Chris Sloan

Got a video project? Wish you did? Want to provide a platform for your students’ videos?

Listen to this podcast to learn about an exciting opportunity for your students to make videos that address the Obama Administration.

David Cole from the Pearson Foundation and Paul Oh from the National Writing Project joined us on this episode on Teachers Teaching Teachers. We invited them to talk about the latest iteration of the Letters to the Next President project that involves video.

A National Writing Project teacher, Chris Sloan, who had already registered for the project, joined as well to talk about his purposes and motivations for involving his students in the project. Ron Link, a video teacher from the Bronx added

On this podcast you'll learn more about -- then you'll probably want to sign up for:

Letters to the Next President: The Video Campaign Encourages Teen Filmmakers to Address Obama Administration - National Writing Project

Letters to the Next President: The Video Campaign, sponsored by the Pearson Foundation and the National Writing Project (NWP), encourages filmmakers ages 13–18, with the support of their teachers, to voice their points of view by creating and sharing digital videos about the issues they want President Obama and his new administration to address.

The video campaign extends the popular Letters to the Next President letter-writing campaign launched in 2008 by NWP and Google Docs, which engaged over 6,500 high school and middle school students across the United States, as well as the hundreds of teachers and mentors who guided them. Students identified topics that reflected their specific personal, regional, and age-related interests, and with the help of Google Docs published their work online for their peers, parents, and the public on the Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future website: www.letters2president.org.

The new initiative is open to all young people whose teachers register their class to participate. The deadline for registration is March 27, 2009. Full registration and publication guidelines can be found at www.digitalartsalliance.org. In early April, participating teachers will be able to upload their students’ videos and publish them for the global community. The complete collection of student work will be posted at www.digitalartsalliance.org and www.letters2president.org.

Enjoy the pocast, and sign up this week!

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

If you're an English teacher or a photography or media teacher, wondering if or when to introduce your students to Youth Voices, this might be the podcast for you.

Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim were joined this week by their colleague of many years, Chris Sloan, who teaches English, media and photography at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City Utah.

Paul, Susan and Chris introduced their work with students and each other to Ron Link, a English and video teacher in the Bronx, who has recently begun to work with the New York City Writing Project, and with Fred Haas, the Technology Liaison for the Boston Writing Project, and teacher of English and screenwriting.

There is so much more for us to learn from each other. Listen to this podcast, then Join us!

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

Steve Muth and Chris Sloan and a couple of 10th Graders join Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim on this show from last month.

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

Elizabeth (Lizzy) Berryman, Director of the PBS Teacher Center in Virginia and Chris Sloan, a high school teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah joined us to talk about a collaborative project between YouTube and the PBS News Hour called “Video Your Vote." The purpose of this project is to look at the actual voting process. The project involves Flip Cams for high school teachers (especially ones in battle ground states) that want to have interview the voting age kids in the school or have students interviewing adults about the voting process. Lizzy joined us on the first half of this podcast to and answer some questions about the project.

In the second half of the show we help a teacher new to http://youthvoices.net set up a group and register her 7th graders on Youth Voices.

Do you have students in your classes who are voting for the first time?

The NewsHour and PBS are partnering with YouTube on an exciting new project called “Video Your Vote,” which will look at the health of democracy in America by focusing on issues surrounding voting and attitudes towards voting.  Each class will record and upload 10 short videos about the voting experience, contributing to a special YouTube pool of clips on the topic.

There are a variety of ways the videos can be shot. They could be perspectives from students who will be voting in the election for the first time, interviews with parents, teachers and school staff about their past voting experiences, or interviews with election officials about how they are preparing for the election and what they are expecting. Students could visit a retirement community to speak with elderly voters, or if the school will be a voting station they can talk to whoever is in charge. This project is a work in progress so we are certainly open to your ideas.

There is also a voting day component to the project. The good folks who are soponsoring this project would like students to take the cameras to the polls on Nov. 4 if possible.  This can happen in a variety of ways, but a few possibilities are sending the cameras with students voting for the first time, or accompanying a few students to a polling place to interview people after they vote. There will be a special “How To” video from YouTube that will give guidelines for video taping at the polls.

Please email Lizzy if you are interested in getting involved in this program at [email protected].