Many of us (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), have already returned or will soon return to school. Our summer weeks of reflecting, learning, dreaming, planning, scheming are behind us. Perhaps it’s useful to remember what our conversations from a few weeks back sounded like.
On this podcast, recorded a few weeks ago, Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim are joined by three other teachers who were just trying to enjoy their summer break:
Allice Barr, a technology integrator at Yarmouth High School, Maine
George Mayo, a middle school teacher and biker from Silver Spring, Maryland
Margare Fiore, an English Teacher with the New School and a member with the New York City Wriitng Project
One of the projects we’ve been working on this summer — and which we discuss in this podcast — is a new Drupal site for http://youthvoices.net. We are planning to launch the new site on our webcast this week.
Over the past several weeks, Paul Allison, Alice Barr, Susan Ettenheim, George Mayo, and Chris Sloan have been working with Bill Fitzgerald and other primates at Funny Monkey to move two school-based social networks, The Personal Learning Space and Youth Voices to a new Drupal site. Several teachers have been working together on these projects, and some of the curriculum that we have developed together is available here, at http://youthplans.wikispaces.com/curriculum.
On this podcast, recorded a month ago, Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim welcome a student, a teacher, and our lead reaseacher and advisor for these projects:
Hannah Feldman, a junior at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA, USA
Lynn Culp, Northridge Academy, north of Los Angels, CA, USA
Dave Cormier, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE, Canada
We talk about what Youth Voices might become this coming school year.
Much work has been done on this project, and we invite you to join us as we re-launch http://youthvoices.net on Wednesday, August 27, 2008. Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times
Listen to a lively conversation about how to use Shelfari– or how to get a similar site built — to create a social networking site for students to share their book logs, reviews, and recommendations with each other.
Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison (and Lee Baber in the chat room) welcomed:
Earlier this summer, Susan Ettenheim began to work with the folks at Shelfari to see about using their social reading site in her school. Wesley Fryer noticed her interest and detailed a quest he has to find or build a social networking site for young readers. He wrote that he
wants “Netflix functionality… the site should offer the following
features:
The website should be free for anyone to register for and use,
but minors should be required to obtain parental consent to comply with
COPPA and other relevant laws as described above.
The site should permit users to RATE books they’ve read, from one to five stars, just like NetFlix.
The
site should let users write book reviews and recommendations that can
be public and/or sent directly to friends, just like NetFlix.
The
site should let users maintain lists of friends, and view what those
friends report they are currently reading, as well as their friends’
recommendations for books to read.
The site should use AI technologies
(or whatever you call the technologies that can do this sort of thing)
to dynamically generate book recommendations for an individual based on
the books s/he has already rated in the system.
Here’s how I’d go about building that site using Drupal.
The main functional requirements:
These requirements are pulled and paraphrased from Wes’ post; any that I have added are italicized.
COPPA compliant — no personal data collected from minors without the prior consent of an adult;
Readers can rate books they have read;
Readers can create lists of friends; these “friendships” can be one way, or reciprocal;
Readers can write reviews on books; these reviews can be shared publicly, or privately between friends;
The site should recommend books to readers based on their likes and dislikes of other books;
Readers should be able to see what their friends are reading, and any reviews/recommendations of their friends;
Readers should be able to keep a reading log on the site; this reading log should have the ability to be public or private;
Readers should be able to form public and private groups/communities.
There are other features that will need attention, of course; for
example, a site like this will require a detail-rich user profile page,
and pages for recent recommendations, featured books, featured readers,
etc.
Lee Baber reflected all the things that make the Edtechtalk community a fantastic place to live and learn. She was fearless, forgiving and giving. She would spend hours trying to help people get to the places they wanted to go, go far beyond what could be expected of any friend or teacher, and do it all with a smile. She was our friend… and we’ll miss her. Please share memories or thoughts of Lee on VoiceThread or by commenting on the EdTechTalk comments page for Lee.
This July, Paul Allison and Julie Conason fascilated a 3-week Writing Project Institute for teachers where we used VoiceThread as the focus of one of our weeks together. In the middle of our work with teachers, we invited Steve Muth, co-founder of VoiceThread, and Colette Cassinelli, a technology teacher near Portland, Oregon who started a wiki that collects examples of VoiceThreads.
What will you find on Collette’s VoiceThread4Education?
Samples submitted by teachers of VoiceThread projects made by their students
VoiceThreads used in professional development
Resources, including other websites that contain VoiceThread examples
Best Practices - tips and ideas of how to best implement VoiceThread in your curriculum
Subject area ideas
“This is your wiki,” Colette writes: “Please feel free to add any ideas, examples or resources to the site and provide appropriate link attribution. If you are not sure how to embed your VoiceThread projects in wikispaces - follow the directions below.”
In addition: Paul and Julie invite you to take a look at the “Narrative Discussions” from our Institute, linked below. We would love your comments on these.
We asked Scott Floyd to sit with some of his friends and colleagues on July, 2, 2008, the last day of the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio, Texas.
Scott Floyd talks about meeting with his ePortfolio mentor, Dr. Helen Barrett. Scott Floyd is a Technology Specialist for the White Oak, Texas Independent School District and he’s the Tech Liaison for the Bluebonnet Writing Project in Texas. (Image snapped by Bud Hunt, uploaded to Scott’s flickr account.)
Christine Voigt, Instructional Technology Specialist at Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas, Texas. Christie talks about a project she did in here school with iPods. (Image from Christine’s Twitter profile.)
Scott Floyd talks with Dean Shareski, a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. In this podcast, Dean talks about how important it is to find time for teachers to learn how to integrate new technologies into the curriculum. (Paul Wood took this picture during the live webcast. This is also in Scott’s NECC2008 flickr set.)
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.
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!
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.
_______________________
Youth Space
Using Web 2.0 tools to build social networks for learning ________________________
__________________
New York City Writing Project
Institute for Literacy Studies Lehman College, CUNY __________________
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!
Interactive Communications and Simulations with Jeff Stanzler - TTT118 - 08.20.08 [55:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Interactive Communications & Simulations group. With the help of university student mentors, students in classrooms around the world are trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli Conflict, or are exploring modern China, or bringing historical figures to life as they debate the world’s responsibilities in Darfur. Hear from teachers and a former university student mentor about an array of projects your students can join as soon as this fall, which offer fertile ground for exercising their creative imaginations, writing with a purpose, and sharing their ideas with an engaged audience of peers.
San Antonio, Texas.
Writing Project) have been up to: