Weeks of June 20 - July 9, 2010

Welcome to the EdTechTalk (ETT) newsletter! When Nat King Cole sang "Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer," he didn't know that for the EdTechTalk community and other educational technology enthusiasts, summer is the time when we crank things up and go full steam, attending and presenting at conferences and workshops, creating new, exciting lessons and units for next year, and writing tweets, plurks and blogs posts to reflect on our learning/teaching experiences. Many of us had a fantastic opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of our online ETT friends at the ISTE 2010 conference in Denver, CO., and there are still many upcoming conferences and workshops to be experienced and shared. Be sure to keep checking Twitter, Flickr, Plurk, and other social media for updates and late-breaking news about conference and unconference streaming of presentations, and teaching resources that are flowing through the edusphere. And if you run out of things to do and are looking for some inspiration, log into EdTechTalk and catch up on some of that fantastic recordings you've missed this year!

While many of our regular ETT webcasts are on a short summer break, many are using the time to get caught up on posting past shows and planning future shows. This week's newsletter features four of the recent Teachers Teaching Teachers shows where some very interesting conversations are taking place on a series of webcasts related to the Gulf oil disaster with the show hosts and a special guest co-host, Diana Laufenberg from the Science Leadership Academy. Listen to their ideas for developing curriculum to deal with this tragedy and then plan to join them in a live show on Wednesdays at 9:00pm Eastern to contribute to the conversation.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #205 -Three teachers from Louisiana talk about a dull ache - 2nd in a series - 06.16.10

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we talked about what we can do now that we might not have done before this disaster or failure. This is the second of a series of shows we will be doing on the Gulf oil disaster.

In the previous podcast (TTT 204), we had a thoughtful, productive conversation with history teacher Diana Laufenberg about responses in our curriculum to the Gulf Oil Disaster. One of her ideas was to set up Skype connections for our students with people in Gulf states to personalize and more deeply understand the impact of this ongoing disaster. To move this idea forward, we’ve invited three teacher-consultants from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project — Carolyn Kirk, Tasha Whitton, and Ellen Steigman — to join us on this podcast.

Won’t you join us too? We will continue our conversations about what needs to change all summer on Teachers Teaching Teachers. We want to know what you are thinking. Join us in the chat room or get ready to join us on Skype at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times

On this podcast, we were also be joined by teachers Matt Montagne and Andrea Zellner — two of our favorite angry, young environmentalists!

Teachers Teaching Teachers #204 - "We can't not deal with it!" says Diana Laufenberg - 1st in a series - 06.09.10
This is the first of a series of TTT webcasts that we are doing this summer in response to BP's gushing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We are asking teachers from all over to join us each Wednesday evening this summer to put together a curriculum that will help our students build their own responses to the human, animal, and ecological devestation that has been happening every day since April. Incredibly, this "spill" promises to continue wrecking damage into the fall and winter.

Diana Laufenberg, a teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, started us in this series of shows with a the powerful, clear-eyed stance of a history teacher commited to helping her students find their own answers to "How does this go on?" Diana's descriptions of a project in which her students made infographics this spring will inspire, and her ideas for connecting her students to students in the Gulf will make you want to join us in this endeavor. We also spoke to a math teacher, Matthew, from Pennsylvania.

Diana Laufenberg ( @dlaufenberg and Living the Dream ) is a history teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. On the school’s website, she is described as “a nomad.”
Diana is a true life-long learner. She currently works with 11th grade students at SLA. Experiential education is an integral part of her educational pursuits taking students from the classroom to the real world and back again. Before finding her way to Philadelphia, she was an active member of the teaching community in Flagstaff, AZ where she was named Technology Teacher of the Year for Arizona and a member of the Governor’s Master Teacher Corps.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #203 - Visualizing information and Envisioning New Schools - 06.02.10

For this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we asked Suzie Boss to come on to help us have a conversation with:

an amazing young high school student who has developed his own project-based learning by creating info-graphics.
a dynamic teacher who has been working all year to help open a new public school in East Brooklyn.

We learned a lot, both about visualizing information and about integrating technology into a new, alternative school.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #202- The 3R's of Gaming: Playing, Modding, and Designing - 05.26.10
On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we learned more about playing, modifying, and designing games.

One of our guests was Scott Price, a game developer or producer at Gamestar Mechanic. A few of us in the New York City Writing Project, especially Susan Ettenheim and Shantanu Saha — both of whom are on this podcast — have been using a beta version of Gamestar Mechanic this spring with their students.

Al Doyle.

Al is the “Sports for the Mind” domain teacher at Quest 2 Learn, a new public school in New York City “where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems. It is a place to play, invent, grow, and explore.”

If you would like your celebration included in the ETT newsletter please email us at [email protected].

EdTechTalk is a community of people interested in the use of technology to improve teaching and learning at all levels of education throughout the world. As a Worldbridges community, it embraces the values of collaboration and inclusiveness. The primary activity of the community is the production of a number of live, interactive webcasts. These programs cover a wide range of topics relating to educational technology. Shows are typically streamed live, and listeners can interact with one another and the show hosts through a text chat. Recordings of the shows are released as podcasts. Participation in the community is encouraged for anyone who has an interest in educational technology. Participation may take many forms, from simply listening to shows produced by the community to more actively working to produce and distribute content for the network.

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Enjoy your week,

Your enthusiastic ETT Newsletter Gang