Teachers Teaching Teachers

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Monika Hardy, Chris Sloan and Paul Allison invited Amy Lewark, Mary Ann Reilly, Adam Mackie, and Jodhbir Singh, who has been visiting visiting the Lab that Monika Hardy facilitates. He has a passion to help change education in India where he is from. Monika writes, "We've been corresponding for some time now. This is our first face to face. He's incredible and will have some good insight of what we're doing and how it looks in person."

Mainly, we learned from a group of educators who teach the classics using gaming. We hope you'll enjoy learning more from the Pericles Group.

From their web site:

Kevin Ballestrini teaches Latin and Mythology at the Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut. He has received an M.A. and B.A. in Classics from the University of Colorado and University of Connecticut respectively. In addition to experience teaching in a traditional classroom setting, in the 2010-2011 academic year Kevin deployed the first fully practomimetic introductory language course at the high school level in a section of Latin I. The experience has clearly enhanced student engagement and connection to life and culture in ancient Rome. For 2011-12, he will be expanding the offering of practomimetic courses to the second year of introductory Latin in addition to the first. As an avid technology enthusiast, he maintains his blog, Techna Virumque Cano (http://kevinbal.blogspot.com) where he discusses the intersection of technology and his teaching. He is also a regular contributor to the collaborative blog Play the Past (http://playthepast.org). Kevin is the leader of a large kinship in The Lord of the Rings Online and active in many gaming communities.

Roger Travis is an Associate Professor of Classics in the Department of Literatures, Cultures & Languages of the University of Connecticut. He is also the Director of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative (http://vghvi.org) at UConn, an interdisciplinary online nexus for online courses and scholarly activities like fellowships, symposia, and the initiative’s Proceedings, of which he is the editor. He received his Bachelor’s degree in classics from Harvard College, and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley before arriving at UConn in 1997. He has published on Homeric epic, Greek tragedy, Greek historiography, the 19th C. British novel, HALO, and the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game He has been President of the Classical Association of New England and of the Classical Association of Connecticut. He writes the blog Living Epic (http://livingepic.org) about his discovery of the fundamental connection between ancient epic and the narrative video game, and is a founder and contributor of the collaborative blog Play the Past(http://playthepast.org). In the 2009-2010 academic year, Roger offered the first courses ever designed entirely as practomimes (seehttp://www.academicimpressions.com/news.php?i=59 for detail).

Stephen Slota is a Ph.D. student in Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut and holds a full-time assistantship with the UConn Two Summers Program under his advisor, Dr. Michael Young. Stephen received both his Bachelor of Science in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Connecticut, followed by two years teaching life science at a Title IX Connecticut high school. He has previously served as a professional development specialist in educational technology and now works with Dr. Roger Travis of the UConn Department of Modern and Classical Languages on the effects of game-based learning in high school and college Latin courses. Stephen’s research interests include: gaming and its effects on student engagement and achievement, situated effects of gaming on secondary learners, prosocial learning through massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the influence of imagination and dreams on situational perception, and pedagogical means of improving student self-efficacy.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Monika Hardy and Paul Allison were joined by Matt Montagne, Alexander Pappas, Chad Sansing Valerie Burton, Amy Lewark, Julie Phelan and Cristian and a couple of other young people. We continued the conversation we started last week, Teachers Teaching Teachers #261 - Monika Hardy and colleagues discuss Lab: a plan of disruption to redefine school - 8.24.11, and we began to look for intersections between the Lab ;that Monika is facilitating in Loveland, Colorado and our work with Youth Voices, both of which seem to be places where students can peruse other students' passions and pursue their own.

Enjoy!

For this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Monika Hardy @monk51295 invited a few of her colleagues:

• Thomas Steele-Maley @steelemaley
• Roberto Greco @rogre
• Mary Ann Rielly @MaryAnnRielly
• Amanda Judd @venueX
• Amy Lewark @fat4thought

to join Chris Sloan @csloan and me @paulallison to introduce why we need lab spaces to disrupt and redefine school (Lab Connections). The goal is to facilitate self-directed learning. Here’s how Monika and others introduce their work in an in-progress book they are writing:

Students in Loveland, CO crafted a four year plan of disruption to redefine school. We are just beginning year two. Year four has community/life as school, with the city as the floor plan. Who, what, when, where, how, and with whom you learn, per choice. The premise… nothing is for everyone. We’re redefining success per individual/community. We’re respectfully questioning everything, especially what public education deems as normal. Imagine if the 7 hours a day we currently call school would/could awaken indispensable people. It’s a quiet revolution.

There has been plenty of theory/research invested in what we are doing, and that will be ongoing. But mostly, we have had the privilege and delight to indulge in experimentation/failure/prototyping/etc. The following is our best attempt to capture the key elements learned from key failures. If you are so inclined, shuffle along with us. It’s a kick. You might just fall in love with it.

For more history of the lab, see this video set/documentation (reverse chronological order):redefineschool.tumblr.com

For current updates/info on the lab, see labconnections: http://labconnections.blogspot.com/p/about.html

This was a first, exploratory conversation, and one that we hope will inspire you to join as well. We'll be continuing our conversations with Monika Hardy and her colleagues in the coming weeks on Teachers Teaching Teachers. Join us every Wednesday at edtechtalk.com/live where you’ll hear and see a Livestream broadcast of our conversation, and be invited to chat and ask questions as well.

If you dig Minecraft (or wonder why other teachers--and their students--do) you'll enjoy this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, recorded earlier this summer. We were joined by a few teachers who have recently launched Massively Minecraft:

The purpose of this community project is to trial the use of the game Minecraft (http://www.minecraft.net) in schools as part of voluntary student activity. The community will engage in exploration and research, not to decide or direct any particular application of the game but, to understand where students might take it and how they and their teachers visualise possibilities for it use within the curriculum. This ethnographic approach relies on you, as the professional in the school, to observe and reflect on student imagination, initiative, interaction, engagement and learning.

The facilitators of this site, Jo Kay, Dean Groom, and Dr Bronwyn Stuckey share their thoughts, questions, and stories about Minecraft on this podcast.

The Minecraft Teacher, Joel Levin and Chad Sansing (who had been with us for an earlier show about Minecraft) joined the conversation as well.

Check out Joel’s videos on YouTube. Also, Ed Tech Crew did a great interview with Joel and Dean as well.

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 teachers involved with the NWP Makes Project:

• Christina Cantrill who works at the National Writing Project as a Senior Program Associate for the NWP Technology Initiative and Digital Is project.
• Judy Jester, Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project at West Chester University and an English teacher in the Kennett Consolidated School District
• Fred Mindlin, a member of UCSC's Central California Writing Project and a teacher in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District.
• Sam Reed, a teacher representative and city representative for Teachers’ Institute of Philadelphia (TIP), and Yale National Initiative (YNIT), respectively. He also serves on the advisory council for the Philadelphia Arts and Education Partnership; the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Literary Committee and I has served on the steering committee of the Philadelphia Writing Project

NWP Makes emerges from a partnership between the National Writing Project and Make Magazine and is part of the NWP's Digital Is program.

Many of us could probably find our approaches to learning in this definition from one of the more famous DIY projects, :

The DIY ethic (do it yourself ethic) refers to the ethic of being self-reliant by completing tasks oneself as opposed to having others who are more experienced or able complete them for you. It promotes the idea that an ordinary person can learn to do more than he or she thought was possible. Naturally, a DIY attitude requires that the adherent attain the knowledge required to complete a given task. Without this, DIY is not an effective dogma. The term can refer to "doing" anything at all, including home improvements and repairs, first aid, and creative endeavors. Central to the ethic is the empowerment of individuals and communities, encouraging the employment of alternative approaches when faced with bureaucratic or societal obstacles to achieving their objectives. Rather than belittling or showing disdain for knowledge or expertise, DIY champions the average individual seeking knowledge and expertise for him/herself. Instead of using the services of others who have expertise, a DIY oriented person would seek out the knowledge for him/herself.

Sounds like Teachers Teaching Teachers to us! Enjoy this podcast, and if you find yourself wanting to join these teachers on Youth Voices, please let us know. We would welcome you and your students.