If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker
Archive for year 2010
Honoring Jon Scieszka
Jan 4th
Over at The Year in Reading blog, Franki and Mary Lee are seeking to give the man his props for his work over the course of the year to promote and encourage literature for young people. They are encouraging more of us to write about his impact on us and those around us.
So,
I was never a huge fan of the Stinky Cheese Man fractured fairy tale stories, but I know my students are, and when we are talking about how to fracture a story, one reference to this now-classic collection is enough to get most of us talking the same wavelength. And The True Story of the Three Little Pigs is wonderful and a great way to teach point of view in any classroom.
But, I loved reading Knucklehead, which is Scieszka‘s memoir of childhood in a house full (literally) of boys, and reveled in the mayhem of his world. I wish he had gone a bit deeper into how that all effected his writing. He touches on it but I wanted more. The book is very accessible to young people and boys, in particular, will find a voice they know and adventures they can understand. Plus, how can you beat a title like Knucklehead?
Another great piece of work by Scieszka is the Guys Read collection, which springs from his work to promote reading among middle-school-aged boys. He asked authors to write about their own experiences and uses those stories to encourage writing and reading. The book is a joy to read and I was excited to see it on the shelf of the local Barnes & Noble yesterday in the young adult fiction area.
Finally, Scieszkalaunched the Exquisite Corpse project online this year, in which he began a nutty story and other famous authors pick up a new chapter each week, with the goal of the story expanding for an entire year. My students and I have been using the chapters for reading (prediction of text, foreshadowing, plot design) but also for prompts for writing (what happens next?). And now, with holiday break about over, we are behind a few chapters! Some of you may recognize the concept from my recent Three-Headed Collaborative Story Adventure, and yes, Scieszkawas one of the inspirations there, too. (oooh, I see Natalie Babbitt is the latest author to add to the story).
So, thank you, Mr. Scieszkafor making reading and writing fun during your tenure as ambassador to young people’s literature and my youngest son is looking forward to the next Trucktown books. (me too)
Peace (in the books),
Kevin
Bringing Collaborative Stories to an End
Jan 3rd
The three strands of this week’s collaborative storytelling — in Google Wave, on an Etherpad site, and in a closed network of teacher-writers — were brought to an end this morning as I wrapped up the adventures under the title The Datastream.
You can read all three stories together on a Google Docs website that I created. You also have the opportunity to read each story on its own through links that I put on that master document.
I did very little editing or tidying up of the text, although I wanted to re-form the stories to make more sense as we neared the end. That was the editor in me. I resisted the urge, figuring that the way the stories get tangled and untangled is interesting in itself, and part of the process, and I did not want to lose the various voices of the collaborators. I loved how links, images, even Twitter, became part of the Wave story.
I struggled with how to end the three stories, even as I tried to steer the narrative towards each other in the last day or two. It became a science fiction-ized story at that point because I could not see any other way to bring the stories together and to a close. What I did not want was a project that never ends.
Ending are as important as beginnings, right?
I decided that I would write the ending piece as second-person narrative — an attempt to draw the reader into the collaborative experience as much as the writers (and there were more than 20 writers across the platforms collaborating on different strands of the story).
So, the obvious question: does this kind of collaborative story have a place in the classroom?
Absolutely, and as Tracy wrote about on her blog, you don’t need technology. Simply having students write the start of a story on paper, and then pass that paper around the room two or three times (it’s a good way to have them think about plot — one person does exposition, another person takes on rising action, etc.).
A few years ago, I used a wiki for this kind of student collaborative writing over a vacation and the students loved it, although the story made no sense whatsoever. Perhaps it would be good to designate some “student editors” of the story, to do sort of what I did here — gently shaping it.
This story project began because I wanted to know what Google Wave was all about. I figured a collaborative story might make sense, and I did learn a lot about Wave from the story writing. I don’t like Wave all that much but I learned how to use it. Then, it occurred to that I am part of a writing community already — the iAnthology — and why not draw them into the concept? So, a second strand began. Someone complained that they could not access Wave, so I started a third strand over at Etherpad, an online word processor that requires no registration.
You should have seen me bouncing around between the three stories, trying to keep plot lines and characters straight in my head. It was fun but strange, as if I were dancing with three partners to three different styles of music, all at once.
If you were a participant in this particular collaborative adventure, I want to thank you. If you are just a reader, thanks, too. We’re in this together, you know.
Peace (in the stories),
Kevin
Wallwishing for Ideas
Jan 3rd
I came across two related items yesterday around the use of the virtual sticky wall called Wallwisher. First, Mary set up her first Wall, asking folks for ideas on how to use this virtual bulletin board in the classroom.
Second, I noticed that Tom Barrett had created another fantastic Google Docs slideshow — this one about using Wallwisher. (Note: Tom did have his setting for embedding on the show so I made a copy and am embedding it here. But it is not my presentation.)
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
Considering Glogster
Jan 2nd
I’m considering bringing my students onto the educational arm of Glogster this coming week to create a book review of Three Cups of Tea (I’ll share the assignment later but it has to do with a series of Three Questions …) I set up a teacher account and created 80 student accounts and have started to build a database of names, usernames, passwords, etc. It’s all free!
I’m a little nervous about the messaging element of the site, though, and wish I could push a button and remove that option. I only want them to focus in on creating a poster review of the book and not get lost in sending messages (which I know happens).
So, my dilemma: does the positives of creating an online poster showing knowledge of the book that they are supposed to be finishing up this week outweigh my concerns about messaging?
I’ll let you know what I eventually decide.
But here is a sample book poster that I created for Peter and the Sword of Mercy, just to show some possibilities. I love how easy it is to make and how easy it is to embed a Glogster. I could see making up a site of all of the Three Cups of Tea posters.
Peace (in the poster),
Kevin
How the collaborative stories are evolving
Jan 2nd
For the past few days, I have been overseeing three different collaborative stories that jumped off from the same starting point:
To say she was connected would be too simple a statement. She was never disconnected. Even in her sleep, her dreams came to her in bursts of 140 characters. (She knew this because she often woke up and jotted down her dreams, a habit she acquired in her college psychology course. Her notebook was full of nighttime ramblings.)
And so, the night of the storm, with the weather forecasters freaking out about the high winds and possible lightning, she, too, began to freak out. She checked for batteries. She stood waiting near the electrical outlets, ready to pull the plugs at the first flash of lightning.
The last thing she expected was the knock at the door, but then, the unexpected always comes at the least convenient moment …
One story has been evolving at Google Wave; another at our iAnthology networking site; and the third, on Etherpad. I am calling the adventure DataStream because of the parallel stories but also because the ending will have to do with a stream of data coming together.
My aim is to close up the stories tomorrow (Sunday) and to weave the three together with a common ending, so that they all start and at the same place but the heart of the stories are different. I’m fascinated by this but also struggling with it.
You can join us — I need more writers at the Etherpad site, in particular, and the beauty of Etherpad is that no registration is required: you just go and write. So, please come join us, even if it is only for a few lines:
The Etherpad Story: http://etherpad.com/cY2ufkguQ2
Here are a few observations that I have:
- It’s not easy to keep three stories in my head. I am dancing between the stories here, trying to keep the plot moving along with clues from the writers (There have been about 20 people writing with me on these three platforms).
- Google Wave may have some potential but I have not been impressed with it, to be honest. It is slow, and not so easy to use. Not intuitive at all. I started the story to experiment primarily with Wave, and so, that has been helpful, but I don’t really like it.
- Writing on a Ning (the iAnthology) is nice because you can thread the story as discussions. I was hoping I could get a few more of our teacher-writers involved, but the holidays make that difficult, and I don’t want the project pushing into next week, when school starts up again.
- The Etherpad is probably the easiest to set up and use. It is so simple. But it has had the least amount of traffic, even though I have blasted about it on my Twitter network.
- I’m working right now in Google Docs to create a master document with all three stories together, in tables. It looks kind of odd this way, but it was the best way I could think of.
Peace (in the collaboration),
Kevin
This year, I …
Jan 1st
There is a neat little flash generator for New Year’s Resolutions. I liked some of the ideas — writing a song, changing the world, be present in each moment, etc, but I ended up adding my own sentiment:
Peace (in 2010),
Kevin
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