http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1636.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=115 Download Can we use mapping to build our school social networks? TTT53 - 05.16.07Follow along in this week’s Google Notebook

We are coming to the end of an academic year in which many of us involved with Teachers Teaching Teachers — with the support of Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow at WorldBridges.com –have [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1589.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/05/blogging-continues-at-eschs-nyc More interviews with stuents while blogging.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1586.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-i-love-to-run.html

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1583.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=114 Download How do I work blogging into my daily curriculum? TTT52 - 05.09.07Bud Hunt asks the question like this: “How do I work Youth Voices [a school-based social network of 1000 student bloggers] into my daily curriculum? How do I use it either to replace existing writing or to support the writing instruction that [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1584.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=113 Download Teachers Using Drupal (and WordPress, and...) TTT51 - 05.02.07Our guests this week were two Writing Project teachers who use Drupal in their work with students and teachers.



Jason Shiroff is a 4th/5th Grade teacher at the Odyssey School in Denver, Colorado. Jason is also the Tech Liaison for the Denver Writing Project.

Will Banks is an [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1585.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=112 Download Trailfire and Virginia Tech Shootings - TTT50 04.25.07Trailfire in the classroom

Madeline Brownstone, a teacher from the Baccalaureate School for Global Education, NYC, kicked off this episode by talking about how she has begun to use Trailfire in her classroom. Madeline has only begun to explore the possibilities of Trailfire. Her 7th graders have begun [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1557.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/04/blogging-update.html Another in my series of videos where I interview students about their work as bloggers.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1514.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=111 Download Creating Sweet Spots on the Web - TTT49 04.18.07How do local Writing Projects create a web presence? What changes when they do? What tools might we consider? Joomla? DrupalED? We discussed these issues with our guests Bill Fitzgerald, Paul Oh, Troy Hicks, Felicia George, Madeline Brownstone, Lee Baber and Paul Allison. Bill [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1469.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-far-away.html When I first heard of the shootings in Virginia, I thought about Lee. How far away was her school and her students? I looked at her students markers on a CommunityWalks map that we had been working on together. As I was working, I zoomed from place to place, noticing -- as we often do -- how close we all are. Here's a Google Earth map that shows where the shootings took place, but it also has all the markers on it from our bloggers in the Personal Learning Space and Youth Voices. I don't know why distance matters to me on this one. I also feel close to the parents who sent their young people away to college, for this? And I'll be sending my sons away just like that in a few years.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1468.html

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=110 Download TTT48 04.11.07 Hard Questions for Teachers Who Teach BloggingAfter a few months of blogging with all of her classes at YouthVoices.net, Susan Ettenheim sent Paul Allison a few questions:



What do you do about the student who is on-line more (has that luxury) doing stronger work than the student who has less experience with being [...]

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1461.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/03/many-sides-of-blogging.html On March 28, 2007, I interviewed students in three of my New Journalism classes at East Side Community High School, NYC. First my 10th graders describe what, how, and why they blog, then my 8th grader, and finally my 11th and 12th graders. The high school students are blogging at http://youthvoices.net and the 8th graders are at http://personallearningspace.com.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1320.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/8078.html


Ride with me on Manhattan's Upper West Side, as I discss using a group of Google Apps instead of the current website at my school.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1321.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/7682.html


Ride with me on the West Side of Manhattan after school on day in March 2007. I discuss setting up an interactive website with Joomla for the New York City Writing Project

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/1205.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/7493.html


Run with me as from Upper-Manhattan into Riverdale in the Bronx, and listen as I "go on" about a few different curriculum queries that have been bouncing around in my head. What I think underlies all fo the examples that a mention here is the notion that writing and multimedia production should be taught as communication and not as a technical skill.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/919.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/7352.html


The semester is winding down. Students are focused on final projects in their core courses, and preparing for state examinations. Blogging is feels harder and harder to care about. Still these young people seem to have enough sense of personal commitment to YouthVoices.net and their personal blog to put forward some effort.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/808.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/7026.html


Rey-Rey's Music Studio Recital, Saturday, December 16, 2006.

The Theater Space at Holy Trinity Church

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/806.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/6841.html


We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 10th - 12th graders. A couple of stories that stand out: Cailin's abilitiy to see connections between a journal-entry-like blog post and an essay she is writing for English class... Nichole's amazing blog by now... John's podcasting habits... and more!

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/807.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/6461.html


We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 9th graders. They have developed good habits of mind and work, and I'm just their consultant. Christy's story of her relationship with Flickr continues to blossom. She set up a group in Flickr. I'm also interested to see Jose and Zadia move beyond their comfortable subjects. Blogging is a n interesting process to watch!

Just before break (Thanksgiving break) I had each student print the Activity button so they could confront how much or how little they had actually done and give me useful feedback. I printed a sheet based on the How Am I Doing questions. Each student had the printout and the questions and I asked them to write the answers to the questions on the printout.

The feedback was fabulous and answered a lot of my questions about what was going on in the class. Many students wondered how to "do it" - many were disappointed about getting no comments. Today I sat the whole class around the LCD and together, using the Responding to Blogs and Podcasts sheet that I had printed for each person, we found and responded to a post. The questions were great and on task. Then the students were sent to do the same. Today, no one was allowed to respond to anyone in our own class. Here is a sample response:

omg...i love guitar hero! it is like awesome! this is so cool! i never thought anybody would like guitar hero! i honestly think this is best video game EVERR! i have played guitar hero on hard and i am struggling on expert. anyway, thanks for posting this blog! rock on dude!
xxx at  ERHS, NYC on Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 14:16 UTC #  

I have deleted the student's name but this is indicative of the breakthrough we had today in the class. Someone else walked out and said to me in passing- "this is so interesting can we do it some more?"

BUT for me the best part is today we talked about typos in a post and looking first at the content and then suggesting that someone do some editing. We talked about judgement and not stereotyping. At first look, we found the post from Mr. O'Neal so we talked about was it "weird" and how do we figure it out - someone suggested reading it to see what he had to say- then someone suggested checking out his profile. Most of all, we had the opportunity to talk about how this was their life- how they would be doing college work online, how they would be finding friends in college online, how they would be networking for jobs online. I think they get it!! and best of all, they are really thinking and pushing what they already know into new places! Tomorrow may be hard, but today was great! 

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/760.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/6365.html


It may not be overly dramatic, but I'm enjoying these moments in my classroom, when I can go around and interview students, simply asking them, "What are you doing?" This was recorded on a Monday at the beginning of a regular week -- when there are no planned vacations or breaks... just four straight days of blogging. What I'm finding exciting this year is the ways I've found to allow students to find their own subject matter around which to read, write, find images, and listen to and create podcasts.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/738.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/6115.html


This is a bit of a rant. I want to find ways for Writing Project teachers to be constructively critical of our work, not just celebratory.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/701.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/5645.html


Webcasting is taking hold in my 8th grade classroom. The students come to class looking forward to getting on the mike. Today I asked them to print out their most recent blog post that was to be made up of stories that answer the question: "What's it like to be a ___ year old boy/girl in NYC in 2006?" The students had a lot of fun talking to their peers in Virginia. I'm thankful to Lee Babar in Virginia who has invited us to join this weekly webcast, Spacecast, which can be heard at 10:30 a.m. on Fridays. We are also joined by Madeline Brownstone's students in Queens. Listen in on Fridays at WorldBridges.net

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/700.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/5394.html


Webcasting is taking hold in my 8th grade classroom. The students come to class looking forward to getting on the mike. Today I asked them to print out their most recent blog post that was to be made up of stories that answer the question: "What's it like to be a ___ year old boy/girl in NYC in 2006?" The students had a lot of fun talking to their peers in Virginia. I'm thankful to Lee Babar in Virginia who has helped invited us to join this weekly webcast, Spacecast, which can be heard at 10:30 a.m. on Fridays. We are also joined by Madeline Brownstone's students in Queens. Listen in on Fridays at WorldBridges.net.

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/668.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/5197.html


Each Friday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Lee Barber and her 8th graders from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia include my students in live webcast. This is only or third time doing this, and there are a few kinks to work out, but notice the engagements of these boys!

http://elgg.educationbridges.net/paulallison/weblog/669.html

http://paulrallison.livejournal.com/4955.html


On this run in the beautiful Bronx, I talk about something that feels too far out there to talk about in normal conversation with teachers: the need for new discipline, a new field of study... let's call it Web Science. In this first-draft rant about the topic, I try to remember why it is important to me to be asking this question even though it has little impact on my work with students right now. Still, it's about seeing what can be accomplished with students who -- almost by happenstance -- end up taking my elective class every year for three or four years, and this compared with students who dip in and out of the "technology elective" maybe twice in their high school careers. It's about skills and habits of mind and work. My focus on this question also comes from my sense that we do in fact have a body of knowledge for students to learn and theory about why it is important for them to learn these things. What I need to follow this up with is a piece of writing where I bring together some thoughs from Will Richardson and Clarence Fisher, David Warlick, Stephen Downes, and Mark Bernstein and others -- Henry Jenkins -- who are talking about this new field of inquiry. Tim Berners-Lee is creating a new field of study called Web Science. Perhaps I'm not alone out on this branch, thinking that "integrating technology" needs to be rethought