New Journalism

We can almost feel the energy growing around curriculum about the BP oil spill.Please plan to join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesday, July 28 / World Times

This will be part of our ongoing series of webcasts focused on collecting stories, ideas, curriculum, connections, and resources that will help us teach about the Gulf oil spill this fall. Teachers who have been working together on this page in Suzie Boss’s Edutopia pblcamp will be with us: It Affects Us All

Eric Brunsell, who collected these resources will join us too - http://www.edutopia.org/blog/oil-spill-project-based-learning-resources We’ll also be joined by Andy Rosenbloom, Program Director Virtual Team Challenge: Spill!
Andy writes:

Even though you’re busy this summer with countless poolside BBQs, it’s never too early to plan ahead for Fall semester curriculum.The Virtual Team Challenge is an entirely FREE online, multiplayer business simulation that takes place in the animated 3D world of New City.  The team objective in the simulation is to help the mayor stage the most efficient oil spill recovery effort.  Top-performing teams are eligible for prizes for themselves, their teachers, and local charities!

Virtual Team Challenge will run this Fall from October 12 – November 24. See our article in The New York Times <http://links.brandgames.com/m/e87GdtSgDHtt2XVuyf8X7kedlZAnCphseJUB-eJOnpFORQTZyQ>  to read about one NJ teacher’s success with the program. Virtual Team Challenge comes complete with lesson plans and in-class exercises which form a  curriculum that highlights general business acumen, business ethics, negotiation skills, decision-making processes and accounting while placing a special emphasis on important life/career skills such as teamwork, communication, professionalism and research methods.

Register now at www.virtualteamchallenge.com/ <http://links.brandgames.com/m/ef9GdtSgDHtt2XVuyf8X7kedlZAngfEEySwYvC4ywuBFTuX8uw>

 
Teachers from the Gulf will be joining us too!This should be good.

Oh, and by the way, Bill Fitzgerald just put up Voices on the Gulf! On the webcast, we’ll be looking for volunteers to begin to put some content up, so that our site looks like the community we want it to be. Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesday, July 28 / World Times

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After giving my every last drop of writing to my project this afternoon, and passing out on the porch (picture to follow, I fear). Paul Oh just asked us to write a little more.

Oh, also I did one response already to my piece about Youth Voices. Marcie Wolfe like it, but felt it ended too fast. She right, I need to work on developing the ending of this piece. But I got to the end and ran of of things to say.

THANKS! Paul, Christina, Elyse, and Kate!I suppose I could write about all of the things we are trying to improve, like the groups, mainly. I read some of the feedback from some teachers who feel like Youth Voices is too much of a public square, and we need a couple of quieter corners. If being in a niche is important, and I think it is — It’s a big part of what it means to be a scholar (talking to like-minded, co-researchers) than we need groups that feel like their own place.

So yeah, I can do this I can celebrate the commons that we’ve created at Youth Voices and talk about how we need to groups with clearly identified, separate identities— but still in the Youth Voices family. My next steps? I want to finish developing - get released already our newest “group” site - which will be “Voices on the Gulf” This will be our prototype for other groups. So the next question will be how to help other groups get similar places on/with/connected to Youth Voices.

I’m tired.But not too tired to add this image by Walter Anderson. I can’t wait to develop more curriculum around comparing Horn Island with Fire Island. (The both have four letters in their first names.)

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Never thought it would come to this
Hurricane Katrina a quaint natural disaster
The face of this corporate horror is man
Made greed, greed made by man
The frogs still chirp in New Orleans
Then again the hurricane disaster was not wind
But shoddy workmanship & miscalculated engineering
So erupts this hell from a platform deep in the Gulf of Mexico
It has been Louisiana’s story from Chita the Lost Island,
Flaherty’s visibly stunning yet bewildering message of tranquility
Benignly coexisting with petrochemicals in the bayou
As I read the Secret World of Walter Anderson
To Lucas, only two years old, we understand the underlying sadness
Of that which is lost as we see the artist row his boat to Horn Island
To paint pelicans, shrimp, cattails, blackberries, pecans all soon to disappear

THREE POEMS by Greg Fuchs « Poets for Living Waters

I’m not sure why the phrase, “jumping the shark” came to mind when I thought about http://youthvoices.net this morning, but it did.

Definitions of jumping the shark on the Web:

Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations. …

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark What I want to work on is what Youth Voices has been, what it is, and what it might be next. No question “authentic conversation” is central. But inside of that is both how to sponsor, track, inspire and value commenting AND how to get rich, multimedia, thoughtful discussion posts.

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The series of webcasts about the Gulf oil spill that we started at the beginning of June continues this week. Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesday, July 21 / World Times We’ve invited anybody who has been with us this summer to return to Teachers Teaching Teachers whenever possible. We hope many will so that we can get an update on what is happening in the Gulf from the teachers who live there.

Author, professor, and Writing Project Director, Ann Dobie will be one of the voices on our webcast this week.

Ann Brewster Dobie taught at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for thirty-eight years, where she is now professor emerita of English. She directed graduate studies in rhetoric and the university’s writing-across-the-curriculum program. She is the author or coauthor of six college writing textbooks and author of numerous articles on literature and composition. She is the editor of Something in Common: Contemporary Louisiana Stories, Uncommonplace: An Anthology of Contemporary Louisiana Poets, and Wide Awake in the Pelican State: Stories by Contemporary Louisiana Writers. … Ann received her doctorate in the teaching of writing from Columbia University.

Biography on http://anndobie.com

Given our interest to work with teachers in the Gulf to collect the stories of students there, take a look at this description of Ann Dobie’s newest book, Fifty-Eight Days in the Cajundome Shelter, which was published in 2008.

Fifty-Eight Days in the Cajundome Shelter

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed thousands of homes, schools, and businesses across the Gulf Coast and changed the face of southeast Louisiana forever. However, nearly a hundred miles northwest of New Orleans, in Lafayette, Louisiana, a different story was unfolding. As men, women, and children waited on their roofs for rescue, executive director Greg Davis hurried to prepare the Cajundome in Lafayette as an emergency shelter.

The workers and volunteers in the Cajundome provided food, showers, and medical care to more than eighteen thousand evacuees that came to Lafayette. From the first busloads of newly homeless to the disasters caused by Hurricane Rita, “Fifty-Eight Days in the Cajundome Shelter” shares personal accounts of heartache and joy, tragedy and triumph. For the first time, here is a collection of the stories of the volunteers and evacuees. Their heroism, courage, and despair are etched into these stories as they endured the first few weeks in a hurricane-ravaged world.

Retold here is the bravery and leadership of Donald Williams as he took charge and led a convoy of handicapped and elderly to safety. Readers will also be captivated by the unforgettable story of the Prevost family as they climbed their way to the roof of their home and their heartbreaking journey to dry land on I-10. The author includes her own personal accounts of what really happened in the aftermath of Katrina and the bravery and selflessness of countless people who struggled to make a difference.

Here’s a list of writing that Ann Dobie has published with the National Writing Project:

Ann DobieNational Writing Project of Acadiana

Ann B. Dobie is the director of the Louisiana Writing Project State Network and former director of the National Writing Project of Acadiana. She is professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

By Ann Dobie:

• What to Do After Your Summer Vacation: Guides to Starting Your Own Writing Group
  2008 
• One Idea—Many Audiences
  2007 
• Teacher Inquiry Communities Network Resources Bibliography
  2007 
• Gulf Coast Sites Steadily Rebuilding
  The Voice, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2006 
• Tips for Publishing: Bringing Classroom Practices, Reflections, and Research to Print
  2004 
• Publishing and Research Resources: Journals
  2003 
• Who, What, When, and Where of Writing Rituals
  The Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2002 
• Writing, in French: A Little Background
  The Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2001 
• Book Review: The Art of Workplace English: A Curriculum for All Students, by C. Boiarsky
  The Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 
• Teachers, Scholars from 16 Countries Drawn to Global Conversations
  The Voice, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996 
• The View from a Rural Site
  The Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1993 

Author’s Page on the National Writing Project’s siteMany others will be joining us as well. Connect with these teachers at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesday, July 21 / World Times

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I just asked President Obama to shut down BP Atlantis. This oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico is operating without the proper safety documents, and even BP admits it could have a “catastrophic operator error.” The spill from BP Atlantis could be many times worse that the current tragedy unfolding in the Gulf. Can you ask President Obama to Shut Down BP Atlantis until proven safe?

Take action by going to:
http://www.spillthetruth.org/take-action Thanks,

Paul Allison

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I’ve been thinking about how to invite my students into their own inquiries this fall connected to the BP oil spill in the Gulf. I’ve also been wondering about how to bring gaming into the curriculum. I’m slowly realizing that these two streams of planning could come together. Gaming is about empathy, system, making connections, solving problems, and these themes keep coming up as we imagine teaching about the Gulf oil failure this fall. Some of the systems involved are ecological, estuarine, food-chain, weather patterns, economic, engineering… My list is off the top of my head. A lot could be added to it, and that’s the point!

I don’t know how to build a game that would put the players into different roles, situations, and systems, but isn’t it all there to explore? The thing is, I’m also impatient. I don’t think we can wait for this to be developed over the next six months, tested, and then released a year from now.

How could we build a game that is, perhaps, like Evoke or another of Jane McGonigal’s games?Or perhaps, it’s about getting students to participate in the research necessary in building such a game? That could happen right away.

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Please plan to join us on Teachers Teaching Teachers tomorrow (Wednesday) at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. One of our guests will be Kyle Meador, the Director of Education at Our School at Blair Grocery, New Orleans. I met Kyle on Edutopia’s “official PBL Camp kickoff” this Monday. This was a webinar led by Suzie Boss, and it was “attended by more than 100 campers. If you missed the live event, you can view an archived recording, and/or download the slide presentation.” Suzie will be joining us on Teachers Teaching Teachers as well.

Edutopia’s Problem-Based Learning Camp

is a four-week online collaboration to give us experience in the planning and implementation of a project for students of all grade levels. We’ll use a series of Web 2.0 tools in the planning and collaboration process. This will not only give us experience using the tools, but will also show us meaningful ways to implement them in our own classrooms.

 (They had to close registration, but all of the materials will be open to everybody and there is PBL wiki. Teachers Teaching Teachers welcomes anybody from the camp, where Paul Allison is participating.)To learn more about Kyle Meador’s school, Our School at Blair Grocery, check out this video. Then click here to visit our photo slideshow. This is well worth your time!

In addition to Kyle Meador and Suzie Boss, we will welcome two teachers from the Live Oak Writing Project which is on the coast in Mississippi. Alicia Blair who was with us last week, will return with a colleague Stacey Ferguson. We have also invited other teachers from the Gulf Coast to join us!Won’t you join us as we listen to “Voices on the Gulf,” and continue to plan curriculum with the teachers there. Browse over to http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA  Wednesday, July 14 / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times. We’ll welcome you there.

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Our School at Blair Grocery and young people from the national Youth Coalition for Community Action took a trip to Southern Louisiana to explore these questions in a series of conversations and experiences with members of the community and scientists doing work in the area. Our goals for the trip were to (1) establish mutually beneficial relationships between OSBG and organizations people and organizations in southern Louisiana; (2) to identify opportunities for service in in southern Louisiana that address significant community needs; and (3) to begin research into the development of a curriculum unit that addresses the ecological and social impacts of the oil spill and continued wetlands depletion

We need a site that makes it easy for students and their teachers K-16 to upload and display images, audio, video, text, and any media that can be embedded, such as flash files..The basic unit would be a discussion post. A teacher or a student should be able to open a discussion and easily add any media in the composing window for that document. At any point in the body of a discussion a student should be able to insert any media by simply clicking an insert button. A drop-down menu should appear for:

• audio
• video
• image
• embed code (for flash and other media)

A student or a teacher should be able  to include this media in a discussion from four sources:

• files on the computer
• web addresses
• web-cams or microphones, live
• telephones directly

Each of these Import pages would be kept as simple as possible.
It should be easy to save a discussion at any point after it is opened, but a teacher or a student should only be able to publish it to the site after he or she includes the following controlled vocabularies:

• Name of school and teacher (drop-down menu)
• Assignment
•  

All discussions should be easy to re-use.in part or in whole by anybody who comes to the site. This would include the following possibilities:

• Select all or part, then copy and paste into another website without loosing any formatting or media.
• Download each piece of media separately.
• The entire discussion post and all of the media in it would be included in RSS feeds that would transmit the discussion to other sites intact. RSS would be attached to open tags, controlled vocabularies (such as school or chosen topics), and things like “most recent discussions.”