Teachers Teaching Teachers: Making Space

I was fortunate to be part of a recent discussion about online student publishing the other week on the wonderful Teachers Teaching Teachers program. While the focus was on Space, a new online publication for and by students, the talk also moved into how the web provides a unique platform for publication. Space uses YouthTwitter for students to submit work and network with each other.

We were joined by a few students, too, and I love that their voices were part of the discussion.

Listen to the podcast of Teachers Teaching Teachers.

http://2008space.googlepages.com/

By the way, this was the 100th episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, which is a great accomplishment on the part of Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim and others. They really dig deep into issues.

Peace (in discussions),
Kevin

Space, Edition 2

George Mayo and his students continue to promote a great idea: an online student journal that is essentially run by students. The first edition was released about a month ago and this weekend, the finishing touches were put on the second edition.

It is a pretty amazing collection of student work that reflects some inroads into writing in the digital age. There are movies, stories, essays, poems and animation — all with links back to student and class sites. Students submit work through the YouthTwitter Network.

I have a handful of students who submitted some pieces to Space again this time around, including a few hyperlinked poems. We used Powerpoint for our linked compositions, but other students from other schools used Hypertextopia as the platform for publications and sharing.

Here are pieces from my students:

What I like is the possibilities here. The digital canvas might allow for students to really explore different kinds of composition and writing, and then share it with a real audience of other students. You could never do this with a paper journal. Movies, audio, animation, etc, would all be flattened down.

The next edition of Space may be handed off to students elsewhere (more on that in the coming weeks) and a wiki may become the publishing platform. I like how the investigation of the right tool is still being explored. The first edition used Google Docs, then Google Page Creator, and now maybe Wikispaces.

Peace (in student work),
Kevin

 

PS — Another amazing project by George and his students was a collective writing project called @manyvoices, in which more than 100 students from around the world contributed to a collaborative story using Twitter. I ordered a book version from Lulu publishing, and it was pretty amazing. You can also download a free PDF version from Lulu, too.

 

Space: the new (literary) frontier

George Mayo, who helped pull together the Many Voices for Darfur project, is at it again — this time, he has launched an online magazine to showcase student writing. It is called Space and it is an offshoot of the YouthTwitter Project that he and others (including friend Paul Allison) have begun as a way to connect students together.

George is using Google Docs as a main platform for the online publication and students submit pieces of writing through YouthTwitter. I really wanted some of my students to get some “space” and so we joined YouthTwitter as a classroom account (for now) and submitted six short stories based on the Chris Van Allsburg book, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (which I wrote about before and even did a podcast book review). I used Google Page Creator to put the stories on their own webpages and then shared the web addresses via YouthTwitter.

One day, I read a concrete poem that George submitted (about concrete poems, appropriately enougy), so I figured I would submit some writing myself — a concrete poem in the shape of a saxophone that I created a few years ago and share with my students every year.

Today is the first publication date of Space and it is a nice mix of student work. I would love to have my students move more into hyperlinked poetry (next month, I hope!) and multimedia creations (I have some burdening moviemakers in class). I think the digital platform holds some interesting opportunities for students to compose and publish for a real audience (always a good thing).

Space might even inspire me to venture into hyperlinked poetry myself, something I have considered but never pursued. Thanks, George, for the inspiration.

Peace (in publication),
Kevin