45:00 minutes (10.34 MB)

This podcast begins with a focus on the work of two technology teachers and two students from The Baccalaureate School for Global Education (BSGE) in Astoria, NY. Madeline Brownstone and Shantanu Saha describe their two-year technology curriculum that has students doing global, multimedia projects.

Madeline and Shantanu have been working with schools here in the US through the New York City Writing Project and World Bridges/EdTechTalk. And their students have been participating in a project with a school in the Netherlands with iEarn.

More recently their students have also begun working with teachers and students involved with the Horizon Project, which was founded by Vikki Davis and Julie Lindsay. Listen to hear how these teachers and students integrate these national and international projects with the curricular expectations of a technology concentration that leads to an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma.

That might be enough, but Madeline and Shantanu and their students also found wonderful ways to relate their work to the collaborative study of rural culture that is being planned by Lee Baber in Virginia and Woody Woodgate in Alaska. Woody tells his students that they are natives of Alaska and the digital worlds.

In this podcast we explore all of these ways of connecting urban, rural, global, and digital youths!

37:40 minutes (8.61 MB)

Listen to this podcast of 8th grade students from Maryland and Virginia talking about Darfur.

Then go to Many Voices for Darfur with you students and have them add their thoughts.

Thursday and Friday, March 6 and 7, 2008

Many Voices for Darfur

 

31:50 minutes (14.57 MB)

We continued our conversation about appropriate boundries between teachers and students in social networks with students from Rye Country Day School and Hewitt School.

What are you experiences with Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network and your students? What boundries do you draw?

 

24:57 minutes (11.45 MB)
We had an exciting conversation about the appropriate boundries that teachers should have between their personal and professional lives with their students, and how the Internet and Social Networking tools effect this relationship. Lucy Gray joined us about half way through our show to discuss Facebook and how college students are using it as a tool to learn, communicate and even get jobs.

Next week we'll be attempting to have a few students join in the conversation.

What are you experiences with Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network and your students? What boundries do you draw?

Click Here for the Chat Transcript.

42:45 minutes (9.8 MB)

Find out what happens when you bring together seven teachers and a student to talk about perennial questions that come up when we use blogs in the classroom.

• a 6th-12th grade "New Journalism" teacher from the Bronx (with laryngitis) (Paul Allison)
• a half-time computer teacher/half-time technology coach from a town west of Chicago, "right about where the corn begins" (Scott Meech)
• a high school art/technology teacher and librarian from New York City (Susan Ettenheim)
• an 8th grade computer technology teacher and Webhead from Virginia (Lee Baber)
• a math/science/employability skills/hunting safety teacher from Alaska (Woody Woodgate)
• a ninth grader from a small town in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia (Victoria)
• an eighth grade science teacher from northern New Hampshire (Rick Biche)
• a middle-school technology integrator from an independent K12 school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Matt Montagne)

 

 

Image: "Stalking a Caribou" by Travis S. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baggis/1735135201/) License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0

60:55 minutes (13.94 MB)

Join our virtual staff room as we check in with a couple of 9th graders from Virginia--Victoria and Zack--along with teachers from these schools:

• East Bronx Academy for the Future, New York City - Paul Allison
• J. Frank Hilliard Middle School, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia - Lee Baber
• High School at UCLA, California - Lynne Culp
• Westwood Schools, Camilla, Georgia - Vicki Davis
• Eleanor Roosevelt High School, New York City - Susan Ettenheim
• Florin High School, Sacramento, California - Bob LeVin
• Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, Utah - Chris Sloan

 

My students (seventh-graders) and I (an English teacher) are using Think.com this year.

This online tool gives each of my students a personal web-space where they can post assignments, collaborate on projects, and communicate through email. It also allows me to increase the frequency and depth of feedback, both from peers and from the teacher (myself).

51:42 minutes (47.33 MB)Five teachers from the National Writing Project's Tech Matters`07 Institute joined Victoria, a soon-to-be 9th grader from Virginia, and Danielle, an 18 year-old student from Australia, to discuss what leads to effective learning with technology. The teachers from Tech Matters had been working with the theme of "compelling communication" in the hours before this webcast, and they were right to suspect that Victoria and Danielle might have pretty clear thoughts about how we teach students to use communication tools in schools now. On this webcast, we learned once again that teachers might benefit from listening more to what students say makes some assignments compelling and others not so compelling. The 2007 Horizon Report claims that "there is a skills gap between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content. Although new tools make it increasingly easy to produce multimedia works, students lack essential skills in composition, storytelling, and design." The conversation on this webcast between Victoria and Danielle and the teachers from Tech Matters would seem to confirm this claim. These girls suggested that many of their teachers had a lot to learn about how to use the tools, and that teachers could learn from the students. At the same time, Victoria and Danielle seem to appreciate the teachers who had worked with them on "composition, storytelling, and design." Most of all these students seem to be saying that two of the most important elements in any school assignment were to be able to connect to real people outside of the school and to create projects are are personally meaningful for students. On this webcast, learning seemed to be happening in many different directions. Here's how one teacher Scott Floyd, from the Bluebonnet Writing Project in Texas described the webcast:

One, a ninth grader, was about to become the most connected student in her county.  Out of need, she is being given a loaded laptop that will allow her to be a seamless part of the classroom.  Her goal in life is to be a writer.  Good for her.  Her district seems to be doing what needs to be done to help her in every way possible.  I can’t wait for her to start honing her skills on her own blog.  

The other student, an eighteen year old from Australia, was not shy in the least bit.  She was asked hard questions about what teachers need to do to engage students with new tools.  She fired back answers that made us pause and reflect about our own actions in our instruction and how they alter the learning environment.  While she says her teacher, Jason Hando , is the best, she discussed how it was not an across the board feeling in all of her classes.  Then she asked what it would take to teach teachers how to be more in tune with technology and integrating skills.  Ouch.  Can anyone say, PD Bingo?  

Overall, the six of us that joined together here in Chico, CA, were very impressed with the student input.  The chat room, as usual, provided some great questions and running commentary about the conversation.  It bounces me back to the reflections from Karl Fisch and others about NECC: Where are the students at these events?   Bravo to Paul and the TTT folks for including them in the webcast.  We should all strive to include these most important voices in our tech planning.

44:39 minutes (20.44 MB)­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: