Check out this new social network for NYCWP, set up for this summer’s Invitational and Tech Institute:

http://nycwritingproject.ning.com/

Bonnie Kaplan, of the Hudson Valley Writing Project, is working on a Digital Storytelling piece about the NWP/ELL conference and has a draft up on YouTube. She is looking for feedback, so check out the video and leave her your two cents, either at the video itself or at her blog.

YouTube - NWP/ELL Conference Draft 1

Kevin Hodgson, of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, and a 6th grade teacher, does thrilling and exciting work with Web 2.0 tools in his classroom. His latest endeavor is no exception. Check it out: Playing with Pivot

Interesting blog post on the impact of technology on teachers and teaching.

21st Century Learning: Letter to my Colleagues

“We Think” by Charles Leadbeater

Bonnie shared this cool video over at her blog, so I’m passing it along.

On the second day of the NYCWP Spring Tech Retreat, held this year at The Baccalaureate School for Global Education, in Astoria, Ken Stein and I delivered a workshop on using Trailfire in the classroom. Here’s a link to the agenda we used: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df257qz4_46fkzt6gp4

For two hours, in two different sessions, we “blazed an Internet trail.” We first presented this workshop back in March at NYCWP’s annual Teacher to Teacher Conference but ran into so many technical issues, due to Lehman’s network capabilities, that we were unable to demonstrate Trailfire in all it’s glory. Last weekend’s session, though, drove home the point that in our educational institutions, we are faced with outdated or under-performing network capabilities. Because of this, I’ve begun to feel that maybe Trailfire is not the best option for teachers to use, unless they work in a school with a powerful Internet connection, such as a T1 line. (By the way, on a political note, if Bloomberg&Co are so hell-bent on running schools like corporations, why do our schools have such lousy Internet and network capabilities? Chew on that one.)

Diigo was briefly mentioned as an alternative to Trailfire, which inspired me to play with it some more once I got home. I have a Diigo account, and I have the toolbar loaded into my browser but I rarely use it. After playing with it, I see big potential. It seems to be less clunky than Trailfire, and more streamlined. I like that you can annotate in a sidebar, or directly on the webpage with sticky notes. Haven’t heard of Diigo? Check it out.

[After I finished posting this entry, I used Diigo to annotate a blog entry by Doug Noon. Two more reasons I appreciate Diigo: the Twitter integration, and the ability to post my annotations directly to my blog.]

I’ve also learned that the key to introducing teachers to new technologies without being totally overwhelming is to make the presentation as smooth and tight as possible. After watching teachers in the first session become confused and overwhelmed, until we reached an important “ah-ha” moment, I tightened up the agenda for the second session. And while I’m on that… can I just say that I totally appreciate that I was able to edit the agenda in Google Docs without having to republish the whole page? That is a nice little feature of Google Docs!

All in all, I think it was a successful weekend. I’m only sorry that I didn’t have time to pop into the VoiceThreads session and take some pictures. Hopefully, someone who presented or attended the VT session will blog about it. I’ll let you know if they do.

Today was the first of two sessions of the NYCWP Spring Tech Retreat, and I think we got off to a bang. We decided to begin by introducing Twitter to our participants. They will use Twitter throughout the retreat for constant reflection and communication, so it made sense to start with that. But first things first, we created avatars, using Splash-Up. The avatars were used in Twitter, and participants could take avatars further, and use them anywhere an avatar is needed or wanted. I’m not sure if we’ll introduce Gravatar…it might be too heady right now, when we’re talking about other cool, new things. 

Participants were given lots of time to play today, and to get used to Twitter. We ended the session with dinner and I heard lots of conversations about the potential of Twitter in the classroom, and other teacher-y things that are bound to come up when you gather teachers together into one room. (Take a look at our agenda.)

Tomorrow, we’ll split into two groups, to look at VoiceThreads and Trailfire. In the meantime, you can take a look at what happened tonight. Check out the flickr set. 

• Being pregnant apparently means not knowing you have to pee until you sneeze. Yeah. Thought I’d share. #
• @rorris Mazel tov!! I take it, the closing went well? #
• @blkdrama it was good! #
• puttering about, trying to get my day in order. time’s a-wasting. #
• y’all, my baby sister helped to write this report about school leases in NYC: http://tiny.cc/XqysF (it’s a PDF link). #
• dinner tonight: rigatoni with eggplant caponata #

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• @dogtrax count me in for hosting DIS on my blog. just let me know when! #
• coffee in hand, chatting with bonnie and getting ready to write daily journal #
• @BakingAndBooks amen. wait ’till/if you get pregnant and you can only have a cup a day… there’s really no room for bad coffee then! #
• @jenathan eek! good luck!!! maybe do some wrist exercises so you don’t get carpal tunnel from signing all the docs… #
• @jenathan breathe. it’s tedious but relatively painless and you actually have something to show for it when you’re done! #
• organizing mission is underway–winter gear has been dropped at dry cleaners, to prepare for storage. #
• meatloaf in the oven, i’m sure there is something else I need to do…mmmh…. #

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• Ready, Set, Go! ( @blkdrama congrats on the new camera!! ) #
• bank errand completed, mail is mailed, laundry’s in progress, coffee is in hand, day is getting off to a productive start. #
• working on NYCWP site, and polishing up the agenda for this weekend’s tech retreat #
• grocery shopping done, baby-sitting gig cancelled for today, sister has summoned me to unload more baby and maternity clothes on me. #
• @cburell tellingly, my splitting headaches ceased when i stopped teaching, back in january… amazing. #
• buying a dishwasher… #
• dishwasher and microwave ordered online, at a discount but delivery cost is a bitch. oh well. it was relatively painless. #

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