Yahoo! For Teachers

Our little school is “walking” I-80 from DuBois, Pennsylvania all the way to San Francisco, California and we’d love to visit with you along the way.

To make this wellness project more than just laps in gym, we are asking you to introduce your middle school and tell us something about your area. You can see (and hear) the VoiceThread proposal by Mrs. Sperling by clicking here.

The proposal is just that. If we get some interest we’ll have our students make a voice thread that will act as the network for the meet and greet.

If you’re interested, or know another middle school that may be, just drop us an email. dsperling@dasd.k12.pa.us or me, at kpruitt@dasd.k12.pa.us.

Good VoiceThreads make good neighbors I always say!

Ken Pruitt
Tech Integrator, DuBois, PA

Note: If you’d like to share your project with other educators, or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your projects with educators around the world.

Educators and students from across the globe are planning a 24 hour long “Webcastathon” on Earth Day 2008 (Tuesday, April 22nd). Thanks to our good friends over at World Bridges, the audio from the conversations will be broadcast live at Edtechtalk.com/live.

The goal of the day is to share stories across the globe about what we’re doing to help better the health of our planet.

Our conversation will follow the 24 hour day in GMT time, which basically means we’ll be observing the day as it passes through Greenwich, England.

There are many ways that you and your students can participate right now. You may start contributing content by visiting the Earth Day Webcastathon planning page at: enviroscims.wikispaces.com/Earth+Day and leaving an audio comment on the two VoiceThread projects.

Or if you and your students publish any videos, pictures, podcasts or any other digital media online in the days and weeks leading up to Earth Day, be sure to tag them as, earthcast08, so we can aggregate the material in one central location.

Also, if you and your students would like to moderate an hour long block live (or even 30 minutes), there is still an opportunity to do so. You may fill up your time slot in any manner that you wish (interview scientists, local leaders, folks doing positive things in your community, etc)

Contact Matt Montagne at mjmontagne at gmail dot com if you’d like to moderate a portion of the day. Finally, if you’d simply like to listen in during the day, you can do so by visiting the Webcastathon planning page throughout Earth Day.

We’ll have a live, moderated chat room that we’ll be using to allow for greater participation.

We hope you and your students are able to join us is some capacity for the 24 Hour Earth Day Webcastathon!

Thanks!
The Earth Day 2008 24 Hour Webcastathon Planning Team

Note: If you’d like to share your project with other educators, or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your projects with educators around the world.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel

In a way, we decided to take sides when we launched Many Voices for Darfur, a global collaboration project. Wendy Drexler and I asked our students an unsettling question: What is our responsibility to help end the genocide in Darfur? The answer we came up we with: spreading awareness.

So for 48 hours, starting at midnight EST on March 6th, many student voices will be collected in the name of those suffering in Darfur. We are asking k-12 students around the world to visit our Many Voices for Darfur blog and leave thoughtful, well-written comments. It is our hope that hundreds or even thousands of students will come together to help raise awareness about the first genocide of the 21st century.

Want to get involved? It’s incredibly easy to participate. Students simply visit the Many Voices for Darfur blog during the 48 hours and leave comments addressing one of the prompts listed on the homepage. For more detailed instructions, visit our Many Voices for Darfur Wiki. To learn more about Darfur, check out our Resources Wiki Page.

Mr. Moses, a teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, made a short YouTube video describing the project for his students. He makes a request for multi-media projects that students could share and link to starting on March 6th.

Read what what others are writing about our project. For more information please contact me.

Mr. Mayo
8th Grade Language Arts Teacher
Rockville, MD

Related Resources

• Mr. Mayo Blog
• Flickr > tag > darfur
• Wikipedia > Darfur
• Yahoo! Teacher Document > Twitter Many Voices Project

Note: If you’d like to contribute your story or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your stories with educators around the world.