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National Writing Project

Teachers Teaching Teachers #208 - Wondering about fossil fuel and enjoying the power of twitter in the NWP - 07.07.10

Mon, 2010-08-02 05:28 — Paul Allison

44:32 minutes (10.19 MB)

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Alicia Blair, a science teacher who lives near the beach in Mississippi, asked us to think of her the next time we pump Fowl Language by Paul Jacksongasoline into a gas-guzzling automobile. Later in the show her heart went out to an art teacher, April Estep, who lives 20 minutes from the site of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mining disaster. Casey Daugherty, a co-director of the Ozarks Writing Project, observed, "We'll think of April every time we switch the lights on."

Sandwiched between these ongoing conversations about how to respond to the BP oil spill and similar disasters such as the Big Branch disaster, we talked about how to raise teacher voice and how to push out audio and video on social networks like Twitter.

This summer our guests brought twitter and social networking to and from their local Invitational Summer Institutes of the National Writing Project. Paul Oh leads us in this discussion of how the face-to-face, intense summer work widens when social networks become part of the mix.

Our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers were:

Learn more from these folks and others on this recent NWP resource page, Tweeting in the Summer Institute and Beyond:

Writing Project teachers have found Twitter to be a serious learning tool. Many sites across the country integrated Twitter into their summer institutes this summer, and teachers have built "personal learning networks"—groups of people who casually join together to communicate and collaborate on common topics—where they discuss serious educational issues.

Story behind the image:

As an ornithologist’s son, watercolor artist Paul Jackson grew up spending Christmases in the park ranger’s cabin on Horn Island, Miss. Over several weeks, he turned his outrage into “Fowl Language,” in which a least tern, stilt, egret, cormorant and other Gulf birds sit atop a dropping-streaked BP sign as an oil rig smokes in the background.

He posted a photo of the painting on his Web site while the paper was still damp. Within two hours, it was selling as a T-shirt on the art-sale Web site Zazzle.com.

The Columbia, Mo., painter has since created his own site, “Art vs. Oil Spill.” About 100 artists from as far away as India and Malaysia have offered works, with all proceeds going to nonprofit groups working to clean up the oil or oiled animals.

Artists find ways to protest Gulf spill | Associated Press | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #207 "We've been taken over once again by something that we couldn't stop, can't stop." - 06.30.10

Wed, 2010-07-21 23:50 — Paul Allison

50:32 minutes (11.57 MB)

This the fourth week of a summer series in which we have focused Teachers Teaching Teachers on the BP Gulf Oil Spill. Our guests included:

  • Matt Montagne, who has been collecting materials, such as: October 28th, 2010 TEDxOILSPILL Talks. The Google Doc that Matt can be found at http://tinyurl.com/voicesonthegulf - And stay tuned! There much more to come under the domain: "VoicesOnTheGulf." (We also eventually agreed on the common tags: "voicesonthegulf" and "edoilspill"
  • Diana Laufenberg, a history teacher from Science Leadership Academy who joined us on this topic 3 weeks ago will try (from her family’s farm) to join us again.
  • Natasha Whitton, one of the three teachers from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project two weeks ago, hopes to join us again
  • Andrea Zellner, a biology and English teachers from the Red Cedar Writing Project in Michigan will be with us again!
  • AND NEW to our webcast: Catherine Tibbs, a former high school English teacher who works for the Live Oak Writing Project in Mississippi joined us. (She is also invited colleagues who will be heard on future podcasts. Catherine wrote this on a Monday late in June :
     I don’t know if you know this or not, but oil reached the MS beaches this weekend. We had been fortunate so far to avoid this mess. From what I understand from the media, the manpower was not coordinated in the Gulf to skim the oil that is now reaching us. Isn’t that always the case?
  • Also new to the podcast is Jeff Mason from Penscola, Florida, a biology and technology teacher. We met a Twitter, and we look forward to a continuing connection. (Jeff came on the webcast last week as well, so look for more from him on future podcasts.)

We hope you will be able to join us in this ongoing project. Help us know how to respond as teachers—and with our students—to this monster that will continue to reek havoc for weeks? months? to come!

Join us to talk about what's happening in the gulf every Wednesday at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA (World Times). 

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #199 - Bitstrips Creators and Writing Project Teachers Talking Comics - 05.05.10

Tue, 2010-06-01 02:36 — Paul Allison

69:27 minutes (15.89 MB)

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we enjoyed a lively conversation with two guys from the Toronto-based  interactive design team who created Bitstrips for Schools, Shahan Panth and Jacob Blackstock.  JacobAtWork-Candid-300x221.png

We were also entertained by a couple of Writing Project teachers: Kevin Hodgson from Western Massachusetts and Larry Neuburger from the Ozarks in Missouri.

In September 2009, Bitstips launched a “new educational site, Bitstrips for Schools!”

Soon after we launched Bitstrips.com, we found that teachers everywhere were using Bitstrips as a teaching tool, engaging their students with the exciting power of comic creation.  So, we decided to build a new version of Bitstrips, tailored specifically for teachers.  Bitstrips for Schools has all the awesome tools from Bitstrips, transplanted into a safe and secure environment, with additional administrative features that put the teacher in control.  Teachers can create a virtual classroom, where their students can become cartoon characters and then complete activities by making comics.  It’s an amazing way to promote literacy while having fun.

And, to start things off with a bang, we’ve licensed the service to the Ministry of Education for our home province of Ontario.  This means that all 5000 publicly funded schools now have access to Bitstrips – that’s over 2,000,000 students!  We can’t wait to see what they come up with.

So, go check out Bitstrips for Schools – learning with comics has never been so much fun!

 Earlier this spring, the National Writing Project invited their teachers to try Bitstripsfor free until the end of the summer.

Have you thought about using comic strips as a new way to engage your students? It seems like a perfect step along the continuum of multimedia use in composition, but the artwork aspect of it may be daunting. Enter: Bitstrips for Schools.

Kevin Hodgson wrote a review:

I am always interested in the various online, but protected, sites offering students and teachers a way to make webcomics. I use ToonDooSpaces with my students, and I love the variety of artwork and other options at ToonDoo, but I keep an eye out for other sites, too.welcome.jpg?w=500&h=183

Recently, the National Writing Project finagled a deal with Bitstrips to let NWP teachers give the Bitstrips for Schools a trial run, so I jumped right in (big surprise) and started up an account, established a “classroom” and began making a comic. Later, I created an “activity” that will show up in any student account that I create.

Perhaps you do comics with your students, or would like to consider the possibilities! We hope you enjoy this conversation!

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #191 - Katherine Schulten and the Learning Network AND "...making the case for the NWP - 03.10.10

Fri, 2010-03-12 12:06 — Paul Allison

67:03 minutes (15.35 MB)

In the first half of thKS1larger.jpgis weeks episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had an inspiring conversation with Katherine Schulten editor of The Learning Network at the New York Times.  Our theme for this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers was about increasing teacher voice in public debates. Katherine suggested how we might use The Learning Network for that.

In addition, we were joined by:

  • Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley
  • and Andrea Zellner a leader at the Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan State University's site of the NWP.

Andrea and many o

thers in the chat room during the webcast gave witness to why we want to maintain federal funding for the NWP to continue -- an example of a time wh

en we need to get our voices to be heard! 

"It's been a heady week for teaching and learning discussion on the Times site," writes Katherine Schulten, our first guest on this podcast. One of Katherine's jobs as an editor of the New York Times Learning Network is to moderate the comments that come in on education-related articles.

A Student Opinion post from earlier this week, "Where Do You Stand on Unconcealed Handguns? "received many lively responses from "students 13 and older," who "are invited [to the Learning Network] to comment on questions about issues in the news."

If you just clicked on those links, your head is probably spinning: so many issues so little time! That's what it feels like to have a conversation with Katherine Schulten, who before she became an editor for the Learning Network was a NYC teacher and a consultant for the New York City Writing Project. Katherine was worried that she was talking too much, because she is so excited about managing the Learning Network.

We'll turned Katherine loose, then we interrupted her with a few questions. We think you'l learn a lot about the New York Times Learning Network on this podcast:

Currently, they are offering these features:

  • Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
  • Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
  • Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
  • 6 Q’s About the Newss — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
  • News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
  • Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.

The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, they re-launched it as a Times blog.

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #185 - Did Educon 2.2 Make Us Smarter? - 02.03.10

Sun, 2010-02-21 06:03 — Paul Allison

64:48 minutes (14.83 MB)

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:

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

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