We are joined by colleagues from England and Australia on this episode of TTT as we follow-up with them on an earler conversations about blogging in elementary schools: http://edtechtalk.com/node/5156.

Our goal is simple: we want to make plans for elementary school students to find and respond to each others blog posts this spring. Joining us on this episode of TTT are Makewaves’ Cliff Manning, KidBlog’s Matt Hardy, Sue Waters from EduBlogs, and some of us are from Youth Voices. We are also joined by David Mitchell, the Quadblogging guru and Linda Yollis an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles who Quadblogs her own way.

Suzie Boss describes Quadblogging like this in a September 25, 2012 post in Edutopia:

The idea is deceptively simple. Four teachers agree to have their students comment on each other's blogs in an organized fashion. Each week, one of the four gets a turn as the spotlight class. The other three classes visit and leave comments. Over the course of a month, every student's work gets read and commented upon. Along the way, students learn about respectful online communication. They may decide to revise their thinking if a commenter shares a perspective they haven't considered.

On this episode of TTT Paul Allison, @paulallison is joined by Cliff Manning, @cliffmanning, Sue Waters, @suewaters, David Mitchell, @DeputyMitchell, Gail Desler, @gaildesler, Linda Yollis, @lindayollis, Matt Hardy, @hardy101, and Suzie Boss, @suzieboss.

On his blog, David Mitchell describes Quadblogging like this:

QuadBlogging is a leg up to an audience for your class/school blog. Over the last 12 months 100,000 pupils have been involved in QuadBlogging from 3000 classes in 40 countries....

A Blog needs an audience to keep it alive for your learners. Too often blogs wither away leaving the learners frustrated and bored. Quadblogging gives your blog a truly authentic and global audience that will visit your blog, leave comments and return on a cycle. Here’s how it works:

You sign up using the form below, shortly after, you will be allocated a Quad four schools/classes including your own. Each Quad has a co-ordinator who is responsible for making sure each of the quad members know what is going on and when. Each week one blog is the focus blog with the other three blogs visiting and commenting during that week. In week two, another school/class blog is the focus with the other three visiting and commenting. This is repeated until each of the classes/schools has had their week in the spotlight. The cycle is then repeated. However, this time, your pupils know what is coming – They will work harder than you have seen them work in order to get content on their blog!

QuadBlogging has been mentioned very highly in recent OfSTED Reports here in the UK and praised for offering opportunities for:“profound impact in developing pupils’ team working, communication and problem-solving skills.”

It’s simple – Give it a try, sign up here.

With the impending snow heading our way,  Maria and Sheila talked about the possibility of a snow day! Snow days have to be made up at the end of the school year to meet the state's requirements. What if the students were able to do the school work at home and have the work count as a day of school. Some schools have implemented 'Blizzard Bags.'   

Lisa is still 'on leave' and we hope she will be able to return soon and add to the conversation!

Find out more about Gooru http://goorulearning.org on this episode of TTT. This is the first in a series of webcasts in which we'll focus on Gooru, asking: How do you teach with Gooru? We'll be talking with teachers who use Gooru in their classrooms, asking them to share best practices and exchange ideas. And we'll dialogue with the Gooru team around what might be done to improve Gooru for all of us?

If you're new to Gooru, here are three places to start your inquiries:

• You might take a look through the lens of Open Educational Resources (OER): Project Blue Sky: Big Boost to OER From . . . Pearson?

Gooru Learning itself has a pedigree that is worth considering. Gooru is developed by Ednovo, the nonprofit education startup founded by Prasad Ram. Ram has a rich history in Silicon Valley, including work at Xerox PARC, Yahoo! and Google. While Director of Engineering for Google Research, Ram developed the concept for using search technology to discover educational content. Ram decided to leave Google in January 2011 and pursue this concept. Ram has started an education focused non-profit startup called Ednovo, which is going to build upon Gooru, a free web based education solution that was begun as a ’20% effort’ at Google, and piloted in India with 25 classrooms and 1000 students. Gooru allows teachers to use openly licensed web resources, find lesson plans on all subjects and topics and then customize it to their specific needs, with rich multimedia content including videos, slides, and simulations.

• You could take a dive into Kevin Hodgson's Meandering Mind and read his review, Gooru: Another Research Project Resource.

So, this morning, I went to Gooru to poke around a bit and remember what it is about. When I had been there last, the site had recently launched and I wasn’t quite sure what they were up to. There didn’t seem to be a lot of content. Now I understand. The site is another way to help students streamline their research queries (sort of like Instagrok, which I use) and for teachers to build up “collections” of resources that can be shared. I like the overall feel of the site — it takes a few minutes to get a sense of what to do, but once you understand it, you will see there are powerful paths to follow.

• You might also go to Gooru themselves and find out that they want to help us "Spend More Time Learning--and Less Time Searching."

Every day teachers and students scour the web to find the best resources to help them learn or teach, pulling from different resources scattered all over the Internet--but what if you could find and organize all the best web resources in one place? With Gooru, you can. Watch NASA videos about solar flares, play interactive games on PBS.com that teach about friction, and take quizzes on equations from Khan Academy. We aggregate the best of the web, giving you high-quality and free multimedia resources within seconds, so you can spend more time studying, and less time searching. When you find resources you love, you can then organize them into a playlist called a collection.

You might also find out what you need to know to get started by listening to our inspiring guests for this episode of TTT:

Paul Allison, Monika Hardy, and Chris Sloanhost Xenia Shih, Timothy Burke, and Jody Donovan from Gooru along with two amazing California teachers, Leah Jensen and Gail Desler.

Enjoy!

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Click Read more to see the chat that was happening during this live webcast and some important links to resources.

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On this episode of TTT Monika Hardy and her student, Cristian Leobardo lead us in a be lab update. We take a look at their revised Website, their book, and their travels http://redefineschool.com.

Here's how Monika, her students and her colleagues describe their main foucus/premise:

Public education could be the most accelerating venue for social change. Rather than waiting for any of the incredible [past, current and ongoing] innovations in redefining public education to scale, imagine we scale the individual. Imagine a new (old) narrative that can start anywhere because it begs no prep or training. Imagine we trust simplicity enough to give it a go. Imagine hastening equity, and ongoing sustainability.
I’ve been working with youth the last four years, locally in Loveland Colorado, as well as virtually around the globe. We have been in an intense mode of experimenting with first, self-directed learning, and now, the intersection of city and school. We've been afforded an incubated space (sand box) within our city, as a connected adjacency (both in and out of) our school district.

We are joined on this episode of TTT by

Paul Allison, Scott and Kelsey Shelhart, Cristian Leobardo, Karen Fasimpaur, Gregory Hill, Monika Hardy, Mikhil Goyal

Enjoy!