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


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

Digital Foxfire 2008-2009, we want your feedback

Curriculum and Instruction efforts next year will place additional emphasis on solidifying what has been called our “Digital Foxfire” approach to Place-based Education.

This is not a single project, but rather an approach to integrating technology as a vehicle for place-based education, and then being able to connect students to the idea of sharing the “alternative products” of teaching and learning with an authentic audience.

Sharing takes place through:

- Writing Products: School website and district blog entries, Strait Talk publication in print, Wikipedia contributions as demonstrating mastery of concepts, posters.

- New Media Products: Webcasting, podcasting, vodcasting.

- Archiving Place-based Content: Digitizing existing BSSD publications that record our place, our culture and our people. Indexing, and making those contributions visible through our wiki system.

As part of the Digital Foxfire Archive, we are hoping to put together webcasts that feature what is going on in our schools, and which allow our students to both share out their “place”, and learn in real time about other places.

These events would be held roughly every two weeks throughout the school year, and teachers and / or their students will be able to participate in one, several or all of them.

What we need help with is channeling this into something that will be flexible enough for teachers to see as a realistic outlet for student work done in the BSSD curriculum in ANY Content Area, or combination of Content Areas.

First of all, we’d like your help in selecting next year’s themes. We believe that broad themes, inclusive enough to be used as common thread across grade levels and teaching styles, would be best for encouraging meaningful exchange.

Note: The shape, flavor, age range and direction of your contributions are not in anyway constrained. We will help you think about, and create something that is above all an engaging set of learning activities in your classroom!

Taxonomy upgrade extras:

Comments

Thanks for your topic on 'research paper format'. I think it will add a great source of information who are Connecting to Place-based Education in Alaska - 4.30.08. For more Research Paper Writing.