Paul Allison

TTT#334 The Future of English with Andrew McGuire, Meenoo Rami, Bryan Loftis, Troy Hicks, Scott Shelhart, Chris Lehmann 01.30.13

This episode of TTT is a conversation about the future of the teaching and schooling in general.The idea for this week's episode of TTT came about when +Andrew McGuire, a student of +Chris Sloan's who had graduated from high school last year, told Chris that he wants to be an English teacher. But he wants a different kind of education than a lot of what he has received. Chris writes:

He’s an education reformer at heart, and a lot of what he described as his ideal educational environment aligns with some of the people who’ve joined us on Teachers Teaching Teachers recently. He’s talking about connected learning in third spaces that involve a maker approach and is inquiry-based. So what would you tell an 18-year old who’s thinking about becoming an English teacher? Not only what Andrew and others like him should study, but how they should go about their teacher education?

Andrew Maguire's profile photoMeenoo Rami's profile photoBryan Loftis's profile photoTroy Hicks's profile photoScott Shelhart's profile photoChris Lehmann's profile photo

Along with Andrew we are joined by these educators: Meenoo Rami, Bryan Loftis, Troy Hicks, Scott Shelhart, Chris Lehmann.

Enjoy!


Click Read more to see the chat that was happening during this live webcast.


TTT#333 Be Lab Update with Cristian Leobardo, Karen Fasimpaur, Gregory Hill, Monika Hardy, and Mikhil Goyal 01.23.13

On this episode of TTT Monika Hardy and her student, Cristian Leobardo lead us in a be lab update. We take a look at their revised Website, their book, and their travels http://redefineschool.com.

Here's how Monika, her students and her colleagues describe their main foucus/premise:

Public education could be the most accelerating venue for social change. Rather than waiting for any of the incredible [past, current and ongoing] innovations in redefining public education to scale, imagine we scale the individual. Imagine a new (old) narrative that can start anywhere because it begs no prep or training. Imagine we trust simplicity enough to give it a go. Imagine hastening equity, and ongoing sustainability.
I’ve been working with youth the last four years, locally in Loveland Colorado, as well as virtually around the globe. We have been in an intense mode of experimenting with first, self-directed learning, and now, the intersection of city and school. We've been afforded an incubated space (sand box) within our city, as a connected adjacency (both in and out of) our school district.

We are joined on this episode of TTT by

Paul Allison's profile photoScott Shelhart's profile photoCristian Buendia's profile photoKaren Fasimpaur's profile photoGregory Hill's profile photomonika hardy's profile photoNikhil Goyal's profile photo

Paul Allison, Scott and Kelsey Shelhart, Cristian Leobardo, Karen Fasimpaur, Gregory Hill, Monika Hardy, Mikhil Goyal

Enjoy!

On this episode of TTT Monika Hardy and her student, Cristian Leobardo lead us in a be lab update. We take a look at their revised Website, their book, and their travels http://redefineschool.com.

Here's how Monika, her students and her colleagues describe their main foucus/premise:

Public education could be the most accelerating venue for social change. Rather than waiting for any of the incredible [past, current and ongoing] innovations in redefining public education to scale, imagine we scale the individual. Imagine a new (old) narrative that can start anywhere because it begs no prep or training. Imagine we trust simplicity enough to give it a go. Imagine hastening equity, and ongoing sustainability.
I’ve been working with youth the last four years, locally in Loveland Colorado, as well as virtually around the globe. We have been in an intense mode of experimenting with first, self-directed learning, and now, the intersection of city and school. We've been afforded an incubated space (sand box) within our city, as a connected adjacency (both in and out of) our school district.

We are joined on this episode of TTT by

Paul Allison's profile photoScott Shelhart's profile photoCristian Buendia's profile photoKaren Fasimpaur's profile photoGregory Hill's profile photomonika hardy's profile photoNikhil Goyal's profile photo

Paul Allison, Scott and Kelsey Shelhart, Cristian Leobardo, Karen Fasimpaur, Gregory Hill, Monika Hardy, Mikhil Goyal

Enjoy!

TTT#332 Gooru for Learning with Xenia Shih, Timothy Burke, and Jody Donovan - plus Leah Jensen and Gail Desler 01.16.13

Find out more about Gooru http://goorulearning.org on this episode of TTT. This is the first in a series of webcasts in which we'll focus on Gooru, asking: How do you teach with Gooru? We'll be talking with teachers who use Gooru in their classrooms, asking them to share best practices and exchange ideas. And we'll dialogue with the Gooru team around what might be done to improve Gooru for all of us?

If you're new to Gooru, here are three places to start your inquiries:

Gooru Learning itself has a pedigree that is worth considering. Gooru is developed by Ednovo, the nonprofit education startup founded by Prasad Ram. Ram has a rich history in Silicon Valley, including work at Xerox PARC, Yahoo! and Google. While Director of Engineering for Google Research, Ram developed the concept for using search technology to discover educational content. Ram decided to leave Google in January 2011 and pursue this concept. Ram has started an education focused non-profit startup called Ednovo, which is going to build upon Gooru, a free web based education solution that was begun as a ’20% effort’ at Google, and piloted in India with 25 classrooms and 1000 students. Gooru allows teachers to use openly licensed web resources, find lesson plans on all subjects and topics and then customize it to their specific needs, with rich multimedia content including videos, slides, and simulations.

So, this morning, I went to Gooru to poke around a bit and remember what it is about. When I had been there last, the site had recently launched and I wasn’t quite sure what they were up to. There didn’t seem to be a lot of content. Now I understand. The site is another way to help students streamline their research queries (sort of like Instagrok, which I use) and for teachers to build up “collections” of resources that can be shared. I like the overall feel of the site — it takes a few minutes to get a sense of what to do, but once you understand it, you will see there are powerful paths to follow.

Every day teachers and students scour the web to find the best resources to help them learn or teach, pulling from different resources scattered all over the Internet--but what if you could find and organize all the best web resources in one place? With Gooru, you can. Watch NASA videos about solar flares, play interactive games on PBS.com that teach about friction, and take quizzes on equations from Khan Academy. We aggregate the best of the web, giving you high-quality and free multimedia resources within seconds, so you can spend more time studying, and less time searching. When you find resources you love, you can then organize them into a playlist called a collection.

You might also find out what you need to know to get started by listening to our inspiring guests for this episode of TTT:

Paul Allison's profile photomonika hardy's profile photoChris Sloan's profile photo
Paul Allison, Monika Hardy, and Chris Sloan
Xenia Shih's profile photoTimothy Burke's profile photoJody Donovan's profile photo
host Xenia Shih, Timothy Burke, and Jody Donovan from Gooru
Leah Jensen's profile photoGail Desler's profile photo
along with two amazing California teachers, Leah Jensen and Gail Desler.

Enjoy!


Click Read more to see the chat that was happening during this live webcast and some important links to resources.


TTT#331 Re-mix, OER, and Educon 2.5 w/ Bill Fitzgerald, George Mayo, Harry Costner, Scott Shelhart, and Kelsey Shelhart 1.09.13

On this episode of TTT, re-mix and get ready for EduCon 2.5 http://educonphilly.org with George Mayo, Harry Costner, and Bill Fitzgerald along with our friends Scott Shelhart and Kelsey Shelhart.

Paul Allison's profile photoHarry Costner's profile photoBill Fitzgerald's profile photoScott Shelhart's profile photomonika hardy's profile photoGeorge Mayo's profile photo

A few weeks ago, George wrote in an email:

Another teacher and I have this experiment for this year's Educon called @remixeducon http://educonphilly.org/conversations/remixeducon . We're planning on creating a structure for participants to share, download and remix media created throughout the conference. The other teacher's name is Harry Costner. He's a really cool middle school film teacher in Virginia.
Would it be possible for us to pitch our @remixeducon idea on a TTT show sometime after the new year as we get closer to Educon? I'm trying to think of ways to spread the word about our project before the conference.

How do you turn down an offer like that?

In addition, Harry and George are doing a second session at Educon on Video Production and Social Media http://educonphilly.org/conversations/Video_Production_and_Social_Media:A_Powerful_Combination

That's not all!

When we heard that Bill Fitzgerald would be remixing at Educon too, we asked him what he’s up too. Here was his reply:

We are definitely running a pre-Educon event - the details (and some of our thoughts about what we hope to achieve, big picture) are linked in this post: http://funnymonkey.com/when-we-talk-about-open-content-this-is-what-we-talk-about
Our Educon session on this is at http://educonphilly.org/conversations/Adopting-Using-and_Reusing_Open_Content
We are also doing a second session on starting a non-profit: http://educonphilly.org/conversations/So_You_Want_To_Start_an_Educational_Non-Profit

Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Enjoy!

TTT#330 Quadblogging 2 with Cliff Manning, David Mitchell, Gail Desler, Linda Yollis, Matt Hardy, Sue Waters, Suzi Boss 1.9.13

We are joined by colleagues from England and Australia on this episode of TTT as we follow-up with them on an earler conversations about blogging in elementary schools: http://edtechtalk.com/node/5156.

Our goal is simple: we want to make plans for elementary school students to find and respond to each others blog posts this spring. Joining us on this episode of TTT are Makewaves’ Cliff Manning, KidBlog’s Matt Hardy, Sue Waters from EduBlogs, and some of us are from Youth Voices. We are also joined by David Mitchell, the Quadblogging guru and Linda Yollis an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles who Quadblogs her own way.

Suzie Boss describes Quadblogging like this in a September 25, 2012 post in Edutopia:

The idea is deceptively simple. Four teachers agree to have their students comment on each other's blogs in an organized fashion. Each week, one of the four gets a turn as the spotlight class. The other three classes visit and leave comments. Over the course of a month, every student's work gets read and commented upon. Along the way, students learn about respectful online communication. They may decide to revise their thinking if a commenter shares a perspective they haven't considered.

On this episode of TTT Paul Allison, @paulallison is joined by Cliff Manning, @cliffmanning, Sue Waters, @suewaters, David Mitchell, @DeputyMitchell, Gail Desler, @gaildesler, Linda Yollis, @lindayollis, Matt Hardy, @hardy101, and Suzie Boss, @suzieboss.

Paul Allison's profile photoCliff Manning's profile photoSue Waters's profile photoDavid Mitchell's profile photoGail Desler's profile photoLinda Yollis's profile photoMatt Hardy's profile photoSuzie Boss's profile photo

On his blog, David Mitchell describes Quadblogging like this:

QuadBlogging is a leg up to an audience for your class/school blog. Over the last 12 months 100,000 pupils have been involved in QuadBlogging from 3000 classes in 40 countries....

A Blog needs an audience to keep it alive for your learners. Too often blogs wither away leaving the learners frustrated and bored. Quadblogging gives your blog a truly authentic and global audience that will visit your blog, leave comments and return on a cycle. Here’s how it works:

You sign up using the form below, shortly after, you will be allocated a Quad four schools/classes including your own. Each Quad has a co-ordinator who is responsible for making sure each of the quad members know what is going on and when. Each week one blog is the focus blog with the other three blogs visiting and commenting during that week. In week two, another school/class blog is the focus with the other three visiting and commenting. This is repeated until each of the classes/schools has had their week in the spotlight. The cycle is then repeated. However, this time, your pupils know what is coming – They will work harder than you have seen them work in order to get content on their blog!

QuadBlogging has been mentioned very highly in recent OfSTED Reports here in the UK and praised for offering opportunities for:“profound impact in developing pupils’ team working, communication and problem-solving skills.”

It’s simple – Give it a try, sign up here.

Enjoy!

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