Paul Allison

Susan Ettenheim just started using Sproutbuilder this spring and is always happy to work with VoiceThread, an all time favorite application, so we decided to introduce them to each other with you joining us in the conversation. Trudy Marquardt from Sproutbuilder joined us with Justin Ellsworth, a Sprout using educator, and Ben Papell and Steve Muth from VoiceThread.

From VoiceThread: With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. Users can doodle while commenting, use multiple identities, and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on other websites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs to play as archival movies.

Steve and Ben, aside from sharing with Trudy and Justin and our listeners, introduced the amazing new VoiceThread Library. The Digital Library is a database of articles about successful VoiceThread projects. It creates a resource that offers guidance and inspiration for people undertaking new projects.

Sprout Builder is a web-hosted, visual authoring solution that allows creative professionals to quickly and easily create branded, rich-media content and widgets. So, why are we interested in it for education? Our students want to build, build, build - who wouldn't want to "make a website" and publish it?

When Harold Rheingold posted  a tweet about SproutBuilder, Susan was intrigued, having followed his work for many years since his very first books about online community.
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09/wiki/widgets-lab
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09/wiki/a-short-guide-how-i-created-demo-sprout-less-hour

Susan's students had been asking to build websites and since becoming a Google Apps school, students had access to Sites. Could they start a Site that could grow to be a digital portfolio over the four years of high school? Could Sites be interesting enough to them to hold their attention? They started a main page and then were frozen. What could they talk about? They were "only" in 9th grade. They needed to gain some confidence and validate the interests and passions that they did already have. Every student found a topic about which they wanted to learn more and built a Sprout to explore the topic. Along the way, they learned about fair use, developing a point of view and a hook into a story, citations and rss feeds. They started to learn about widgets and social media and saw how a giant like Pepsi, http://www.pepsithrowbackhub.com/index.html and a 9th grade student could explore using the same tool.

Trudy Marquardt at SproutBuilder started answering Susan's help questions and introduced her to Justin who has started an amazing wiki about SproutBuilder.
Here are some links that Justin shared:
http://www.farmington.k12.mi.us/
http://www.farmington.k12.mi.us/woo/classrooms/2nd/index.php
http://singtokids.wikispaces.com/Fifth+Grade

Here are some links to get you started:
http://www.sproutbuilder.com/
http://ed.voicethread.com
http://techfarm.wikispaces.com/Sprout

Here is a link to a YouTube Video that Trudy made on Sprouts and Education:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mok49o2o2e4

oh and... the link to the VoiceThread Moodle embed plugin - http://voicethread.com/blog/

Thank you Harold Rheingold for your Twitter posts! One of Harold's college students has even corresponded with one of Susan's students about building Sprouts.

Where are the intersection between widgets, commercialism, education and those amazing creations like Voice Thread and Sprout who seem to knit it all together? Please add your thoughts and experiences to our discussion. Keep it real!

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

Our guest on this Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast is David Colarusso, developer of communityCounts and a moderator of Ask the President.

A few weeks ago, as soon as Paul Allison had finished reading about “Ask the President” in The Nation, Barack Obama was conducting his first online town hall. Obama answered questions that had been voted to the top at WhiteHouse.gov, an exciting new process which was molded on a project that was created and is being hosted by our guest, David Colarusso, “a 30-year-old law student and former high school teacher.”

When Paul read that this web innovator and activist was a former teacher, he started thinking that David may have some thoughts about how my students and the students involved in our social network, http://youthvoices.net, might get involved in the “Ask The President” project or other communityCOUNTS projects.

Listen to our conversation with David Colarusso about “leveraging your voice for change.” We asked him how to “spark, collect, rank, and compel discussion for an assortment of web-content from Flickr to YouTube” using communityCounts.

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

Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison welcome colleagues Ron Link (NYC Writing Project), Gail Desler (Area 3 Writing Project in California), and Fred Hass (Boston Writing Project) for a conversation about collaboration, publishing, and building a responsive community of students, mainly within our work together on Youth Voices.

Please listen to how we talk to each other, then plan to join us in the future.

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

Do you work with schools globally? Or want to?

The teachers whose students use Youth Voices -- and meet each week on this webcast -- often talk about “taking it global.” And this is a key value advocated by Jeff Lebow.

The idea for this webcast came when a teacher new to our work together contacted us saying that she was thinking of having her students get involved with both Youth Voices and Taking it Global (TIG). This teacher, Melissa Lynn Pomerantz, a 10 grade English teacher from St. Louis joined us on the show. 

To learn more about TIGed we invited:

• Katherine Walraven; http://profiles.tigweb.org/kagawa - TIG’s Education Program Manager,
  
  We also invited a teacher and a tech integrator who use TIGed:
   
• Mali Bickley; http://profiles.tigweb.org/mbickley
• Suzie Vesper; http://profiles.tigweb.org/suzievesper

Listen to this podcast if you would also like to learn more about Taking It Global. Perhaps like us, you will want to learn how we can broaden our -- and our students -- horizons beyond these United States.

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

Do you use VoiceThread? Many of us do, and as we grow with this application in our classrooms, it’s great to know that the founders are still there with us, listening and improving their tool.

Perhaps you also received an email from the VoiceThread team earlier this month. Upon their release of “a major update to our Groups feature and want to share how it works and what it means for everyday VoiceThreaders.” They go on to explain that the improvements mean that groups are “persistent,” “borderless,” and “simple.” And they did profide “a Thread showing what’s new and how to use it.” http://voicethread.com/share/343705/.

Fair enough, but this made Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison feel the need for more conversation! We asked Steve Muth and Ben Papell to join us on Teachers Teaching Teachers February 25.

We also invited four teachers whose art as educators includes using VoiceThread. Bill Ferriter, Mattie Ettenheim, Mary Ellen Rudolph, Colette Cassinelli and others!

Enjoy the podcast.

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