Paul_Allison

Teachers Teaching Teachers #109 - Cybercamps, Summer Invitationals, Institutes, and Workshops- 06.18.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:11:37 -0500

We invite you to join us as we reflect on Writing Project Summer Institutes and other professional development opportunities we have or will be facilitating for our colleagues this summer.

Please take a moment, go register and leave your comments over at our Teachers Teaching Teachers room on http://friendfeed.com/rooms/ttt and take a look at some of the sites we've been collecting there for this Wednesday's live webcast.

Hear what Bud Hunt (Colorado), Mary Meyer (Prairie Lands Writing Project), and Bonnie Kaplan (Hudson ValleyWriting Project) have been up to:

Blogging with Summer Institute 2008
A blog for integrating technology into the Hudson Valley Writing Project's Summer Institute. Bonnie Kaplan, technology liaison will be with us on TTT, Wednesday night, June 18.
Writing With Technology
Mary Meyer will be with us on Wednesday to reflect on this work.
CyberCamp 08
Bud Hunt's work in his district over the past couple of weeks. Bud will be with us (an maybe a participant or two).

What are you doing to bring 21st century literacies to your Writing Project or in your district or school this summer?

Also listen to Julie Conason and Paul Allison on this podcast as they talk about the 3-week institute they are planning for the New York City Writing Project.'

Lee Baber checks in on this podcast as well. Stay strong Lee!

Photo: Uploaded to flickr on August 16, 2007 by Wesley Fryer

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #108 - Planning all out in the open - 06.11.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:12:13 -0500

On this podcast you'll hear Felicia George, Bill O'Neal, Susan Ettenheim, Cheryl Oakes, and Gail Desler as they help Paul Allison and Julie Conason think about this Summer Instutute for teachers in the New York City Writing Project.

_______________________

Youth Space

Using Web 2.0 tools to build
social networks for learning
________________________

__________________

New York City Writing Project

Institute for Literacy Studies
Lehman College, CUNY
__________________

Summer Advanced Institute
Mondays - Thursdays, 9 - 2
June 30 - July 17
______________________

How can we use technology to put the voices of youth at the center of the curriculum?

Spend 12 days this summer with other New York City Writing Project teachers who use technology in their classrooms. Share the ways we use the Internet to make student-to-student connections. Learn about a curriculum currently being developed and collaborated on by teachers across the nation. Explore how we use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other tools to inspire young people to do research into their own questions.

Find out why Creative Commons Man is our superhero!

Facilitators: Paul Allison and Julie Conason
Location: Lehman College, CUNY

Participants will receive 3 graduate credits or a $500 stipend.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #107 - What have we learned this year with VoiceThread? 06.04.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:47:25 -0500

Join Matt Montagne, Ben Papelle, Susan Ettenheim, Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Bill O'Neal, and Hannah Feldman in a reflective conversation about where we have come this year, and where we want to go next year.

We especially look at how to move beyond our initial infatuation with VoiceThread to a more long-lasting relationship that emphasises what VoiceThread probably does best: inspire, generate, and build online conversatons.

Here are a couple of VoiceThreads that were made back in February 2008. Many of us used these to prepare our students for the Many Voices for Darfur project that George Mayo and Wendy Dexler organized in the first week of March 2008.

I present this pair of VoiceThreads as an example. By comparing the presentation that I, Paul Allison, made (top) with the of the kind of collaborative space created by Bill Ferriter (Darth Tater) and his 6th Graders in North Carolina (bottom), we can begin to understand the constructive critique that we build up to on this podcast.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #106 - What's new about creating projects in the digital age? 05.28.08

Paul Allison — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:42:33 -0500

Except for our colleagues in the the Southern Hemisphere, many of us are either already enjoying the summer holidays or we are looking forward to them coming soon. Teachers often use this time to relax and reflect on their work. We collaborate with other teachers in summer workshops and catch up on professional reading. Summer Invitational Institutes are the heart of the work for National Writing Projects across the country. What a better time to stop and take a look at a new book by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss? Their book, Reinventing Project Based Learning was published earlier this year, and many of us will be using this book to guide our project planning processes.

To learn more about this "Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age," we asked Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss to join us on this podcast. The magic of doing this live allowed us to also include Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA and Gail Desler, Technology Integration Specialist for Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento, CA. and Tech Liaison for the Area 3 Writing Project.

Enjoy the conversation! And don't forget to check out the chat and our FriendFeed room that has many of the links that are mentioned in this podcast.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #102 - Connecting to Place-based Education in Alaska - 4.30.08

Paul Allison — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:31:12 -0500

The ice has melted, many are off fishing, and schools have graduated their seniors in the rural areas of Alaska where our guests for this podcast are from. But our colleagues in Alaska have already begun planning for the next academic year, and on this podcast, you can find way to connect with them. In this podcast, we focused on the "Digital Foxfire approach to Placed-based Education" that seems to describe some of the work in the schools in Marshall, Alaska and in the Bering Strait School District (BSSD). Our guides for this conversation were:

John Concilus, Director of Technology, BSSD
Ginger Crockett, teacher Brevig Mission, Alaska
Woody Woodgate, who will soon be working for the State of Alaska's Education and Early Development Department
Flora Evan, Language Arts teacher, Marshall, Alaska

Listen to the podcast, then connect! Click Read more (below), and see what they are cooking up in the Bering Strait School District. Add your thoughts to their survey, and click Contact. We'll see you there.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #101 - Collaborating in the Bering Sea - 04.23.08

Paul Allison — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:09:53 -0500

On this podcast Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are joined by John Concilus, Director of Educational Technology, and a student from one of the schools in the Bering Strait School District. John introduced himself a few weeks ago by responding to an earlier podcast with a "Comment and Invitation for Collaboration."

Learn more about the Bering Strait School District and their work with technology. Then this Wednesday, April 30, join John Concilus again, plus a teacher from Brevig Mission, AK, Ginger Crockett, and others. Woody Woodgate and a colleague may be joining us as well. (Maybe we'll finally find out more about that seal hunt.)

We are excited to continue our connections with teachers in Alaska, and in particular we want to learn more about "place-based education." Here's what John said in a recent email:

We've already decided at the budget meeting to move forward with our Digital Foxfire program next school year. I'll have more information about this by Wednesday, but will have a form set up by then for having potentially intersted partner schools sign up.

Where's Brevig Mission? Check out this map, and use the zoom to find where you are in relation to Ginger's school.

tagzaniapaste
Brevig Mission School map TTT 101 April 23, 2008
placed-based education
http://edtechtalk.com/node/3101/1231#comment-1231
edtech@bssd.org
blog.bssd.org

Some projects involving sites in multiple locations using our Wiki, Ning, etc...

http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/2008_Social_Networking_Collaboration

http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/2008_Social_Networking_Project_Two

Teachers Teaching Teachers #100 - Making Space on Youth Twitter - 04.16.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:09:56 -0500

Just before the second issue of Space was published, Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison, from the New York City Writing Project, were joined by:

Kevin Hodgson, a sixth grade teacher from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project
George Mayo, an 8th grade teacher from Maryland, and one of his students Pablo, an editor of the second issue of Space.
Chris Sloan, a high school teacher from the Wasatch Range Writing Project in Salt Lake City, and one of his students, Dane
Hannah, a student from the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia

Join the fun!

Listen to this podcast, as we bounce ideas off each other and plan future collaborations.
Please share Space, Issue #2 with your students.
And register your students at Youth Twitter.

2008space - via kwout

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #99 - From elgg to Drupal? - 04.09.08

Paul Allison — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:43:09 -0500

For this webcast, we invited Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cormier and Gail Desler to talk about social networking and what platforms make sense right now. Of course behind all of this talk about Drupal and Edublogs were questions that we are asking about about how we in the, ah... Teachers Teaching Teachers, Youth Voices, Personal Learning Space, Youth Twitter ... group of teachers might want to continue working together ... and how the software decisions we need to make this Spring can support our hopes and plans.

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #98 - Learning to be Unschooly - 04.02.08

Paul Allison — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:57:35 -0500

Earlier this month, on Youth Twitter, a student in South Korea, Soojin wrote, "just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete."

A bit later, Hannah, a student in Philadelphia, answered on Youth Twitter, "I think Alan's survey is a good example of how not to be 'schooly'. Students should ask questions of each other and interact."

Wow, we thought this would be an interesting conversation on Teachers Teaching Teachers. Perhaps we could have more of a Students Teaching Teachers show.

We invited Soojin, Hannah, Alan, a student from Queens, NY, Lindsea, a studnet from Honolulu, and Ben, a student from NYC to talk about the possibilities and problems with http://youthtwitter on our live webcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers.

What a great a conversation we had about Youth Twitter, and blogging, and social networking and blogging-beyond-school.

OH! We also invited some of the students' teachers. Their insights were invaluable.

We were excited to have Clay Burell, Madeline Brownstone, and George Mayo join us for this conversation as well.

Here's the first paragraph of a blog post that Soojin wrote the day after the webcast. (Click the link to read the whole post, and the responses.)

Enjoy! And pass this podcast on to your students for inspiration.

Unschooly-Youths Conversations Reflection

Posted on April 4th, 2008 by Soojin

April 3^rd, 2008 10:00 AM GMT+09, something new happened to my life. Well, yes to quote me that was my “first time Skyping for real-purposes” and, of course, “with bunch of White-people” that lasted more than an hour hosted by a group called TeachersTeachingTeachers (not to forget mentioning Clay Burell’s impression that it was more like StudentsTeachingTeachers :-). Many feelings crossed my heart. Oh well, yes, I was pretty nervous at first I won’t deny (so childish!). And at the same time I was very honored to join this group of 9 out of 6 billion, members consisting of Clay Burell, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim, Madeline Brownstone, Lindsea, Hannah, Alan, Mr.Mayo, and Ben, talking about the leading form of education that all world will eventually have (sorry that I couldn’t link all names; please tell me your addresses). Paul told me during the conference that my tweet in YouthTwitter: just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete was one of the key inspiration for opening such meeting. Actually, when I decided to tweet that I was afraid if I offended anyone in YouthTwitter but I decided to become honest because I wanted YT to improve. I’ve been blogging since last year, connected since about a month ago, and now I made a difference. Very meaningful.

No Music No Civilization » Unschooly-Youths Conversations Reflection

Chat Log (Don't miss this one.)

Image by Lindsea

Teachers Teaching Teachers #97 - Foxfire for the Firefox Generation - 03.26.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:04:35 -0500

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!

Teachers Teaching Teachers #96 - Has digital storytelling changed writing? - 03.19.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:14:09 -0500

This spring Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are experimenting again. This time with Hypertextopia. We have just begun to explore with our students how writing changes in this online environment. To learn more, we invited Mark Bernstein and Jeremy Ashkenas to have a conversation with us.

Mark Bernstein has been Eastgate's chief scientist since 1987. He has developed Storyspace and other hypertext software, and he is the publisher of wonderful hypertexts.
Jeremy Ashkenas is working on Hypertextopia as a part of his final project for his undergraduate degree at Brown University.

We were inspired to invite the spunky programmer/publisher to talk with the upstart literature/computer undergrad after reading through this recent thread on if:Book. Listen to learn more about hypertext writing online, and join us at Hypertextopia!

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #95 - Locating the Tyranny of Filtering - 03.12.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:15:36 -0500

It's happening in small, geographically dispersed schools in rural Alaska. Three people are responsible for doing it for over a million public school students in New York City. An independent school in Milwaukee uses the same software that is being used in NYC to do it. In Colorado, an outspoken opponent of it was recently hired for a district level job, and now he is on a small committee that gives the thumbs up or down. In North Dakota, a secret password is emailed each week to a group of thirty teachers who can then undo it in their schools, when needed. In rural Virginia, a teacher carefully measures her arguments for the educational benefit against the possible risks each time she requests for it to be undone. Because so many schools do it in so many different ways, the developers of VoiceThread have to work overtime to keep their Web 2.0 tool available in public schools.

In September, Wesley Fryer "observed from China that the level of content filtering / censorship enforced by the central, totalitarian government was actually LESS severe than the content filtering enforced in many U.S. public schools" (Content filtering in Communist China versus an Oklahoma school » Moving at the Speed of Creativity).

Really? Do the descriptions in the first paragraph accurately represent the tyranny of filtering in U.S. schools today? Or do teachers have more power than we often exercise? It's become too easy for educators to represent filtering as if it's something that oppresses us. What if we find that the enemy is us?

From the discussion captured on this podcast, we can sketch a much more complicated picture of how filtering really seems to work in U.S. schools. See what we mean by clicking Read more, below.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #94 - Music in the Classroom - 03.05.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:01:42 -0500

Recently, Lee Baber and Elderbob Brannan facilitated a 6-week session for the Electronic Village Online. I Got Rhythm: Music in the Classroom.

In today's multi-literate world, music plays an important role. It is one that is often over-looked or neglected in the classroom. With the advent of Web 2.0, Music has taken an even more significant position. Whereas it was once only the subject matter of those who were music majors, it now expands into many relavant areas of expertise. The ability to either select the proper music for a piece or to create music to stand alone, has become a common driver for most students. We beleive that the instructor, though not a music theorist, can offer a variety of resources and information to help students pursue this drive. It is our intent to explore ways that music can be made available in a classroom situation.

EVO 2008 Call for Participation wiki / Music

One of the prizes they found during their class was Joseph M. Pisano, a music professor whose enthusasiam and knowledge bubbles out in this podcast!

Listen to Dr. Pisano, then pass this one on to the music educator in your school. Also check out his blog: MusTech.net

That's not all! Hook your favorite music educator up with Dr. Pisano's campaign, Me Blogger. His goal is to inspire 100 Music Education Bloggers (ME Too!) before 2009. He would like to invite any music educator to become a ME Blogger today. "Join Our “Global Conversation” about music, education, and technology!"

Chat Log

(Click Read more to see more about Lee Baber and Elderbob Brannan)

Teachers Teaching Teachers #93 - Open Curriculum Planning - 02.27.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:24:49 -0500

Imagine, if you would, your department meeting webcast live every month or so. At it's core, that's what we aim for at Teachers Teaching Teachers, and there's more. In this podcast, we go back to the basics, back to the making public our private curriculum discussions. Five National Writing Project teachers and two guests joined together to check what our students were doing and what we were thinking. We work together with a group of sites:

Youth Voices social network of 9th - 12 grade bloggers
Personal Learning Space - social network of 6th - 8th grade bloggers
Elggplans Wikispace - a wiki where we gather collaborative plans
Youthwiki Wikispace- a wiki for youths to share multimedia in galleries of work
Youth Bridges - youth podcasting network
Youth Twitter - a safe, twitter-like blogging network for students

The curriculum we build together is beginning to be gathered together in places like these:

On this podcast Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, from New York City were joined by:

Chris Sloan, Salt Lake City, Utah
Bill O'Neal, Trenton, New Jersey
Lynne Culp, Los Angeles, California
Mike Sansone, Iowa
Jim Sigler, Missouri

Enjoy!

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #92 - Many Voices for Darfur - 02.20.08

Paul Allison — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:02:00 -0600

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

For 48 hours, starting at midnight Eastern standard time on March 6, 2008, many student voices will be collected in the name of those suffering in Darfur. Be sure that your voice is among them. Men, women, and children in the Darfur region of Sudan are dying. The Sudan militia and Janjaweed are responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths and 2,500,000 displaced refugees. You can learn more about the genocide taking place in Darfur by visiting the Many Voices for Darfur Wiki. Once you have had a chance to learn more about Darfur, please post your comment to one or more of the following prompts below:

If you could visit the camps in Chad and sit down one-on-one with a refugee who is your age, how would you explain what you or others are doing in your country to spread awareness and make a difference?
Write an open letter to Omar al-Bashir pleading your case for the Darfur region of Sudan.
Write an open letter to leaders in your country to make a case for government support of international efforts in Darfur.

Please read these RULES and GUIDELINES before posting your comment.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #91: Tagging, Tumbling, and Mathcasting 02.13.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:56:00 -0600

This is a jam-packed thirty-nine minutes, where we explore the power of tagging, teachers using tumblogs, mathcasts, VoiceThreads in health, speech, history, math, music, technology, and EFL classes. Join Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Susan Ettenheim, and VoiceThread's Ben Papell (Yes, he's a "regular" by now), as they welcome these fresh voices, fresh at least to us at Teachers Teaching Teachers:

Carla Raguseo, an EFL teacher and Computer Lab coordinator at A.R.I.C.A.N.A., a Binational Center in Rosario, Argentina

Carla Arena, a Brazilian EFL teacher, teacher trainer and site content manager at A Binational Center in Brasilia, but she's on a leave right now.

Jeremy Brown, a Special Education Teacher at the Medow Hall Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland

Judi Epcke, a teacher and Technology Integration Specialist in Northbrook, Illinois

Tim Fahlberg, founder of Mathcasts, after 11 years as a math teacher.

read more

Teachers Teaching Teachers #90: Microblogging our way toward global awareness 02.06.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:07:42 -0600

Some educators, including some of us who meet regularly on Teachers Teaching Teachers, have begun to find places in our curriculum for microblogging.

“Compared to regular blogging, microblogging fulfills a need for an even faster mode of communication. By encouraging shorter posts, it lowers users’ requirement of time and thought investment for content generation. This is also one of its main differentiating factors from blogging in general. The second important difference is the frequency of update. On average, a prolific blogger may update her blog once every few days; on the other hand a microblogger may post several updates in a single day.” (Java Akshay, Tim Finin, Xaiodan Song, Bell Tseng, Why We Twitter: U nderstanding Microblogging Usage and Communitites. August 12, 2007)

At the beginning of this podcast we explore microblogging with David Karp, the 21-year-old fou nder of Tumblr, an interesting new blogging platform that some of us have begun to use. VoiceThread founders, Ben Pappel and Steve Muth join us in this conversation as well. (Read more about microblogging below.)

In the last 15 or 20 minutes, (beginning at 31:14) we are joined by George Mayo, an 8th grade teacher in Maryland, and Wendy Dexler, a 3rd grade teacher in Florida, who joined each other at Educon 2.0 to create a Global Darfur Awareness Event which will take place on March 6th. (Read more about this project below.)

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #89: Is the tool irrelevant? 01.30.08

Paul Allison — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:43:37 -0600

Listen to Scott Floyd, Tech Liaison for the Texas Bluebonnet Writing Project, and Ellen Petry Leanse explain how and why they collaborated on a project that resulted in this VoiceThread, as well as other media versions of the same story. Scott writes on his blog:

Ellen Petry Leanse has a powerful story to tell of her escape from the political unrest in Kenya during the presidential elections over the 2007 Christmas holidays. She and her 12 year old son were there volunteering in an orphanage as well as other humanitarian work. I first encountered her story January 15th on Guy Kawasaki’s blog as a guest post. Her writing moved me. Something inside of me kept saying to contact her and help her share what she and her son went through. As Google would have it, her email came up in the first try, and by 8:11 AM I sent off a personal plea to her to share her narrative through digital storytelling.

A Piece of My Mind - my ideas, thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned in education The founders of VoiceThread, Ben Papell and Steve Muth, also join us in this discussion of the lessons that can be learned from this one example of digital storytelling.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #88 - Me and my inquiry in relation to a whole community of learners - 01.23.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:55:20 -0600

Listen to seven National Writing Project teachers plan a Spring Blogging curriculum together.

Find out if seven people can plan a curriculum together over skype. These seven teachers from Writing Projects across the country met and planned a 15-week blogging curriculum that they have started to put together (click read more).

Bob Levin and Gail Desler (Area 3 Writing Project, Sacramento, CA)
Woody Woodgate (Alaska Writing Project, Marshall, Alaska)
Bill O'Neal (Trenton, NJ Writing Project)
Chris Sloan (Wasatch Range Writing Project, Salt Lake City, Utah)
Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim (New York City Writing Project)

Image Source: Art for the Soul by RICHARD LAZZARA, a Creative Commons image uploaded to Flickr on January 13, 2006.
by shankargallery

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #87: Spin the Globe--A conversation with Graham Wegner, Doug Noon, and Joel Arquillos--01.16.09

Paul Allison — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:46:51 -0600

Graham Wegner, Doug Noon, Joel Arquillos joined us to think about collaborative projects that Spin the Globe.

Many of us have have enjoyed reading both of Graham Wegner's and Doug Noon's blogs [ http://gwegner.edublogs.org and http://borderland.northernattitude.org ] for some time now, and several weeks ago we were delighted to learn about their wiki project, Spin the Globe [ http://spintheglobe.wikispaces.com ] .

Woody Woodgate -- who teaches in Marshall, Alaska, and has been doing all sorts of wiki and blog and Voice Thread projects with us here in New York City and elsewhere [ http://youthwiki.wikispaces.com/Marshall+School%2C+AK ] -- was so inspired that he started to spearhead a curriculum into an urban/rural comparison. As you can tell, we have just begun to develop this curriculum: http://youthwiki.wikispaces.com/Rural+and+City+collaboration+-+Alaska+meets+New+York+City

As we plan this work, we are looking at other examples of urban/rural exchanges such as the exchange between Joel Arquillos' students in San Francisco and David Boardman's students in a town in Maine.

When Joel Arquillos, a social studies teacher at the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco, started his 11th-grade American history students blogging, he didn't know what to expect. Mr. Arquillos set up a group blog as a joint project with David Boardman's English class juniors and seniors from rural Winthrop High School in Maine for students to post assignments online, comment on each other's work and expand their cultural awareness. At first, the students needed to be prodded to post. But the blog took off when Mr. Arquillos had them write about their neighborhoods. A student who lives in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco described her feelings about the drug dealing and gang violence in the neighborhood. The Maine students posted that they had thought neighborhoods like the Tenderloin were urban legends. Soon, the students started posting on their own to find out what their peers cross-country thought about various subjects (the structure of the new SAT's, good reasons to skip the prom, etc.), discussions that almost came to match the assigned writings in volume. "I want to give these kids the tools to say, 'Hey, my voice is important in this world,' " Mr. Arquillos said after the yearlong experiment. "This blog helps me do that."

New Tools: Blogs, Podcasts and Virtual Classrooms - New York Time

Here's the kind of frank, thoughtful conversation you will hear on this podcast:

Graham calls it a grassroots collaboration. And that, it is. He set up a wiki last August called Spin the Globe. It’s a web space where his class and mine can hopefully learn from each other about our respective far-flung parts of the world. Graham gave it a fair review, but I haven’t had a lot to say about it because it hasn’t really come together for me and my group yet. But we’re getting there, and now, since Paul Allison invited me and Graham to discuss it this evening on the Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast, I’m sorting through my reactions to the project so far.

Borderland » Blog Archive » Classroom Collaborative Give and Take - by Doug Noon

I’ll be honest here and state the goals that Doug and I negotiated have been our guiding light because the process and the final product has been constantly malleable and subject to redefinition. The big difficulty was making this project important to two very different groups of students living very different lives. My class enjoyed the advantage of being the initiators and being very settled as we were well into the second half of our school year. They knew me, I knew their capabilities and by that stage in the year I knew them all well enough to enthuse them about this mysterious project we were doing with “the kids from Alaska”. Doug, on the other hand, was just starting his new school year and was still working out his group’s particular tendencies and skill sets. From my perspective, his position was always going to be trickier to manage. But I have to pay tribute to his support, his diplomomatic balancing of some of my hare-brained ideas and ultimately suggesting ways to get around some of the barriers (cultural and technological). One of the best pieces of advice actually came from his wife, also a teacher, who pointed out that a top-down approach that dictated specific roles and topics for students was somewhat at odds with the inquiry based approach we were actually wanting for them. In my class, the project gained its largest boost of momentum when I spoke to my students and announced that the shackles were off and they were free to develop whatever pages of the wiki they wanted. After all, Wikipedia contributors don’t get assigned to write specific articles by a superior. I know that a classroom effort can’t be quite as organic as that but productivity and engagement went up noticeably from that point on.

Teaching Generation Z » Blog Archive » Spin The Globe - Adelaide Meets Fairbanks by Graham Wegner

Chat Log

Chat Log for TTT#87 - 01.16.09

Paul Allison — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:40:32 -0600

20:14:44 Mdodes -> -EdTechTalk: Good evening!
20:15:04 tkidd132 -> -EdTechTalk: Good Evening Are we the only ones here....lol
20:15:09 Mdodes -> -EdTechTalk: yup for the moment
20:15:13 Mdodes -> -EdTechTalk: still another 45 minutes
20:15:18 tkidd132 -> -EdTechTalk: Oh ok
20:15:38 tkidd132 -> -EdTechTalk: Hola Nick
20:15:48 Mdodes -> -EdTechTalk: One second
20:15:52 nick -> -EdTechTalk: hi
20:15:58 Alex Hayes -> -EdTechTalk: hi there !

Teachers Teaching Teachers #86 Giving All Schools Access to VoiceThread-A Conversation with Ben Papell and Steve Muth-01.09.08

Paul Allison — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:08:30 -0600

Ben Papell and Steve Muth are fed up with the number of school districts across the US that are bocking VoiceThread. Even though VoiceThread was one of the most popular Web-tools with educators in 2007, it has also been unavailable to many teachers because of district or school filters that block all free websites or sites that allow for user contributions or that allow students to surf to unapproved content... or for whatever reasons. All Ben and Steve know is that they've been getting a steady stream of emails that say something like: "I love, love, love VoiceThread! I use it at home, but I can't use it in my school. It's blocked! Is there any way you can help?"

Ben and Steve are not the first developers of tools like VoiceThread to run into problems like this. They may be the first to come up with a solution that not only solves the blocking problem, but potentially makes their product even more attractive because it will give students of all ages free (to them), unlimited access to their own VoiceThread accounts that teachers can manage without using email addresses. Here are some of the details that Ben and Steve provided:

The Ed.VoiceThread network is a worldwide community where safety is built upon a foundation of accountability. All users are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Access is restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, and all content is created exclusively by registered members of the community. Web services offering free accounts are blocked in many school districts because of child online protection policies, and are not eligible for federal eRate monies. For this reason, there are no free Ed.VoiceThread accounts and student email addresses are not required. Educators must pay a one time $10 verification fee to become a member of the community, with no recurring costs.

Schools will also be able to pay a monthly fee (about $100), which will make it possible for all teachers in the building to use VoiceThread with their students.

Learn more about this innovative plan on this webcast. Ben Papell and Steve Muth joined us once again to explain changes they are making to address access problems in US schools.

Ed.VoiceThread goes live on Thursday, January 17. Get the inside story on this podcast.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #85 - 01.02.08 - Old and New Ring in the New Year

Paul Allison — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:24:34 -0600

We were joined by many old and new voices as we brought in the new year with music and stories of things that changed our teaching last year.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #84 - Old School Meets New School: A Chat with Dave Cormier and Bonnie Stewart on A Living Archives

Paul Allison — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:03:23 -0600

Dave Cormier and Bonnie Stewart joined this show to discuss their project "A Living Archives." As you will hear them explain, this project, which is funded by Canadian Heritage, has students from all three school districts on Prince Edward Island (PEI) using leading edge technologies to bring PEI history and heritage to life. Bonnie and Dave have been building partnerships between the University of Prince Edward Island, the Provincial Archives and Records Office, the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation, the PEI Library, and the three PEI Boards of Education.

Click Read more to find out what what Dave wrote about "The Living Archives project" in July 2007.

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #83 - Tagging, Ceramics, Digital Photography, and More

Paul Allison — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:55:29 -0600

Listen in as these eight teachers have a wide-ranging conversation during one of their virtual staff meetings, where they discuss their work together.

Paul Allison, East Bronx Academy for the Future, Bronx, NY
Lee Baber, J. Frank Hillyard Middle School, Broadway, VA
Susan Ettenheim, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, New York, NY
Russ Knopp, Preston Hall Middle School, Waitsburg, WA
Matt Montagne, University School of Milwaukee, WI
Bill O'Neal, Trenton High School West, Trenton, NJ
Chris Sloan, Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, UT
Woody Woodgate, Marshall School, Marshall, AK

tagzaniapaste TTT83 tagged map by user - Tagzania

Paul_Allison

Teachers Teaching Teachers #109 - Cybercamps, Summer Invitationals, Institutes, and Workshops- 06.18.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #108 - Planning all out in the open - 06.11.08

Summer Advanced Institute Mondays - Thursdays, 9 - 2 June 30 - July 17 ______________________

Teachers Teaching Teachers #107 - What have we learned this year with VoiceThread? 06.04.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #106 - What's new about creating projects in the digital age? 05.28.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #102 - Connecting to Place-based Education in Alaska - 4.30.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #101 - Collaborating in the Bering Sea - 04.23.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #100 - Making Space on Youth Twitter - 04.16.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #99 - From elgg to Drupal? - 04.09.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #98 - Learning to be Unschooly - 04.02.08

Unschooly-Youths Conversations Reflection

Teachers Teaching Teachers #97 - Foxfire for the Firefox Generation - 03.26.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #96 - Has digital storytelling changed writing? - 03.19.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #95 - Locating the Tyranny of Filtering - 03.12.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #94 - Music in the Classroom - 03.05.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #93 - Open Curriculum Planning - 02.27.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #92 - Many Voices for Darfur - 02.20.08

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #91: Tagging, Tumbling, and Mathcasting 02.13.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #90: Microblogging our way toward global awareness 02.06.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #89: Is the tool irrelevant? 01.30.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #88 - Me and my inquiry in relation to a whole community of learners - 01.23.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #87: Spin the Globe--A conversation with Graham Wegner, Doug Noon, and Joel Arquillos--01.16.09

Chat Log for TTT#87 - 01.16.09

Teachers Teaching Teachers #86 Giving All Schools Access to VoiceThread-A Conversation with Ben Papell and Steve Muth-01.09.08

Teachers Teaching Teachers #85 - 01.02.08 - Old and New Ring in the New Year

Teachers Teaching Teachers #84 - Old School Meets New School: A Chat with Dave Cormier and Bonnie Stewart on A Living Archives

Teachers Teaching Teachers #83 - Tagging, Ceramics, Digital Photography, and More

Summer Advanced Institute
Mondays - Thursdays, 9 - 2
June 30 - July 17
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