Teachers Teaching Teachers #122 From Google Docs for Presidents to Drupal sites for Youth Voices - 09.17.09

Paul Allison — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:11:19 -0500

On this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers, we followed up on two collaborative projects that some of us have been working on: a new Drupal site for Youth Voices and "Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future"

Paul Oh stopped by to report on the launch of the Website for teachers, which allows us to post student writing to the Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future website. Paul Oh directed us to the website where: "At the secure area of that site, you will be able to log in using your Google account information. Once you do so, further directions will help you manage your students' pieces that were published using the special project submission
template described in Step 2. At that point, your students' work will be publicly visible along with all the writing from across the country."

Several teachers have tip-toed into Youth Voices, and on this podcast we report on the mechanics of joining this site and creating groups. Listen in, then consider having your students join us.

We invited several teachers and student to come talk about the site. In particular we talked about how to use the groups function of our new Drupal baby. (Thanks Bill Firtzgerald!) For
example, we set up a Digital Photography Community Group and a literature-focused inquiry group, "Catastrophe and Resiliency":

A space where we can take a stand against historical and current atrocities, genocides, ethnic cleanings, holocausts, occupations, and wars. A place to share our responses to books and stories about how humaity can not be stopped by these catastrophes, and how we must never again turn away from these disasters. A forum where we can connect around books, stories, and poems at all levels of difficulty and variety, books like Long Way Gone, What is the What? Persepolis, Maus, Night and other stories of spirit in the face of calamity.

Lindsea, a student from Hawaii joined us, and many others.

Looking for collaborative projects? Want to find out more? Listen to this podcast, and join in the coming weeks as we continue to plan together on Teachers Teaching Teachers.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #98 - Learning to be Unschooly - 04.02.08

Paul Allison — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:57:35 -0500

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

Chat Log (Don't miss this one.)

Image by Lindsea