Our goal in this--and the next--episode of TTT teachersteachingteachers.org/feed/podcast is to join those who are developing a practical, pedagogical discourse between the heckling and the hype around badges. Our conversations are open and wide-ranging, but we have a few questions that must be answered soon, as the fall semester starts up around the US:
Does it make sense to wrap Youth Voices youthvoices.net with badges?
How would it work?
What impacts might there be on different kinds students?
How do I start?
Of course, it's impossible to pull apart the different philosophical, political, and psychological threads that seem to attach themselves to badges, but the educators in this conversation begin to bring some clarity to the questions involved.
There's only so much that this many thoughtful participants can say in an hour, but we hope that there are a few moments while you are listening when you find yourself wanting to enter the conversation. Let us know what you are thinking by posting a comment below. And join us next week as we continue our conversations about badges on TTT with these thoughtful educators:
We'll continue these conversations live at edtechtalk.com/ttt on Wednesday, 15 August at 4PM ET / 1PM PT/ World Times: goo.gl/tERfa. NOTICE THE EARLIER TIME.
We’ll continue to focus on incorporating badges into K-12 education and beyond. There’s so much to say on the topic.
What’s your favorite blog post, video, article, resource about Badges? Please add a couple of links in the comments below. We want to be open and flexile about all of the ways people are talking about the issues involved. And, we are interested in keeping it real. We’ve been developing some ideas around badges for Youth Voices youthvoices.net, and there's more about this on P2PU goo.gl/oKQ1R.
See you on Wednesday.
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.
“Online communities of practice and personal learning networks are grassroots phenomena. Through them, educators are taking charge of their professional learning, and research suggests the value is real and wide ranging,” says Dr. Darren Cambridge, American Institutes for Research (AIR).
On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we are joined by an amazing group of educators as we help to kick off Connected Educator Month http://connectededucators.org/cem/ in our own way—with a conversation about what it all means to us, especially when we think about how important it is to be connected locally and physically as it is to be connected nationally or globally and virtually. Paul Allison, Monika Hardy and Chris Sloan host this conversation about Connected Educator Month (CEM). This special show focus on online communities of practice and includes guests such as:
Tommy Buteau joins us on this episode of TTT, and it seems perfect to introduce you to him in this Connected Educators Month http://connectededucators.org/. Tommy teaches in Windsor, Colorado http://youthvoices.net/whs/ and he talks about these three connected projects and more:
Add your comments to this post. Let us know what you think about Tommy’s connected pedagogy, and help us look into the future of Youth Voices. http://youthvoices.net. This episode might be a good moment for us to connect to old friends who want to work with us at Youth Voices again or meet new people as well.
Joining Tommy on this episode are:
Shantanu Saha, Monika Hardy, Jeremy Hyler, Deb Kauffman, Gail Desler,Valerie Burton, Chris Sloan, and Fred Mindlin
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Welcome to our first video festival. On this episode of TTT, we screen two-and-a-half student documentaries by middle school students in George Mayo's classes and two by high school students in Joel Malley's classes. Monika Hardy and Paul Allison were joined by Troy Hicks, Rebecca Warner, and Eric Taddei.
Central Films where you'll find videos from Cheektowaga Central's Mass Media and Film Production classes, which can best be described as a creative nonfiction writing workshop where we develop our writing into film projects. Visit our Vimeo group http://vimeo.com/groups/centralfilms to watch our films. If you have any questions, contact Joel at [email protected]
We started our celebration with a look at a couple of the philosophical touchstones for TTT, mainly World Bridges and the National Writing Project. Jeff Lebow (WB) and Elyse Eidman-Aadahl (NWP) helped us with these starting points.
The goals of Worldbridges are relatively simple and straightforward, as follows, “Our primary goal is to foster understanding and cooperation amongst the citizens of the world. We value civility and respect, open source collaboration, fair distribution of income, and a sense of world identity.” As part of these efforts, Worldbridges seeks to foster positive systemic changes in areas such as education, the environment, and politics. It also supports reliable and fair commerce. And it promotes a “people’s forum” for more civilized discussion of problems, issues, and conflicts that pose significant challenges in united the people of this planet. Values supported by the Worldbridges organization include respect and civility, fair distribution of income, world identity, and open source collaboration.
Jeff Lebow began experimenting with Worldbridges ideas (initially called “World Explorer”) when starting his master’s program in Training and Learning Technologies at the University of New Mexico in 1993 after a year of teaching English in Thailand (Worldbridges, 2007). At that time, Lebow became excited at the possibilities of the convergence of intercultural interaction and collaborative and interactive online technologies. After completing his masters, he returned to Asia—this time Pusan, Korea—where he taught English as a university and began to experiment with online audio and video, which included covering the Nagano Olympics in 1998. After burning out on all his activities and attempting to envision and build a webcasting network his life took a turn, or as he puts it, “I decided to quit my job, shave my head, and go to India for a while to contemplate the next chapter, for me personally and for Worldbridges. After some quality offline time, I decided to give Worldbridges a shot.” In Lebow’s vision for Worldbridges, he sought for it to become a means for using Internet technology for a global webcasting network of people. And it has!
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And here's a paragraph about the National Writing Project's core philosophy by Art Peterson in 2004
The National Writing Project's core philosophy, "teachers teaching teachers," is perhaps most directly expressed in the invitational summer institute's teacher demonstrations. NWP founder Jim Gray writes in Teachers at the Center, his memoir of the writing project beginnings, "The most successful demonstrations communicate not only what the teacher does but also why the teacher thinks this particular practice works. The emphasis upon the why as well as the what is important: it provides a theoretical underpinning and it accents a considered approach to writing beyond mere gimmickry" (143). According to Gray, this demonstration serves as a "trial run" for the workshops future teacher-consultants will present during inservice work in the schools, but it is intended to be much more than a simple demonstration of a strategy or technique. It is intended to be a significant "genre" for the circulation of knowledge about practice.
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Enjoy!
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Do you have your EdTechTalk stuff yet? Did you know there are T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, buttons, magnets, and tote bags available? They're all based on Wordle interpretations of the EdTechTalk Delicious tags.
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