Chris Sloan

Teachers Teaching Teachers #71 - The Left Coast Joins Us

Paul Allison — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:24:57 -0500

On this webcast, we were joined for the first time by Woody Woodgate, an educator from a small town in Alaska. Also joining us were three teachers from California, from north to south: Gail Desler, Matt Makoweski, and Lynne Culp. Moving across the country, we were also joined by Chris Sloan in Utah, Kevin Sandridge in Florida. Lee Baber from Virginia also joined Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim in New York. What did we talk about? Well, we had another planning meeting around this medley of sites:

YouthVoices.net (grades 9 - 12)
PersonalLearningSpace.com (grades 4 - 8)
elggplans.wikispaces.com (common planning)
youthwiki.wikispaces.com (student galleries of video, images and multimedia)
YouthBridges.net (webcasting home & podcasting network)

This week we plan to continue the conversation. Please join us at edtechtalk.com at 9:00 Eastern / 6:00 Pacific.

Chat Log 09.19.07

Teachers Teaching Teachers #37: Rethinking Journalism with Chris Sloan

SusanEttenheim — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:06:01 -0600

EdTechTalk: Teachers Teaching Teachers #37
Rethinking Journalism with Chris Sloan
January 24, 2007
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Writing like the post that we’ve copied here makes it easy to listen to what our students think about our work with them. Here’s what a 9th grader in Chris Sloan’s class thinks about blogging at YouthVoices.net:

What makes a good blog post, by Parker at Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City

To create a really good blog post, I really think that people need to open up to the readers. Honesty is most effective, because the actual emotion that others put down is probably something that others have experienced, or can relate to. For example, i just read a letter a girl wrote to her father, but he passed away four years ago. It was the most personal, morose, true example of sadness that i have ever read, let alone on youthvoices. I don’t know anything like that personally, but the raw openness made it something that i felt, not just read. I’ve also published some poems on the site, and i’ve gotten some varied, but positive, responses to those, and that’s encouraging. more below

Teachers Teaching Teachers #35 - Midyear Reorientation

SusanEttenheim — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:21:26 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers #35
January 10, 2007
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This was the kind of conversation that needed more time. Listen as nine teachers from six states — Paul Allison, NY, Lee Baber, VA , Glen Bledsoe, OR, Susan Ettenheim, NY, Kevin Hodgson, MA, Eric Hoefler, VA, Matt Makowetski, CA, Chris Sloan, UT, and Ken Stein, NY (plus a father from China) — who use blogs, discussion boards, and other Web-based communication tools in their classrooms tell stories about the first half of the academic year. We report on what we have been learning about blogging (and using wikis) with students. We also begin to talk about what our plans are for the remainder of the year.

Take a look at our ever expanding Google Notebook for this show: Teachers Teaching Teachers 01.10.07

In the comments at the bottom of this post, please join us with your thoughts about what you’ve learned teaching students to communicate online. What are your stories? Let’s see how many more states — and countries — we can add to the list as we check in with colleagues from all over the globe.

We also want to talk about how to help students who will be ending their classes with us in January can find some closure with their blogs without closing off the possiblities of keeping an ongoing blog.

And please join us next week — and every Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern — in the text chat room at EdTechTalk.com.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #27 - Blogging as Swarming

admin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:53:42 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers #27
November 1, 2006
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How can we sponsor and deepen the natural swarming that happens in student blogs on a social network? This complex question is where several teachers — Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Madeline Brownstone, Susan Ettenheim, Teb Locke, and Chris Sloan — seemed to be at the end of their conversation here. Teb talked about the kinds of committed writing he is seeing in his 3rd - 5th graders blog, their social network, and their wiki. We also talked about the differences from typical school writing that we are seeingthe personal, digital writing students are doing for their peers on blogs in The Personal Learning Space and Youth Voices.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #26 - Is blogging bigger than the sum of its parts?

SusanEttenheim — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:03:12 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers#26
October 25, 2006
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Has writing really changed? What’s the difference — really — between writing an essay and writing a blog post? Has the use of images really changed the writing process? Digital technologies are great, but don’t we still have to teach kids how to write the way we always did? What’s the difference?

Teachers Teaching Teachers #25 -Do we need a new discipline: Stories of Student Online Conversation

SusanEttenheim — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 08:06:54 -0500

Teachers Teaching Teachers
Do we need a new discipline: Stories of Student Online Conversation
October 18, 2006
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Our conversation this evening began innocently enough with Gail Desler, the technology liaison for the Area 3 Writing Project in and around Sacramento, California, describing her work over the past four years with blogging in the classroom. Last year 3 different Writing Projects and 5 schools joined together in a project called “Youth Voices: Coast to Valley.” Given that we have stolen their name, “Youth Voices” in an attempt to broaden our network of schools, we are delighted to include Gail and her teachers in the elgg at http://youthvoices.net! Last night Gail said that some of the same teachers from last year’s work would be joining the new Youth Voices. A great question that Gail has been asking is, “How can we sustain and deepen online conversations on a blog?” And part of this has to do with finding the right balance between personal blogging and common blogging around a theme or text.