Teachers Teaching Teachers

Teachers Teaching Teachers #60 - Why Technology Matters

On this weeks Teaching Teaching Teachers webcast, we were joined by four National Writing Project teachers who were selected last summer to participate in Tech Matters — a 4-day summer institute sponsored by the Tech Liaison Network of the National Writing Project.  Joe Bellino, Bonnie Kaplan, Kevin Hodgson, and Donna Bragg discussed moments they remember from Tech Matters`06, and they talked about five issues they faced after they returned from Tech Matters. These teachers talked about learning to turn these separate challenges into strands of a web of support for change in their teaching and in their local Writing Projects:

  • creating a personal learning system to continue learning about important new technologies
  • bringing personal learning and experiences with Web 2.0 technologies into their classrooms
  • working with other teachers in their buildings and in other schools in their area to them to begin their learning about Web 2.0 as well.
  • staying connected with other teachers in the National Writing Project's Tech Liaison network, developing projects for their own learning together
  • working alongside the leadership team of their local Writing Projects, helping these leaders to take their own personal next steps with important technologies.

Thats an outline of what these teachers learned last summer. What did you learn last summer? Did it make a difference in your classroom? How are you learning this summer? Join us to share one of your memories about summer learning.

For example, here is a part of Cynthia Calvert’s story:

Being at TM 06 was one of the best things that ever happened to me both professionally and personally. If I had not been invited to TM06, I would not have met Jason, Tracey, and Paige–my fellow Common Threads collaborators and my life would not have been as full. I now count them among my closest and dearest friends. Then I wouldn’t have met Kevin who inspires me to take risks and try new technology tools that until TM06 I did not know existed. I could go on about each and every person who was involved in TM06. I am a better person and a better TL for having been a part of the institute. I know this sounds corny, but it’s true. Finally, I have a better handle on what my job as Alcorn WP’s TL is. I have more confidence and speak with more authority when I talk about technology. I’ve learned to take baby steps, thanks to Peter and Betty, and not try to do everything at once, so I’m less overwhelmed.

Tech Matters`07 starts within hours. We have already invited all former TM participants to join the Technology Matters website (a DrupalEd site that Bill Fitzgerald and Will Banks have been helping us to build). If you were a Tech Matters participant in  `03, `04,`05, or `06, and we missed you. Please register on our site now: http://nwptechmatters07.org/user/register
 

We would also like to invite anybody who is reading this now to subscribe to the work of Tech Matters`07. We want you to hear the podcasts, see the videos and pictures, and read the texts published by this years invited participants of Technology Matters.
  Subscribe to Technology Matters in a reader (and receive all text, audio, and video that is made public.)

Add Technology Matters Podcast (audio only) to your iTunes

 

Subscribe to Technology Matters Videocast (video only).

 

Finally we want to invite you to join us live on webcasts that we will be streaming from Chico, California through the help of Susan Ettenheim, Jeff Lebow, Dave Cormier and others connected with http://edtechtalk.com. Here are the times when we want you to join us. All you need is Skype, a microphone, and a headset of ear buds to join us on any of these afternoons:

  • Tuesday, July 17 - 5:00-5:45 Pacific / 8:00-8:45 Eastern
  • Wednesday, July 18 - 4:00-5:00 pm Pacific / 7:00-8:00 pm Eastern
  • Thursday, July 19 - 4:00-5:00 pm Pacific/ 7:00-8:00 pm Eastern
  • Friday, July 20 - 4:00-5:00 pm Pacific / 7:00-8:00 pm Eastern
  • Saturday, July 21- To Be Announced
Please join us at http://edtechtalk.com. Help us to widen the conversations we are having at Technology Matters `07.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #58 - 06.20.07 - Finding passion in and out of the classroom

This year several elementary school teachers--mainly Writing Project teachers--from California, Colorado, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon, and the Philippines sent each other podcasts and poetry and responses on a weblog, Youth Radio: Connecting Youth Voices to the World. These teachers have created a space where young writers and voices can connect with news stories about their communities, their schools and their interests!

That's all fine, but on this webcast Paul Allison and Lee Baber talked to two of the teachers behind this project, Glen Bledsoe and Kevin Hodgson. We never got to the student work because we spent the entire time learning more about each of these teachers as musicians and creative people outside of the classroom.

It's fascinating to hear the differences between the music that Lee and Glen share with us, and to imagine Kevin's sax! Yet what we all share is a passion for living creative, passionate lives in and out of the classroom.

We had a great time together, and we invite you listen in.

Click Read More, below to find a long list of links from Glen's amazingly diverse creative mind.

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

­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:
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Teachers Teaching Teachers #56 - 06.06.07 - The International Teen Life Project

 

At the end of this webcast, which features the five teachers involved with the International Teen Life Project, Scott S. Floyd, a teacher from the White Oak ISD and the Tech Liaison for the Bluebonnet Writing Project in Texas, USA asked, "What's one thing that teachers who want to get involved in a global project should keep in mind?" Clarence Fisher, a 7/8 teacher from Snow Lake, Manitoba, Canada began his answer with one word, "Planning... " This only made sense, because the International Teen Life Project that Clarence organized with four colleagues from around the world this last winter and spring is a model for how to go about planning a global project for middle school students. In January 2007, just as "the fun" was about to begin, Clarence wrote about this work in his blog:

In the middle of December, a small group of teachers, Kim Cofino and Jabiz Raisdana from Kuala Lumpur, Jamie Hide from Columbia, Lee Baber from Virginia, and myself began putting our heads together about more intense ways to bring students together. All being middle school teachers, we came up with the idea for a project that would focus our students around examining and reflecting on their own lives first and the lives of other people their age in their nation. From here, we want the kids to think globally and look at the lives and the concerns of people their own age in other parts of the globe.... While we are just beginning off, I am truly excited about this project.We are bringing together so many things: blogging, Skype, wikis, videoconferencing, podcasting, digital storytelling, etc in one place that is truly a new literacies sandbox!

Remote Access: International Teen Life

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #55 - 05.30.07 Re-mediating Speech Class

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Our guest hosts on this podcast were Troy Hicks and Dawn Reed from the Red Cedar Writing Project! Here’s how they describe their work:

As podcasting has become a part of our language arts classes, weave seen first hand the ways in which it gives students an audience for their work. By its very nature, podcasting is an oral phenomenon and while it involves the writing process, examining the production rebroadcasts as a speech act also merits our attention. We, Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks, have been interested in how podcasting — because of its ability to record, edit, and revise oral language as well as to time-shift content — can be used as an extension of speech class in high school.

Our project this spring attempted to engaging students in responsible, ethical,and productive composing activities thorough blogging and podcasting. We set out to study how creating and publishing a podcast modeled on NPR’s This I Believe essays could change the composing process for students. In so doing, Dawn’s students created and published their own podcasts, and the two of us discovered a few things about our own technology skills, the school infrastructure, and students’ ability to rise to the occasion that we would like to share with you.

Also, we would like to discuss three ideas that we began our project with and think about how these were actualized:

  1. To understand how blogging and podcasting can be considered a part of Michigan’s new “online experience” for high school students and, rather than take a class fully online, teachers might incorporate elements of digital writing into the irregular classroom work.
  2. To consider themes that emerge from a project like this and how a K-12/university research team can better understand those themes through collaboration.
  3. To reconsider how teaching “speech,” a curricular partner to composition, changes when the media for production includes podcasting.In that sense, we will discuss how purposes and genres change, as well as the affordances and constraints of podcasting, both from technical and pedagogical perspectives.

Join us in the conversation! Add a comment here.

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