Monday, July 02, 2007

Ben Wilkoff 's Academy of Discovery (School 2.0, Part 11)

For months, I've been listening to this guy who records himself talking in the car (and no, it's not Kevin Honeycutt!). He calls his recording series and blog "Discourses about Discourse," and most of them are discussions with himself about his attempts to implement "School 2.0:" his use of the tools of the web in his classroom, how his students are responding, what feedback he is getting from the parents, and his concerns about how his students will do next year when they don't have the same ability to use the web. These soliloquies are surprisingly engaging, and they belong to Ben Wilkoff, a 7th and 8th grade language arts teacher at Cresthill Middle School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

Ben is only 24, but it's a wise voice that comes to me through my mp3 player (by the way, Ben--and others--remember that many of us have to convert your mp4 files every time we download them!) I invited Ben to describe his "Academy of Discovery" in this recorded interview, and I was impressed enough that I nominated Ben for the Edutopia/Yahoo! for Teachers Totally Wired Teacher Award--largely based on his stories of how he has had to work with the parents of his students to help them understand what he is teaching. Now, I may not have been the only one to nominate Ben, but I will take some credit for the fact the HE WON and will be flying to San Francisco later this month to accept this award. Turns out Ben was also and early Ning user...

In the crush to get ready for three conferences in June, poor Ben's interview has been delayed about a month getting posted. It's not the only one--I've got some other zingers still in the hopper!

Listen to the the Interview in MP3 format
Listen to the Interview in Vorbis OGG format

Subscribe to this AudioCast:

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for your kind words. I really want to thank you for all of your help in getting my name out there. I owe a lot of the recent comments on my blog and podcast to your encouragement. I look forward to meeting you on my trip out to SF.

    One note: the ning interview link doesn't work because there is a blogger url in front of it. I'm sure that it is all blogger's fault, but I thought that I would let you know anyway.

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  2. Fixed it, I hope! You're the best.

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  3. Anonymous5:52 PM

    @Steve: All of us here at Yahoo! for Teachers, along with the rest of the YPulse panel were equally impressed with Ben and his innovative use of social media in the classroom!

    We look forward to meeting Ben and couldn't ask for a better educator to represent Education 2.0! Thanks for taking the time to recommend him for this award.

    Congratulations Ben! See you in San Francisco!

    db

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