61:29 minutes (28.15 MB)

Anne Reed Milwaukee Lawyer brings her experiences to the show as a blogging lawyer describing her entry into the blogosphere. Her interactions with Facebook, Twitter and blogging describes an approach counter culture to the fear mongering of the media. If your child is starting to use chat rooms, social networking tools, this is a great place to hear how to use these tools to benefit your and your children.

 

Chat Log

 

  

69:20 minutes (15.88 MB)

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.

Chat Log More Comments

44:35 minutes (10.19 MB)

Earlier this month, on Youth Twitter, a student in South Korea, Soojin wrote, "just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete."

A bit later, Hannah, a student in Philadelphia, answered on Youth Twitter, "I think Alan's survey is a good example of how not to be 'schooly'. Students should ask questions of each other and interact."

Wow, we thought this would be an interesting conversation on Teachers Teaching Teachers. Perhaps we could have more of a Students Teaching Teachers show.

We invited Soojin, Hannah, Alan, a student from Queens, NY, Lindsea, a studnet from Honolulu, and Ben, a student from NYC to talk about the possibilities and problems with http://youthtwitter on our live webcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers.

What a great a conversation we had about Youth Twitter, and blogging, and social networking and blogging-beyond-school.

OH! We also invited some of the students' teachers. Their insights were invaluable.

We were excited to have Clay Burell, Madeline Brownstone, and George Mayo join us for this conversation as well.

Here's the first paragraph of a blog post that Soojin wrote the day after the webcast. (Click the link to read the whole post, and the responses.)

Enjoy! And pass this podcast on to your students for inspiration.

Chat Log (Don't miss this one.)


Image by Lindsea

74:55 minutes (17.13 MB)

Imagine, if you would, your department meeting webcast live every month or so. At it's core, that's what we aim for at Teachers Teaching Teachers, and there's more. In this podcast, we go back to the basics, back to the making public our private curriculum discussions. Five National Writing Project teachers and two guests joined together to check what our students were doing and what we were thinking. We work together with a group of sites:

• Youth Voices social network of 9th - 12 grade bloggers
• Personal Learning Space - social network of 6th - 8th grade bloggers
• Elggplans Wikispace - a wiki where we gather collaborative plans
• Youthwiki Wikispace- a wiki for youths to share multimedia in galleries of work
• Youth Bridges - youth podcasting network
• Youth Twitter - a safe, twitter-like blogging network for students

The curriculum we build together is beginning to be gathered together in places like these:

• 10 self 10 world questions
• 12 steps to a post with image, comments, and reflection
• Be a blogger - Self Assessment Guide
• Be a blogger! - Hypertext version

On this podcast Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, from New York City were joined by:

• Chris Sloan, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Bill O'Neal, Trenton, New Jersey
• Lynne Culp, Los Angeles, California
• Mike Sansone, Iowa
• Jim Sigler, Missouri

Enjoy!

Chat Log

39:00 minutes (8.95 MB)

This is a jam-packed thirty-nine minutes, where we explore the power of tagging, teachers using tumblogs, mathcasts, VoiceThreads in health, speech, history, math, music, technology, and EFL classes. Join Paul Allison, Lee Baber, Susan Ettenheim, and VoiceThread's Ben Papell (Yes, he's a "regular" by now), as they welcome these fresh voices, fresh at least to us at Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Carla Raguseo, an EFL teacher and Computer Lab coordinator at A.R.I.C.A.N.A., a Binational Center in Rosario, Argentina
• Carla Arena, a Brazilian EFL teacher, teacher trainer and site content manager at A Binational Center in Brasilia, but she's on a leave right now.
• Jeremy Brown, a Special Education Teacher at the Medow Hall Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland
• Judi Epcke, a teacher and Technology Integration Specialist in Northbrook, Illinois
• Tim Fahlberg, founder of Mathcasts, after 11 years as a math teacher.

40:00 minutes (9.15 MB)

Listen to seven National Writing Project teachers plan a Spring Blogging curriculum together.

Find out if seven people can plan a curriculum together over skype. These seven teachers from Writing Projects across the country met and planned a 15-week blogging curriculum that they have started to put together (click read more).

• Bob Levin and Gail Desler (Area 3 Writing Project, Sacramento, CA)
• Woody Woodgate (Alaska Writing Project, Marshall, Alaska)
• Bill O'Neal (Trenton, NJ Writing Project)
• Chris Sloan (Wasatch Range Writing Project, Salt Lake City, Utah)
• Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim (New York City Writing Project)

Image Source: Art for the Soul by RICHARD LAZZARA, a Creative Commons image uploaded to Flickr on January 13, 2006.
by shankargallery

 

Chat Log

39:00 minutes (8.96 MB)Vance Stevens joins us on this podcast, to discuss a project he has been doing with four teachers--Nelba Quintana, Doris Molero, Sasa Sirk, and Rita Zeinstejer. They have been asking their students to use the tag "writingmatrix" when they post to their blogs, then they use Technorati and Google Reader to find each other's blogs. Vance and these four teachers presented this work recently at the K12OnlineConference: "Motivate Student Writers by Fostering Collaboration through Tagging and Aggregating" We thought it would be a good idea to see how we might join their network of student bloggers with our school-based social networks at YouthVoices.net and the PersonalLearningSpace.com.

42:45 minutes (9.8 MB)

Find out what happens when you bring together seven teachers and a student to talk about perennial questions that come up when we use blogs in the classroom.

• a 6th-12th grade "New Journalism" teacher from the Bronx (with laryngitis) (Paul Allison)
• a half-time computer teacher/half-time technology coach from a town west of Chicago, "right about where the corn begins" (Scott Meech)
• a high school art/technology teacher and librarian from New York City (Susan Ettenheim)
• an 8th grade computer technology teacher and Webhead from Virginia (Lee Baber)
• a math/science/employability skills/hunting safety teacher from Alaska (Woody Woodgate)
• a ninth grader from a small town in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia (Victoria)
• an eighth grade science teacher from northern New Hampshire (Rick Biche)
• a middle-school technology integrator from an independent K12 school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Matt Montagne)

 

 

Image: "Stalking a Caribou" by Travis S. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/baggis/1735135201/) License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0

44:49 minutes (20.52 MB)Karen Janowski quoted Brian Crosby from his blog title, "learning is messy' and Cathy from South Carolina, suggests that we "muddy the waters." Are you willing to get messy with us?

Sylvia Norton, from Maine's MARVEL, says "I think we spend a lot of time talking about quality information but not always walking the talk when it comes to expectations in student work and what we accept without question"

Are you wiling to take that step this year and dip your own toes in the water? Here's your homework:

Find you own state's database collection (paid for by your taxes!). As Cathy said, these are your "free search tools." Who doesn't like a great bargain? You may go to your school library site or you may go to your public library site if you don't have a direct link already in your own bookmarks. You may need a public library card number or some other state identification number.

Now, think of something you are wondering about. Is it your aunt's newly diagnosed illness, is it a question about Iraq, is it the history of a neighborhood fixture, is it something about a book you've been reading this summer? Search in these state funded free resources and see what you find. If you can, we'd love you to do the same search in some other places too, maybe Google, maybe findarticles.com, maybe Wikipedia...

PLEASE share your results. The only way we can continue to learn is by using what Worldbridges.net calls "open source learning" where we all add to the body of knowledge and share, after all this is Teachers Teaching Teachers!

Add a New Note to our Google Notebook that lists your state, your urls used, the names of the databases you used, your search request and most importantly your results and reactions !!

Come back next week, same time, same place and let's see what we can collectively learn. Let's all get messy this week!

Google Notebook for August 22, 2007 Teachers Teaching Teachers:
http://www.google.com/notebook/#b=BDQOrSwoQsJqSocci

Now for some show notes and thoughts:

Where should our students be starting?

Cheryl from Maine says: I would love our school librarians to use Marvel first and not answer kids questions in Google until they have done a Marvel search!
Kevin from Florida says: " I do think there is value in students 'starting out' in wikipeida to get the juices flowing....."
Troy from Michigan discovered that one FindArticles search had 1/3 of the links on the first page requiring money to open them. "One concern with Find Articles -- to what extent does that site represent the full range of periodicals and journals available? Moreover, what about the advertisements that are present on that site?"

If we are encouraging students to blog for voice, action and sometimes response, isn't it important that we teach them to arm themselves with accurate and reliable information as a starting point?

Courtney from GALILEO in Georgia says, "... facts and past research - databases; someone's first-hand perspective - blog postings

LindaN also made an important point, "I think it depends on the depth of background knowledge the kids have on a topic."

Sylvia from MARVEL in Maine, reminds us, "I've never had a parent show up for a parent conference because they were worried that their kid didn't pass information literacy."
Later Sylvia also noted, "I do see adults every day who do not know how to find and use good accurate information as part of their daily problem solving."

What do you think? We want to especially thank Joyce Valenza and everyone else who is helping to bring this important topic to the blogosphere and the attention of teachers and librarians and vendors!

Here are the links from the text chat in time order:
Library Terms That Users Understand
http://www.jkup.net/terms.html
Google Notebook link for Teachers Teaching Teachers notebook for Aug. 8 and Aug. 15 discussions
http://www.google.com/notebook/#b=BDQOrSwoQk93r3cMi
Joyce Valenza's students explain it - Databases are Different!
http://springfieldvideo.edublogs.org/2007/03/01/databases-are-different/
Texas State Databases
http://www.texshare.edu/
Georgia Public Library Service
http://www.georgialibraries.org/lib/galileo.html
Public look at the Google Teachers Teaching Teachers notebook
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/07807265150553936842/BDQOrSwoQk93r...
Direct link to GALILEO, Georgia State Databases
http://www.galileo.usg.edu
Scholarly vs. Popular vs. Trade vs. Primary Sources from Springfield Township High School Virtual Library- an amazing resource!
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/scholarly.html
Brian Crosby's blog, a fourth grade teacher at Agnes Risley School in Sparks, Nevada.
http://www.learningismessy.com/blog/
Wesley Fryer's blog
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/
A trail is a collection of web pages, assembled and annotated by any Trailfire member, on just about anything under the sun.
http://trailfire.com
Joyce Valenza's blog NeverEndingSearch on School Library Journal
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334.html
Lee Baber's blog
http://web.mac.com/lbaber/iWeb/LeeBaber/Blog/Blog.html
Courtney's list of state funded virtual libraries
http://del.icio.us/cmcgough/statevirtuallibraries

Click to play
44:28 minutes (20.36 MB)Lee Baber and Susan Ettenheim are joined by Sylvia Norton of MARVEL (Maine), Kate Storms of NOVEL (New York), Karen Minton and Courtney McGough of GALILEO (Georgia) to discuss how we can incorporate the rich resources of state funded databases into our blogging. We were so pleased that Joyce Valenza could also join us. Listen as we tackle some tough issues. Sylvia pointed out that the way to give our teens voice is to give them access to high quality information. This way they expand their knowledge and they become able to do the decision making that we want them to do.

33:49 minutes (7.73 MB)

[Listen to This Blog Text Here] Blogging in the classroom isn't an experiment anymore. It may still be new to many teachers, and we may still have plenty to learn about how to take the most advantage to this new genre, but many of us have been blogging with our students for several years now. We've grown more and more clear about why blogging in a social networking is central to our curricula, and we are more confident in the tools we can use to do this work.

One of the things we say to each other in this podcast is that this work is exciting because it has a history (and a theory) and a future. As schools begin again this fall, over a dozen teachers will be joining together to plan curriculum for two school-based social networks. Last year we started collecting together our plans on a wikispaces site, Elgg Plans. Our high school students' work can be found on an elgg, Youth Voice and on another wikispaces site, Youth Wiki. Our middle school students' blogs are on an elgg, the Personal Learning Space, that is a "walled garden."

Can you imagine blogging with your students? Want to join us? We would welcome you, especially now! Please respond to this post. Let us know of your interest, and we'll help you get started. Also, take a look at these Guidelines for Joining YouthVoices.net.

We'll show you how we use James Beane's "10 self and 10 world questions" to build curriculum with out students. (See this Trailfire for more information.) We plan to also mix in a healthy dose of Paulo Freire's "generative words" and "generative themes." (See a description of "generative themes that discusses images in a book, Brave New Schools. And find "generative" in the third chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.) There's also some business about Peter Elbow's notions of freewriting and focused sentences, and so much more!

At the end of this podcast, Lee Baber shows how blogging has changed her way of teaching:

Why would we make these kinds of changes, and invite you to do the same? In this podcast, Gail Desler answers:

Please listen to this podcast, and consider joining us. Give your students a voice this year! Please express your interest or ask questions in the comments attached to this post.

44:39 minutes (20.44 MB)­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:

63:48 minutes (29.21 MB) We invite you to listen in as eight Writing Project and WorldBridges teachers from five different (U.S.) states reflect on our students work in Youth Voices.

• Alice Barr, Yarmouth HS, Yarmouth, Maine
• Barbara Mehlman, Humanities and the Arts High School HUM, NY. New York
• Bill Oneal, Trenton Central High School, West, Trenton, New Jersey
• Ken Stein, Satellite High School, Midtown, NY, New York
• Lee Baber, F. Hillyard Middle School, Broadway, Virginia
• Matt Makowetski, MHS, Lompoc, California
• Paul Allison, East Side Community HS, NY, New York
• Susan Ettenheim, Eleanor Roosevelt HS, NY, New York

After welcoming our newest members of the community, we spent some time celebrating what is going well in this school-based community of about 1000 student writers/bloggers. We discussed ways we might collaborate more over the summer and into next fall. And we began to make plans for next year. We are a community of teachers, focused on fostering a social network where students can become compelling bloggers. Some of our questions include:

• How can we cover all of the required skills and topics of our various curricula (technology, global studies, art, English...) and still allow students to blog about topics of their own choosing?
• Could we select a group of books and invite students to form communities (reading groups) around each of these? How could we have a common text or common texts available as an option for students to blog about... without loosing our environment of student choice?
• How do we continue to nurture our ethic of student peer response. Do the sentence starters we've been using work? Can they be more open?
• Can we use the elgg to share multimedia work, art, or visual work more? How do we sponsor peer response to this work? Can we all learn to use the wiki more, following Susan Ettenheim's lead on Gallery pages like Flash Creations Page 2? Will an update to the new elgg profile pages (see Paul Allison's example) be part of the solution?
• How do we remain a community of teachers that is open to new teachers jumping in with their students, yet maintain a transparent support structure where we can share tips and community standards (e.g. "only Creative Commons images, please, and no pictures of the students themselves... and... and...)?
• What role might our wiki play: http://elggplans.wikispaces.com? How might we organize this site better? How do we get everybody to contribute to and use this site?
• Could we use our new Gcast to stay in touch on a regular basis? (Email Susan Ettenheim -- SEttenh@schools.nyc.gov -- to learn more.)
• What can we do this summer to build this community? (Step one. All of us should register at the elgg: EducationBridges.net - We'll form a community or communities there.)

Come hear us talk about these and other questions. Hear what teachers talk about when they talk about their students blogging in an elgg. Join the conversation! Leave a comment if you would like to join Youth Voices, and start blogging in your classroom.

55:17 minutes (25.31 MB)­

Bud Hunt asks the question like this: “How do I work Youth Voices [a school-based social network of 1000 student bloggers] into my daily curriculum? How do I use it either to replace existing writing or to support the writing instruction that I want to do?”

Like many of us, Bud is convinced that he has the tools he needs (Elgg is just one example.) to bring blogging and social networking into into the center of his writing, reading and research curricula. Teachers like Bud have learned that students who are asked to blog weekly (or thereabouts) about issues and topics of their own choosing achieve and go beyond the goals we have for them when we teach writing in more traditional ways. (If you’re not yet one of the “convinced,” please take a look at our students work on Youth Voices.Perhaps you’ll find evidence that supports our convictions. Also checkout what the students themselves say when they write in our “How am I doing?” community blog.)

The problem is, how do we make it work? Although each teacher has a unique situation, many of us face constraints that are similar to the ones Bud points to when he asks, “How do I fit Elgg into my language arts curriculum? More specifically, how do I do so in neat, nine-week chunks? (My courses are all on the quarter system.)”

Bud sums up with these kind words: “I love, love, love what y’all are doing with YouthVoices. I want my students to be involved in a strong writing community — I just don’t know how to practically do so. ”

Many teachers find themselves, like Bud, on the brink of using student-centered (because the topics come from each individual student) blogging. And perhaps it’s not too bold for those of us who have been involved in creating Youth Voices–a community of practice for high school bloggers–to say that we can show that this kind of blogging both engages students and helps them to reach toward higher and higher standards of writing and multimedia communication. We are ready to encourage those of you on the edge to find ways to solve your very real logistical problems. It’s worth it.

52:20 minutes (23.96 MB)

After a few months of blogging with all of her classes at YouthVoices.net, Susan Ettenheim sent Paul Allison a few questions:

67:58 minutes (31.12 MB)

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

44:56 minutes (20.6 MB)­

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