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.

In this podcast we continue to track some of the developments at VoiceThread with co-founders, Steve Muth and Ben Papell. We also talk with:

• Gail Desler, Tech Liaision with the Area 3 Wrting Project in Northern California
• Lee Kolbert, a recently-returned to the clssroom teacher in Boca Raton, Florida.

Lee joined us fresh from her presenting at Alan November's Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. One of her presentations was about VoiceThread. Gail reports on a VoiceThread project that she had done with 4th Grade teacher, Halerin Ferrier, "Letters from the Internment Camps."

Steve and Ben tell us why they have set up this VoiceThread Digital Library, and they describe another inspiring example that can be found there, K-12 art, poetry, and music from Erin Berg:

This is a collaborative VT from three different classes across the United States (2nd graders from Utah, 9th grade English students from Colorado, and 5th-6th grade music composition students from Texas). This VT is an example of the power of collaboration using technology. This encompasses art through words, visuals, and music.

Second graders first completed a piece of artwork, depicting a place they love to visit or imagine visiting. Then, 9th graders used a Wiki to divide up the artwork. They worked on their poetry and attached it as a comment on the VT. Then, the link was sent to a classroom in Texas, where boys worked to compose an original piece of music for each picture using GarageBand. Overall, it took about 2 1/2 months to put together.

And if that's not enough Ben and Steve use this webcast to unofficially announce (It's official now.) a partnership with the New York Public Library. Joyce Valenza does a great job of describing some of these new VoiceThread connections in her post: "Voicethread gets even cooler! NYPL, Creative Commons, and more."

After all of that, we hope you still have time to listen to the podcast!

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.

On a snowy, windy night last week, Dr. Sondra Perl, Lehman College and Gradate Center, CUNY, NY and five National Writing Project  teachers from the Rural Sites Network joined us to describe their journeys as teachers of Holocaust studies.  These are the teachers who you'll hear on this podcast:

• Danielle Bethune, McCool Junction Schools, Nebraska
• Kristi Bancroft Boucher, Oxford Hills High School, Maine
• Gail Desler, Elk Grove School District, California
• Ilka Hanselmann, Wind Gap Middle School, Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania
• Susan Hodgin, Moscow Senior High School, Idaho
• Larry Neuberger, Miller High School, Springfield, Missouri

We took a look at their experiences in 10-day seminars that Dr. Perl led this summer and last summer. We learned more about how these teachers have integrated teaching about the Holocaust into their work with students. Perhaps you will be inspired by these teachers to begin your own journey into studying and teaching about the Holocaust.

The purpose of the Holocaust Educators Network (HEN) is:

...to provide a forum for faculty interested in studying and teaching the Holocaust. The Network extends the work of the summer seminars sponsored by the Memorial Library. Located at Lehman College of the City University of New York, HEN uses an inquiry-based approach to focus on how educators can engage students with difficult material and how writing and dialogue can help move students from shock and denial to empathy and action. We look to support educators from middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in the following ways:

• By examining teaching practices both critically and generously;
• By sharing resources and devising new approaches in workshops and in online forums;
• By inviting noted scholars and researchers to present new work to the group; and
• By developing and conducting workshops in teachers' own schools and communities.

(Image: Holocaust survivor, Irving Roth)

This summer the Holocaust Educators Network will once again offer a ten-day summer seminar led by Dr. Sondra Perl to middle school, high school, and college teachers from rural sites within the National Writing Project. To find out more or to apply for this summer's seminar, please send an e-mail to Holocaust.educators@gmail.com

Don't delay! Applications for this summer need to be in by mid-January.

For the 2009 summer seminar, we invite applications in two formats: 1) applications by individual teachers who are already members of the National Writing Project (NWP) and 2) applications by teams of two teachers from different subject areas in which at least one is a member of the NWP. Click here to download an individual application form; Click here to download a team application form. Please note: applications for the 2009 summer seminar must be postmarked no later than January 16, 2009. Applicants will be notified of all decisions by March 2009.

This year, rural teachers outside of the National Writing Project may also apply. Click here for a flier with more information about the program; click here to download an application form.

Youth Voices is growing with new teachers and students every week. If you are interested in finding out what the teachers involved in this project have been thinking about, this podcast might be for you.

Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, both from New York City were joined by Gail Desler from California and Sarah Sutter from Maine.

Listen, then join us at http://YouthVoices.net

Click Read More to find the Chat Log

Except for our colleagues in the the Southern Hemisphere, many of us are either already enjoying the summer holidays or we are looking forward to them coming soon. Teachers often use this time to relax and reflect on their work. We collaborate with other teachers in summer workshops and catch up on professional reading. Summer Invitational Institutes are the heart of the work for National Writing Projects across the country. What a better time to stop and take a look at a new book by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss? Their book, Reinventing Project Based Learning was published earlier this year, and many of us will be using this book to guide our project planning processes.

To learn more about this "Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age," we asked Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss to join us on this podcast. The magic of doing this live allowed us to also include Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA and Gail Desler, Technology Integration Specialist for Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento, CA. and Tech Liaison for the Area 3 Writing Project.

Enjoy the conversation! And don't forget to check out the chat and our FriendFeed room that has many of the links that are mentioned in this podcast.

Chat Log

For this webcast, we invited Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cormier and Gail Desler to talk about social networking and what platforms make sense right now. Of course behind all of this talk about Drupal and Edublogs were questions that we are asking about about how we in the, ah... Teachers Teaching Teachers, Youth Voices, Personal Learning Space, Youth Twitter ... group of teachers might want to continue working together ... and how the software decisions we need to make this Spring can support our hopes and plans.