Evoke

Where were you when Earth Day 2010 started at Zero Hour - Greenwich Mean Time Thursday (also known as 9 p.m Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific USA) ?

Many of us were listening to the 2010 Keynote Earthcast speaker, Jason Czarneki, which is available at Earthbridges.net.

Jason Czarneki, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, was the keynoting Earthcast 2010, a live, 24 hour webcastathon starting at 0 GMT on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 . Jason keynoted Earthcast 2009 and was back to jumpstart Earthcast 2010, this time speaking to the topic of, “Climate Policy and U.S.-China Relations.” The theme of the talk was particularly relevant as Jason is currently living and teaching in Guangzhou, China, north of Hong Kong, on a Fulbright Scholarship. Jason gave a 20-30 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of discussion and questions from the moderators and virtual participants.

That was a tough act to follow, but we did our best! Teachers Teaching Teachers was the second hour of Earthcast 2010:

• We talked about school/community gardens! Paul Allison’s students at the East-West School of International Studies, Flushing have been tilling the earth this spring. They’ve been inspired by their play in Evoke to change the world, one garden at at time. A couple of student-gardeners join us on this podcast.

• Susan Ettenheim also welcomed students from the Green Team at her school, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Manhattan.

• We also had a teacher new to TTT, Elizabeth Kee. She teaches at Lower East Side Prep, also in Manhattan. Elizabeth had been teaching Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks to her mainly Chinese and other ELL students. This spring they planted the seeds from this book, and at the time of the Earthday, they were getting ready to move to a community garden.

• AND!! We were joined by Evoke gardeners, Michele Baron from Virginia, and Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys from Guadalajara, Mexico!

What a way to start an EARTH DAY!

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

We hope you'll enjoy this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers where we bring together gardeners from the alternate reality game, Evoke with photography students on Youth Voices. Take a look at this recent photo discussion, and join a few Youth Voices students:

• Gamer, photograher, and musician, Jake, from Chris Sloan's classes at  Judge Memorial H.S. in Salt Lake City
   
• Matt, Brianna, and Annie, from Susan Ettenheim's digital photography class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC
   
• We are also joined by Evoke gardener, Michele Barron.

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

It’s Spring in the northern hemisphere. Some of us have five or six, others nine weeks left in the academic year. It’s a great time to try out something new or to reflect on what we tried this year. What are you doing this academic season? Listen to this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, then let us know what you are doing this spring.

• You will <fill in the blank>
• Paul Allison and Rachel Smith report on how Evoke is going, perhaps with a student or two.
• Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan talk about how their collaborations in digital photography classes are going.
• Matt Montagne and a student discuss Goggle Apps and the plans, at the time, for Earth Day, which was a success again this year.

Photo: Uploaded on April 12, 2010 by AnnaBanana628
 

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

We've been learning about gaming from students this spring, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we were joined by two ninth graders from Susan Ettenheim's class in NYC, a tenth grader from Paul Allison's class in Queens, an eleventh grader from Austin, Texas, and a senior from Chris Sloan's class in Salt Lake City.

We learned so much about gaming from Jake a few weeks ago (TTT #190) and Robin more recently (TTT #192) that we invited both of them back to talk more specifically about Alternate Reality Games and Evoke! On this episode, you'll hear Jake and Robin, and a few other students talk about their experience of playing Evoke!

Is Evoke a game? Or is it just a trick to get people to use a social network? Why do serious gamers seem to know what Jane McGonigal is up to (See recent TED talk.), and get engaged with this game, while other students are less engaged? We invite you to join us as we listen to our students and our colleagues respond to these questions.

• Jake is a senior in Chris Sloan's New Media class at Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Robin is a sophomore in Paul Allison's English class at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, NYC.
• Perez and Phil are freshman in Susan Ettenheim's class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, in New York City.
• Nathan is a junior and he's a game-runner for Evoke from Austin, Texas.
• Suzie Boss is the co-writer with Jane Krauss of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, and she has recently interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging.
• Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services the New Media Consortium, and has taken on the role as a community organizer for teachers on Evoke. 

Please enjoy. And find out more about all of us and our work on Evoke at Teachers Teaching Teachers #192.

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

Robin is playing Evoke, and on this podcast he tells us why. Robin is in Paul Allison's English class. He's a tenth Grader at the East-West School for International Studies, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Robin talks about his experiences in the first couple of weeks of playing Evoke.

We are also joined by Chris Wood, a student teacher from Queens College, CUNY who is working with Paul this semester.

So what is Evoke?

EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world.

It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.

The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.

The game begins on March 3, 2010. Players can join the game at any time.

On May 12th, 2010 the first season of the game will end, and successful participants will form the first graduating class of the EVOKE network.

Ninmah!
Rachel Smith is also playing Evoke and she joined us to talk about this Alternate-Reality Game (ARG) as well. Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services the New Media Consortium. In addition to being the lead writer on the Horizon Report, Rachel writes on her blog that she has

a hard time explaining what I actually do. Some of it is writing (a lot of it, lately, which is not a bad thing). Some of it is drawing, which is pretty cool. I used to doodle in high school and get detention. Now I doodle at work and get kudos. Go figure. I also organize things and direct projects and try to be generally helpful.

Rachel wrote an wonderful introduction to Evoke on her blog, "Urgent EVOKE: Agent Ninmah is Born," and she started a Discussion on Evoke, in which she is “calling all teachers!” to find ways to collaborate:

How did we get here?
At Educon 2.2 in January, Paul Allison had a conversation with Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss shortly after Suzie had interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging. It was Suzie’s excited comments that led him to begin to follow her McGonigal’s work and end up at Evoke. In March, several of us in the New York City Writing Project introduced Evoke in our English, Art, and Technology classrooms.

We are working together to become mentors for our students as they also play Evoke. We’re all very excited about it, so much so that on a Saturday morning last month, Susan Ettenheim, Chris Wood, Paul Allison and a few others traveled though a cold, rainy wind storm in NYC to meet for three hours, just to play Evoke together, and talk about which parts our students would need more support on and which they could do on their own. It was a lot of fun on that Saturday morning to share some of the stories of a couple of our students who had managed to push themselves onto the Leaders board already (e.g. Hannah Kohn).

Our students and we have already learned a lot with Evoke. We love the project prompts and the overall structure of Evoke! Our ultimate goal this semester is to look at other games, and to have students build prototypes of games, as well as mess around with some game building. (Oh, and we’ll be planting gardens and volunteering for City Harvest too!)
 
Please join us in this ongoing conversation!

We want to invite any teachers and students who are playing Evoke themselves and/or using it with their students to listen to this episode (and the next one, TTT #193, which is also about Evoke). We want to get your voice on a future episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. We do these conversations on Skype. Please let us know when you can join us to talk about Evoke on a Wednesday in April (4/7, 4/14, 4/21 or 4/28) at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. Plan to join us at http://edtechtalk.com/live if you want to find our more about Evoke and what were up to this Spring!

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