Teachers Teaching Teachers #29

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

The students in the middle school elgg are comparing notes on what it's like to be a teenager. Some students in Virginia are getting hunting licenses and some students in NYC are talking about going to clubs. They are sharing similarities and differences. The teachers are reflecting and adjusting and refining the technical and social aspects of multiple schools and many students talking together.

Another conversation that came up was how to meet curriculum requirements while participating in the elgg and various strategies being used by teachers on both the middle school and high school levels. Students in the high school elgg are learning to introduce researched evidence and snippets from various sources to support their posts. Susan tried to share Paul's strategy about introducing and using focussed sentences into the writing and gently pushing teens to learn how to deepen and enliven their exchanges with evidence, but by then Paul was off on another airplane so hopefully he will review that with us next time we all get together.

We also talked about sharing elgg lessons at schools.wikia.com (http://schools.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=lesson&go=Go). Madeline summed it all up well, noting that the students are learning both how to pace their conversations and get into the conversation and bond with each other.

You'll hear some audio difficulty due to the time delay encountered with Paul's call at the beginning of the show and a very buggy skypecast. With severe storms all over the east coast, Paul's plane ended up in Atlanta and Sharon called in from her conference in Atlanta. They were on air at the same time and probably only a few miles from each other in real life! Despite all technical challenges, you will find some interesting new discoveries this week. Please post here in the comments area and share your own stories and discoveries this week.

Links from the show this week:

http://youthvoices.net/elgg/
(Youth Voices - high school elgg)
http://personallearningspace.com (Personal Learning Space - middle school elgg)

http://web.mac.com/lbaber/iWeb/SpaceCast/SpaceCast/SpaceCast.html
(SpaceCast)

http://communitywalk.com/map/17934 (Community Walk map)
http://creativearrow.org (The Neighborhood School elgg)
http://theneighborhoodschool.org/wiki/index.php?title=Madison%2C_CT (an example of wiki with an embedded media player:)

http://schools.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
(High School Collaborative Writing Wiki)
http://schools.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=lesson&go=Go (for the elgg lesson plans)
AttachmentSize
Audio icon 11_15_06Teachers29.mp318.4 MB