On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, seven of us--Chris Sloan, Gail Desler, Fred Mindlin, Monika Hardy, Valerie Burton, Scott Shelhardt and Paul Allison--share our ideas, concerns, hopes, dreams, plans and strategies for moving our teaching away from prescribed learning toward a social change that puts students and their passions at the center of work together.

We find ourselves pondering larger pedagogical questions, discussing issues involved in working together, and brainstorming on nitty-gritty issues about how we might take advantage of the resources we have. Many of these questions will inform our conversations in future shows:

• How do we use the connections young people already have--through tools like cell phones and social networks--to extend their learning?
• How do we get to the brilliance within each young person by moving beyond external incentives like grades and badges?
• What's the difference between teaching with/through games and "gamifying" the curriculum?
• How can we build online cultures using sites like Youth Voices where young children, middle school students, older adolescents, and even young adults can work together in an online one-room school house?
• How can we find the hardware and software we need to enable our students to work together?

And finally, we'd love to know what guests you would like us to invite and what topics you would like us to discuss on future shows of Teachers Teaching Teachers as Monika Hardy, Paul Allison and Chris Sloan have evolved into regular hosts on the show. 

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Monika Hardy and Paul Allison were joined by Matt Montagne, Alexander Pappas, Chad Sansing Valerie Burton, Amy Lewark, Julie Phelan and Cristian and a couple of other young people. We continued the conversation we started last week, Teachers Teaching Teachers #261 - Monika Hardy and colleagues discuss Lab: a plan of disruption to redefine school - 8.24.11, and we began to look for intersections between the Lab ;that Monika is facilitating in Loveland, Colorado and our work with Youth Voices, both of which seem to be places where students can peruse other students' passions and pursue their own.

Enjoy!