George Haines

Teachers Teaching Teachers #182 - A student-centered follow up: More on games, YouTube, Twitter, and Research - 01.13.10

On this week’s Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had some follow-up’s, and some room for new voices. Paul Allison invited several of his students from the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, NY onto the show to explain more about gaming. These students were listening and in the chat room on TTT#181 the week before when we talked about gaming in schools with other teachers, researchers, and consultants. The student had asked for a student-centered follow up. Listen to find out where gaming is in their lives.

And if that’s not enough, this week's podcast also includes George Haines, a 6th grade teacher back on the show to talk about a Twitter project he was about to launch. George was on TTT in August: Teachers Teaching Teachers #165 - 08.26.09 - Meet Lisa Dick and George Haines: Talking about research and diigo George has written us recently to say that he hasn’t given up on “video and self-directed learning via youtube."

On this week’s Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had some follow-up’s, and some room for new voices. Paul Allison invited several of his students from the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, NY onto the show to explain more about gaming. These students were listening and in the chat room on TTT#181 the week before when we talked about gaming in schools with other teachers, researchers, and consultants. The student had asked for a student-centered follow up. Listen to find out where gaming is in their lives.

And stay tuned every Wednesday evening this Spring as Paul and Susan Ettenheim and other students learn about bringing gaming into their curriculum this coming semester. If you know of a gamer, please invite him or her to join us as well! We’d love to include other students via Skype!

And if that’s not enough, this week's podcast also includes George Haines, a 6th grade teacher back on the show to talk about a Twitter project he was about to launch. George was on TTT in August: Teachers Teaching Teachers #165 - 08.26.09 - Meet Lisa Dick and George Haines: Talking about research and diigo George has written us recently to say that he hasn’t given up on “video and self-directed learning via youtube."

I haven’t scrapped that platform yet, but I decided to try to use Twitter for self-directed learning first. It is so much more nimble of a platform, I figured it would allow for a more fluid discussion and more immediate feedback and clarification.I saw that you have a youthvoices account on twitter and I just started following it. My kids are almost ready to start tweeting out their questions and connecting to other kids as part of this “KidSourcing” project. My kids are 6th graders, but I have invited any classes in the ballpark to connect with my kids. We are connecting to kids in Tanzania (http://epicchangeblog.org/2009/10/21/the-twitterkids-of-tanzania/) and I am working out the involvement with schools in Peru, Brazil, China and a couple here in the old U.S. of A. I don’t know how neatly our project meshes with what you are trying to accomplish with Youth Voices, but I figured I would reach out and gauge  your interest in connecting.Here is the basic outline for the project: The idea is to have kids search for answers from the crowd of kids with no help from the adults (aside from monitoring and guiding offline).

The idea is to seek answers to “why” questions as opposed to “What” questions. For example, a question that a kid can simply Google like “when did the civil war start?” is a bad one, but a question like “WHY did the civil war start?” is a good one. Questions that start discussions, lead to independent research and sharing links fit the bill. The idea would be to keep it loose and low impact- not a heavily dependent collaboration. I will probably tell my kids to post a new question each week and I will probably give them an arbitrary number of questions from other kids to help answer.

For the first month we will work in depth on the project, then I hope to make it part of the routine when they come to the lab, meaning they login and check twitter for 5-10 minutes before we launch into whatever other projects we are doing at the time. video and self-directed learning via youtube.I haven’t scrapped that platform yet, but I decided to try to use Twitter for self-directed learning first. It is so much more nimble of a platform, I figured it would allow for a more fluid discussion and more immediate feedback and clarification.I saw that you have a Youth Voices account on twitter and I just started following it. My kids are almost ready to start tweeting out their questions and connecting to other kids as part of this “KidSourcing” project. My kids are 6th graders, but I have invited any classes in the ballpark to connect with my kids. We are connecting to kids in Tanzania (http://epicchangeblog.org/2009/10/21/the-twitterkids-of-tanzania/) and I am working out the involvement with schools in Peru, Brazil, China and a couple here in the old U.S. of A. I don’t know how neatly our project meshes with what you are trying to accomplish with youthvoices, but I figured I would reach out and gauge  your interest in connecting.

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #165 - 08.26.09 - Meet Lisa Dick and George Haines: Talking about research and diigo

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had a conversation about Diigo and annotations with Lisa Dick, Computer Education a teacher Northern Louisiana @tidertechie. I had put out a call for teachers who use Diigo with their students, and Lisa answered that call.

We also talked with George Haines @oline73. George teaches 7th Graders out on Long Island. One of his sites, by the way is a Google Site, so there’s more to talk about there, since I’ve been building a prototype of what I want students to do. Anyway… George and I connected on Twitter because I was wondering about how to keep my up-coming curriculum focused on self-initiated, self-interested, self-sustaining inquiries.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had a conversation about Diigo and annotations with Lisa Dick, Computer Education a teacher Northern Louisiana @tidertechie. I had put out a call for teachers who use Diigo with their students, and Lisa answered that call.

We also talked with George Haines @oline73. George teaches 7th Graders out on Long Island. One of his sites, by the way is a Google Site, so there’s more to talk about there, since I’ve been building a prototype of what I want students to do. Anyway… George and I connected on Twitter because I was wondering about how to keep my up-coming curriculum focused on self-initiated, self-interested, self-sustaining inquiries.

At Youth Voices, we do a lot of work around this question. We’ve borrowed James A. Beane’s beginning point in his Curriculum Integration work. It’s from Beane that we got the idea to have students write “10 self and 10 world questions“  There’s been a lot of — “Well, maybe we need to do this or that instead.” — And I’m open to some of this, but I still find this simple beginning place to be incredibly powerful.

Getting back to George Haines, he had some ideas that he said were too long to put into 140 characters, ideas about how to kick off self-directed projects. So we invited him onto TTT.

In short, we talked about research, annotating resources, sharing them in diigo, and we talked about why we do this self-motivated, “I-search” in the first place… and we’ll be meeting two new teachers. That’s the most wonderful part of this story. I had never met Lisa Dick or George Hines or the others that joined us on this webcast. We hope you enjoy meeting them too.

 

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

 

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