Monthly Archives: June 2008

Memoir Mondays: Songs as Political Protest

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This is part of a project at Two Writing Teachers
We used to take the stage late at night, armed with a few guitars — an acoustic (me), an electric (JD) and a bass (Bert). A drummer would come in the future. Hooligans, a hangout for two different universities, was one of those dark-lit establishments that has the rank smell of beer all over. Tables were shoved so close to each other that patrons were just as likely to be engaged in a conversation at their own table as the ones next to them.

One night a week, the place opened up the stage for Open Mic Night and our ragtag trio (we named ourselves Behind Bars first and then later, Rough Draft) would join the assortment of other pseudo-musicians in playing to an audience that would waver between interested and disinterested, and you had to really engage them or you’d lose them. We hardly knew what we were doing, except we knew we had original songs that we wanted to play. If there was an open stage, we wanted to use it. We were as rough as our name suggested, but confident that music was important to us.

This was during the heart of the Reagan years and all of us were feeling very disenfranchised by the political scene and the willingness of our administration to support covert wars in order to advance its aim of ending Communism once and for all. Central America was often a battleground for these proxy wars between the US and Russia, but there were many other hot spots around the world and Iran-Contra wasn’t far off. We spent one of our summer fixed to the TV screen, watching Oliver North testify about the inner workings of Casey’s CIA operations that pushed legalities aside in order to further political aims. Things were happening in the world that made us angry, yet we had no way to express that anger or vent our frustration.

As a result, I was writing very political songs at the time for the band, trying to reach some heart of understanding of this world we were soon set to move into. I alternated between disguising the venom of my thoughts with rhythm and melody and being forthright with my aims. Music, I was sure, could change people’s hearts and if not, then at least it was a legitimate way for me to protest the unfolding world in a language that I could understand: music. My bandmates were right with me on this.

On this particular night, we launched into a song called “It’s Another War,” which is about sending kids off to fight a war while the leaders stay home behind desks. I was writing from the perspective of the lessons of Vietnam being ignored while covert operations were taking place in Central and South America.

The song begins: “So we’re off in another, though we didn’t start it, we’ve seen it before,” and builds into a condemnation of Reagan and his staff, although never named. (Later, Bert made a video of the song that I have on VHS somewhere — need to dig it up).

Midway through, at the chorus, suddenly I hear a voice that is swearing at me to get off the stage and leave America if I don’t like it so much. I kept playing and singing, eyeing this person and wondering what might happen in this bar tonight. That’s when I noticed one of my roommates — the one with completely different political views than me, the conservative man all the way through — jump to his feet, and move towards the table where the heckler is sitting. Even as we play, I can hear my roommate shout: “Keep quiet. They have a right to their song,” with slightly more profanity than that. The heckler glared back and then backed down. I was saved by the token Conservative in our Liberal midst, as about ironic as you can get, I suppose, and a reminder not to judge someone by their political leaning.

This all came back this week as I pulled out my acoustic guitar (the same one I used to play at Hooligans, it turns out, although now it has about 25 years of travel on it) and I wrote a new song about Bush and his presidency. I realized how strangely similar things had become and how I was still trying to sort out my political feelings through music.

So, here is the (ahem) rough draft of the new song.

Farewell to King George

Listen to the song

We’ve been held up forever
as you take what you want
Not knowing what we need

We might be in this together
But only if the world
is crumbling at its knees

You look so tired
And we’ve been brought down low
Your time’s expired
With the clock ticking slow
And when the history books
Give you a second look
I know you’re gone

You find forgiveness for your sins
When death is but a battle cry
waiting in the wings

This world may never be the same
You threw the match that drew the spark
and stoked it into flames

Chorus

Now that the day has come and gone
I’ll meet you out on the roof
to celebrate the dawn

We’re held captive to our fears
But this chance to end the bitterness
may wash away the tears

Chorusx2

The song’s title will have to go — it’s too overt and makes me a bit uncomfortable. And the song may never move to another stage. Many don’t. But for now, it works for me as I await a change in our leadership that may make a positive difference in the world, although how to reverse the damage done by this administration is beyond me.

Peace (in all respects),
Kevin

Your Days in a Sentence

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It’s difficult to express the wonder and amazement that I get when I put out a call for Days in a Sentence and receive back such a wealth of words. There were more than 20 contributors this week! The vibrancy and giving of our writing community, and the way that a sentence pinpoints the act of reflection, is really quite something.

Thank you.

Here are your Days in a Sentence, traditional-style:

Bonnie as salmon? Naw. But in her role as a leader and mentor of teachers, she admits that the classroom is getting more distant, particularly as a heat wave pounced on her (and my) region last week and fried plenty of brains in the schools.

“I am moving upstream from the rest of the fish in my river, as teachers I know melt in their classrooms while I am in my AC planning for work this summer and finally taking on the projects demanding my attention. I still hold my memories of school in June but they are fading.“

Paul had a sudden realization of the balance between what he carries around in his hand from place to place and what carries him around from place to place. Until he thinks about the debt. It’s a skewed financial equilibrium (OK, that has to be a good band name, right? Skewed Financial Equilibrium!)

“I think it is scary that my laptop is worth more than my car, or my truck, or all of my clothes, or my living room furniture, but not as big as my student loan.”

Ken composes poems that are not of this world. Spend a moment reading this one aloud and you’ll see what I mean. Thanks, Ken. (Note: Ken and I crossed many paths during the Comment Challenge and he is one of the finalists for prizes for that event. Please consider casting your vote. First, read the nominations and then consider voting — Bonnie is also a nominee, as is Kate — see below)

“Somewhere between dreaming and waking,
when least expected,
there’s a turning point
with no life going into it,
no usefulness coming out of it,
where cogent thought
carries no weight
for sensibility
and idiocy
are in dispute –
Reality,
its hand
held out to meet you,
Fantasy,
its limbs
spread out to greet you,
confusing
night and day,
life and death,
till passage
is complete.“

Kate had weather on (and in) her mind this week as the term neared its end for her. (Kate is also a nominee in the Comment Challenge)

“Rain and sunshine, wet and dry as mixed as my feelings in the last week of term.”

Connie sees the virtues of continuity with an initiative she is part of. That would be nice, since most of us know that continuity in education rarely happens unless there is a solid base underneath it to support and nurture it. And if anyone is good at nurturing folks, it is Connie. (See the Fireside Ning for examples)

“Ah, here I am, the last day of school, weary but emotionally elated from having broken new educational ground; the funny thing is we’re now so completely networked, I know we’ll just continue on from here–and that has never happened before.“

Amy makes the quick and seamless (?) transition from the classroom to camp, with barely time to catch her breath. She must love kids!

“School is over but my camp director job has already begun – no rest for the weary! It would be nice to have a break in between the two jobs, but it is a change of pace anyway. Camp tours begin today so I will be meeting many nervous parents (and kids).“

Lynn cites “frozen brains” in her post. To be honest, a frozen brain would have felt nice in my head this past week. Lynn also talks of renewal — that way in which we have in finding new energy and motivation in our life.

“Frozen brains will melt soon enough with respite, roaming, rare family-time—ah, renewal!“

Illya has had quite a week — from sports to teachers to climbing walls (in a good way, it seems).

“It’s been a full 3 days of teaching baseball to a group of eager young boys, showing eager teachers how to teach with their new book and tomorrow I’ll be helping eager young children to climb walls – now that is a fulfilling week!!!”

Matt appreciates the fact that we threw no curve balls (continuing with Illya’s reference to sports here) with Day in a Sentence this week. Sometimes, we need solid footing in our lives.

“This week I’m finding change is hard. I’m glad my day in a sentence remains the same.”

Barb‘s part of the world got hit hard with Mother Nature, but does anyone in the outside world know about it in this Age of Media? Not if you live in a small market, unfortunately.

“Southern Indiana fields plowed, planted, and flooded with devastating flooding across the state get very little press.“

Janice (who joins us for the first time, I think) pushed herself hard this week in a physical way. She may have paid the price with a sore body but, hey, she got a sentence out of it! (Thanks for participating, Janice)

“My brain, which believes it is still twenty, had great difficulty convincing my almost fifty year old legs, lungs, and heart that they COULD keep going when I filled in as the extra player in an intense game of Ultimate, and then, later, on a lengthy hike to release salmon back into the Credit River.“

Can you hear them? The kids? They are calling you out to the playground.The monkey bars and swings await. Delaine heard them and is on her way. (Me, too. See you there).

“Just like small children, my friends are anxiously waiting outside, ready to play, for me to come running from the house after all my chores are done. The end of school is very near, and the playground is calling.”

Michelle feels her feet sinking into the Earth that once was solid but which now has absorbed the rains. May she soon find solid ground again!

“Rain-soaked nights and rare sunshine make me feel as if I am sinking into a very spongy clay earth here in Vermillion, South Dakota.”

Sara can find some space this summer to breathe and to talk as a married couple. Her single life is behind her now (good thing, right?). I love that she has big dreams. I hope she achieves them (I know she will)

“my thoughts lately are of freedom, sustainability, choices, and the tenacity of my first summer of married finances – discussing big dreams with my husband and taking the first journeying steps to reach them. (and god forbid i write “baby” steps, or both mothers will sense something grandchild-ish in the atmosphere…)“

Warm, gentle and nurturing thoughts go out to Nina, who clearly has had a difficult time. I hope these words find you with some sunshine peeking through the clouds, Nina.

“I feel surrounded by cancer; it has been a cruel week.”

Alice‘s sentence reminds me of the song from Semisonic that goes “Every new beginning starts from some other beginnings end.” I always liked that line. And the prospect of summer brings that idea forth for many of us.

“Welcome to summer vacation, where ends become a beginning.”

Mary got a gift of cooler temps as she headed to Beantown to explore the Freedom Trail with her students this week. If she had gone any earlier in the week, she and her kids would have melted into the sidewalk and ended up in the Charles River.

“With temperatures above 90 in the classroom on Monday and Tuesday it was ironic that on Wednesday we were walking the Freedom Trail in Boston celebrating the cooler temperatures and the change in venue. The Boston Massacre was refreshing after the South Hadley Melt Down.“

Brandi (Welcome!) is new to Day in a Sentence, I believe, and her blog, Lead by Example, is very cool and worth your attention. She’s a bit tired from the technology, but I appreciate that she found the energy to contribute here.

“As I watch the week come to an end, I am exhausted from trying to catch up on all of my digital communication.“

Anne was one step ahead of her principal in a cross-world journey this week.

“It was announced at morning briefing that our principal was leaving for USA, but I reported that I would be there before her, taking my kids with me, as we were using skype to participate in an amazing videoconference for a “show and tell finale” with the New England students we had connected with through blogging.“

Amy P. is having one of those unscheduled moments of blissful confusion. I think it is blissful, but it may not be.

“This week brings randomness due to no established summer schedule.”

Cynthia always packs a handful into a sentence and this time, she realized how she could use a tool to explain a tool. Great insight and I would love to see her movie.

“I spent all week working on my presentation on Photo Stories for the 21st for the MWTI Writing conference, and then Wednesday night I had an epiphany about what I should have done, so I spent Thursday re-vamping and re-creating a Photo Story on how to use Photo Story. Whew!“

I also redid my Wordle experiment from the other day, adding in the newest sentences and then editing out my own introductions to each sentence. Here, then, is a gift to everyone who participated this week: Your Days in a Wordle.

You can go right to the Wordle Gallery to get a better view of the design, too.

Thanks for participating this week. Be on the lookout for a guest host for next week.

Peace (in our connective words),
Kevin

Claymation in the Classroom, part one

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As I did with my Digital Math Book reflections, I am going to break my reflection about our recent claymation projects down over a few days.

With the school year ending in just a few days, my students were rushing to finish up their Claymation Movies this past week. More time would have been helpful and I was frantically carving out small blocks of time here and there just to get them some space for editing and adding audio. It didn’t help that we had a few kids absent on a few days.

But eight small movies are now done, with mixed results, I think. On one hand, my sixth graders loved working with the clay and with the stop-motion animation software. They “got” it pretty quickly, although my constant preaching for patience doesn’t always resonate with all students. Patience is key to claymation and the more raw video they can gather, the more flexibility they will have later.

The theme this year was Climate Change and I will detail a bit further how we went about things in another post. Essentially, they had to work in some aspect of the environment into their stories. In the past, I have had groups of students work collaboratively with second graders, but that didn’t work out this year due to scheduling difficulties. So we were on our own.

I also experimented with a different approach: I let the students create characters out of clay first and then they developed the story second, via storyboarding and concept mapping. I had hoped that the characters might infuse the stories and I do believe that happened, for the most part. I wish I had forced more time on them to develop scripts, but I wanted to see how it would turn out if I was not quite as vigilant. That didn’t work out so well, I think, as the stories in the movies seem weaker than usual this year. The script-writing process gives them focus.

I will detail the unit planning and the resources, and how we publish the movies, a bit further later this week. Plus, I will give a lowdown on a summer camp for kids that I am helping to run again this year that focuses on stop-motion movie making.

Here is one of the movies from the classroom:

Peace (in stop-motion),
Kevin

Wow! Wordle is Cool

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I found this site via Larry (always a good connection) and it is called Wordle. Wordle takes your words and then reforms them as a Word Cloud, giving prominence and good placement to words that are repeated or used most often in the text you provide it.

As an experiment, I took all of my own Days in a Sentence from this year (since January — I keep them in a Google Docs file) and created this:

I love that Students is the biggest word on my cloud. (Although why the word Goo is bigger than some others has me pleasantly puzzled)
Then, I grabbed all 20 (so far) submissions for this week’s Day in a Sentence feature, and gave Wordle another go.
Check this out:
The word Week is pretty big, but I also see Summer and Teachers and Students in our collective Wordle Mix. I love transforming words, you know?
What can you do with Wordle? Let me know.
Peace (in word clouds),
Kevin

The Summer Goals Meme

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I was tagged a few times for a Summer Goals Meme (that started over at A Year of Reading, I believe, and then made its way to Two Writing Teachers, and beyond) and it does seem to be a good time to think about the weeks ahead. Summer is certainly here, weather-wise, in New England. We’ve had some real scorching days out there.

Here are my five goals:

  • Figure out ways to have meaningful technology at our Western Massachusetts Writing Project even though it seems as if our computer lab may be off-limits due to renovations to the building. I worry that the promise of technology instruction will not be realized this year;
  • Help middle school kids create some fun movies at the Claymation Movie Camp that I am co-leading this summer (with my friends, Tina). This is the second year of offering the venture and I believe the camp was filled up early with eager kids;
  • Find time to write for myself — poems, quickfiction, etc. — in a meaningful way. I would like to keep exploring hypertextual space as a way to write;
  • We joined a community swimming pool this year and we hope to use it a lot this summer. It’s not far from our house and will be a nice way to cool off this summer. And we want all of our kids to have swimming lessons;
  • Read Harry Potter, the last, which has been sitting on the floor next to my bed since last summer when the rest of my family read it without me.
  • Bonus: I want to take home one of our school’s new Mac Computers and dig a little deeper into its software. In particular, I want to know the ins and outs of Garage Band for making student podcast projects. (Anybody have a good web resource that I can use?)

(from a Mac-based Comic Life lesson the other day)

Instead of tagging other people, why don’t I just open up this comments area for your goals, if you have time.

What are your plans for the next few weeks (I won’t say Summer, since not everyone who stops by here is in my hemisphere).

Peace (in plans),
Kevin

Day in a Sentence is only a Sentence

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Welcome to Day in a Sentence — your weekly adventure with words and reflection.
After a wonderful visit to Nancy’s blog, where books were all the rage, Day in a Sentence returns home this week and we want you (and you and you) to consider joining us.
The premise is simple:

  • Consider a day in the past week or the entire week itself
  • Write a single sentence that captures the spirit of your day or week
  • Use the comment feature here on this post to share your sentence
  • Over the weekend, I will gather up everyone’s words and post them together as one big collective Days in a Sentence

This is an open invitation to anyone passing through this neck of the Bloggery Woods or anyone who happens to collect my blog in your RSS.
Please consider joining us this week.

Here is my sentence (and you can listen to it as a podcast, too)

The early summer heat wave that hit this week has melted my brain to the point that I almost need to stick my head inside the freezer in order to plan out lessons that will take my students and I through the final days of our school year.

Peace (in words and deeds),
Kevin

Slice of Life, Weekly Challenge, Chapter 11

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(This is part of a weekly feature called Slice of Life Project)

I have a student with a form of Autism and other health issues and the combination of those two elements make connecting with him difficult at times. That said, he is such a wonderful kid — full of insight and intellect and interesting things to observe about the world. I have loved having him in my class this year and I worry about his transition to a new school next year.

One of his hobbies is Guitar Hero. He comes in with cardboard guitars and shows me his latest moves on the electronic fretboards. He loves music. During our poetry unit, when students were working on a final poem, he was absent for a few days, as happens with his diabetes. He came back in and handed me what he said was his final poem but which was a song that he had written. He said he did not have a melody in mind but I was blown away by what he had done. Writing is an incredibly difficult task for him. To have written lyrics to a song was a major accomplishment. And to address the theme of Life, and the emotions connected with how he sees life, was just amazing.  I tried to get him to publish it as a poem in our book via Lulu, but he flat out said “no” to me.

So I began to ponder how to connect with him through music. I took his lyrics home and let them sit and simmer on the shelf for a few weeks. I’d look at them and think about them, pull out my guitar from time to time. I was not in a rush. I was still trying to wrap a melody around his words.

This weekend, it finally came together, and I recorded a version of his song. I am going to surprise him with a CD version of it and I printed out a copy of the words (only slightly modified to match the structure of the music I had written) in fancy print. My hope is that is shines a light on him as a songwriter and allows him to see some real meaning to his writing abilities.

Yesterday, I pulled him aside during library time and brought him back to our room. I told him I had a present for him, reminded him of his lyrics and let him know I found them to be powerful and I wanted to put them to music. He looked at me with big eyes. Then, I handed him the fancy lyric sheet and popped in the CD and we listened to the song together. He smiled a huge smile and said, “It has been great to have you as a teacher, too, Mr. Hodgson.” We did our own special handshake and later, he told the paraprofessional that he now had a “sacred song.”

Yeah.

Here is the song and you can listen to the podcast version, too (complete with my cold/stuffed nose voice):

Life

When I look into the sky
And I see the butterfly
It makes me want to cry
to think it could die

So I strum on my guitar
I know it can get me far
It doesn’t matter who you are
you’re a star

It’s sweet notes make me happy
Forgive me if it sounds sappy

Life can be bad – bad
Life can make you mad – mad
At times, it even makes you sad
But if you look around and focus
You might see the blooming crocus
And then you’ll know to be glad
because life can’t all be bad

Good things come and go
You have to go with the flow
Some thing we just don’t know
take it slow

Enjoy all that life brings
Like the glimmer of strings
So I sit here and play my guitar and I sing

It’s sweet notes make me happy
Forgive me if it sounds sappy

(repeat chorus)

Peace (in connecting through music),
Kevin

Memoir Mondays: The Iceberg

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This is part of a project at Two Writing Teachers

Icebergs

My brother saved my life.
This remembrance bubbled up to the surface the other day as I dipped my toes into a neighborhood pool and experienced the incredible cold chill of the water. That tactile experience really brought me back to the neighborhood where I grew up and the river, if you can call it that, which formed the center of so many of our activities.
The stream crept along through the woods not far from the apartments where my family lived and although most of us knew enough not to swim in there (and if you did, not to drink any of it) after my mother did some science experiments on the water and found it filled with bacteria, it still was an irresistible part of our childhood. We found giant turtles in there. We watched the tiny fish darting about in the pools. We dug dams and appreciated the power of the water overcome our efforts.
One section of the stream ran under a bridge near a factory and this area was close to a shaded area where us kids would hang out after getting snacks from the convenience store. In summer, we would sit beneath the pine trees and find reprieve from the hot sun.
But winter — deep in winter — is the setting for this particular story.
It was a frigid day and the river was mostly a sheet of ice. Beneath the ice flow, you could just make out the water still moving to make its way through the piped tunnels that channeled under the roadway bridge. It was at this spot that a group of us stood, breaking up the ice with rocks and sticks and our heavily-booted feet. All of us were wrapped up in layers to keep the cold at bay. The ice came apart in huge sections and it occurred to us that we had inadvertently created “icebergs” on the river.
And didn’t those icebergs look just like rafts?
My older brother and his friends jumped from the edge of the bank and took off on icebergs just like Huck Finn. A few of them even had sticks in hands to guide them. They pretended to do battles against each other. The icebergs were remarkably thick and held the weight of bodies nicely. My brother nimbly danced from iceberg to bank, back and forth with grace.
Three years younger than him but determined to join in, I moved closer to the edge of the bank, trying to pick out the best iceberg for me.
One floated nearby and I moved closer to get on board. Somehow, though, I lost my footing and slipped. Panic set in. One of my feet hit an icy patch and it was taking me down into the water, down below the iceberg. This was one of those moments of slow-motion that people talk about. There was nothing I could do. I truly felt as if a monster’s hand was reaching up from the bottom of the river and was taking hold of first one foot, and then the other. Water rushed into my boots. The stinging cold crept up my leg. My gloved fingers tried to grip the land but failed. The monster’s icy grip slowly, slowly, slowly began yanking me down to the bottom of the icy river where death surely awaits.
(Aside: Years later, as a reporter, I was sent to the scene of a disappearance of a man who had been ice fishing at night. Out on the middle of the lake, there was an eerie scene of a chair, a thermos, some fishing gear, and the iced-over outline of a crack in the surface. I was forced to wait until the body had been pulled out of the ice by police divers. I was saddened and terrified for this person, and reminded of the event I write about here.)
Meanwhile, the iceberg — as if an instrument of destruction of this river monster — was moving in some strange trajectory, methodically coming towards me instead of away from me. My body was now being pulled under the thick ice sheet. My hands tried to grip the edge of the ice but nothing would hold. The cold stung my body. My grip was weak. It was so cold, so very cold. I remember both the ferocious beating of my heart in panic and the numb acceptance that this might be the end of the world. What was happening to me felt inevitable.
It was at that moment of letting go and accepting fate that I felt a hand grab the collar of my jacket.
I was being yanked up right out of the water by something more powerful than me and I was thrown to the ground. I looked up and saw my brother standing there, over me, with a look of concern and anger on his face. He swore at me for being an idiot. I could not even respond because the shivering started in immediately. My lips chattered a million miles a minute. My eyes started to close. He reached down and pulled me up, took off his jacket and put it on me. He put his arm around me to keep me warm. I moved into his embrace with appreciation.
And then, with only a few words between us about what had happened back there on the river, my brother walked me back home.

Peace (in defying the odds),
Kevin

The Digital Math Book Project, part four

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This is the fourth in a series of reflective posts I am writing about my Digital Picture Book Project (see post one, post two and post three). Today, I want to share some of the finer details, from a teaching stance, and give some pointers if you are considering such a project.

First of all, here is the basic plan that I follow. It obviously has more details to it in practice, but this gives you some idea of what it looks like:

  • Week One: Come up with a concept and target a specific audience. Develop a storyboard with sketch drawings and frame story ideas. Invite in an author/illustrator to talk about the process.
  • Week Two: Write a rough draft of the story in Microsoft Word and proofread. Begin work on the computers.
  • Week Three: Work towards completion of pictures and words; Consider adding multimedia elements such as audio narration, slide and image transitions, etc. Classmates read and critique the developing picture books, providing authentic input for revisions.
  • Week Four: Invite students from younger grades to tour the classroom in round robin format, reading and/or listening to stories and asking questions of writers; reflect on process and experience.
  • Week Five and beyond: Publish the picture books to the Sixth Grade Weblog (for families) and print out two copies of every book (one for writers and one for school library), if budget permits. Teacher grades projects.

I use a scoring rubric, which I share with my students at the start of the project that covers such areas as the story, the math concept, the design of the book, and spelling/grammar issues. (you can view the rubric here, if you want. Feel free to use it, adapt it or whatever).

We do regular check-ins as a way for me to monitor progress, but also as a way for students to reflect upon what they are doing. These check-ins begin as writing prompts and then move into a classroom sharing and discussion. I find that at these moments, many of the students who have a good grasp on technology emerge as leaders. They will often share some tricks they have discovered and offer to help others. I love those moments, particularly when the not-so-cool kid suddenly becomes very cool indeed.

I am noticing the quality of books are getting better each year (this is the third year of this project) and that may be that I have more models from previous years to show students. It may also be that I am giving them more time, even though some continue to feel rushed when the deadline emerges. The use of storyboarding and graphic organizers are crucial to keep focus on the story before a computer is even booted up, and while the story may change as they move along in a natural way, the outline they have created keeps them on track.

Here is something else I love: having my students share their books with younger students at our school. We set aside periods of time when younger grades can visit our classroom, or join us in the library (where our librarian is a partner in this project) and view the books on the computers. My kids become truly published writers and the younger students see some possibilities of technology. They are usually in wow-ed by the books. And anything that brings older and younger students together is something I am in favor of.

Finally, I should relate some of the technical aspects of what we are doing. Along with Powerpoint, we use a classroom Weblog (The Electronic Pencil) to showcase the stories for parents. I save the books as Powerpoint Shows, upload and share with my Box.net account so that kids can download them at home, if you want. Box.Net also allows me to track the number of downloads. And the blog allowed students from all four classes to be able to view the math books from friends in the other three classes, to their great delight. They also left some quick comments on the blog about the books they read.

I tinkered with using Slideshare, but then found that the books were flattened out (although the links to the web worked, so that was a plus). In the past, I have also made the books into PDFs, but I did not do that this year (although I offered to do that for any student who did have access to Powerpoint or Microsoft’s PP viewer software).

I turn the books into videos using some software I purchased called PPT to Video (by Wondershare). It’s quite easy to use and allows the animation to work, which is crucial. I wish there were a free service out there that would do the same, but I use the software for other projects, too, so it was worth the cost that I paid for it. I also turned to web-based Animoto this year to make a compilation video of various slides from everyone’s books. The kids LOVED seeing parts of their stories turned into a music video. (And Animoto has a service account for educators that allows you to make and then download a video file for free, which is a wonderful gesture on their part. You can also upload automatically from Animoto into YouTube for sharing on blogs, etc.)

Here is the final video collection of picture books:

Thanks for reading the posts and watching the books. I hope you try it yourself, and if you have a similar project, I hope you will share your own reflections with us.

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

PS — I have to share this picture that one of my students did of our math teacher in front of the class, giving a pop quiz. It cracks all of us up to no end.