38:00 minutes (26.09 MB)

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, +Gail Desler/@GailDesler and +Natalie Bernasconi/@nbernasconi take us on a tour of their Digital ID wiki http://digital-id.wikispaces.com that they've been building to help each of us and our students to answer three questions:

Our students (and we ourselves) spend increasing amount of time online, communicating and collaborating virtually. How can we teach our students about their rights and responsibilities as digital citizens as they navigate their online communities?

Gail and Natalie, both members of their local National Writing Project sites, created the Digital ID wiki http://digital-id.wikispaces.com to supply students, teachers, and administrators with a toolkit of reliable information, resources, and guidelines to help us all learn how to be upstanding Digital Citizens who maintain a healthy Digital Identity (ID) in the 21st Century.

Learn about the Digital ID project on this episode of TTT. Project curators Natalie Bernasconi and Gail Desler share how this collaborative project has grown into an "international conversation" that they would love for you and your students to be a part of.

What ideas do you have for weaving digital citizenship into the core curriculum?

63:14 minutes (28.95 MB)

 COOLCast Discussion about Digital Identities with Bonnie Stewart
May 22, 2012

#change11: fleshing out the digital selves in practice (complete with augmented identity crisis)
http://theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/05/12/fleshing-out-the-digital-selves-in-practice/

46:48 minutes (32.13 MB)

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, +Fred Mindlin/@fmindlin starts with string art, and pulls us into his world of anthropology, story-telling, collaborative learning, and more!

Fred inspires and entertains all of us in this episode of TTT: +Lacy Manship/@now_awake, +Gail Desler/@GailDesler, +Kelsey Shelhart, +Denise Colby/@Niecsa, +Paul Allison/@paulallison, +Chad Sansing/@chadsansing, and +Diana Maliszewski/@mzmollytl.

To get the full effect, take a moment to find some string before you listen to this episode of TTT. How much? Fred says, "About two meters or a little over 6 feet is usually a good length. Hold the string between your two hands stretched out as wide as they go, then add about 6 inches."

Fred explains that he was "inspired by the session we had with teachers using Minecraft, where we explored an online game world via another virtual world, http://edtechtalk.com/node/5102 and I was intrigued by whether it would be feasible to explore a meatspace game in our virtual Teachers Teaching Teachers forum." He sees "string games as a gateway to keyboarding and creativity or finger calisthenics, and computer keyboarding: media magic for tradigital storytelling."

Playing games with string is a human cultural universal. This ancient art form is surprisingly helpful in developing both the manual dexterity and strength needed for computer keyboarding. The approach I use for teaching string games to groups also provides a helpful practice ground for some of life's essential skills: creativity, resilience, cooperation, and storytelling.

And that's not all. Here's an excerpt and a couple of photos from a post that Diana wrote shortly after this episode of TTT:

There were some great quotes that Chad, a fellow participant, shared via Twitter. (I can't recall them all - they were things like "it's important to model failure" and "string games are 'digital' fun".) What I realized was how potent teaching string games would be to analyze your own teaching practice. Listening to Fred teach the group how to make a 3-pronged spear made me hyper-aware of how important detailed, clear instructions are, and the different learning styles at play. The first time I tried it, I failed. The second time, when Fred re-explained and added a few "notice this part here" tips, I did it! I cheered pretty loudly when I succeeded. My webcam wasn't working on Google +, so I convinced my daughter to take a photo of my accomplishment.
 

I made a 3-pronged spear! Here's proof!

A less complimentary shot of me, with my string jedi master Fred on-screen

Fred mentioned that there are several books and YouTube videos that explain, step by step, how to make different shapes. I think I need a person near me to give feedback (though the string collapsing in unrecognizable shapes is pretty immediate feedback too). I gave myself a goal - to teach the kids in my SK and Grade 7 classes how to make the 3-pronged spear and do it to music at a June assembly. I'm repeating it here so it'll be my contract to myself to try it out and report what results.

Enjoy!

49:06 minutes (22.48 MB) Our third of three episodes  of Teachers Teaching Teachers in which we discuss Howard Rheingold's New Smart: How to Thrive Online.  For this conversation, Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, and Monika Hardy, are joined by  Howard Rheingold, Fred Mindlin,Valerie Burton, Mariana Rios, Cristian Romero, and Jeff Lebow.

42:20 minutes (9.69 MB)

This is the first of three shows (#292 April 11, #294 April 25, #295 May 2) in which we are talking about Howard Rheingold's new book, Net Smart, How to Thrive Online. Howard joins us on Wednesday, May 2.

Joining Paul Allison, Monika Hardy, and Chris Sloan on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers are Alice Barr, Nancy Sharoff, Vinnie Vrotny, Valerie Burton, Sarah Rolle, Scott Lockman, and Andrea Zellner.

On this episode we mainly talk about the introduction to Howard's book and a syllabus for a social media literacies course on the high school level that he has compiled from his college-level syllabus.

Syllabus: Social Media Literacies, High School Level, Seed Version Compiled By Howard Rheingold

Howard writes:

As an instructor of undergraduate and graduate students at University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, I created a syllabus for the benefit of other college/university level instructors. I created a copy of the original syllabus for modification to use with high school students (probably juniors or seniors). I will rely on actual high school teachers to help me modify this source document. Please feel free to use, modify, and share this syllabus in your own way. Reorder the modules, add or subtract required or recommended texts and learning activities. Use your own assessment methods. If you wish to help improve this seed document, contact howard@rheingold.com and I will add you as a commenter and/or editor.

This syllabus is based on my 2012 book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, as a textbook. I set out to write the book as an educational instrument. As I explain in the introductory chapter, (which is downloadable free of charge), I have concluded, after thirty years as an online participant, observer, and teacher, that social media literacies are a critical uncertainty in the issue of whether digital media improve or erode human individual capacities and collective culture. Just as in the eras following the invention of the alphabet and printing press, literate populations become the driving force that shape new media. What we know now matters in shaping the ways people will use and misuse social media for decades to come.

The 21st century depends on a critical mass of people who understand basic scientific literacy, media literacy, information literacy, in addition to the literacies I cover in my book and in this syllabus. I use “literacy” in the sense of a skill that includes not only the individual ability to decode and encode in a medium, but also the social ability to use the medium effectively in concert with others. I didn’t write the book as a syllabus, but as a logical ordering of the five social media literacies of attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network awareness: attention is the starting place for all media use; crap detection is necessary for effective participation; knowledge of individual participation is by its nature enmeshed with collaborative communications that take place through networked publics. When composing the syllabus, I duplicated much of this progression, but chose texts that can offer analytic tools, explanatory frameworks, and competing perspectives -- the basic building blocks for teachers to use. For high school communities, “Critical consumption online” or “critical consumption of social media” could substitute for “crap detection” as a label. The methods are identical, although many resources most appropriate for high school students must exist to replace texts in the original, college-level version.

Here are a couple of moments from Teachers Teaching Teachers #294 where we think about Crap Detection in light of KONY 2012. The entire show is there as well.

Please join our conversation with Howard Rheingold on Teachers Teaching Teachers this Wednesday, May 2 at 9:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Pacific / World Times.