New Journalism

We are very excited about the new website, http://voicesonthegulf.org ! We are putting together a team to help us to develop this site — and fast. (Alicia Blair, Jeff Mason, Matt Montagne, David Pulling, Andrea Zellner, Catherine Tibbs, Chris Sloan, Diana Laufenberg, Ellen Steigman, Susan Ettenheim, Gail Desler, George Mayo (invited), Paige Baggett, and Tasha Whitton! We’re so excited about working with you all, and there’s room for more.) Along with this growing group of National Writing Project teachers, teachers from along the Gulf Coast, teachers in Edutopia’s pblcmp, AND/OR teachers involved with the EdTechTalk/WorldBridges community, we have been organizing (and working with Bill Fitzgerald at FunnyMonkey) to build this site that will do the following:

1. Provide a place where we can collect, amplify, and engage the poems, stories, and essays that students along the Gulf Coast bring to their teachers this month, as schools open.
2. Layer these stories, poems, and essays with online sources, including news releases and poetry (such as the poems on Poets for Living Waters).
3. We don’t know yet! Many of us have been working for some time on building a site like Voices on the Gulf, and we have some idea what directions this will take, AND we want to allow the discussions on the site to help us know how to develop.

The most important item, above is #1 - we are working as fast and hard as possible to get the site out to teachers, and for it to be easy to use.

If you would like to add a poem, thought, or anything, please sign up, then once you’ve been made into a member, you’ll see the Add Discussion button. Please go in and write a brief reflection, add  photo, a video, or almost anything — just to see how easy it is to do. AGAIN, THANKS! We need a lot of content right now so that we can see how the site works. AND students are coming back this week and next in many Gulf Coast schools.

A lot of our connections with teachers on the gulf have happened this summer on a live webcast that we do every Wednesday evening. You may have already been on the show. We would love it if you would come back. We’ve been able to make a lot of invaluable connections. You can see what we mean here: http://edtechtalk.com/teachersteachingteachers We would love to invite you to join us on Teachers Teaching Teachers tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Central / 9:00 p.m. Eastern. If you use Skype, please respond to this email, and let us know your Skype name (again)— just helps us to know who to look for!

We hope that you will be able to join us on Wednesday evening. We are working fast because schools are starting up down there! If you are available, that would be great, but we would also love to have you join us any Wednesday this month.

Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times

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