Recently the group of teachers whose students are using Youth Voices have been paying more attention to both the gamers in our classrooms and to the educational leaders who are suggesting that we consider bringing gaming into the curriculum. We are looking for ideas, answer to our questions and inspiration from students like Jake and critical friends like Suzie Boss, both of whom join us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.

• Jake is a senior in Chris Sloan's New Media class at Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• Suzie Boss is the co-writer with Jane Krauss of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, and she has recently interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging.

The invitation that we sent for this episode remains an open one. We would love to hear how you and your students are bringing the world of gaming into your teaching and learning!

If you’re a student who plays games or a game designer or a teacher who resents that he doesn’t have more time to play games... If you use games in your classroom or would like to... If you want to learn more about gaming in education—like we do.... then please join us for more talk about what we’re learning about gaming! Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. We’re looking for more students and teachers to join us in this quest to include games in our classrooms.

Also, we would like to take a moment to say how important it has been for us to learn about the work of others at conferences this year. This episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, which was produced and edited by Chris Sloan, and much of the innovative curriculum work that we are doing in our classrooms this spring probably would not have happened without the important work of Christina Cantrill, Paul Oh, and Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and others at the National Writing Project.

They introduced us to the work of Barry Joseph and Rafi Santo from Global Kids at the Digital Is conference, a one-day conference supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative in November 2009. And they've been nurturing our connections ever since.

Also, we owe thanks to Chris Lehmann and the teachers and students of the Science Leadership Academy for bringing us together with Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss at Educon 2.2 in January 2010. Suzie's suggestion that we take a look at Evoke helped up us find a rich gaming path to follow this spring! It's worth remembering that a lot of exciting teaching and learning can come from following up on those business cards that we exchange at conferences.

Other related Teachers Teaching Teachers episodes:

• Teachers Teaching Teachers #188 - A snow day in NYC gives us a chance to do some collaborative planning - 02.26.10
• Teachers Teaching Teachers #182 - A student-centered follow up: More on games, YouTube, Twitter, and Research - 01.13.10
• Teachers Teaching Teachers #181 - Getting Schooled on Gaming: A conversation with Global Kids and Quest to Learn - 01.06.10

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

In the first half of this weeks episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had an inspiring conversation with Katherine Schulten editor of The Learning Network at the New York Times.  Our theme for this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers was about increasing teacher voice in public debates. Katherine suggested how we might use The Learning Network for that.

In addition, we were joined by:

• Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley
• and Andrea Zellner a leader at the Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan State University's site of the NWP.

Andrea and many o

thers in the chat room during the webcast gave witness to why we want to maintain federal funding for the NWP to continue -- an example of a time wh

en we need to get our voices to be heard! 

"It's been a heady week for teaching and learning discussion on the Times site," writes Katherine Schulten, our first guest on this podcast. One of Katherine's jobs as an editor of the New York Times Learning Network is to moderate the comments that come in on education-related articles.

• By this last weekend (3/7/2010), the article, "Building a Better Teacher, had 313 comments on it, and had been one of the top most-emailed on the Times site after it went online last Wednesday.
• For several days the article about Diane Ravitch's about-face on NCLB was right up there too.
• And this article, "Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets," which is about teaching Darwin and Global Warming got over 1000 comments.

A Student Opinion post from earlier this week, "Where Do You Stand on Unconcealed Handguns? "received many lively responses from "students 13 and older," who "are invited [to the Learning Network] to comment on questions about issues in the news."

If you just clicked on those links, your head is probably spinning: so many issues so little time! That's what it feels like to have a conversation with Katherine Schulten, who before she became an editor for the Learning Network was a NYC teacher and a consultant for the New York City Writing Project. Katherine was worried that she was talking too much, because she is so excited about managing the Learning Network.

We'll turned Katherine loose, then we interrupted her with a few questions. We think you'l learn a lot about the New York Times Learning Network on this podcast:

Currently, they are offering these features:

• Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
• Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
• Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
• 6 Q’s About the Newss — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
• News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
• Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.

The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, they re-launched it as a Times blog.

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

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, you will learn more about RAW INcK: Reading and Writing in Kentuckiana. Our guests were one site’s student managers, Tyler, along with their teacher, Paul W. Hankins, an English Teacher and Creator of RAW INcK. (Another student-manager of the Ning, Jin joined us in the chat room.) Paul is also a teacher-consultant with the Indiana University Southeast Writing Project and a State Representative to ALAN from Indiana. Listen to find out why we are excited to connect up with RAW INcK, “A Reading and Writing Community Hosted by the Juniors of Silver Creek High School [Indiana]. Now hosting members from all across America! Go INcK!”

Learn about how they set up chat sessions with authors like these:

• Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, and Identical.
• Chris Crutcher. Crutcher’s works include Athletic Shorts, Chinese Handcuffs, Deadline, The Sledding Hill, and King of the Mild Frontier.
• Kimberly Willis Holt, author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, My Louisiana Sky, and a host of other YA titles.

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

This podcast is another in a series of Teachers Teaching Teachers shows to feature the authors of a recent outcrop of books on new media and literacy (Copyright Clarity: 184, 135, The Digital Writing Workshop: 172, 171, 170, Teaching the New Writing: 157, 156, 155, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools: 138)  Perhaps we have the makings of a new discipline here, or at least a budding new branch on the tree of academic inquiry. See the National Writing Project's list at Teaching Now: Digital Writing Books. What would you add to this list? Let us know by adding a comment below.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we were excited to have a conversation with Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast about their new book, Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons.

Stephens and Ballast guide teachers in how to successfully implement technology for writing across the curriculum and create engaging lesson plans. They outline four frames of writing–inside writing, responsive writing, purposeful writing, and social action writing–and present student-centered and inquiry-based reading/writing lessons to connect real-world writing to content area standards. The result is a state-of the-art resource for helping teachers teach every student to write inside and outside of the classroom.

Liz Campbell Stephens teaches graduate courses in Educational Technology and is Director of the Office of Educator Preparation at Texas State University-San Marcos. She serves on the National Writing Project’s Board of Directors and was Director of the Central Texas Writing Project for 11 years. She co-authored Technology, Reading, and Language Arts and has written numerous chapters and papers on technology and literacy.  Liz is former high school English teacher and brings that experience to her work as a teacher educator, federal programs director, and consultant. Her research has centered on literacy, technology, and teacher education.

Kerry Ballast is a Teacher Consultant for the Central Texas Writing Project and a secondary English language arts teacher with 14 years classroom experience. She has worked with students in grades 6-12 to explore various forms of writing, both traditional and digital. Currently, she works for the Texas Education Agency.

We were also joined by English teacher, Joel Malley who teaches at Cheektowaga Central School District, near Buffalo, NY. Joel is also the Tech Liaison for the Western New York Writing Project at Canisius College. Troy Hicks had a couple of things to say as well. Troy is the director of the Chippewa River Writing Project at Central Michigan University.
 

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

On this podcast a few of us who attended Educon 2.2 reflect on our learning there. Appropriately enough, we were guided in this reflective conversation by:

• Hannah, a student from The Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia
• her history teacher Diana Laufenberg
• their Principal, Chris Lehmann

On this podcast you'll hear what four teachers, three of us from different Writing Projects, had to say just a few days after ther conference. You'll hear from:

• Paul Allison, New York City Writing Project
• Joe Conroy, NWP at Rutgers University Writing Project (Don't miss Joe's video, below.)
• Gail Desler, Area 3 Writing Project in Northern California
• Dolores Gende, Academic Technology Coordinator and Physics teacher from Dallas, Texas
  

If you were at Educon, we hope you'll be able to compare notes with us. If you were not able to make it, perhaps this podcast can suggest why there's so much interest in Educon!

Here's how the organizers of EduCon 2.2 describe the conference:

What is Educon?

EduCon 2.2 is both a conversation and a conference.

And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.

The Axioms

Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.2

1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
2. Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around
4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5. Learning can — and must — be networked

Enjoy Joe Conroy's Video!

Watch What is EduCon? in Educational & How-To  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

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

Our friend and colleague, Chris Sloan, from the Wasatch Range Writing Project in Utah invited Renee Hobbs and Troy Hicks to join us on this week’s Teachers Teaching Teachers. (By the way, if you would like to plan and produce (and later edit) a TTT webcast like Chris did for this episode, please email Paul Allison or Susan Ettenheim.)

Here’s how Chris Sloan describes his thinking for the live webcast:

The authors of “Code of Practices for Fair Use in Media Education” might just as well be describing me, when they write, “Most ‘copyright education’ that educators and learners have encountered has been shaped by the concerns of commercial copyright holders, whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyrighted material with stealing.”  While the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education was published more than a year ago, I still have questions about how it applies to my own teaching and to my students’ digital compositions.  And I don’t think I’m alone either.  So I thought having a chat with Renee Hobbs and Troy Hicks, two people who’ve thought a lot about this, might help me (and other teachers like me) think through the copyright doctrine of fair use.

We asked Renee to talk about her background, how she got to this place where she is, a media educator at Temple University.  In November 2008, educators were introduced to the “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, by Renee Hobbs, Peter Jaszi, and Patricia Auferheide.  We also asked her how and why the three of them created this code? Troy Hicks wrote a book The Digital Writing Workshop and an article “Transforming our understanding of copyright and fair use”.  Given that he had written a book that advocates how to teach digital writing, we are happy to have his thoughts on Renee’s work during this podcast.

• At the end of the section, “What is transformative use?” Troy writes: “If we as educators can invite our students to think critically about their use of copyrighted materials in the process of creating their own digital compositions, and help them understand what it means to build on the work of another in a transformative way, then we can open up thought-provoking discussions about how we compose in the 21st century.”  Can you say more about that Troy?  How does that look in your own teaching?

Now some teachers might not think that this document pertains to them because we might not all understand the title and/or the concept of “Fair Use,” but one of the things I notice pretty quickly about the document (on page 2) is that media literacy is often embedded in other subject areas.  Additionally the description of Media Literacy Education seems to describe what students do in Youth Voices a lot of the time, and what more students will be doing the more they create digital compositions.

• ML is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms
• ML responds to the demands of cultural participation in the 21st century
• ML like all literacy includes both receptive and productive dimensions
• media can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors and the democratic process

The Guide addresses… “the transformative use of copyrighted materials in media literacy educations that can flourish only with a robust understanding of fair use….  The Supreme Court has pointed out that fair use keeps copyright from violating the First Amendment….  Fair use helps ensure that people have access to the information they need to fully participate as citizens.  The fair use doctrine allows users to make use of copyrighted works without permission or payment when the benefit to society outweighs the cost to the copyright holder.”“for any particular field lawyers and judges consider expectations and practice in assessing what is ‘fair’ within that field.  So in essence we’re talking specifically about fair use in an educational setting, about how fair use applies to student digital compositions published on the Internet – Youth Voices.The Fair use Doctrine (section 107) of the Copyright Act of 1976 states that the use of copyrighted material “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research” is not infringement.In weighing the balance at the heart of fair use analysis, judges refer to four types of considerations mentioned in the law.

• the purpose of the use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the original work
• and the effect of the use on the market for the original

In recent years, legal scholars have found that courts return again and again to two questions in deciding if a particular use of a copyrighted work is a fair use

• did the unlicensed use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
• was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?

Applying the doctrine of fair use requires a reasoning process, not a list of hard-and-fast rules.  It requires users to consider the context and situation of each use of copyrighted work.  So we want you to join us. We’ll present a couple of cases from our work on Youth Voices.

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

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.

If you were itching to include gaming in your curriculum, what would you do? Susan and I, and others in the New York City Writing Project started by having a conversation with some pretty smart people earlier this month on Teachers Teaching Teachers. We met most of these educators in November 2009 at the National Writing Project's "Digital Is..." Conference, which was an invitational one-day conference supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

On this podcast we are joined by these amazing folks:

• Barry Joseph and Rafi Santo from Global Kids.
• Jonathan Richter and Peggy Marconi who are working together at the Oregon Writing Project at the University of Oregon.
• New York City Public School teachers, Al Doyle, David Marini, and Shantanu Saha

Let's start by quoting Global Kids on Games-based Learning|:

Since 2002, Global Kids has been a leader in the use of online games to promote global awareness, engaged citizenship, and  21st Century Learning Skills. Through Playing 4 Keeps, Global Kids trains urban youth to think critically about digital games and design games about important social issues. Here is an article that just came out about their most recent program for individual educators: American Library Association on Global Kid’s games-based trainings.

Here's more about Barry Joseph and Rafi Santo:

• Barry Joseph, Global Kids, Inc., Director of the Online Leadership Program, holds a BA from Northwestern University and an MA in American Studies from New York University. Barry came to Global Kids in 2000 through the New Voices Fellowship of the Academy for Educational Development, funded by the Ford Foundation. He has developed innovative programs in the areas of youth-led online dialogues, video games as a form of youth media, the application of social networks for social good and the educational potential of virtual worlds, combining youth development practices with the development of high profile digital media projects that develop 21st Century Skills. He has also worked with GK’s development program to secure funding from a number of foundation’s and corporations. Barry served on the steering committee of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative and his writing appeared in the Foundation’s Ecology of Games volume in 2007. He has spoken at numerous conferences and published articles in a wide variety of publications.
   
• Since joining Global Kids, Rafi Santo has been developing and implementing educational technology projects as varied as youth advisories on digital media, online youth dialogues, social media civic engagement programs and youth leadership development and peer education in virtual worlds. He has collaborated on projects with organizations including The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, UNICEF, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has worked with many of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning grantees to strengthen their initiatives through youth voices and perspectives. He has ten years of experience in youth development and education. Prior to joining Global Kids, Rafi did field work in international development in India, helping to build bridges between Hindu and Muslim communities in conflict. He graduated with a BA in Integral Studies from New York University.
  

Next check out this is brief overview of a gaming project that Jonathan Richter and Peggy Marconi are working on:

The Simulations Gaming Development Initiative (SGDI) program at Lane Community College aims to integrate programming and gaming industry curricula into a distributed 3D virtual and web-enhanced platform in order to enhance access and innovation for people across the country. The project has been designed to start locally and scale up as the capacity for a geodistributed Community of Practice emerges to include distance students from participating high schools and community colleges. An introduction to Second Life course is being piloted Fall 2009, with concurrent design of a gaming and simulation programming course to be implemented Spring 2010. The SGDI project features a focus on building capacity to attract non-typical students into the computer sciences - particularly females - by developing support structures for learning such content in accessible and collaborative ways.Center for Advanced Technology in Education.

Here's more about Jonathon Richter and Peggy Marconi:

• Jonathon Richter, Ed.D is Director of The Center for Learning in Virtual Environments at The University of Oregon where he currently is co-Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation grants – one to integrate computer science and game development into virtual environments at Lane Community College in Oregon and the other investigating the way globally distributed teams use virtual worlds to collaborate and innovate. He is the co-founder and current chair of the American Educational Research Association’s special interest group on virtual worlds named the Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning (ARVEL) and is leading the MERLOT Taskforce on Virtual Worlds.
   
• Peggy Marconi is the Associate Director Oregon Writing Project at the University of Oregon, Center for Advanced Technology in Education . Peggy is good at making curriculum connections for classroom application for gamimg. And she iscurrently working with colleagues to develop Oregon Writing Project Institutes in Second Life.

Finally, allow us to introduce you to two New York City Public School teachers, Al Doyle and Shantanu Saha:

• Al Doyle | Sports for the Mind domain teacher Al Doyle, a native of Brooklyn, has interests ranging from art and animation to set design, digital imaging and most recently, game design. He was the producer and lead animator for the Salvadori Foundation’s Art of Construction, a web site designed to teach basic architecture and engineering to middle school students. For more than twenty years, he has taught computer graphics and multimedia at leading independent New York City K-12 schools. Al developed a popular course for adults, Learning Photoshop Through Art, at the Guggenheim Museum. Al received a Jerome Foundation Fellowship to create a portfolio of prints at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop which is now in the Library of Congress collection. Al studied stage design at the Polakov Studio in the West Village and was resident designer at HB Studio for several years. In addition, he designed over 100 educational theater productions and over 25 professional designs for ballet, dance, drama, musical theater and opera in off-Broadway and regional theater. As Director of Internet Training at the National Teacher Training Institute for New York’s Channel Thirteen / WNET, Al traveled extensively in a “train-the-trainers” model of technology integration for K-12 teachers. Currently, in addition to his role at Quest, Al teaches for the graduate division of Touro College’s Masters Degree Program in Instructional Technology
  
  
• Shantanu Saha is a technology teacher at Baccalaureate School for Global Education. On his Google profile, Shantanu lists his Superpower as: “I can heal electronics by touch.” His Interests are “games, games, and more games.”
   
• David Marini and Paul Allison are colleagues at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens. David mainly teaches Art, and he is a big gamer.

Gamer or not, you'll be inspired by this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Let us know how you are using games in your classroom!

Image:  “Darth Vader getting schooled about Japan’s keitai culture,” Uploaded on August 13, 2005 by chriskk

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