Rachel Smith

Teachers Teaching Teachers #201 - Horizon Report 2010 K-12 Edition, with Rachel Smith, Alan Levine, and Scott Newcomb - 05.19.10

Our guests for this podcast were Rachel Smith @nimah and Alan Levine @cogdog vice-presidents of the New Media Consortium. They are the principal writers of the 2010 K-12 Edition of the Horizon Report and they joined us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.  We supplemented their descriptions with examples from our classrooms. For example, check out the work fourth-grade teacher Scott Newcomb is doing with smartphones in Ohio.

Cloud Computing… Collaborative Environments… Game-Based Learning… Mobiles… Augmented Reality… Flexible Displays…

After enjoying and learning from the conversation at Seedlings-2010-05-06 with Lucy Gray and the K12 Horizon Report, we thought we would do a follow-up to their inspiring show. (Thanks Alice, Bob, and Cheryl! And double-thanks to Alice for helping to broadcast this episode.)

2010-K12-Horizon-Cover-320.jpg Our guests for this podcast were Rachel Smith @nimah and Alan Levine @cogdog vice-presidents of the New Media Consortium. They are the principal writers of the 2010 K-12 Edition of the Horizon Report and they joined us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.  We supplemented their descriptions with examples from our classrooms. For example, check out the work fourth-grade teacher Scott Newcomb is doing with smartphones in Ohio.

Are you working on the horizons of change? We’d love to hear your story in the comments below.

Rachel Smith's picture Rachel Smith NMC, VP, NMC Services http://www.nmc.org

Rachel S. Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services for the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of more than 260 world-class universities, colleges, museums, research centers, and technology companies dedicated to using new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and support learning and creative expression. She is recognized for her work in making new technologies approachable for higher education faculty and staff through talks, trainings, and written materials. A specialist in project coordination, user interface design, and visual facilitation, Rachel leads the NMC’s fee-based services units, directs the NMC’s involvement in projects such as the open source Pachyderm project, and directs all NMC internal and external publications. She serves as an interorganizational liaison, bringing together NMC members from around the globe to develop new projects. Rachel authors instructional materials, guides, and monographs on the creative and technical aspects of teaching with technology.

Alan Levine's picture Alan Levine  NMC, Vice President, Community and CTO http://www.nmc.org/


Alan Levine is the Vice President of Community and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the New Media Consortium, where he leads efforts to research and integrate those cool new 2.0, 3.0,… technologies. Before this, he spent 14 years evangelizing technology for the Maricopa Community Colleges, where he hoisted the first web server in the system way back in 1993. Alan was a key contributor to significant efforts such as Ocotillo, a faculty-led initiative that promotes innovation and drives change, created the , a virtual warehouse of innovation that pioneered the use of RSS in syndicating learning object content, and developed Feed2JS, an open source software shared for allowing people to easily incorportate RSS content into web pages. Alan works from home in the tiny town of Strawberry, Arizona, and continues to bark and growl about his work at CogDogBlog.

And that’s not all! We also invited teachers like Scott Newcomb to join us on this webcast to tell stories from your classroom! Examples of teachers looking for change on the horizon:
  • Scott Newcomb, a fourth grade teacher in St. Marys, Ohio.  He and his colleagues have been involved in a Mobile Learning project for the last two years. They have been using smartphones in the classroom.  Every student in their school district from 3rd grade to 6th grade has their own mobile learning device!  They will be adding seventh grade next year.  Their goal is to have a mobile learning device in every students’ hand from 3rd grade to 12th grade! Check out their school’s mobile learning website: http://www.smriders.net/Mobile_Learning/ Next year, they will have over 900 mobile learning devices in their school district!
     
  • You! We invite you to read the K 12 Horizon report and add your examples to the comments for this post.

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.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #193 - Is Evoke a game? Why does it matter? Five Students with Rachel Smith and Suzie Boss - 03.24.10

Join us as we listen to our students and our colleagues respond to questions about Evoke.

  • Jake is a senior in Chris Sloan's New Media class at Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
  • Robin is a sophomore in Paul Allison's English class at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, NYC.
  • Perez and Phil are freshman in Susan Ettenheim's class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, in New York City.
  • Nathan is a junior and he's a game-runner for Evoke from Austin, Texas.
  • Suzie Boss is the co-writer with Jane Krauss of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, and she has recently interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging.
  • Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services the New Media Consortium, and has taken on the role as a community organizer for teachers on Evoke.

We've been learning about gaming from students this spring, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we were joined by two ninth graders from Susan Ettenheim's class in NYC, a tenth grader from Paul Allison's class in Queens, an eleventh grader from Austin, Texas, and a senior from Chris Sloan's class in Salt Lake City.

We learned so much about gaming from Jake a few weeks ago (TTT #190) and Robin more recently (TTT #192) that we invited both of them back to talk more specifically about Alternate Reality Games and Evoke! On this episode, you'll hear Jake and Robin, and a few other students talk about their experience of playing Evoke!

Is Evoke a game? Or is it just a trick to get people to use a social network? Why do serious gamers seem to know what Jane McGonigal is up to (See recent TED talk.), and get engaged with this game, while other students are less engaged? We invite you to join us as we listen to our students and our colleagues respond to these questions.

  • Jake is a senior in Chris Sloan's New Media class at Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.
  • Robin is a sophomore in Paul Allison's English class at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, NYC.
  • Perez and Phil are freshman in Susan Ettenheim's class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, in New York City.
  • Nathan is a junior and he's a game-runner for Evoke from Austin, Texas.
  • Suzie Boss is the co-writer with Jane Krauss of Reinventing Project-Based Learning, and she has recently interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging.
  • Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services the New Media Consortium, and has taken on the role as a community organizer for teachers on Evoke. 

Please enjoy. And find out more about all of us and our work on Evoke at Teachers Teaching Teachers #192.

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

Teachers Teaching Teachers #192 - Students and Teachers Finding our Missions on Evoke: Rachel Smith and Robin - 03.17.10

Robin is playing Evoke, and on this podcast he tells us why. Robin is in Paul Allison's English class. He's a tenth Grader at the East-West School for International Studies, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Robin talks about his experiences in the first couple of weeks of playing Evoke.

We are also joined by Chris Wood, a student teacher from Queens College, CUNY who is working with Paul this semester.

Ninmah!
Rachel Smith

is also playing

Evoke

and she joined us to talk about this Alternate-Reality Game (ARG) as well. Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services

the New Media Consortium

. In addition to being the lead writer on the Horizon Report, Rachel writes on her

blog

that she has

 

a hard time explaining what I actually do. Some of it is writing (a lot of it, lately, which is not a bad thing). Some of it is drawing, which is pretty cool. I used to doodle in high school and get detention. Now I doodle at work and get kudos. Go figure. I also organize things and direct projects and try to be generally helpful.

Rachel wrote an wonderful introduction to Evoke on her blog, "

Urgent EVOKE: Agent Ninmah is Born

," and she started a Discussion on Evoke, in which she is “

calling all teachers!

” to find ways to collaborate.

Robin is playing Evoke, and on this podcast he tells us why. Robin is in Paul Allison's English class. He's a tenth Grader at the East-West School for International Studies, and on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Robin talks about his experiences in the first couple of weeks of playing Evoke.

We are also joined by Chris Wood, a student teacher from Queens College, CUNY who is working with Paul this semester.

So what is Evoke?

EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world.

It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.

The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.

The game begins on March 3, 2010. Players can join the game at any time.

On May 12th, 2010 the first season of the game will end, and successful participants will form the first graduating class of the EVOKE network.

Ninmah!
Rachel Smith is also playing Evoke and she joined us to talk about this Alternate-Reality Game (ARG) as well. Rachel Smith is the Vice President, NMC Services the New Media Consortium. In addition to being the lead writer on the Horizon Report, Rachel writes on her blog that she has

a hard time explaining what I actually do. Some of it is writing (a lot of it, lately, which is not a bad thing). Some of it is drawing, which is pretty cool. I used to doodle in high school and get detention. Now I doodle at work and get kudos. Go figure. I also organize things and direct projects and try to be generally helpful.

Rachel wrote an wonderful introduction to Evoke on her blog, "Urgent EVOKE: Agent Ninmah is Born," and she started a Discussion on Evoke, in which she is “calling all teachers!” to find ways to collaborate:

There have been many posts in other threads about getting a group of teachers together here on EVOKE. I’d like to pull us together. Here’s my suggestion:
1. In this thread, post who you are and what you teach — or, if you’re a teacher-type but not actually a teacher, like me, tell us what you do. Tell us also where you’re from!
2. Check out the google doc that happyseaurcin started — it has ideas about how to engage teachers in EVOKE.
3. Take a look at the wiki (http://urgentevoke.wikia.com/) and visit the Calling All Teachers page. Add your name (and a link back to your EVOKE profile, if you like) if you’d like to collaborate. If you have an idea for a project, add it to the brainstorming section.
Let’s see if we can get traction over the next couple of weeks and maybe pick an idea or two to develop more fully!

How did we get here?
At Educon 2.2 in January, Paul Allison had a conversation with Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss shortly after Suzie had interviewed Jane McGonigal for WorldChanging. It was Suzie’s excited comments that led him to begin to follow her McGonigal’s work and end up at Evoke. In March, several of us in the New York City Writing Project introduced Evoke in our English, Art, and Technology classrooms.

We are working together to become mentors for our students as they also play Evoke. We’re all very excited about it, so much so that on a Saturday morning last month, Susan Ettenheim, Chris Wood, Paul Allison and a few others traveled though a cold, rainy wind storm in NYC to meet for three hours, just to play Evoke together, and talk about which parts our students would need more support on and which they could do on their own. It was a lot of fun on that Saturday morning to share some of the stories of a couple of our students who had managed to push themselves onto the Leaders board already (e.g. Hannah Kohn).

Our students and we have already learned a lot with Evoke. We love the project prompts and the overall structure of Evoke! Our ultimate goal this semester is to look at other games, and to have students build prototypes of games, as well as mess around with some game building. (Oh, and we’ll be planting gardens and volunteering for City Harvest too!)
 
Please join us in this ongoing conversation!

We want to invite any teachers and students who are playing Evoke themselves and/or using it with their students to listen to this episode (and the next one, TTT #193, which is also about Evoke). We want to get your voice on a future episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. We do these conversations on Skype. Please let us know when you can join us to talk about Evoke on a Wednesday in April (4/7, 4/14, 4/21 or 4/28) at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. Plan to join us at http://edtechtalk.com/live if you want to find our more about Evoke and what were up to this Spring!

 

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

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