Elgg

Help me save ELGG at a public high school!

Steve Maher — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:27:25 -0500

I am the History Department chair at a public high school in New Jersey
who needs some assistance in regards to policy
considerations when an academic institution runs ELGG. If I can't find an answer soon we will lose our new ELGG.

Our administration is concerned that students can create communities
and exchange materials privately, away from the scrutiny of even the
network administrator. We are not up against a team of entrenched
stone-age recalcitrants, but rather a fear of being in court trying to

Teachers Teaching Teachers #57 - 06.13.07 - What's old and what's new about blogging?

Paul Allison — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:56:30 -0500

Listen in as Christina Cantrill and Paul Oh from the National Writing Project, Kevin Hodgson from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, and Felicia George from the New York City Writing Project -- plus Jason from Australia and two students from his school, along with Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim describe ONE blog post, written by an 11th grader on Youth Voices.net. Paul directs our attention to the teacher-work and the student-work that went into producing this post. Our goal was to to collectively describe how blogging borrows from past writing pedagogy and seeks to go beyond it as well! It promises to be a very grounded, yet insightful conversation. We used a remote version of this Zoho Show during the webcast:

Teachers Teaching Teachers #54 - 05.23.07 How do we keep it real in school blogs?

Paul Allison — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:31:15 -0500

We invite you to listen in as eight Writing Project and WorldBridges teachers from five different (U.S.) states reflect on our students work in Youth Voices.

Alice Barr, Yarmouth HS, Yarmouth, Maine
Barbara Mehlman, Humanities and the Arts High School HUM, NY. New York
Bill Oneal, Trenton Central High School, West, Trenton, New Jersey
Ken Stein, Satellite High School, Midtown, NY, New York
Lee Baber, F. Hillyard Middle School, Broadway, Virginia
Matt Makowetski, MHS, Lompoc, California
Paul Allison, East Side Community HS, NY, New York
Susan Ettenheim, Eleanor Roosevelt HS, NY, New York

After welcoming our newest members of the community, we spent some time celebrating what is going well in this school-based community of about 1000 student writers/bloggers. We discussed ways we might collaborate more over the summer and into next fall. And we began to make plans for next year. We are a community of teachers, focused on fostering a social network where students can become compelling bloggers. Some of our questions include:

How can we cover all of the required skills and topics of our various curricula (technology, global studies, art, English...) and still allow students to blog about topics of their own choosing?
Could we select a group of books and invite students to form communities (reading groups) around each of these? How could we have a common text or common texts available as an option for students to blog about... without loosing our environment of student choice?
How do we continue to nurture our ethic of student peer response. Do the sentence starters we've been using work? Can they be more open?
Can we use the elgg to share multimedia work, art, or visual work more? How do we sponsor peer response to this work? Can we all learn to use the wiki more, following Susan Ettenheim's lead on Gallery pages like Flash Creations Page 2? Will an update to the new elgg profile pages (see Paul Allison's example) be part of the solution?
How do we remain a community of teachers that is open to new teachers jumping in with their students, yet maintain a transparent support structure where we can share tips and community standards (e.g. "only Creative Commons images, please, and no pictures of the students themselves... and... and...)?
What role might our wiki play: http://elggplans.wikispaces.com? How might we organize this site better? How do we get everybody to contribute to and use this site?
Could we use our new Gcast to stay in touch on a regular basis? (Email Susan Ettenheim -- SEttenh@schools.nyc.gov -- to learn more.)
What can we do this summer to build this community? (Step one. All of us should register at the elgg: EducationBridges.net - We'll form a community or communities there.)

Come hear us talk about these and other questions. Hear what teachers talk about when they talk about their students blogging in an elgg. Join the conversation! Leave a comment if you would like to join Youth Voices, and start blogging in your classroom.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #53 - Can we use mapping to build our school social networks?

Paul Allison — Sat, 19 May 2007 11:18:08 -0500

Follow along in this week's Google Notebook

We are coming to the end of an academic year in which many of us involved with Teachers Teaching Teachers -- with the support of Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow at WorldBridges.com --have begun two elggs (social networking sites): PersonalLearningSpace.com and YouthVoices.net. PersonalLearningSpace has about 1000 middle school students blogging, and Youth Voices has the same number blogging on the high school level. Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Chris Sloan, Susan Ettenheim and others have been following Mike Pegg's Google Maps Mania for for some time, and last summer we planned a project with Jared Cosulich's CommunityWalk that we call Entry Points. We gave our map this title because each of the about 200 markers on our map go (or should go) to a profile in the social networks mentioned above. All fine, but... We're not happy with how this project has turned out, and in this podcast we review our work with this mapping service... and with maps in general. What is our purpose and what tools would fit best for what we are trying to do? We are activist teachers willing to take risks and bring the best tools available to our students. We plan to continue discussing our use of maps -- retrospectively and prospectively. Do you use Google Maps? Let us know what you are doing. Perhaps you will put us on the right trail for bringing mapping into our social networks in ways that capture our students interest in maps and build our online communities.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #52 - How do I work blogging into my daily curriculum?

Paul Allison — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:35:42 -0500

Bud Hunt asks the question like this: “How do I work Youth Voices [a school-based social network of 1000 student bloggers] into my daily curriculum? How do I use it either to replace existing writing or to support the writing instruction that I want to do?”

Like many of us, Bud is convinced that he has the tools he needs (Elgg is just one example.) to bring blogging and social networking into into the center of his writing, reading and research curricula. Teachers like Bud have learned that students who are asked to blog weekly (or thereabouts) about issues and topics of their own choosing achieve and go beyond the goals we have for them when we teach writing in more traditional ways. (If you’re not yet one of the “convinced,” please take a look at our students work on Youth Voices.Perhaps you’ll find evidence that supports our convictions. Also checkout what the students themselves say when they write in our “How am I doing?” community blog.)

The problem is, how do we make it work? Although each teacher has a unique situation, many of us face constraints that are similar to the ones Bud points to when he asks, “How do I fit Elgg into my language arts curriculum? More specifically, how do I do so in neat, nine-week chunks? (My courses are all on the quarter system.)”

Bud sums up with these kind words: “I love, love, love what y’all are doing with YouthVoices. I want my students to be involved in a strong writing community — I just don’t know how to practically do so. ”

Many teachers find themselves, like Bud, on the brink of using student-centered (because the topics come from each individual student) blogging. And perhaps it’s not too bold for those of us who have been involved in creating Youth Voices–a community of practice for high school bloggers–to say that we can show that this kind of blogging both engages students and helps them to reach toward higher and higher standards of writing and multimedia communication. We are ready to encourage those of you on the edge to find ways to solve your very real logistical problems. It’s worth it.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #46 - Joomala? DrupalEd? Edublogs? Wordpress? Elgg?

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 22:02:17 -0500

March 28, 2007 - This week, we invited several National Writing Project (NWP) technology liaisons to join us to talk about how they manage Content Management Systems (CMS’s) for their local sites, schools, and classrooms.We discussed the possibilities of using the DrupalEd profile that Bill Fitzgerald has recently been piloting, and is threatening to release within weeks. Our conclusion was less than clear but it will make for a good show next week! See you then.

Chat Log Below

Teachers Teaching Teachers #41

SusanEttenheim — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:54:51 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers
February 21, 2007 
Download mp3

show notes from February 21, 2007

Ken Stein, Alex Ragone, Susan Ettenheim, Lee Baber

Ken and Alex lead a discussion about Flickr in the classroom, digital photography and developing conversation around images.

Some links discussed in the show:

Teachers Teaching Teachers #38: Teaching Blogging

SusanEttenheim — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:38:28 -0600

EdTechTalk: Teachers Teaching Teachers #38
Teaching Blogging
January 31, 2007
Download mp3 (52:23, 25 MB)

The night before she started her Spring Semester classes at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City, Susan Ettenheim participated in a dialogue via skype with teachers from four different Writing Projects: Paul Allison (NYC), Matt Makowetski (South Coast, CA), Bill O’Neal (Trenton, NJ), and Bob LeVin (Area 3 in CA). This is a podcast of that conversation.

Along with Chris Sloan in Salt Lake City (Utah WP), the six of us are beginning a complex, exciting collaboration with our students in an elgg, YouthVoices.net. Listen as we plan, take a look at Susan’s introduction to her students, and consider joining us. You might leave a comment here, then go over to YouthVoices and see what all the excitement is about.

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
Download mp3 (70:58, 34 MB)

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 32 - Updates from Eric Hoefler and Richard Stohlman

admin — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:10:59 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers 32
December 13, 2006
Download mp3

Please check this shows Google Notebook for links and additional materials: TTT32. Erick Hoefler and Richard Stohlman joined us to give us updates on their work with blogging and discussion forums in the high schools where they work.

Richard’s work with WordPress and WordPress MU is progressing, and he is looking for other high schools who would like to the students on his student’s blogs, especially Charlie’s Advisory’s New York Experience - 2006/2007.

Eric seems to be in the middle of adding to his technology repertoire. In addition to the committed, rich writing that he is having his students do on forums on a Joomla site, he is moving toward the use of an an elggspaces account in his creative writing classes.

Listen in as we discuss how blogs and discussion forums are folding into other cirricula. Some of the questions have to do with how to get other teachers in our buildings to buy in to these new technologies… and in particular, how to think about the process, less finished nature of blog posts when teachers are feel the need for finished products and projects. We talked about how much time blogging takes to develop. Many other issues came up as well, including how to bridge the gap between MySpace problems (although a student joined us to say that we exaggerate these) and the formal writing instruction found in many of our classrooms. Oh… and research. We plan to talk more about that soon.

Please add your voice!

Teachers Teaching Teachers #29

SusanEttenheim — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:55:50 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers #29
November 15, 2006
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Paul Allison calls in from the airport in Atlanta on the way to Nashville for the annual meeting of The National Writing Project and Susan Ettenheim, Teb Locke, Madeline Brownstone and Lee Baber host a conversation about this week's challenges with students and online communication and collaboration. Sharon Peters shares her first adventures as her students join in the online conversation. Teb shares a very exciting discovery about introducing the mapping projects into the wiki. Here is an example of wiki with an embedded media player: http://theneighborhoodschool.org/wiki/index.php?title=Madison%2C_CT

21st Century Learning #20: Bill Fitzgerald on DrupalEd

alex.ragone — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:48:29 -0600

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #20
A Conversation with Bill Fitzgerald on Drupal in Education
October 31, 2006
Download mp3 (1:00:08, 28.1 MB)

We had an excellent conversation with Bill Fitzgerald, from FunnyMonkey.com, OpenAcademic.org and the brand spankin new DrupalEd Distribution on how Drupal fits into education. The goal of the show was to create a cookbook for a conference site with Drupal -- we got to it in the last 10 minutes! Thanks to Bill for his time and the excellent conversation.

If you're interested in getting involved in the Drupal Education movement, join the Drupal Documentation Listserv,comment on the DrupalEd Distribution page, and join DrupalEd Drupal.

Past Shows on Drupal, Elgg, and Open Source:

# 11 - Open Source Show
# 17 - The Read/Write Web Conference

Other Drupal Resources:

About Drupal
Drupal Wikipedia Entry
CMS Academy Drupal
Drupal Page at the School Computing Wiki

See Chat Transcript

21st Century Learning #19: Richard Kassissieh

alex.ragone — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:32:06 -0500

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #19
A Conversation with Richard Kassissieh
October 24, 2006
Download mp3 (57:42, 27.0 MB)

A discussion with Richard Kassissieh about community portals and open source software. Richard discussed how to build, encourage use, and grow school community web sites.

See Chat Transcript

A Conversation about Elgg in the Classroom

alex.ragone — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:37:45 -0500

A Conversation about Elgg in the Classroom
with Dave Cormier, Bud Hunt, and Alex Ragone
October 13, 2006
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EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #17: The Read/Write Web Conference

alex.ragone — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 08:42:21 -0500

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #17
The Read/Write Web Conference
October 10, 2006
Download mp3 (42.57, 20.1MB)

This week, we discussed the Read/Write web enabled conference. Alex is on the planning committee and arvind is the Blog manager for the NYSAIS Managers of Information Technology conference at Mohonk Mountain house in New Paltz, New York this November (where EdTechTalk's very own Dave Cormier will be presenting). We discussed how to extend and enhance the conference with Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Webcasts, and other web 2.0 tools. No clear decisions were made, but you can track our progress at NYSAIS Mohonk 2006 Wiki page

See Chat Transcript

Teachers Teaching Teachers #22 - Elgg Storytelling

SusanEttenheim — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:48:01 -0500

Teachers Teaching Teachers: Elgg Storytelling #22
September 28, 2006
Download mp3 (47:12, 43.2MB)

We had many questions guiding our storytelling about using elggs in secondary classrooms. See Paul’s post Continuing adventures in elgg-land.

EdTechBrainstorm September 7, 2006

Doug — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:02:02 -0500

Ed Tech Brainstorm -- 07 September, 2006

Download mp3 (16.0MB, 35:00)

A conversation with Dave Cormier, Jeff Flynn, Paul Ellerman and Jennifer Wagner in which we discuss Drupal, Elgg and Moodle.

Dave, Jeff, Paul and Jennifer also tell us more about the some of the "edtech" projects they are working on a present.

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #11 for July 21, 2006

alex.ragone — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 21:20:04 -0500

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #11 for July 21, 2006:

Open Source, ePortfolios, Moodle, Drupal, Elgg, Open Source Schools, Exeter, FunnyMonkey.com

Our guests included:
Steve Kossakoski - Assistant Superintendent, Technology & Research for SAU-16 in Exeter, NH and a pioneering open source practitioner - See http://www.k12opensource.org/ & http://www.spdc.org/ Steve Haragon from http://www.k12opensource.com/
Bill Fitzgerald from http://www.funnymonkey.com/

An Exciting Conversation about the use of open source software and its uses in schools. See the show notes for amazing links that were shared during the conversation.

Download mp3 (28.6MB 1:01:01)

Comments? Questions? Leave a text comment below or an audio comment to the left.

For show archives, check out our wiki.

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #10: SLA, Education Bridges, Info Literacy

alex.ragone — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:16:56 -0500

EdTechTalk: 21st Century Learning #10 for July 14, 2006:

Arvind discusses his visit to Science Leadership Academy and what he thought of the school.

Education Bridges Elgg Server - Alex installed Elgg on the WorldBridges.net server and he and arvind are the only two users. Sign up - tell us what you are into, and let's start collaborating via Elgg.

Alex's Information Literacy Curriculum Wiki. Alex and his department are collaborating on a K-12 Information Literacy skills matrix this summer. The matrix will have stories to give examples how to use the different skills in your classroom. Check it out --- tell us your Information Literacy story.

Download mp3 (19.4MB 41:21)

Comments? Questions? Leave a text comment below or an audio comment to the left.

For show archives, check out our wiki.

EdTechTalk #32 - January 15, 2006

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:13:51 -0600

Chat log
Show Notes
Download mp3 (14.5MB, 1:03:13)

EdTechTalk#32-January 15, 2006

ETT32 was an exciting show for us... lots of guests, less work for us. First we were joined by Ben Werdmuller. of elgg. He told us all about the upcoming 0.4 release of elgg and a gave us a few hints of what is on the elgg horizon. We then covered some edtech news, and were visited by some people from nuvvo a new, free online LMS. Our last guest was Graham Stanley who committed, during the show, to starting a new live EFL call in show. We'll be waiting Graham.