January 2008
32 posts
Youth Twitter →
I heard about a WordPress Theme that would look like Twitter on Buzz Outloud yesterday, and they weren’t sure of all of the applications. Duh! I’ve been only experimenting very lightly with Twitter in my classroom, because I’ve been worried about not having administrative control over the students’ posts and because of security concerns with other connections they might...
Educon 2.0, Tumblr, and an Escape from Kenya on...
We’ve got a regular educational news hour prepared for you tonight on Teachers Teaching Teachers. Join us LIVE! at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. First Felicia George, Associate Director of the New York City Writing Project and and Co-Chair of the National Writing Project’s Technology Liaisons Network...
Answering "Who am I?" with 4 photos →
Youth Wiki » Boone Middle School, FL →
Students doing a 4-picture project.
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Four Slide Sales Pitch:... →
Examples from the Edublog world.
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Misunderstanding Chicago →
An interesting argument here, althought I think we can still be “less is more” with audio on a VoiceThread.
“I read that the prestigious University of Chicago Business School will accept...”
– LeaderTalk: The Dizzying Chasm
Full-Time MBA: Essay Questions and Slide... →
I think it would be interesting to add a version of this to our early assignments for the profile on YouthVoices and the PersonalLearningSpace. I wonder if a VoiceThread will embed on a Who am I page.
Are we asking for too much?
A few days ago Will Richardson posted a tweet “looking for a student who is reading, writing, linking back to reading, reflecting, synthesizing, understanding how blogging connects. 10:49 AM January 21, 2008” — Twitter / willrich45 By the next day, he still hadn’t found what he was looking for, so he tweeted again:“Still looking for a student written blog post that synthesizes a number of...
“If they’re going to fall in love with regular “writing,” to return to it...”
– More on Saving Blogging from Schooling | Beyond School
MsCarlson: Home →
How cool is this? I hope we can get our 7th and 8th graders talking to them. Answering the question, “Why should I talk to them? I don’t know them.” will be the next question to answer.
“Maybe I’m asking too much here, but I’m still surprised at how difficult it is...”
– Weblogg-ed » Looking for Student “Blogging”
“new post: http://tinyurl.com/ypmgc7 Response to @willrich45 ‘s request for...”
– Twitter / cburell
“Still looking for a student written blog post that synthesizes a number of ideas...”
– Twitter / willrich45
“Looking for a student who is reading, writing, linking back to reading,...”
– Twitter / willrich45
15 Week Plan
I want to create a 15 week plan for my students this semester, and I want it to be a generic plan that others in our TTT, YouthVoices, PersonalLearningSpace can use. Susan Ettenheim and I are going to work on it tomorrow morning, via skype.
RE: Why use tumblr
Paul’s suggesting introducting something new to the elementary teachers. New is not necessarily bad but what happens when you do this with folks who are not comfortable with technology. Maybe ask Paul to come do this? Let’s see what the study group folks can tolerate. — feliciageo I’m game. I think it would be interesting to work with a network of teachers like your study...
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How is technological innovation changing the...
The second talking point about 21st Century literacy is: The world of technological innovation moves at a different pace than the educational system. When I first looked at this sentence, I wondered how it could be a talking point: Of course the speed of change is faster with technology than it is with schools. But this is so obvious that I wonder why it’s worth mentioning. However, look at...
Why must the benefits of technology be balanced...
One of the talking points about 21st Century literacy is: The powers of technology exist alongside challenges and vulnerabilities. I read this and I wondered why it has a passive construction, as if the challenges and vulnerabilities were some sort of act of nature. Here’s how I would re-write this (I know it’s not as tidy.): Technology gives teachers and students unprecedented...
Where does writing fit in 21st Century literacy?
In June 2007, I presented at a two-day conference sponsored by the Tech Initiative of the National Writing Project. We were looking at the “teaching and learning of literacy in the 21st Century.” Our friends at Inverness Research, Inc. are in the process of releasing several talking points related to our presentations and conversations. In general I’m concerned that their...
What would we teach in my dream school?
In my dream school, curriculum would be planned collaboratively by the 6 staff members on each team, with three focus areas: creative, compelling communication academic inquiry and research service learning and civic engagement A more developed set of outcomes would be specified on all six levels, with language for these standards developed by the teachers on each of the teams. Traditional or...
What would your dream school be like?
I would love to be a teacher in a small, public school that serves the families in an urban neighborhood. The school would be exempt from standardized tests, and would use digital portfolios to promote and graduate students. The school would have about 432 K-12 students and about 40 staff members, which is small enough for these adults to meet and plan together as a whole group. There would...
What do I teach?
I teach in a new field of study. Teachers who teach with new media, with computers, with blogs and wikis, and podcasts are working in new ways with unique content. Our work, our field, our subject deserves to be a core class in secondary school.
A new school (again)
I finally updated my resume and sent it out on a couple of listservs here in NYC. In my message I said that I wanted to teach in a new school. This after having just moved to East Bronx Academy for the Future just 4 months ago. I never saw myself as someone who moved around a lot. I spent 12 years at University Heights Secondary School, 3 at International, and 5 at East Side. I don’t want to...
Identity shifts I've felt in my own career
In “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age,” W. Lance Bennett says that “careers have changed from relatively secure life-long bonds with a single employer and type of work to several different employers and kinds of work.” I feel like I’ve lived on both sides of these “shifts in social and political identity processes resulting from the last several decades...
“A starting point for civic learning among all of these groups is to recognize...”
– Citation: Bennett, W. Lance. “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age.” Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24....
How do we avoid top-down limits on school-based...
On page 12 of his introductory chapter of the book that he edited, Civic Life Online, W. Lance Bennett observes: Youth sites often seem less social, more moderated, less open to posting and sharing media content, and more top-down compared to those pertaining to dating, friends, games, music, or video. And again I’m left wondering about our school-based social networks, Youth Voices and the...
Can we teach students with their digital tools?
One of my main goals in having students blog in the classroom over the past five years (I started in the Spring of 2003) can be summed up with this sentence by W. Lance Bennett (see longer quote in the tumblr post below this one): “In order for young citizens to feel comfortable engaging in more conventional politics, they need to feel invited to participate on their own terms, and to learn...
“Two overall trends seem to hold:
The majority of those communicating with young...”
– Citation: Bennett, W. Lance. “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age.” Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24....
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What about my civic engagement?
I think there is a problem with how uninterested and disengaged I am with schools. I’m a teacher, and I haven’t cared about the schools I teach in for about five years now. However, I took pause this weekend when I read a paragraph (See my Tumblr post below this one.) in a chapter of in a new book by W. Lance Bennett about how to bridge between bad institutions and young people who are...
“I think that there is a problem with youth civic engagement, but it is not...”
– Civic Life Online Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth Edited by W. Lance Bennett Civic Life Online - The MIT Press, “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age,” W. Lance Bennett (page 4)