We are joined by Ed Martinez, +Fred Mindlin, and Dan Spelce to discuss "Forage IV," a pilot program supported in part by NWP's collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Literacy Initiative.
Integrating art with environmental education, we support teachers in linking their existing curriculum to a student-led interest-driven project, collaborating with practicing artists.
This story helps us put learning narratives next to this description of connected learning from The Digital Media & Learning Research Hub http://dmlhub.net/ :
Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today’s rapidly changing work and political conditions.
This webcast is one in a series that we've been doing recently where we are asking: Where are the classrooms that are doing this well and how do they ensure that the other principles are in place?
Enjoy!
Forage III hanging in a window of the Ritt in Santa Cruz, CA
Joel Malley @joelmalley and Stephen Ritz join us on this episode of TTT, the second of a series of episodes this Spring where we are discussing Connected Learning and our OLE (Online Learning Experience) sponsored by the National Writing Project http://connect.nwp.org/online-learning-connected-learning. (Anybody can join the OLE. Just email Joel.)
We're in the middle of the third session, and this webcast looks back to the first session where many of us were introduced to a wonderful example of a connected teacher, Stephen Ritz.
We invite you to join these conversations at the Connected Learning Inquiry Group and here on Teachers Teaching Teachers over the next several weeks.
On this episode of TTT, we are joined by:
Paul Allison, Stephen Ritz, Joel Malley, Chris Sloan, Nadjib Aktouf, Scott Shelhart, Nikhil Goyal, Valerie Burton and Monika Hardy
After listening to this first episode in this series on Connected Learning (TTT #336), we hope you are inspired to join our special guest, Stephen Ritz on this episode of TTT.
Check him out here, listen to or watch our webcast — further below, and leave your coments.
And stay tuned! We are live every Wednesday at Teachers Teaching Teachers.
After we read and discuss Will Richardson's Book Why School? on the Connected Learning Inquiry Group site, Richardson will be joining us on TTT on March 27 at 9PM ET/6PM PT/World Times: http://goo.gl/TLFP7 at https://edtechtalk.net/ttt .
Enjoy this episode of TTT, and plan to connect with us all Spring!
Click Read more to see the chat that was happening during this live webcast.
This episode of TTT is a conversation about the future of the teaching and schooling in general.The idea for this week's episode of TTT came about when +Andrew McGuire, a student of +Chris Sloan's who had graduated from high school last year, told Chris that he wants to be an English teacher. But he wants a different kind of education than a lot of what he has received. Chris writes:
He’s an education reformer at heart, and a lot of what he described as his ideal educational environment aligns with some of the people who’ve joined us on Teachers Teaching Teachers recently. He’s talking about connected learning in third spaces that involve a maker approach and is inquiry-based. So what would you tell an 18-year old who’s thinking about becoming an English teacher? Not only what Andrew and others like him should study, but how they should go about their teacher education?
On this episode of TTT Monika Hardy and her student, Cristian Leobardo lead us in a be lab update. We take a look at their revised Website, their book, and their travels http://redefineschool.com.
Here's how Monika, her students and her colleagues describe their main foucus/premise:
Public education could be the most accelerating venue for social change. Rather than waiting for any of the incredible [past, current and ongoing] innovations in redefining public education to scale, imagine we scale the individual. Imagine a new (old) narrative that can start anywhere because it begs no prep or training. Imagine we trust simplicity enough to give it a go. Imagine hastening equity, and ongoing sustainability. I’ve been working with youth the last four years, locally in Loveland Colorado, as well as virtually around the globe. We have been in an intense mode of experimenting with first, self-directed learning, and now, the intersection of city and school. We've been afforded an incubated space (sand box) within our city, as a connected adjacency (both in and out of) our school district.
We are joined on this episode of TTT by
Paul Allison, Scott and Kelsey Shelhart, Cristian Leobardo, Karen Fasimpaur, Gregory Hill, Monika Hardy, Mikhil Goyal
On this episode of TTT, re-mix and get ready for EduCon 2.5 http://educonphilly.org with George Mayo, Harry Costner, and Bill Fitzgerald along with our friends Scott Shelhart and Kelsey Shelhart.
A few weeks ago, George wrote in an email:
Another teacher and I have this experiment for this year's Educon called @remixeducon http://educonphilly.org/conversations/remixeducon . We're planning on creating a structure for participants to share, download and remix media created throughout the conference. The other teacher's name is Harry Costner. He's a really cool middle school film teacher in Virginia.
Would it be possible for us to pitch our @remixeducon idea on a TTT show sometime after the new year as we get closer to Educon? I'm trying to think of ways to spread the word about our project before the conference.
On this episode of TTT, we do our best to help Eighth-grader Kelsey make connections with people like Leah Qusba from the Alliance for Climate Education: and Kyle Ruddick, the founder of One Day On Earth. Enjoy the conversation, and consider ways of collaborating with us on some our plans together.
Paul Allison, Scott and Kelsey Shelhart, Monisha Nelson, Daniel Lichblau and Kyle Ruddick, Leah Qusba, Monika Hardy, and Cristian Buendia
One Day on Earth – next event on 12-12-12 http://www.onedayonearth.org/page/participate Participation Information on the above link. Together, we are showcasing the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occurs in one day. We invite you to join our international community of thousands of filmmakers, hundreds of schools, and dozens of non-profits, and contribute to this unique global mosaic. One Day on Earth is a community that not only watches, but participates.
Global Song project http://www.onedayonearth.org/group/globalsong Download the guide tracks, and on 12.12.12, record yourself on video playing an instrument, singing or dancing along with the guide track and send us your video/audio.
On this episode of TTT teachersteachingteachers.org/feed/podcast, find out what Digital Storyteller/Maker/String Arts Master/3rd Spacer, Fred Mindlin is up to with Metal Sculptor, Ed Martinez at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.
Last week, Ed Martinez started a 5-week series of workshops with students to create another in a group of mobiles he’s been working on representing the forage species of the local marine environment in Santa Cruz, California. Fred MIndlin is facilitating student sharing of reflection and analysis about the process and its meaning. Read more about this project at http://forage.storyreach.com/, and see more about Ed’s work at http://junkartscramble.com/
This is a relaxed, reflective, and insightful conversation, thanks in large part to the comments and questions from 8th-grader, Kelsey Shelhart.
Please join our dialogue by adding your comments on this Vialogue:
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!
_________________________________
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.
__________________________________
Enjoy!
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.
On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Chris Sloan and Scott Shelhart host a conversation about Open Education. They were talking just before the first ever Open Education Week which took “place 5-10 March 2012 online and in locally hosted events around the world.”
As it says on http://www.openeducationweek.org ”The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness of the open education movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Participation in all events and use of all resources is free an open to anyone. Read more
Our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers are Cable Green, Mary Lou Foward and Karen Fasimpaur.
Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons. Most recently, Green was the Director of eLearning & Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, where he provided leadership on strategic technology planning, openly licensing and sharing digital content, growing and improving online and hybrid learning, and implementing enterprise learning technologies and student support services. One innovative project, the Open Course Library, creates low-cost, digital, openly licensed (CC BY) instructional materials for 81 high impact community college courses. As Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, Green is responsible for setting strategic direction and priorities to build a global movement that will enable robust and vibrant practices and policies for free sharing of education and learning assets. Cable will lead Creative Commons’ recently-announced project to provide technical assistance to winning grantees of the Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community and Career Training Grant program.
Mary Lou Forward is the Executive Director of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, providing leadership for the organization’s efforts to support OpenCourseWare use and development globally. Prior to joining the Consortium, she served as Dean of African Studies for SIT Study Abroad. In that role, she provided academic and strategic leadership for 29 programs across the African continent, leading SIT’s incorporation of technology and distance learning in international programming and developing innovative opportunities to collaborate across countries and between diverse student groups. She has also worked on community-based development in Africa, with an emphasis on the incorporation of appropriate technologies and sustainable resources in small-scale enterprise development.
Karen Fasimpaur is an enthusiastic user of OER in K-12 classrooms. She works with teachers to help integrate, remix, and share open-licensed curriculum to engage students and differentiate instruction. Prior to this work, Karen was an educational multimedia producer, a textbook developer, and a teacher.
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.
+Mary Ann Reilly was one of the catalysts of this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. She had shared this video with +Troy Hicks, +Teresa Bunner, and +Buffy Hamilton “in response to the question about how we empower/engage high school students. The video chronicles work that educators at Morristown High School did in developing a classics academy. The film was made by Ben Donnellon.”
This video frames our conversation. In addition we refer to “A 2006 survey, The Silent Epidemic, [which] put these questions [about engagement or the lack thereof in high school] to a group that isn’t usually asked for opinions on American education—high school dropouts. The study found that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school.” http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/2006-High-school-drop-out-rate-survey.aspx
In reference to this survey, Troy Hicks had been wondering: “Where we are at ten years into ’21st century learning’ and NCLB. Are the problems with engagement really still just the same? Who are the students that are dropping out and why? Who is actually sticking around and not feeling engaged? Why?”
We also welcome Louis, a student from Bronx Academy Senior High http://bronxbash.com the school where Paul Allison teaches. His stories of staying school or not were a needed grounding for this conversation.
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.
