Writing

Teachers Teaching Teachers #96 - Has digital storytelling changed writing? - 03.19.08

Paul Allison — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:14:09 -0500

This spring Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are experimenting again. This time with Hypertextopia. We have just begun to explore with our students how writing changes in this online environment. To learn more, we invited Mark Bernstein and Jeremy Ashkenas to have a conversation with us.

Mark Bernstein has been Eastgate's chief scientist since 1987. He has developed Storyspace and other hypertext software, and he is the publisher of wonderful hypertexts.
Jeremy Ashkenas is working on Hypertextopia as a part of his final project for his undergraduate degree at Brown University.

We were inspired to invite the spunky programmer/publisher to talk with the upstart literature/computer undergrad after reading through this recent thread on if:Book. Listen to learn more about hypertext writing online, and join us at Hypertextopia!

Chat Log

Teachers Teaching Teachers #63 - 07.20.07 - From Collaboration to Revolution at Tech Matters`07

Paul Allison — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:58:56 -0500

This is our third, and final installment of Teachers Teaching Teachers webcasts from the National Writing Project's Tech Matters`07 in Chico, California. Today, Jason Hando from Sydney, Austrialia and Donna Bragg, from the Lehigh Valley Writing Project in Pennsylvania joined six teachers to discuss Google Docs, wikis, collaboration, and the changes that are happening in learning for both young people and for many teachers, even if these changes are happening more slowly for school systems. This is our discussion at the end of a day focused on how collaborative tools have changed the ways we write and learn in and out of schools in the 21st Century.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #59 - 06.27.07 - Welcoming new voices

Paul Allison — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:55:40 -0500

Joining Paul Allison (NYC), Lee Baber (Virginia), and Susan Ettenheim (NYC) on this show were two new voices on Teachers Teaching Teachers and one regular guest (with a side of him we haven't seen before):

Karen McComas was finally able to join us. (She has had a class on Wednesday evenings.) Karen is Associate Professor of Communication Disorders at Marshall University, in West Virginia. She is an ASHA-certified Speech-Language Pathologist and Audiologist. Karen also serves as the Chair of the Technology Liaison Leadership Team of the National Writing Project and as a Teacher Consultant for the Marshall University Writing Project . For her, writing is an historical and political act. She writes to understand and preserve the story of her life. She has also been an inspiration for teaching with technology in the National Writing Project for many years. Here's Karen's blog ...in mind's eye...

Betty D. Collum was able to get on using her cell phone. Betty is a 5th/6th writing teachers in Webster County Schools, Eupora, Mississippi. She is also the Mississippi State University Writing Project Tech Liaison, and a member of the National Writing Project's Tech Liaison Leadership Team. This year Betty's students have been contributors to a podcasting project that includes teachers and their students from all over the country, Youth Radio: Connecting Youth Voices to the World.

Bill O'Neal also joined us. Bill has worked with us for several months on YouthVoices.org. He is an English teacher at Trenton Central High School, West, and he is the Tech Liaison for the Trenton Writing Project. After show #58 (06.20.07), Bill wanted us to know that he also has a life in music! When we asked if we could highlight his website about his musical life he wrote:

"The music on my site has little to do with education... but whatever. This fall I am, however, reviving a guitar workshop for the students. I limited enrollment to eight. The district sent us to a weekend workshop (a few NYC teachers also attended) for a not-for-profit group called Little Kids Rock. They will provide the guitars. Lack of instruments was my biggest hurdle the last time I ran a workshop: Very few students owned guitars. Their web site is: http://littlekidsrock.org."

Bill's music site is: www.billoneal.com

Enjoy this a low-key, summer show. We recorded this webcast in the middle of electrical storms that kept knocking out our Skype connections, something you will probably barely notice because of Susan Ettenheim's amazing editing skills!

Please add a story of your own about something that you did in your classroom this year, something that you want to do better in the fall... or something that you want to continue doing.

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #57 - 06.13.07 - What's old and what's new about blogging?

Paul Allison — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:56:30 -0500

Listen in as Christina Cantrill and Paul Oh from the National Writing Project, Kevin Hodgson from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, and Felicia George from the New York City Writing Project -- plus Jason from Australia and two students from his school, along with Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim describe ONE blog post, written by an 11th grader on Youth Voices.net. Paul directs our attention to the teacher-work and the student-work that went into producing this post. Our goal was to to collectively describe how blogging borrows from past writing pedagogy and seeks to go beyond it as well! It promises to be a very grounded, yet insightful conversation. We used a remote version of this Zoho Show during the webcast:

Teachers Teaching Teachers #55 - 05.30.07 Re-mediating Speech Class

Paul Allison — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:25:01 -0500

Our guest hosts on this podcast were Troy Hicks and Dawn Reed from the Red Cedar Writing Project! Here’s how they describe their work:

As podcasting has become a part of our language arts classes, weave seen first hand the ways in which it gives students an audience for their work. By its very nature, podcasting is an oral phenomenon and while it involves the writing process, examining the production rebroadcasts as a speech act also merits our attention. We, Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks, have been interested in how podcasting — because of its ability to record, edit, and revise oral language as well as to time-shift content — can be used as an extension of speech class in high school.

Our project this spring attempted to engaging students in responsible, ethical,and productive composing activities thorough blogging and podcasting. We set out to study how creating and publishing a podcast modeled on NPR’s This I Believe essays could change the composing process for students. In so doing, Dawn’s students created and published their own podcasts, and the two of us discovered a few things about our own technology skills, the school infrastructure, and students’ ability to rise to the occasion that we would like to share with you.

Also, we would like to discuss three ideas that we began our project with and think about how these were actualized:

To understand how blogging and podcasting can be considered a part of Michigan’s new “online experience” for high school students and, rather than take a class fully online, teachers might incorporate elements of digital writing into the irregular classroom work.
To consider themes that emerge from a project like this and how a K-12/university research team can better understand those themes through collaboration.
To reconsider how teaching “speech,” a curricular partner to composition, changes when the media for production includes podcasting.In that sense, we will discuss how purposes and genres change, as well as the affordances and constraints of podcasting, both from technical and pedagogical perspectives.

Join us in the conversation! Add a comment here.

Teachers Using Drupal (and Wordpress, and...) Teachers Teaching Teachers 55 - 05.02.07

Paul Allison — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:39:20 -0500

Our guests this week were two Writing Project teachers who use Drupal in their work with students and teachers.

Jason Shiroff is a 4th/5th Grade teacher at the Odyssey School in Denver, Colorado. Jason is also the Tech Liaison for the Denver Writing Project.
Will Banks is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at East Carolina University, and he is the Director of the Tar River Writing Project.

Check out some of what we talked about in this week’s Google Notebook.

Teachers Teaching Teachers#44 - Connections in Western Massachusetts and Northern California

SusanEttenheim — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:06:00 -0500

We were joined on this wide-ranging podcast by 6th grade teacher and Western Mass. Writing Project tech liaison, Kevin Hodgson and Area 3 (California) Writing Project tech liaison Gail Desler, as well as Ken Stein, a high school teacher in New York City who is just beginning to bring his students into YouthVoices.net. We talk about podcasts, blogging, and many other 21st Century literacies. And we are joined by many others, including Alice Mercer, also from Northern California. In the end we welcomed teachers from New York, Massachusetts, California, Virginia, Florida, and Taiwan. We invite you to also join the conversation!

Kevin passed along these links that he mentioned about their Making Connections project (which is closed to the public):

A report about Making Connections blog project

Student Surveys

Teacher Reflections

Teachers Teaching Teachers #41

SusanEttenheim — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:54:51 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers
February 21, 2007 
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show notes from February 21, 2007

Ken Stein, Alex Ragone, Susan Ettenheim, Lee Baber

Ken and Alex lead a discussion about Flickr in the classroom, digital photography and developing conversation around images.

Some links discussed in the show:

Teachers Teaching Teachers #35 - Midyear Reorientation

SusanEttenheim — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:21:26 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers #35
January 10, 2007
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This was the kind of conversation that needed more time. Listen as nine teachers from six states — Paul Allison, NY, Lee Baber, VA , Glen Bledsoe, OR, Susan Ettenheim, NY, Kevin Hodgson, MA, Eric Hoefler, VA, Matt Makowetski, CA, Chris Sloan, UT, and Ken Stein, NY (plus a father from China) — who use blogs, discussion boards, and other Web-based communication tools in their classrooms tell stories about the first half of the academic year. We report on what we have been learning about blogging (and using wikis) with students. We also begin to talk about what our plans are for the remainder of the year.

Take a look at our ever expanding Google Notebook for this show: Teachers Teaching Teachers 01.10.07

In the comments at the bottom of this post, please join us with your thoughts about what you’ve learned teaching students to communicate online. What are your stories? Let’s see how many more states — and countries — we can add to the list as we check in with colleagues from all over the globe.

We also want to talk about how to help students who will be ending their classes with us in January can find some closure with their blogs without closing off the possiblities of keeping an ongoing blog.

And please join us next week — and every Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern — in the text chat room at EdTechTalk.com.

Teachers Teaching Teachers 32 - Updates from Eric Hoefler and Richard Stohlman

admin — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:10:59 -0600

Teachers Teaching Teachers 32
December 13, 2006
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Please check this shows Google Notebook for links and additional materials: TTT32. Erick Hoefler and Richard Stohlman joined us to give us updates on their work with blogging and discussion forums in the high schools where they work.

Richard’s work with WordPress and WordPress MU is progressing, and he is looking for other high schools who would like to the students on his student’s blogs, especially Charlie’s Advisory’s New York Experience - 2006/2007.

Eric seems to be in the middle of adding to his technology repertoire. In addition to the committed, rich writing that he is having his students do on forums on a Joomla site, he is moving toward the use of an an elggspaces account in his creative writing classes.

Listen in as we discuss how blogs and discussion forums are folding into other cirricula. Some of the questions have to do with how to get other teachers in our buildings to buy in to these new technologies… and in particular, how to think about the process, less finished nature of blog posts when teachers are feel the need for finished products and projects. We talked about how much time blogging takes to develop. Many other issues came up as well, including how to bridge the gap between MySpace problems (although a student joined us to say that we exaggerate these) and the formal writing instruction found in many of our classrooms. Oh… and research. We plan to talk more about that soon.

Please add your voice!