EdTechWeekly #157
March 14, 2010

In a break from EdTechWeekly tradition, Dave and Jen explored their research projects and interests regarding "community" within an educational setting. If you are looking for the contributed links to news and resources shared by the EdTechTalk "community" this week, please point your browser to our EdTechTalk delicious folder.

Chat Log Below 

Hi everyone

I'm sending an unauthorized newsletter (I'll probably hear it from the newsletter team) to tell you about why edtechtalk has been a little weird lately (that is, in a technical way). We've been compromised by some irritating folks who apparently want us to be more informed about the pornography scene on the internet.

Welcome to this week's EdTechTalk (ETT) newsletter! This has been a fantastic week of outstanding conversations and professional development shared at ETT. If you missed the K12Online Conference Echo webcast on Tuesday you missed a fun time of learning and growing professionally. Special guest presenter was Jackie Gerstein who shared the phenomenal ways she uses technology with her students. You will definitely want to listen to the recording of the session.

This week, we discussed the experience of online learning with two students at The University of Montana. Amanda Armstrong, an undergraduate student taking a fully online degree in Media Arts and Jamie Lockman, a graduate student taking an online political science course. Topics discussed include:

In the first half of this weeks episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had an inspiring conversation with Katherine Schulten editor of The Learning Network at the New York Times.  Our theme for this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers was about increasing teacher voice in public debates. Katherine suggested how we might use The Learning Network for that.

In addition, we were joined by:

• Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley
• and Andrea Zellner a leader at the Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan State University's site of the NWP.

Andrea and many o

thers in the chat room during the webcast gave witness to why we want to maintain federal funding for the NWP to continue -- an example of a time wh

en we need to get our voices to be heard! 

"It's been a heady week for teaching and learning discussion on the Times site," writes Katherine Schulten, our first guest on this podcast. One of Katherine's jobs as an editor of the New York Times Learning Network is to moderate the comments that come in on education-related articles.

• By this last weekend (3/7/2010), the article, "Building a Better Teacher, had 313 comments on it, and had been one of the top most-emailed on the Times site after it went online last Wednesday.
• For several days the article about Diane Ravitch's about-face on NCLB was right up there too.
• And this article, "Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets," which is about teaching Darwin and Global Warming got over 1000 comments.

A Student Opinion post from earlier this week, "Where Do You Stand on Unconcealed Handguns? "received many lively responses from "students 13 and older," who "are invited [to the Learning Network] to comment on questions about issues in the news."

If you just clicked on those links, your head is probably spinning: so many issues so little time! That's what it feels like to have a conversation with Katherine Schulten, who before she became an editor for the Learning Network was a NYC teacher and a consultant for the New York City Writing Project. Katherine was worried that she was talking too much, because she is so excited about managing the Learning Network.

We'll turned Katherine loose, then we interrupted her with a few questions. We think you'l learn a lot about the New York Times Learning Network on this podcast:

Currently, they are offering these features:

• Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
• Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
• Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
• 6 Q’s About the Newss — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
• News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
• Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.

The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, they re-launched it as a Times blog.

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

 This week, Sheila Adams, Lisa Parisi, and Maria Knee were joined by Ginger Lewman for a conversation about free tools.  How much are we willing to pay if the tools don't stay free?  

Chat Archive:

 EdTechWeekly #156
March 7, 2010

This Week's Delicious Links

Chat Log Below
 

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, you will learn more about RAW INcK: Reading and Writing in Kentuckiana. Our guests were one site’s student managers, Tyler, along with their teacher, Paul W. Hankins, an English Teacher and Creator of RAW INcK. (Another student-manager of the Ning, Jin joined us in the chat room.) Paul is also a teacher-consultant with the Indiana University Southeast Writing Project and a State Representative to ALAN from Indiana. Listen to find out why we are excited to connect up with RAW INcK, “A Reading and Writing Community Hosted by the Juniors of Silver Creek High School [Indiana]. Now hosting members from all across America! Go INcK!”

Learn about how they set up chat sessions with authors like these:

• Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, and Identical.
• Chris Crutcher. Crutcher’s works include Athletic Shorts, Chinese Handcuffs, Deadline, The Sledding Hill, and King of the Mild Frontier.
• Kimberly Willis Holt, author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, My Louisiana Sky, and a host of other YA titles.

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.