Fred Mindlin

Our second of three episodes of Teachers Teaching Teachers in which we discuss Howard Rheingold's New Smart: How to Thrive Online . Howard is joining us on May 2. For this conversation Paul Allison and Monika Hardy are joined by Fred Mindlin, Sarah Rolle, Mura Nava, Valerie Burton, Vinnie Vrotny, Tinashe Blanchet, and Christian.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we have a conversation with three teachers from the New York City Writing Project who are part of a study group that has been sponsored by the NYCWP to foster and reflect on the use of Youth Voices by these teachers. Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Monika Hardy host a conversation with Jim Nordlinger, Amal Aboulhosn, and Carla Cherry from the NYCWP along with our colleagues Valerie Burton, and Fred Mindlin. As an introduction to this conversation, we offer these reflections posted by one of our listeners on her blog, "Short Quips: thinking in (hyper)text" (Check out here blog, to see this teacher's complete response, and view her About Me.):

Tonight I participated in my first live educational conference online through EdTechTalk. The conference is called “Teachers Teaching Teachers” and takes place every Wednesday night. I did not join the group via video, but rather just watched/listened to the other participants and participated through a live chat feature....

It took me a while to catch up to what was being discussed. Participants were throwing around the term “Youth Voices” and I thought at first that it was just a cool catch phrase for high school kids who were blogging. It wasn’t until i joined the live chat that I got a better idea of what Youth Voices is. Youth Voices, it turns out, is a huge site where the main purpose is to offer a space for youth to participate in discussion. It is a place where youth can post their thoughts and comment on other youth’s thoughts....

One of the discussions among the video participants revolved around how teachers should/are assessing their student’s contributions on Youth Voices. One educator shared how she is setting guidelines for how much/what her students need to contribute to Youth Voices within a specific time frame. For example, she will stipulate that her students need to write one post and make one comment within a week, and if they do both they get the marks for it. This particular educator works at a school in the Bronx and has found that participating in Youth Voices has empowered her students to have their voices heard. She noted how much time and effort can be put into a short comment, because the students are very aware of their online presence and ensuring they present themselves appropriately.

... It was an interesting experience to view it. I think the biggest thing I got out of the experience was that I was also able to network with educators from far and wide- always a positive when you are working on developing your professional learning network.

... I would love to come back to join in a conversation in the future, especially if I am looking for information specifically related to the topic being discussed. I am curious to know whether there are any live educator chats/conferences specifically for Early Childhood Educators. If you know of one, pass it on!

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

On this episode of +Teachers Teaching Teachers, we talk about Connected Learning/connecting-our-learning with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and this amazing group of NWP teacher leaders listed here: Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Clifford Lee, Fred Mindlin, Katie MacKay, Chad Sansing, Meenoo Rami, Lacy Manship, and Antero Garcia

You can see some of what we discuss through the following links:

• Read the Connected Learning Principles document: http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles
• Visit the NEWLY LAUNCHED Connected Learning community site: http://connectedlearning.tv/
• Get a summary at Mimi Ito's blog: http://www.itofisher.com/mito/weblog/2012/03/connected_learning.html
• And see some of the research through the Connected Learning research network: http://clrn.dmlhub.net/

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

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?feed=rss2, Monika Hardy and Paul Allison discuss "Detox," a reflective practice that they have been inviting students to do in their different contexts.

Monika has been doing Detox with her students for a couple of years http://labconnections.blogspot.com/p/what-is-detox.html

Recently, Paul started asking his students to reflect on their work, dreams, thoughts, and learning on Youth Voices: http://youthvoices.net/channel/31618

Monika and Paul are joined in this conversation by a co-conspirator with Monika and a researcher of Detox James Folkestad, from Colorado State University.

We also get the perspective of youths from two of Paul's high school students Evelyn Salazar and (on the phone) Shamar Smith. In addition there are valuable insights from 7th Grader Kelsey Shelhart and her father Scott Shelhart as well as Fred Mindlin.

After listening to this podcast, you might be inspired to try something similar in your classroom or perhaps your students are already doing this kind of reflection on who they are, what they are doing, what they dream could happen, what they are noticing, and what connections they are making.

Either way, whether you are starting something new or continuing a valuable process in your classroom, please let us know about it. We'd love to hear if "detox" is spreading virally or "scaling across trans-locally" to use some of the language that Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze have given us in their book Walk Our Walk On:

Taking things to scale doesn’t happen vertically through one-size-fits-all replication strategies... experiments move horizontally, scaling across villages and nations, trans-locally, as many diverse people learn from their discoveries and are inspired to try their own.
( http://www.walkoutwalkon.net/mexico )

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

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we are joined by:

Chris Sloan,

Monika Hardy, 

Fred Mindlin, 

Chad Sansing,

Scott Shelhart, 

Paul Allison,

Kelsey Shelhart, and

Rahul Deodhar

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