Author Archives: dogtrax

She said, “Don’t Forget Me!”

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On our last day of school, our tradition is to have every staff member standing outside on the sidewalk, waving goodbye to all of our students on the buses, which make about three or four passes through the bus loop. Horns blowing, voices yelling, we end the year in a rather raucous celebration of the time we have spent together and the oncoming summer break. I usually scan the bus windows for the faces of my students, making eye contact and smiling, and shouting out a few words. For some, it will be the last time we have contact, as they head off to the regional middle school and high school next year. There’s a touch of sadness to the day.

Yesterday, one of my students jammed her head far out the window and shouted, “Don’t forget me!”

No, I won’t forget you.

I’ll remember all those times you had books in your arms, and books piled in your desk, and how you somehow discovered every new book that I brought in and put on my desk. I have a feeling you were always waiting to see what came in to the classroom, so you could have first dibs on it. And I won’t forget that just the other day, at our last recess (actually, your last recess ever), you spent the entire time following a butterfly through the playing fields, completely focused on the activity. When I asked you later what you would have done if you could have caught it, you replied, “Let it go, of course.”

No, I won’t forget you. You, and all of your classmates, and all of the years of students, are lodged inside my heart, and in that place, it is hard to lose the traces of memories etched in there, like carvings of daily interactions.

Peace (in the break ahead),
Kevin

 

How We Used Technology for Writing This Year

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End of Year Comic
Today is our last day of school of the year. Phew. As I often do, I was thinking a bit about the various kinds of technology that my sixth graders used this year to complement, enhance and inform their writing. Here’s a list of some of the things they did, although I may forget a few here and there.

  • The first days of school, they were on Photostory 3, working on creating digital story dream scenes . I returned to the collection the other day, just to remember how I remember them from the start of the year now that they are moving on and out of our elementary school. The combination of visual representation, setting forth aspirations, and using digital tools to tell a story is a fantastic way to begin the year in our class.
  • We participated in the National Day on Writing by writing and podcasting a short reflection on the topic of “why I write.” Listening to their voices, I am still amazed at the depth of the thinking of many of the students. The podcasting element (in which we used the Cinch app on our iPods) brings voice into the picture in a neat way. We even created a classroom Twitter account for the day, so that we could share our podcasts. (But then, we didn’t use it much for the rest of the year.)
  • Early on, my students went into Bitstrips for Schools and created an avatar representation of themselves. Watching and helping them try to navigate who they are in online spaces is a big part of what I do around technology. The webcomic space then became a place we returned to from time to time, but not often enough. Mostly, it became an extension activity zone for some of my students who needed something a little different.
  • I introduced the concept of video game design for the first time ever in my classroom, and I have to say, it was a huge success, and kids are still talking about it. We used Gamestar Mechanic, and we worked to connect the design process with a writing process, and how story narrative can be the backbone of a good video game. Plus, we made a lot of connections to our science curriculum with the game design project. I sort of took a chance on the idea this year, and it paid off.
  • Our Digital Life unit was another new addition this year, as we explored the many facets of digital citizenship. We used CommonSense Media curriculum as a starting point, but then veered off in a lot of different directions, all leading towards a digital poster project with Glogster in which students presented their understanding of issues around digital media. This was another new unit this year, and again, I think it was very successful.
  • Our Wiki Dictionary grew by another 80 words or so this year, as students invented words and then used our wiki to add their own words to an ever-growing collaborative (across time) dictionary.
  • The use of InstaGrok this year for a research assignment (with a media component) was a great find, and I thank whomever it was that tweeted that site out one day. InstaGrok really channeled my students’ interest and kept them focused on their essay topics, while providing a valuable space to collect and share notes while doing online research.
  • And of course, our main online home — The Electronic Pencil — continued to be the focal point of resources, links and some writing this year.

It’s been quite an adventure, and now I need to do some revamping of my Sixth Grade Curriculum Site to reflect the changes that we did and then think through what I need to do for next year, too, particularly as our district moves deeper into curriculum changes via our state’s adoption of the Common Core.

Peace (in the shift),
Kevin

 

Of Robotics and Taking Chances

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A colleague of mine who teaches the grade below me decided to try out a robotics program this year with her students and here, she is interviewed by the lead teacher who helped her with the integration of the technology into her classroom. I love how she talks about taking a chance on something new. She also seems energized by the robotics idea, and now she is asking me more about technology for her ELA class next year.

 

Peace (in the sharing of new ideas),
Kevin

 

Book Review: The Key to Aligning Your K-5 Class with Common Core Standards

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Actually, it was the subtitle of this book that caught my attention: 30 Projects That Integrate Technology into Core Lesson Plans (although both the title and the subtitle are mouthful, almost as if Fiona Apple were in charge). That said, this handy resource book covers a lot of ground around ways that technology and media tools like Google Earth, Storybird, blogging and wikis and more can be used by teachers to engage students around the Common Core learning standards. Each section is set out with a very basic format, and the writing — while not that exciting — is straight to the point, which is what you want in a resource guide.

Some of the lessons that popped out at me as being particularly interesting:

  • Creating student/peer book review with QR Codes that can be put on stickers, and placed in classroom books;
  • Studying the craft of writing by using webcomics for understanding main ideas of narrative structure;
  • Using mindmapping software for collaboration with other students around informational topics;
  • Tapping into timeline software for sequencing of ideas over a period of time;
  • Touring the world of setting of books with Google Lit Trips, and creating your own;
  • And more.

The book is put out by the Ask a Tech Teacher website, and the introduction reminds teachers that technology should no longer be a separate activity; Instead, as reflected in the Common Core and many state standards, technology and media production are part of the whole literacy package that students SHOULD be using for reading and writing, and listening and speaking. The 30 lessons in this book provide a helpful framework for teachers who are wondering where to even start, and the writers provide links to paid software and web resources, but also alternative free possibilities, too. I appreciated that.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

Summer Learning at the P2PU site with NWP

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I am aiming to participate with these two study groups this summer at the P2PU (Peer to Peer University) open course site. You come, too. Both are being coordinated with friends in the National Writing Project.

 Curating Our Digital Lives – Register Now — July 9-23rd

https://p2pu.org/en/groups/curating-our-digital-lives/

How do you curate the huge volume of information that comprises our daily lives, particularly as it relates to professional knowledge? And how do we help youth do the same for the purpose of personal and academic growth? Join this three-week conversation to share your experiences as we consider curation as an opportunity to gather and annotate as well as publish and share as part of a knowledge-building network.

 

Making Writing and Literacy Learning Connections – Register Now — July 9-23rd

https://p2pu.org/en/groups/making-writing-and-literacy-learning-connections

If “digital” is how we write, share, and participate today and into the future, what does that mean for the teaching of writing and for learning? Join a National Writing Project study group as we explore these questions together through our own experiences and those of the NWP Digital Is community. Each week we’ll focus on a different aspect of inquiry and practice related to writing, teaching and connected learning

Peace (in the collaboration),
Kevin

 

Making Sense of Video Game Stats

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One of the many things I like about Gamestar Mechanic is how it guides young game designers to continually improve their games, even after publishing it to online spaces for an audience of gamers. The other day, I shared out my Fueling the Fuel Cell game that I made as a mentor text for my students. Since then, the number of players who have tried the challenge has gone up every day (thank you, if you tried my game. If you want to try it, follow this link into Gamestar to play Fueling the Fuel Cells). But how does a game designer know about the experiences of the players? Well, in a bid to answer that query, Gamestar Mechanic provides you with a handy “stats” page that shows how many people have started the game, how many finished the game, and how many made it the end of each level (if your game has multiple levels).

Here are the stats for my fuel cell game:
Fuel Cell game stats
You’ll notice that not too many folks got to the end of the game. That’s fine, although ideally, the middle funnel shape (shown in the guide to the left of the page) is what you are aiming for with your game. You don’t want everyone to win (too easy) nor do you want everyone abandoning the game (too hard). You want to find that sweet spot of true gamers sticking with you until the end.

When my students are coming back to revise games, after the first round of sharing, this is a page that I bring them to on their game. It’s funny how they interpret the data, though. Some are quite happy if no one can complete their game, as if it were a competition between them and their audience. Others can’t shift from a person who has spent hours creating a game and know every little square of the layout to imagine themselves as newbies to it, seeing the problems with the game from another angle. All of this is valuable for the iterative revision process of video game design, however.

Peace (in the game),
Kevin

PS — another game I created and share out is Women in Science.

Media Project: Podcasts with Cinch

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Two of my students decided to use our classroom Cinch podcasting app on our iPods to create a podcast version of their essays. We talked about how to condense down the ideas into a short podcast. Here is what they came up with. The first is about solar energy and the second is about two kinds of engines (two stroke and four stroke) on the dirt bikes they like to ride. In other years, we often use Voicethread to have everyone do some podcasting with this project, but we ran out of time this year.

Solar Power

Two Stroke versus Four Stroke engines

 

Peace (in the voice),
Kevin

 

A Video Game Collection: Essay-inspired Media Projects

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I played a bunch of my students’ video games yesterday as part of my assessment of their essay projects, which I have been writing about for a few days now (and more to come …) I decided that I would grab screenshots of some of the games made in Gamestar Mechanic and then dump those videos into Animoto, for a quick video collection.

Check it out:

You can also play one of their games:

Peace (in the games),
Kevin
 

Book Review: The Girl Who Was On Fire

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I’ve written my fair share lately about Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy but I guess I am not done yet. As part of one of our Scholastic Book orders, I saw this collection of “completely unauthorized” essays about The Hunger Games called The Girl Who Was On Fire (edited by Leah Wilson). I know this is just a book marketing gimmick to sell more books, but I have been very curious about all the ancillary books that my students are reading about the book and the movie.

The first few essays didn’t interest me much, as they covered the love triangle (Katniss, Peeta, Gale) and how love becomes an enduring theme in the series. I love love, but I wasn’t all that interested in the analysis of it in the book. (Is that a guy reaction? Maybe. Most of the writers here are female, by the way. And my most avid readers of the series are girls. Why is that?)

But the next few sections centered on the parallels to modern reality television and the games (as well as connections to classic literature that Collins references in the books), and the use of rhetoric and “smoke and mirrors” in the politics of Panem, and how Katniss navigates those ideas to her own advantage. There’s also an intriguing essay about the science of The Hunger Games, and how maybe some of the strange things in the books (such as the genetic mutant Mutts) are not that far-fetched after all, if you consider the scope of modern science. There’s even a piece about the impact of Post-Traumatic Stress on the characters (particularly Peeta) and how those events shape a life.

Overall, it was interesting to read The Girl Who Was On Fire collection after just finishing the series, even if the book is part of a marketing campaign by Scholastic. Now, where is that copy of the parody of the books called The Hunger Pains (by National Lampoon, of all things)? That’s what I need now to lighten up the mood a bit.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin