Susan Ettenheim

Teachers Teaching Teachers #202- The 3R's of Gaming: Playing, Modding, and Designing - 05.26.10

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we learned more about playing, modifying, and designing games. 

One of our guests was Scott Price, a game developer or producer at Gamestar Mechanic. A few of us in the New York City Writing Project, especially Susan Ettenheim and Shantanu Saha — both of whom are on this podcast — have been using a beta version of Gamestar Mechanic this spring with their students.

On this episode of TTT, we were also priviledged to have a 6 grade teacher who has been using Gamestar Mechanic as well as other gaming platforms extensively with his students, Al Doyle.

Al is the “Sports for the Mind” domain teacher at Quest 2 Learn, a new public school in New York City “where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems. It is a place to play, invent, grow, and explore.”

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we learned more about playing, modifying, and designing games. press-villagevoice.png

One of our guests was Scott Price, a game developer or producer at Gamestar Mechanic. A few of us in the New York City Writing Project, especially Susan Ettenheim and Shantanu Saha — both of whom are on this podcast — have been using a beta version of Gamestar Mechanic this spring with their students.

Students or as they are know inside of this game, “Mechanics" can do a bunch of fun and interesting things with Gamestar Mechanic, and most of them fall into three categories:

Quest
You’ll start the game playing the Gamestar Mechanic Quest. You’ll start out as a new arrival in Factory 7. Along the way, you will play games, fix broken games and even design games of your own. As you complete challenges, you’ll collect “sprites”: avatars, enemies, blocks and other tools that serve as the building blocks for making games.
Workshop
In the workshop, you can use the sprites you’ve earned to build your own games. You can edit and change games you have created, add content that tells the “story” behind your game and, of course, play the games you’ve made.
Game Alley
If you’ve created an awesome game, you can publish it to Game Alley. In Game Alley, mechanics can play games created by other users and share the games they have created. You can review and comment on other mechanics’ games to let them know how much their games rock or what they can do to make them better.

 

On this episode of TTT, we were also priviledged to have a 6 grade teacher who has been using Gamestar Mechanic as well as other gaming platforms extensively with his students, Al Doyle.

Al is the “Sports for the Mind” domain teacher at Quest 2 Learn, a new public school in New York City “where students learn to see the world as composed of many different kinds of systems. It is a place to play, invent, grow, and explore.”

3574046938_e75a33cc43_m.jpg
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.

 We hope you enjoy this episode, and we invite you to join us in our quest learn more about how to understand “game mechanics.” We want to imagine the different possibilities that Gamestar Mechanic and other sites like this provide to our students as we make room for these new literacies of game play, game modding, and game design!

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #198 - David Niguidula and Bill Fitzgerald Give New Life to Digital Portfolios - 04.28.10

We asked two of our favorite software developers/consultants/activists/dreamers, Bill Fitzgerald and David Niguidula to talk to us about digital portfolios on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.


Bill Fitzgerald and FunnyMonkey

At an Educon 2.1 session in January, Bill Fitzgerald showed us a Durpal-based digital portfolio system that he and his colleagues at FunnyMonkey had been developing. As always with Bill, it was more than a software demonstration. With this project, he is leading us in a process of “Rethinking Portfolios.”

We were happy the opportunity in this podcst to learn more about FunnyMonkey’s Digital Portfolio project.

David Niguidula and Richer Picture


Fifteen years ago, Paul Allison and Shantanu Saha were working at University Heights Secondary School in the Bronx when we had the opportunity to begin building a digital portfolio for our school. David Niguidula was the leader of this project with the Coalition of Essential Schools. That project was a life changer for both Paul and Shantanu. It was the experience with technology that would put each of us on our own journeys into educational technology that continue today. Occasionally our paths meet up. Both Shantanu’s and Paul’s students work on Youth Voices, a Drupal site developed by Bill Fitzgerald.

We were excited to have this opportunity to catch up with David Niguidula!

We wondered if these two guys had ever met before. Well, they didl meet, on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Enjoy!

We asked two of our favorite software developers/consultants/activists/dreamers, Bill Fitzgerald and David Niguidula to talk to us about digital portfolios on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.


Bill Fitzgerald and FunnyMonkey

At an Educon 2.1 session in January, Bill Fitzgerald showed us a Durpal-based digital portfolio system that he and his colleagues at FunnyMonkey had been developing. As always with Bill, it was more than a software demonstration. With this project, he is leading us in a process of “Rethinking Portfolios.”

The promise of the portfolio is that the demonstration of learning remains as close as possible to the process of learning, while allowing individual elements of the learning process to be highlighted and discussed as part of evaluation. This type of assessment creates a nuanced picture of how a person is developing as a learner.

Portfolios have been around for a while, yet they are still largely viewed as an “alternative” means of assessment. What are some of the barriers for adoption that exist? What are the arguments against using portfolios?

When used effectively as part of ongoing professional development:]

  • A teaching portfolio shows what and how a teacher is teaching;
  • In conjunction with a student portfolio, organic ties can be made between student learning and the role of the teach
  • The process of creating a teacher portfolio accomplishes (at least) two things
  1. it transforms curriculum development from an individual endeavor into a community endeavor; and
  2. after maintaining a teacher portfolio for one year, a teacher will have created a fully portable outline of their entire course, which has the potential to eliminate the need for a textbook.

We were happy the opportunity in this podcst to learn more about FunnyMonkey’s Digital Portfolio project.

David Niguidula and Richer Picture


Fifteen years ago, Paul Allison and Shantanu Saha were working at University Heights Secondary School in the Bronx when we had the opportunity to begin building a digital portfolio for our school. David Niguidula was the leader of this project with the Coalition of Essential Schools. That project was a life changer for both Paul and Shantanu. It was the experience with technology that would put each of us on our own journeys into educational technology that continue today. Occasionally our paths meet up. Both Shantanu’s and Paul’s students work on Youth Voices, a Drupal site developed by Bill Fitzgerald.

We were excited to have this opportunity to catch up with David Niguidula! This is how his site describes their work:

Richer Picture® products and services help schools use technology to personalize teaching and learning. Our digital portfolios provide a new way for your students to show that they are meeting standards — while celebrating who they are as individual learners.

We have the most extensive experience in developing and implementing electronic portfolios in K-12 schools. In the 1990’s, Ideas Consulting Founder David Niguidula led the first research project on digital portfolios while at the Coalition of Essential Schools. Since then, we have accumulated over a dozen years of experience working in elementary, middle, and high schools across the country and around the world.

We provide both technology tools and the professional development to help you use them effectively. Our software is customized for your school and is designed to fit your needs. Our professional development goes far beyond learning how to use the tools; we help your staff address the essential questions of assessment and school change.

These tandem descriptions made us wonder if these two guys had ever met before. Well, they didl meet, on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Enjoy!

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #197 - Students, Teachers, and Gardeners Mark Earth Day 2010 - Hour 2 of Earthcast 2010 - 04.21.10

Teachers Teaching Teachers was the second hour of Earthcast 2010:

  • We talked about school/community gardens! Paul Allison’s students at the East-West School of International Studies, Flushing have been tilling the earth this spring. They’ve been inspired by their play in Evoke to change the world, one garden at at time. A couple of student-gardeners join us on this podcast.

  • Susan Ettenheim also welcomed students from the Green Team at her school, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Manhattan.

  • We also had a teacher new to TTT, Elizabeth Kee. She teaches at Lower East Side Prep, also in Manhattan. Elizabeth had been teaching Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks to her mainly Chinese and other ELL students. This spring they planted the seeds from this book, and at the time of the Earthday, they were getting ready to move to a community garden.

  • AND!! We were joined by Evoke gardeners, Michele Baron from Virginia, and Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys from Guadalajara, Mexico!

What a way to start an EARTH DAY!

Where were you when Earth Day 2010 started at Zero Hour - Greenwich Mean Time Thursday (also known as 9 p.m Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific USA) ?

Many of us were listening to the 2010 Keynote Earthcast speaker, Jason Czarneki, which is available at Earthbridges.net.

Jason Czarneki, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, was the keynoting Earthcast 2010, a live, 24 hour webcastathon starting at 0 GMT on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 . Jason keynoted Earthcast 2009 and was back to jumpstart Earthcast 2010, this time speaking to the topic of, “Climate Policy and U.S.-China Relations.” The theme of the talk was particularly relevant as Jason is currently living and teaching in Guangzhou, China, north of Hong Kong, on a Fulbright Scholarship. Jason gave a 20-30 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of discussion and questions from the moderators and virtual participants.

That was a tough act to follow, but we did our best! Teachers Teaching Teachers was the second hour of Earthcast 2010:

 

  • We talked about school/community gardens! Paul Allison’s students at the East-West School of International Studies, Flushing have been tilling the earth this spring. They’ve been inspired by their play in Evoke to change the world, one garden at at time. A couple of student-gardeners join us on this podcast.

  • Susan Ettenheim also welcomed students from the Green Team at her school, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Manhattan.

  • We also had a teacher new to TTT, Elizabeth Kee. She teaches at Lower East Side Prep, also in Manhattan. Elizabeth had been teaching Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks to her mainly Chinese and other ELL students. This spring they planted the seeds from this book, and at the time of the Earthday, they were getting ready to move to a community garden.

  • AND!! We were joined by Evoke gardeners, Michele Baron from Virginia, and Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys from Guadalajara, Mexico!

What a way to start an EARTH DAY!

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #196 - Mash-up of Youth Voices Student Photographers and Evoke Gardeners - 04.14.10

We hope you enjoy this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers where we bring together gardeners from the alternate reality game, Evoke with photography students on Youth Voices. Take a look at this recent photo discussion, and join a few of our students:

  • Jake, from Chris Sloan's classes at  Judge Memorial H.S. in Salt Lake City
  • Matt, Brianna, and Annie, from Susan Ettenheim's digital photography class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC
  • We are also joined by Evoke gardener, Michele Barron.

We hope you'll enjoy this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers where we bring together gardeners from the alternate reality game, Evoke with photography students on Youth Voices. Take a look at this recent photo discussion, and join a few Youth Voices students:

  • Gamer, photograher, and musician, Jake, from Chris Sloan's classes at  Judge Memorial H.S. in Salt Lake City
     
  • Matt, Brianna, and Annie, from Susan Ettenheim's digital photography class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC
     
  • We are also joined by Evoke gardener, Michele Barron.

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #195 - Spring Curriculum Share - 04.07.10

It’s Spring in the northern hemisphere. Some of us have five or six, others nine weeks left in the academic year. It’s a great time to try out something new or to reflect on what we tried this year. What are you doing this academic season? Listen to this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, then let us know what you are doing this spring.

  • You will <fill in the blank>
  • Paul Allison and Rachel Smith report on how Evoke is going, perhaps with a student or two.
  • Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan talk about how their collaborations in digital photography classes are going.
  • Matt Montagne and a student discuss Goggle Apps and the plans, at the time, for Earth Day, which was a success again this year.

It’s Spring in the northern hemisphere. Some of us have five or six, others nine weeks left in the academic year. It’s a great time to try out something new or to reflect on what we tried this year. What are you doing this academic season? Listen to this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, then let us know what you are doing this spring.

  • You will <fill in the blank>
  • Paul Allison and Rachel Smith report on how Evoke is going, perhaps with a student or two.
  • Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan talk about how their collaborations in digital photography classes are going.
  • Matt Montagne and a student discuss Goggle Apps and the plans, at the time, for Earth Day, which was a success again this year.

Photo: Uploaded on April 12, 2010 by AnnaBanana628
 

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

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