A few students from my New Journalism class at East Side Community High School in New York City talk about their blogs and read blog posts while connected with a couple of students from Lee Baber's class in Virginia. Lee webcasts live for us every Friday morning over through WorldBridges. And these conversations are available as a podcast. Look for Spacecast on iTunes.

Ride with me on Manhattan's Upper West Side, as I discss using a group of Google Apps instead of the current website at my school.

Ride with me on the West Side of Manhattan after school on day in March 2007. I discuss setting up an interactive website with Joomla for the New York City Writing Project

Run with me as from Upper-Manhattan into Riverdale in the Bronx, and listen as I "go on" about a few different curriculum queries that have been bouncing around in my head. What I think underlies all fo the examples that a mention here is the notion that writing and multimedia production should be taught as communication and not as a technical skill.

The semester is winding down. Students are focused on final projects in their core courses, and preparing for state examinations. Blogging is feels harder and harder to care about. Still these young people seem to have enough sense of personal commitment to YouthVoices.net and their personal blog to put forward some effort.

Rey-Rey's Music Studio Recital, Saturday, December 16, 2006.

The Theater Space at Holy Trinity Church

We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 10th - 12th graders. A couple of stories that stand out: Cailin's abilitiy to see connections between a journal-entry-like blog post and an essay she is writing for English class... Nichole's amazing blog by now... John's podcasting habits... and more!

We are in the last 5 or 6 weeks of the semester, and I'm having a great time with most of my 9th graders. They have developed good habits of mind and work, and I'm just their consultant. Christy's story of her relationship with Flickr continues to blossom. She set up a group in Flickr. I'm also interested to see Jose and Zadia move beyond their comfortable subjects. Blogging is a n interesting process to watch!

It may not be overly dramatic, but I'm enjoying these moments in my classroom, when I can go around and interview students, simply asking them, "What are you doing?" This was recorded on a Monday at the beginning of a regular week -- when there are no planned vacations or breaks... just four straight days of blogging. What I'm finding exciting this year is the ways I've found to allow students to find their own subject matter around which to read, write, find images, and listen to and create podcasts.

This is a bit of a rant. I want to find ways for Writing Project teachers to be constructively critical of our work, not just celebratory.