Lee Kolbert

Will Richardson and Lee Kolbert shared their views on their philosophies as educators and how it impacts on their relationships with their child’s classroom teacher. Penny Lindballe  shared her insights as a parent. More details to follow.

 This week we continued a conversation that began on Twitter when Alec Couros went to his daughter's Back to School Night.  Along with Will Richardson, Lee Kolbert, and Angela Maiers, we discussed the issues we face as parents when walking into our own children's classrooms.  Alec could not join us but was with us in spirit....we hope.

Chat Archive:

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.