Following the January 14 Teachers Teaching Teachers Skypcast, I’ve been trying to get the word out to teachers in my district, region, and edublogosphere about three outstanding projects:

# 1 www.brainyflix.com – BrainFlix’s great video contest, with its goal of helping students prep for the vocab section of the SATs. Come on, what better way for kids to build their vocabulary levels than by creating or viewing vocab videos?! The rules are simple and explicit and students can win $. So checkout the list and invite your students in. The contest ends March 16. What a great opportunity for our students to contribute to an online learning repository.

#2 Read-i-cide: A Conversation VoiceThread – Thanks to George Mayo for sharing about a VoiceThread created by Bill Ferriter with Kelly Gallagher . If you are concerned about the impact on mandated anthologies + worksheets on students’ engagement with reading, come join the VoiceThread conversation.

# Center for Social Media – I’ve already blogged about the excellent resources Peter Jazsi, Renee Hobbs, et al, are adding to this site. I keep adding more and more of their links to my Toolkit4BlogWalker wiki. But, oh my, for some hilarious examples of remixes, checkout all the categories at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/recut_reframe_recycle.

I very much enjoyed Tuesday’s interactive videoconference with Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson, who connected from Wayne State University in Michigan to an 8th grade US History class and a 12 grade African American Studies class in my district.

I had the good fortune to meet Alex last April while waiting for my luggage in the Denver Airport.  Since he was wearing a Tuskegee Airman jacket, I could not resist introducing myself.  As he shared his story of “fighting for the right to fight,” I immediately started thinking of ways that he could share his World War II experiences with middle and high school students. To top it off, he showed me a copy of his book, Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free, which includes sketches from his time spent in a German POW camp for officers – the first time in his miliatry career that he enjoyed equal treatment as his fellow white officers. No question about it, students needed the opportunity to hear and learn from his first-hand experiences in a pre-civil right decade.

Nine months later, and with the help of the Berrien County’s energetic Janine Lim, we did it! Throughout a highly interactive hour, students learned that the fight for civil rights did not begin in the 60s. The Tuskegee Airmen persistently fought to overcome barriers and indignities, and in no small way laid the groundwork for what has transpired through the past 60+ years.

Today as we commemorate the life and sacrifices of Martin Luther King, Jr., and tomorrow as we head into a history-making inauguaration, I think perhaps the students participating in last week’s event will understand the anaology of the turtle on the gate post, who could not have reached that position without the help of many others – such as one Tuskegee Airman who has made a life career on taking a stand for social justice, fighting for the right to fight.

And what a good use of technology to take students beyond their school sites and community:-)

Professor Peter Jaszi, from the Center for Social Media, was one of the speakers on Wednesday evening’s very informative and engaging Teachers Teaching Teachers Skypecast. I’ve printed out a copy of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which Jaszi helped produce. It’s actually an easy read – and only 17 pages long, so not too intimidating.  I really like the premise that “educators need to be leaders, not followers, in establishing best practices in fair use” and that we should be exploring the issues with our students.

I’m looking with particular interest at page 13 of the Code: Developing Audiences for Student Work and its use of the term “transformativenss”:

“If student work that incorporates, modifies, and re-presents existing media content meets the transformativeness standard, it can be distributed to wide audiences under the doctrine of fair use.”

Between Jaszi’s Skypcast and reading through the Code, I had a vague idea of what transformativeness might look like, but somewhere on the Center for Social Media site, I found a link to a YouTube video that absolutely made transformativeness visible. Note: Not appropriate for younger audiences

I’ve been periodically listening to Tom Chapin’s audio version of “It’s not on the Test” for the past couple of years. So I was delighted to find the video version on YouTube:

Before the Winter Break, I introduced the 4th grade teachers in my EETT grant to blogs and blogging during a 3-hour whirlwind workshop. With only a week left before vacation, already several went “live” with their blogs and invited their students to post comments, noting that their students immediately took to blogging. One of the great things about introducing Web 2.0 tools is that kids like technology.

I am pretty sure that students who read and respond to blogs regularly – especially beyond the school day – are building their reading skills. But my EETT grant was funded based on my argument that students at three of my district’s lowest-performing elementary schools would improve their writing skills by integrating multi-modal, multimedia tools and strategies into the English/Language Arts program. The tools (blogs, podcasts, wikis, VoiceThread, and video editing) are only half of the program. Area 3 Writing Project Teacher Consultants are providing the other half: teacher-tested writing activities and strategies that have transformed writing in their own classrooms – and have helped raise scores on the 4th grade paper-and-pencil state writing assessment.

Technology is not a silver bullet. But if you combine powerful writing strategies – such as introducing emerging writers to the concept of strong verbs and prompting them, for example, to locate strong verbs in other bloggers’ posts and to respond with at least one strong verb – with Web 2.0 tools, then I predict this group of 4th graders will become better writers.

Over the break, I’ve been reading some outstanding posts by Silvia Tolisano, Kim Cofino, and Kevin Jarrett.

Drawing from many of the ideas and resources they’ve shared, here is my agenda for Tuesday’s EETT workshop:

Opening Session: Revisiting Blogs and Blogging

• As as opener, I’ll show Rachel Boyd’s Why Let Our Students Blog? which is hosted here on TeacherTube.
• We’ll then move on to an exploration of student blogging with an academic focus. We’ll visit several recent posts by classroom teacher Silvia Tolisano on her Langwitches blog – bringing away three ideas we could use tomorrow and responding to at least three student bloggers listed in her posts:
  • Blogging Lesson Plan: Writing
  • Introduction to the Blogging Lesson Plan
  • Blogging with Elementary Students

• The Big Question: How can blogging help YOUR students?
• End with my Sacto neighbor and thinking partner Alice Mercer’s video on Blogging with Students

Morning Workshop: Summary Writing – Facilitated by A3WP 4th grade teachers Angela Luna and Heather Koczian.

Afternoon Session = Podcasting for Absolute Beginners*

• Start with a brief PowerPoint. I’m providing handouts for teachers to note how they will integrate podcasting – and summary writing – into their classrooms.
• Introduce Audacity
• Hands-on time for teachers to experiment with their first podcasts
• End session with demo on podcasting from a cell phone via Gcast
• Wrap Up – Sharing of ideas for incorporating podcasting – as a writing strategy – into the 4th grade curriculum.

*Note: I’ve posted links to podcasting tutorials and resources on ToolKit4BlogWalker.

As we move through this grant year, it is my hope that through access to powerful writing strategies and access to technology tools that provide authentic audience and authentic purpose, this group of 4th graders will experience academic growth – and excitement – and will add writing (most likely online writing) to their list of favorites.

Image copied from http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/blog-stickies.jpg

Loved starting the New Year with an email from NWP colleague Kevin Hodgson, whose creative energy and projects never cease to amaze and inspire. So what did I love about this morning’s email, my first message of 2009?… An invitation to reflect on my year and share with the DIAS community…. An introduction to a new tool, (something Kevin sends our way on a regular basis), Xtranormal. Oh my, think of the classroom applications for this tool!

….Inclusion of music (another frequent bonus from Kevin)…. And the promise of continuing on with this valued part of my PLN into the New Year.

Thanks, Kevin, and Happy New Year to you and the DIAS worldwide community:-)