Margaret Simon

So you want your K-6 students to blog because you want them to have an audience beyond your classroom. What do you do? Do you set up a blog for each student or for your class, perhaps using http://edublogs.org? Do you join us at http://youthvoices.net or do you join http://kidblog.org ? And there are plenty of other choices.

But here's the rub: How do you get your students' posts out there in the world to get responses from K-6 students like them? How can be build a stronger community of elementary school teachers whose students are blogging together?

We would like to invite you to help us consider some of these questions with the amazing educators on this episode of TTT.

Gail Desler, Gail Poulin, Kevin Hodgson, Margaret Simon, Matt Hardy, Paul Allison, Suzie Boss, and Tony Iannone

Consider QuadBlogging and other complications around having your own class EduBlog or working in a community like Youth Voices or KidBlog, and the problems and delights of having different ages working together, or not?

Gail Desler and Kevin Hodgson started this conversation in November at NCTE and they would like to see if it might not be possible to get something started with NWP elementary school teachers around some sort of community that gets more and more comments flowing.

Here's Gail's recent email that led us to schedule a TTT around this topic:

I would love to head into the New Year with some shared discussions on creating an elementary community of digital kids/digital writers that would lead into YouthVoices, but would actually be its own community. As I mentioned to both of you at NCTE, I'm spurred on by Suzie Boss's (who will be joining us on TTT) recent Edutopia post: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/quad-blogging-technology-classroom-suzie-boss Just seems like a perfect NWP project - that would be pretty easy to initiate and maintain.

That's not all! On Wednesday, January 9, 2013, we plan a follow-up conversation with many of the same people on this episode. Join us at http://edtechtalk.com/ttt on Wednesday, 1.9.13 at 5PM ET/2PM PT/World Times: http://goo.gl/024pD

On this special Meet the Authors episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Paul Allison, Valerie Burton, and Gail Desler have a conversation with two teachers and recently published authors from New Iberia, Louisiana,+Margaret Simon and +Stephanie Judice/@sagaofthesetti.

Margaret has been a frequent guest on Teachers Teaching Teachers since the BP Oil Spill. Her elementary school school students published memorable poems and multimedia commentary on Voices on the Gulf, and Ms. Simons' students continue to publish on Youth Voices http://youthvoices.net/posts/user/3587

On this episode of TTT, we celebrate and explore the recent publication of Margaret Simon's Young Adult novel, Blessen. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0984891528/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

In this highlight from TTT#297, Margaret Simon explains that Blessen was born in a Writing Marathon led by Richard Louth, a director of the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project [http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/315 and http://goo.gl/ONqs7 ]. The character, Blessen grew real in a workshop with Sharon Arms Doucet [https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Sharon+Arms+Doucet%22 and after meeting a lot of Blessens as a teacher in New Iberia.

It may be a YA novel or a first-chapter book, but I agree with one Amazon reviewer who writes that Blessen is "a book for young readers, but an old reader like me can enjoy it just as well."

In this highlight from the videocast, Margaret reads "Piggly Wiggly," a chapter from her book, Blessen.

Margaret Simon is a teacher-consultant with the National Writing Project of Acadiana, Louisiana. In this podcast we explore Margaret's creative process, her use of a writing group, and her journey in publication. What questions do you have? Please add your comments below.

Margaret's friend and writing partner, Stephanie Judice, joins us as well. She published Rising last year and is working on Book 2. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B004YXL72O/ref=sib_dp_kd#reader-link Margaret writes, "She's the one who pushed me to publish."

An interesting review of Blessen: http://revmoore.blogspot.com/2012/04/blessen.html

Stephanie Judice's Saga of Setti on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Saga-of-the-Setti/203566846334918

Margaret Simon's Blessen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blessenbyMargaretSimon

Enjoy!

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, these seven teachers:

• Chris Sloan (Utah)
• Margaret Simon (Louisiana)
• Monika Hardy (with an Inovation Lab student, Cristian) (Colorado)
• Scott Shelhart (Indiana)
• Cynthia Shidner (Alaska)
• Paul Allison (New York)
• Fred Haas (Massachusetts)

Enjoy!

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we are joined by Kevin Hodgson, Charles Freij, Margaret Simon, Judy Jester, Ronnie Burt, Gail Desler, Chris Sloan, Adam Cohen, Dan Polleys. We talk about our plans for the fall and how using Youth Voices might fit with our work with our students.

• Meet Erick Gordon the new director of the New York City Writing Project and the founder of the Student Press Initiative.
• Enjoy the perspectives of a couple of the digital photographers who are in Chris Sloan’s school in Salt Lake City, where they had just published their student magazine, the Bulldog Press on MagCloud for the first time.
• Warm to the thoughts of David Pulling from LSU-Eunice who gives us an update on how his students I-Search papers. In particular we invite you to take a look at this one by Vonda Guidry: “Potential Health Effects of Food Contamination From the BP Oil Spill.” Paul Allison’s high school students and Vonda had a productive dialogue in the comments under her discussion post.
• And of course you don't want to miss Margaret Simon's elementary school students  who have publishing on Voices on the Gulf — and who now have other ideas, as Margaret explains:
  

  Things are good and busy.  Our gifted students present a historical play each year for first graders in the parish at The Shadows, a plantation home on the bayou.  There is much involved in preparing and performing, so little else goes on.

  My student Kaylie is working on making Clover the Plover a book.  She is illustrating it using Paint on the Promethean board.  I hope to publish it on Lulu as a fundraiser for the Gulf.

And more! Why don’t you drop by too? We invite you to join us every Wednesday at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA (World Times).