gardening

Joel Malley @joelmalley and Stephen Ritz join us on this episode of TTT, the second of a series of episodes this Spring where we are discussing Connected Learning and our OLE (Online Learning Experience) sponsored by the National Writing Project http://connect.nwp.org/online-learning-connected-learning. (Anybody can join the OLE. Just email Joel.)

We're in the middle of the third session, and this webcast looks back to the first session where many of us were introduced to a wonderful example of a connected teacher, Stephen Ritz.

Here's the plan for the next couple of months:

• Session 1 - Connected Learning Core Values, Feb 6-Feb 20
• Session 2 - Why School?, Feb 21-March 6
• Session 3 - Connected Learning is Interest-Powered, March 7-March 20
• Session 4 - Connected Learning is Peer Supported, March 21-April 3
• Session 5 - Connected Learning is Academically Oriented, April 3-April 17
• Session 6 - Connected Learning is Production Centered, April 18-May 1
• Session 7 - Connected Learning is Openly Networked, May 2-May 15
• Session 8 - Connected Learning has Shared Purpose, May 16-29

We invite you to join these conversations at the Connected Learning Inquiry Group and here on Teachers Teaching Teachers over the next several weeks.

On this episode of TTT, we are joined by:

After listening to this first episode in this series on Connected Learning (TTT #336), we hope you are inspired to join our special guest, Stephen Ritz on this episode of TTT.

Check him out here, listen to or watch our webcast -- further below, and leave your coments.

And stay tuned! We are live every Wednesday at Teachers Teaching Teachers.

After we read and discuss Will Richardson's Book Why School? on the Connected Learning Inquiry Group site, Richardson will be joining us on TTT on March 27 at 9PM ET/6PM PT/World Times: http://goo.gl/TLFP7 at http://edtechtalk.com/ttt .

Enjoy this episode of TTT, and plan to connect with us all Spring!

Do you garden with your students? Do they make things? And do they read and write about these experiences, and sometimes publish the results online?

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, you'll hear National Writing Project teachers from Colorado, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and California describe the gardens and writing projects they are doing with their students.

One of the guests, Patricia Paugh, recently did a session at the National Writing Project’s Urban Sites Network meeting in Boston.

Adventures in Text Analysis: Reading and Writing a Community Garden Project
Mary Moran and Patricia Paugh,
This session investigates theories related to genre pedagogy enacted in a year-long project on community gardening in an urban neighborhood. The session will include analysis of multi-genre texts and sharing of artifacts related to purposeful writing by students who worked with an urban farming collaborative. (Patricia C. Paugh, is an Associate Professor Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Massachusetts Boston.)

We were also joined by an elementary school teacher, Denise Ferrell, who told us about the multiple garden projects she has been doing with Annie Ortiz and other colleagues at the Skyline Elementary in Stillwater, Oklahoma:

We are fortunate at Skyline to have several kinds of gardens. We have a butterfly garden, an 83 ft raised bed, 5 small square raised beds, a cistern, some small dwarf fruit trees. We also have an outdoor classroom.

Fred Mindlin, Associate Director for Technology Integration at the Central California Writing Project, joined us from a Whole Foods store! Fred has been working with gardeners and digital stories and videos, and more as part of the National Writing Project’s Makes project.

Marshall Woody from the Southern Colorado Writing Project who has just starting gardening with his students, was on the call with us as well.

Enjoy!

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

Enjoy our curriculum share from late-September on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Chris Sloan, Margaret Simon, Susan Ettenheim, Paul Allison, and Gail Desler welcomed our guest Becky Jezek, the Director of the Wooly School Garden project.

Woolly School Garden from Drew Falkman on Vimeo.

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

FRESH is more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participants in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.

When I write we, I don’t mean our small team (officially two of us, with lots of amazing helps from our interns and volunteers) but I mean YOU. All of you. FRESH is a grassroots efforts for a grassroots movement. It’s been tremendously exciting to see the movie catch on and spread like wild fire, being used all over the country as a platform to raise awareness and connecting people to the solutions available in their community.

Within a month of our launch, we’ve received over 20,000 visitors and hundreds of screenings have already been organized. We want to reach 1 million folks. Not just because that would totally feel nice to our ego (mine especially!), but because, we believe that FRESH can truly help get us to a tipping point, when sustainable food will no longer be just a niche market.

Please help us reach 1 million people (to start with that is.) Organize a home screening or a community screening. Get in touch with us, let us know what we can do more and better. We’re open!

http://www.freshthemovie.com

Also joining us were three educators from Our School at Blair Grocery:

• Nat Turner, Founder and Head of School
• Kyle Meador, Director of Education Programs
• Qasim Davis, Teacher and Dean of Students

They had just won a grant from Fresh because of their wonderful garden.

FRESH 1% GRANT - WE WON!!!

At Our School at Blair Grocery, FRESH is one of our favorite documentaries. Every time we watch it, it inspires us in our work for food security and food justice for our community. Now, because of the amazing response from our supporters who voted for us to win the FRESH 1% Grant, we’ll also receive financial support from FRESH — 1% of their annual revenue for 2010.

We hope you enjoy this conversation, and that you leave thinking, "Yes I can!"

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

Where were you when Earth Day 2010 started at Zero Hour - Greenwich Mean Time Thursday (also known as 9 p.m Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific USA) ?

Many of us were listening to the 2010 Keynote Earthcast speaker, Jason Czarneki, which is available at Earthbridges.net.

Jason Czarneki, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, was the keynoting Earthcast 2010, a live, 24 hour webcastathon starting at 0 GMT on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 . Jason keynoted Earthcast 2009 and was back to jumpstart Earthcast 2010, this time speaking to the topic of, “Climate Policy and U.S.-China Relations.” The theme of the talk was particularly relevant as Jason is currently living and teaching in Guangzhou, China, north of Hong Kong, on a Fulbright Scholarship. Jason gave a 20-30 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of discussion and questions from the moderators and virtual participants.

That was a tough act to follow, but we did our best! Teachers Teaching Teachers was the second hour of Earthcast 2010:

• We talked about school/community gardens! Paul Allison’s students at the East-West School of International Studies, Flushing have been tilling the earth this spring. They’ve been inspired by their play in Evoke to change the world, one garden at at time. A couple of student-gardeners join us on this podcast.

• Susan Ettenheim also welcomed students from the Green Team at her school, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Manhattan.

• We also had a teacher new to TTT, Elizabeth Kee. She teaches at Lower East Side Prep, also in Manhattan. Elizabeth had been teaching Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks to her mainly Chinese and other ELL students. This spring they planted the seeds from this book, and at the time of the Earthday, they were getting ready to move to a community garden.

• AND!! We were joined by Evoke gardeners, Michele Baron from Virginia, and Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys from Guadalajara, Mexico!

What a way to start an EARTH DAY!

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