Chris Harbeck and I will be guests tomorrow morning on the Richard Cloutier Reports show at our local radio station, CJOB.

The topic is "What are our kids doing online?" but I can see us talking about adults as well as how some sites are changing the way we connect socially, personally, and professionally at all ages.

You can listen live, streamed over the internet, but we'd rather have folks participate in the chat room we've created or via twitter. We're using the hash tag #cjob.

Chris has a much more detailed post up than I do. Head over there and check it out.

Hope to see you online and on the radio. ;-) The fun starts at about 9am central time in North America.

So we talked for 2 hours ... when you take out all the commercials it's a little less than an hour. I didn't think I expressed myself very well this time out. The conversation felt a little fractured, like we kept losing focus. There was one moment when I completely forgot what I was going to say. What I meant to share, in the context of how important a caring adult is in the life of a successful student, was this:

A while ago a colleague of mine called home to speak to the parents of one of her students. This student had started missing some classes and she was concerned about their progress in math:

"Hello, Mrs. J. I'm your son's math teacher. I just wanted to let you know that he's missed a few classes and I'm starting to get concerned about his progress in the class. I ..."

"Tell it to someone who cares!"

Here's the audio: (59 min 38 sec, Download, 29 Mb)

So tomorrow I've been invited back to CJOB radio to participate in a panel discussion on literacy. Sort of unusual for a math teacher but then again, maybe not.

In my latest workshop on numeracy I talked about how literacy is about much more than reading and much more than what we learn in school.

It'll be interesting to compare notes with the other people on the panel: an early years literacy teacher, someone from Red River College (our local community college), and someone who works in adult education. (I don't know anyone's names yet.)

I've still got the chatterous room set up and open for anyone that would like to participate. If you've got the time, please join us:

Check the time for where you live.

Listen here.

Join the live chat.

Chatterous is blocked by the CJOB web filter. (It's not just us education folks that have to put up with this sort of thing.) I'll check in on the room after the show. Hope to see you in the chatterous room!

Friday's interview with Richard Cloutier was fascinating from a few different perspectives:

The View From The Studio

Richard was a wonderful host and I found myself taken with the entire process of putting together a radio show. He started working on this show months ago when we met over coffee. He than came to see me teach a couple of times and we had a chance to talk about how it went after each class. In one class my SMARTboard was broken so he really wasn't seeing any technology in the classroom per se other than mentions of what was happening online in the class blog. The second time we did have the SMARTboard up and running but the class was a very "meat and potatoes" algebra lesson. We did get a chance to look at how I used the SMARTboard to refer to the previous night's scribe post on the blog, how I pulled in a video from YouTube to link the dry content they were learning to some useful mental math, and how I tried to have the kids on the board more than I. (Actually, I've decided to begin analyzing my lessons and sharing that online. I hope to garner suggestions for my instructional design and more effective use of the SMARTboard. That particular lesson will be the first in that series which I'll publish here shortly.)

Richard had every minute of the show planned to the second. Nonetheless he was constantly communicating with his producer to change things midstream in response to the feedback from the audience. He was taking in email live, on the fly, working the phones, planning the upcoming sequence, coordinating those of us live in the studio with Sheryl, Dean, and Wes on the phones as well as the other callers on the phone. We wanted to also monitor the Chatterous space but couldn't get through the network filter; an issue, it seems, that's not exclusive to education. I think there's work for Clarence in the world of mainstream media professional development. ;-)

In the last week and half since the show it seems to have made a small splash online. The audio has been dowloaded over 500 times and blog reflections have come in from around the world:

Wes Fryer (Edmond, Oklahoma): pre-interview post

podcast recording

post-interview refelction

Donna DesRoches (North Battleford, Saskatchewan): A Day of Learning

Stuart Meldrum (Hawick, Scotland): Teachers take over the Canadian airwaves

Neil Winton (Perth, Scotland): New Year, New Connections, New Learning

Chris Harbeck (Winnipeg, Manitoba): A day listening to Darren on the Radio

John Evans (St. Francois Xavier, Manitoba): Darren Kuropatwa Interview on CJOB Friday, January 2, 2009

Wes Fryer - follow up post (Edmond, Oklahoma): Contrasting recent Oklahoma City and Winnipeg morning radio coverage about education

Alice Barr (Yarmouth, Maine): Week 1 of 2009 and already some amazing learning!

One common thread through all these reflections was the engagement everyone felt in the online chat. It was an opportunity to continue meaningful conversation during commercials. Over 1000 comments were shared over the three hours of the show. Here's some of what happened in the chat:

There were between 30 and 50 people in the chat at different times. They came from:

• Maine, USA


• New Hampshire


• Edmond, Oklahoma


• St. Francois Xavier, MB


• Perth, Scotland


• Los Angeles, CA, USA


• Harrisburg, PA, USA


• North Battleford, Saskatchewan


• Winnipeg , MB


• Charters Towers, QLD, Australia


• Farmington, Maine, USA


• Fort Gratiot, MI, USA


• Wales UK


• Charlottetown, PEI, Canada


• Philadelphia, USA


• Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Folks shared links & tips (kick youtube, snackr.net, and many more) and quotes from the show that resonated with them.

A real sense of community developed by the end. Many participants in the chat added new people to their blogrolls, exchanged twitter usernames, and contact information.

What's Next?

A number of other people are thinking about ways to engage the mainstream media in their communities around the world. What will happen here in Winnipeg? Well, maybe more people reading and commenting on edublogs, joining the conversation, more local attention for the good work my students have done and are doing. Or maybe not.

The Last Word

... in the chat was about penmanship. A valid point I think. Emphasis my own.

There is no excuse for the lack of skills of today's students. Successful handwriting can be taught to anyone in a short period of time, with a little effort on the part of the teacher. When I taught school, I reduced handwriting down to ten easy lessons, and with a plan of attack for the students to use on their own. I can boast an unusually and significant success rate. One of my lessons was entitled "One Letter at a Time". Pick a letter. Decide how you want it to look. Learn how to write it very slowly and deliberately. Then for a week or so, every time you write it, take the time to do it properly. When satisfied, choose another letter, and repeat the procedure. No student ever gets through the whole alphabet. However, overall penmanship improves drastically.

Whenever I drive to or from work I like to listen to CBC radio. On the way home I listen to Margaux Watt who hosts "Up To Speed". So on Friday, after my Extreme (web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover workshop I was a little chuffed to be interviewed by Margaux on her show.

A friend recorded it and sent me the audio file. It's only about five minutes long. While we were talking the podcast I do with my students, Student Voices, came up. Margaux suggested she might play one of those interviews on the radio. I don't know if that will ever happen, but if you listened to the show on the radio and came here looking for those podcasts you can find them here.

Two five minute talks in as many days ... I can say exactly two things about five minute talks:

(1) Five minutes is very short.

(2) Five minutes is very hard to do well.

Here are my five minutes on the radio: