http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=170

Download What's new about creating projects in the digital age? TTT106 - 05.28.08 Except for our colleagues in the the Southern Hemisphere, many of us are either already enjoying the summer holidays or we are looking forward to them coming soon. Teachers often use this time to relax and reflect on their work. We collaborate [...]

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/09/setting-table.html

It feels far away, because I've got to get computers set up -- and connected to the Internet -- and I keep running into problems like Skype not working because of something the Department of Education put on the computers.... I can get it off, but doing that thirty times becomes a pain. Still, I feel clear about what I want the students to have available, and how to get them started, but I need to figure out how the students can do parts of this set up -- while still being accurate.

Link

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/11/21st-century-literacies.html

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }This document -- and the assumptions behind it -- have helped me to clarify my reasons for defining a new discipline alongside of rhetoric and composition, but different from these disciplines.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/11/testing-openbox-services.html

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/seals-and-fox.html

You can see them if you look closely -- wait -- see!

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/courtney-is-so-smart.html

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }I really like the consensus that Courtney McGough has found in response to my babbling about databases. I'll have more response, I just wanted to say that this felt warm.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/are-state-library-research-data

This month, over at Teachers Teaching Teachers, Susan Ettenheim, Lee Baber and others are looking into how and why to use state library research databases, and they have given us a homework assignment:

Find you own states database collection (paid for by your taxes!).... Now, think of something you are wondering about. Is it your aunts newly diagnosed illness, is it a question about Iraq, is it the history of a neighborhood fixture, is it something about a book youve been reading this summer? Search in these state funded free resources and see what you find. If you can, wed love you to do the same search in some other places too, maybe Google, maybe findarticles.com, maybe Wikipedia...

Its time to walk the talk! TTT67 - August 15, 2007

Here's the results of dipping my toes into the New York Online Virtual Electronic Library (NOVELNY). These are just my first impressions, and they leave me wondering whether a more careful study has ever been done than the one here that we are doing for oursleves. Has anyone ever more carefully studied and described the differences one finds between searching in publically available sources, and these protected databases?

Last month I used the the keyword "relationships" to show how to set up subscription alerts for on-going searches in Google Blogs, Google News, EveryZing (audio), and FindArticles. By using the same word to do a NOVELNY databases search, perhaps I can compare resusts. On the search page, I choose "Full-text articles only," then I ask for a search in "All Resources," and I do a search for the the keyword, "relationships." This gives me almost 45,000 hits in 14 databases.

1	EBSCO Animals
65	Funk & Wagnall's New World Encyclopedia
949	General Science Collection
15	Health & Wellness Resource Center
326	Primary Search
225	TOPICSearch
15687	MasterFILE Select
170	Business & Company Resource Center
24142	Custom Newspaper Database
62	Informe Revistas en Espanol - Spanish
2058	New York State Newspapers
1194	National Newspaper Index
10	Twayne Authors Series
43	Gale Virtual Reference Library (All)

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=171

Download What have we learned this year with VoiceThread? TTT107 - 06.04.08
Join Matt Montagne, Ben Papelle, Susan Ettenheim, Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Bill O’Neal, and Hannah Feldman in a reflective conversation about where we have come this year, and where we want to go next year.


We especially look at how to move beyond our initial [...]

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/10/this-year-marks-my-25th-year-of

    This year marks my 25th year of teaching, and I feel like it's my first. This year, I've become a 7th Grade English Language Arts teacher for the first time. Two or three nights a week, I fall asleep while I'm trying to prepare my lessons, I'm so emotionally and physically drained by my current teaching assignment. Perhaps it's a good thing that I've been re-assigned away from my current classroom, and instead I'll be teaching an elective course in technology. But let's not get to the positive feelings so fast. Right now I'm feeling like I've been sucker-punched. I feel like my work isn't respected, and that I'm not liked. I feel like a failure.    The hardest part of this story for me to admit is that I'm not a very good 7th grade teacher, at least not with the 115 young people that I've been working with for the past two months. My morning class, which meets from 8:20 - 9:25 every day has been going really well. I don't know how many times I've walked out of that class thinking, "I can do this! Maybe I can teach English Language Arts to seventh graders in a school in the Bronx."  Reality often hits an hour and a half later when my break and lunch is over, and I start three 65-minute afternoon classes of 27-30 students each. By the time I see them, these young people have been yelled at, berated, punished, and threatened all day. After their screaming lunch and three hours of academic classes, they have nothing to loose.    How do I handle this situation? Not as well as the social studies teacher does. The students say that they like her, because, "She understands and can talk to us." I've wanted to sit in this teacher's classroom to watch how she does it. I have always had a lot of respect for middle school teachers, but never as much as I do now. The students tell me that I'm too "soft," and that I get angry too fast. They say that I need to be more "up there" or respected. I've been very open with my students about how I feel when they act out in class -- yelling, throwing paper, but I haven't figured it out yet. Perhaps I never will, but it's been helpful to seek their advise. I've been slowly building a respectful, demanding atmosphere in my class. It has not been easy.     This week was going relatively well until the end of the day on Friday, when my principal came to me to say that I would be re-assigned beginning Monday -- just hours from when I'm writing this. Instead of teaching my 7th Graders English Language Arts, I would be given elective classes from several grades in this 6-12 school. Wow!     Although my learning how to control my class was a part of her assessment, she agreed with me that the problem was not just in my classroom. All of the other 7th Grade teachers were struggling with discipline issues as well. Her answer was that she had to do something about English because there is a state exam in English (and in math) in January that determines whether or not these students will be promoted to the 8th grade. A literacy teaching coach is replacing me on Monday. She will not be using computers, and she will focus on reading and writing workshops as specified by a local college. These approaches, both the literacy coach and the principal argue, will get directly to the meat of what students need to learn to pass the state exam and be promoted to 8th grade.    What have I been doing with my students -- faster with my first period than my afternoon classes? The first thing I did was to set up a Google Apps Education account, giving all of my students email, docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. Then I created Google accounts for each of my students to that they could use Google Reader and Blogger. I set up a Blogger account for each student and associated each of their blogs with their Google Docs. Further I enrolled each of my students in the Personal Learning Space, and I went into each account to make it easy for them to collect the data from their Blogger posts into their Personal Learning Space blogs. This way each student would have a public blog that they could keep long after my class ended, and their work would also be collected into the "walled-garden," social network where they would be able to find friends, peers, readers.     We had begun with James Beane's notion of asking students to do personal inquiries by posing for themselves ten questions about themselves and ten questions they have about the world.  We also did a lot of work following Peter Elbow's descriptions of a freewriting / focused sentence / freewriting again... process of writing. In addition we had begun to explore reading together by reading and annotating (personal responses) the Wikipedia article about the Jena 6, and we did a "cloze" exercise with an article about Mychal Bell's (temporary) release from jail. The students had also written an essay in response to Sandra Cisneros' short story, "Eleven."     Most all of my students had shared ten or more pieces of writing with me in their Google Docs by the time I was re-assigned away from them. Toward the middle of last week they had just started publishing to their blogs--after checking spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. It was all just beginning to come together! Of course there was plenty to fold in. This week I was going to show them how to find Creative Commons images and insert them into their Google Docs.    Reading was an issue. I agreed with my friends who thought I could have started independent reading sooner, but their folders were set up. We were about to choose books, based on the themes (keywords and tags) from their 10 self and 10 world questions. And they were ready to begin Google Reader as soon as it seemed right. My vision was that students would be reading online in Google Reader or off-line in their books at least three times each week. Their responses to this reading would form the first of two-required blog posts each week. There's so much more to describe. My seventh graders had all learned their passwords, were responsible for one laptop, were learning how to use tabbed-browsing in Flock, and knew how to use Fauxto.com to create simple images.    We were ready to roll, but the steering wheel has been yanked from my hands.     It seems that I haven't been teaching an English Language Arts class in such a way that it would help my students to be successful on a state exam that looms over the principal's head. Seriously, it's not joke, principals must show improvement in their scores or they are going to be fired in NYC. You can imagine how hard it is for principals to take chances and try new things. So I don't blame my principal for wanting to go with an approach and an English curriculum that is more familiar to students, parents, other teachers, literacy coaches, and city and state evaluators.    Tomorrow I start my new position. The principal, while expressing no confidence in my placement as a seventh grade ELA teacher, told me that she didn't want to loose me. I appreciate that. I don't know exactly what my program will look like right now, so I can't say too much, but I'm pretty sure that I will have both middle school and high school students, which will allow me to take a more active role in Youth Voices. Maybe I've been handed a gift, maybe it's not possible to bring so much of the 21st Century into a situation that is tied to a 20th Century test. Maybe I'll be happier in the margins of the school again. I wonder though, when this work will be the core work of our schools.    At least for me, tomorrow I'll be able to teach students what I think is important for them to learn without the pressure of a standardized test or mandated curriculum.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/09/feeling-good-vlog-092207.html

Why aren't more teachers using weblogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networks in their classrooms? For a few years now, I've been doing technology and literacy workshops and summer institutes and presentations in the New York City Writing Project. A variety of teachers -- some young and savvy tech users, some who have avoided computers for many years, some "old-line" tech teachers who are more familiar static websites than blogs and wikis -- participate in these workshops and institutes. Yet only a few do the work once they get back to their classrooms.

This year, I've returned to being a regular 7th Grade English teacher in a pretty normal school (with a bit more technology support than usual). For the past five years I've been a technology teacher who has been given a lab of computers and a lot of support in keeping these computers up-to-date and working. Many of the workshops for other teachers that I've done have been in this lab. When teachers who are enthusiastic about doing this work go out into their own classrooms, they often run into infrastructure problems.

But what exactly do we mean by "infrastructure problems?" It isn't really true that computers aren't available. The schools are generally wired. So where is the rub? This is what I'm trying to pay attention to this year as a 7th Grade English teacher at East Bronx Academy for the Future.

As I say in this video, my focus this Fall is to keep track of all the things I am doing to make Web 2.0 work in my classroom. I want to be clear about the kind of commitment, vision, and hard work it takes to accomplish this. And, I want to demonstrate that it is possible.

What are the hurdles a teacher has to clear to teach with blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 tools? What does it take to clear these hurdles?

This is an early report. So far I'm feeling pretty good.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/11/special-places-in-nyc.html

tagzaniapaste
ebaff tagged map - Tagzania

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/10/halloween-inquiry.html

Halloween Inquiry

Here are some questions that we have begun to explore in our 7th Grade Technology class at East Bronx Academy for the Future. Please listen to our podcast, then add your answers to these questions:

What do you do on Halloween?
How does your community celebrate?
What are some of the best costumes you have ever seen?
Why do we celebrate Halloween?
Where does it come from? What's the history of Halloween?
Is it celebrated everywhere?
Is Halloween different in different countries?
What are some of your questions about Halloween?

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/09/while-running-in-nj-i-discuss-m

While running in NJ, I discuss the many elements of a complex job, from managing computer hardware, to having big ideas and goals, and from developing curriculum to manage the classroom and build community to inviting students into meaningful inquiries. While on my run I map out my curriculum as I begin my new job as a 7th Grade English Language Arts teacher at the East Bronx Academy for the Future. Thanks for listening.

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=172

Download Planning all out in the open - TTT108 - 06.11.08 On this podcast you’ll hear Felicia George, Bill O’Neal, Susan Ettenheim, Cheryl Oakes, and Gail Desler as they help Paul Allison and Julie Conason think about this Summer Instutute for teachers in the New York City Writing Project.
_______________________
Youth Space
Using Web [...]

http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=173

Download Cybercamps, Summer Invitationals, Institutes, and Workshops - TTT109 - 06.18.08We invite you to join us as we reflect on Writing Project Summer Institutes and other professional development opportunities we have or will be facilitating for our colleagues this summer.
Please take a moment, go register and leave your comments over at our Teachers Teaching Teachers [...]

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/databases-and-research.html

The issue is, of course, complicated. The only way to keep this information locked and expensive is to claim that it is special, but I still need that to be demonstrated. Is it really true that the information in these databases is significantly more complex, thorough, considered than can be found elsewhere? What about http://FindArticles.com? Also, we need to consider how much an adolescent can comprehend in evaluating resources. I like the direction Susan Ettenheim was taking at the end of Teachers Teaching Teachers #66, where she tried to get folks to describe what it is in these databases that is unique. Oddly the response was a story about how someone (from Georgia?) had started calling them empty containers. Freeing the databases is important, but getting rich statistics, peer-evaluated articles... (and this is the list that I think needs to be developed) ... to our students is even more important, and may or or may not be related to the "free the databases" movement.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/coast-guard-beach-eastham-ma.ht

The Atlantic Ocean has a way of quieting everything else.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-blogging-dialectical-note-ta

At the beginning of my first year of teaching in September 1984, I read Ann E. Berthoff's five-paragraph "Facets" in the English Journal. The "dialectical or double-entry notebook" that she describes became an important tool in my classroom that year, and it has has remained so since, especially in the last few years as blogging has become central to my curriculum. In her short essay, Berthoff describes a writing process in which "students and teachers alike... are discovering that journals need not be limited to personal or 'expressive' writing but that they can be used to record that inner dialogue which is thought." Over twenty years later many teachers and students have begun to use blogging the way we've been using the dialogue journal.

Berthoff describes dialectical note taking like this:

On one side of an open notebook, writers take notes, copy texts, record observations; on the facing page, they respond to those responses, taking notes on their notes and commenting on their comments, observing their observations and thinking about their thinking.

Bloggers can respond that they also enact a productive reiterative process when they spin another thread in the webs that make up the blogosphere. Many bloggers also describe their art as a one that "helps develop the habits of reflection which constitute critical inquiry and creative thinking." Creating places for students to make similar connections the classroom is more of a challenge, but many of us are finding this possible as well.

Berthoff could have been talking about what happens when teachers blog when she writes about the impact of double-entry notebooks: "Teachers become reflective writers and thereby more imaginative, freed at last from the compulsion to find an assignment to follow the one on how to tie-dye tee-shirts or on what to do about skunks under the porch." I'm not sure about those examples, but many of us who have put personal blogging at the center of our writing practice have felt the freedom that Berthoff speaks of here. Blogging allows us to put the student firmly in the center of his or her own inquiry over time.

Just like double-entry notebooks, blogging "can teach everybody the value and usefulness of looking--and looking again."

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/08/adding-freire-to-beane-videocas

Take James Beane's "10 self and 10 world questions." (See this Trailfire for more information.) Mix in a healthy dose of Paulo Freire's "generative words" and "generative themes." (See a description of "generative themes that discusses images in a book, Brave New Schools. And find "generative" in the third chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.) And I think we've got the makings of a really powerful curriculum! I'm planning to write more about this soon. Maybe I can make it sound coherent?

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-your-philosophy.html

A bit of a rant about teaching philosophy and change in how we do school. Recorded on Tue Jul 31 10:47:31 MST 2007

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/building-community-for-youth-vo

I want to build on our first attempts to have students use Google Reader to do research for their blog posts. Last semester, Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan joined me by having our students use Google Reader in our classroom as part of a more general blogging project connected to Youth Voices. We found that students' posts were often more compelling when they "introduced, inserted, and interpreted" quotations from other sources, especially blogs and news sources that their students found by searching Google Blog Search and Google News. I also had students quote from podcasts, albeit ones that he had selected for them and with no particular topic or question in mind.

Here are some examples from last semester of Youth Voices bloggers using published voices from blogs and news items in their own blog posts:

• My students at East Side Community High School, NYC: Jennifer, Felix, John (podcast listener)
• Susan's students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC: Robyn, Mercedes, Christina
• Chris's students at Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, Utah: Ameera, Eric's China post, Emerson's myspace

I think there are two main habits and several understandings that we are want students to develop by learning to use Google Reader.

1. Students will use Google Reader to collect and read online sources about self-directed inquiries.
2. Students will include voices from the sources they collect in Google Reader when they post on their blogs.

Understandings:

• Students will begin to use common "texts" with students in their niche group of friends or "elgg communities" using the Google Reader Share function.
• Students will assess their own reading habits, using the Google Reader Trends function.
• Students will understand the differences between blogs, news sources, articles, peer-reviewed journals, videos, and podcasts.
• Students will distinguish between the RSS-resources (listed above) from web sites, Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias and information sources.

See more of my thinking about this at this wiki page: Using Google Reader.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/tech-matters-07-minigrant-devel

Saturday, July 21, 2007 in Chico, California.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/swimmiing-at-tech-matters07.htm

Yes, they spelled out W-I-K-I in the water.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/collaboration.html

Betty Collum and Troy Hicks present at Tech Matters 07.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/rich-interactive-informaton.htm

Technology Matters, second day.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/tech-matters07-compelling-commu

The first full day of workshops at the National Writing Project's Tech Matters`07 Institute in Chico, California

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/07/tech-matters07-introductions.ht

This is our first dinner together. We introduced ourselves.

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/11/protest-or-acting-irresponsibly

Link to audio

Today is one of several days out of the year when teachers are proctoring tests -- assessments that determine our school grade. This is so Orwellian that I don't know where to start to protest, so I just keep saying "No!" I don't do this loudly or even explicitly. My negative opinion about the testing-mandated-curriculum culture just seems to ooze out of me. Mainly I teach new things to students like blogging and podcasting and -- like now -- I'm setting up for a webcast tomorrow, instead of proctoring for a test. Unfortunately my attitude and teaching can't last long in a school, so I guess I need to be ready to keep looking again and again. Why can't I find a school that might be willing to re-think curriculum in such a way that computers are necessary to do the tasks we imagine for young people?

http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/10/profile-posting-responding.html

I've been trying to describe my curriculum in simpler and simpler ways. Recently I've been saying that there are three strands:

* Blog Posts - responding to literature and journal-writing/research
* Profile building - description of self, community, and culture using multimedia
* Responding to others in the Personal Learning Space, a school based social network.

Of course there are a lot of other goals, and I'm concerned that my students are following me.