On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim, and Chris Sloan catch up with two other National Writing Project teachers, Bud Hunt and Gail Desler.
First we talk to Bud about his conversation at this year EduCon 2.3. We encourage you to follow the links at the bottom of this description from the EduCon site (I hope we did our "linktrubition" correctly here!):
Dr. Remix; or how I learned to stop worrying and love citation
Browse recordings: livestream.com/educon8
Who: Bud Hunt, St. Vrain Valley School District (CO) and Joe Bires, Haddonfield School District (NJ)
Conversation Description:
This presentation is an extension of a Twitter conversation in response to a keynote presentation at ISTE 2010. One presenter felt that he was witnessing an act of plagiarism, while the other felt he was seeing remix in action. Their constructive disagreement is worth further exploration.
Clearly, there are many differing views on the role of proper use of the work of others. What is the place of citation in the work we are doing with students and others? When should you cite? How? What does a digital citation, or "linktribution" as Alan Levine calls it, look like online?
Perhaps you never thought about it or perhaps you never considered the issue in its totality. This discussion will raise your awareness of this issue that fundamentally affects us because ideas are at the core of all of our curricula. Through citation, we ask students to connect ideas together and create new ones, but the issue of citation masks the fundamental question of the relationship between ideas and their creators.
Websites: http://www.budtheteacher.com - http://edtechleadership.com - http://bit.ly/drremix
Next up in the podcast, Gail Desler brings us up to date on here work as a technology integrator in the Elk Grove (CA) Unified School District. Among other things, Gail describes why she loves Audacity so much, and here's some of how she puts it in her wonderful Edublog, BlogWalker:
The appeal of Audacity to students is that they can edit all or just parts of a recording. For the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of observing Teresa Cheung’s 4th graders delve into Audacity to edit their Stories from Heart audio interviews. Once students see how easy it is to zoom in and delete an “er” or “um,” or shorten a pause, or amplify a section that’s too low, or remove background noise, etc., they become active sound editors. I love watching the confidence level of ELLs grow, as they relax, knowing how easy it is to redo words or even a single word until they’re satisfied with the output.
But more importantly, as Teresa’s students listen, for instance, to Chase’s mother explain how she came to be born by a waterfall, or Devina’s grandmother talk about growing up in Berkeley in the ’50s, or Anthony’s mother talk about her childhood days escaping Laos, the students take pride in sharing and preserving family stories, cultures, and languages. As the collection builds, so does the celebration of common threads and diversity in Ms. Cheung’s classroom, along with an appreciation for the power of the human voice.
Finally, Paul, Chris, and Susan mull over some of the changes they are planning for Youth Voices. Within days of this post, Bill Fitzgerald and the other "primates" over at FunnyMonkey will have finished a re-launch of Youth Voices on their new Voice Box installation.
The VoiceBox installation profile is designed to simplify the work of groups looking to create or expand their online presence. Groups who could use this site range from media organizations to not-for-profits to schools to advocacy groups. If an organization wants to build a place for their stakeholders to publish, interact, and get more informed, then VoiceBox could support that work.
We are very excited because we hope this re-launch will allow us to work with more students and teachers at Youth Voices.
We hope you enjoy this podcast. Enjoy peaking into the thoughts and plans of five National Writing Project teachers from across the country.