Author Archives: dogtrax

Writing Prompts for Techno Kids

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I came across this post by Sharon at TeacherlyTech in my RSS and it had me thinking. She explains how she tries to develop writing prompts that speak to the interests of her students, with slants towards technology. I love that idea. Here is what she shared as a few possibilities:

(1) What’s in your iPod? What do your playlists say about you as a person?
(2) What are the rights and wrongs of text messaging during class?
(3) Should you friend your teachers, employers, or other authority figures on social networking sites?
(4) What are the worst Facebook/MySpace faux pas your friends should be warned against?
(5) What was the most significant TV show (or video game or pop star or other media presence) of your childhood? How did it influence your life?

I wonder what I might add? Here are a few off the top of my head.

  • What would the html source code look like if you were a webpage?
  • Design and label a personal computing device that will be on the market in 10 years.
  • Explain in steps something (a concept or a piece of equipment) about technology that you understand but which your parents do not.
  • If you were the teacher, what technology would you allow students to use for learning and why?
  • Write a persuasive paragraph that argues for me (your teacher) showing you a certain tool of technology that we don’t already use (but which you use outside of the school).
  • Write a short story in which the main character is a minor character from one of the video games that you play (or know about).
  • Imagine you are going to produce a video for Youtube and you can earn $1 for every view it gets. What will your video be about and what would you need to make it happen?

Thanks, Sharon, for the inspiration. I wonder if other folks have suggestions, too?

Peace (in the prompts),
Kevin

My K12Online Presenation goes live (sometime) today

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Sometime later today, my short presentation for the K12 Online Conference will go live. It’s called The Heroic Journey Project and I tried to show how my students used Google Maps, Google Earth and Picasa for creating an online heroic journey across the world.

You can check out the K12 Online Schedule and also visit and participate in the K12 Online Ning site. There are some wonderful presentations there already.

When my preso goes live, I am supposed to create a forum discussion at the K12 Ning and ask three essential questions to spark a discussion among folks, so I am trying to think about that and also am hoping I can post all that this morning before school starts.

Peace (in the K12 Online world),

Kevin

National Writing Project feeds

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Here are some of the updates out of the National Writing Project following the Annual Meeting last month in Philly:

2009 NWP Annual Meeting Photo Album

Monday, December 14, 2009
Type: Resource
Over 1,000 writing project colleagues gathered for the 32nd NWP Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. View this Flickr stream of photos from the meeting to see many sessions, workshops, socials, and other activities through the attendees’ eyes.

2009 Annual Meeting Highlights: General Session Writings

Monday, December 14, 2009
Type: Resource
Inspired by a Billy Collins poem “To My Patron,” teachers at the NWP Annual Meeting were asked to write about what it takes to teach students to write. A long metrical poem or a short well-crafted argument? A set of colleagues to talk to? A blank mind? Model readings? Just a pen? Here is a sample of their responses.

Video Highlights from NWP’s 2009 Annual Meeting

Monday, December 14, 2009
Type: Resource
Check out these video highlights, including teacher-consultant interviews and a delicious writing marathon, from NWP’s 2009 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Peace (in the gathering),
Kevin

Meep This!

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I just ran across an interesting article in the Boston Globe (should have this motto: We’re still alive!). Erin McKean, a writer for The Word column about language and use, tackles a news story in which a principal banned the word “meep” from school because too many kids were saying it too often.

For those muppet fanatics, this is cool. “Meep” is what Beaker says most of the time and so for young kids to be appropriating invented Muppet language for their own world … wow, cool. I guess the principal had some other ideas about it (“We wouldn’t ban a word just to ban a word,” he explains), but as we all know, banning a word only makes it stronger and more valuable as language currency so I am guessing there is more “meeping” going on in that school than ever before.

My older son, looking over my shoulder as I was reading the column, said, “We meep at our school, too. Well, some kids do.”

Honestly, I have not heard one of my own students doing a “meep”  but maybe I haven’t been listening close enough. And maybe there are connotations that I am not privvy to knowing (quite likely, as I am an adult).

McKean closes the column out with this:

All words mean only what we all collectively agree they should mean, no more and no less.

I leave you with a video of Beaker singing a meep-filled “Ode to Joy.”

Peace (meep),
Kevin

Reviewing Socially Networked Classroom with Glogster

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Thanks to my friend, Gail D., I ventured into Glogster (the edu version) this week and decided to use it to post a book review of William Kist’s The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age, which is put out by Corwin Press.

Glogster is  a poster-like application, where you use “stickers” and other tools to post text, add video and audio and images, and do things around design. I’m not completely happy with mine, as I think it is too busy. But I wanted to dive in and see the possibilities for the classroom.

Glogster seems school-friendly, allowing teachers to set up accounts for students under one login (haven’t tried it yet but seems decent). I can imagine my kids working on a book report with this site, but it will require lessons on focus and design, for sure.

Here is my book review on Glogster:

Peace (on the glog),
Kevin

Tapping into a network for ideas: digital story tutorials

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I am part of a listserve of some very smart people — the technology liaisons of the National Writing Project. Time and time again, when someone has a question or a problem, these teachers and technology coordinators eagerly come up with solutions and resources. I say this because this week, someone asked about resources for teaching digital storytelling. Within a few hours, there were multiple responses with links for resources. I love that.

Here are some of the resources shared:

It’s always amazing to realize the networks we are building and how much people are willing to go out of their way to help others in the process of learning and integrating technology. It’s just knowing how to enter a network, I guess.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Ray Harryhausen: Master of Stopmotion

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Wow

Youtube again. This time, it is a six-part documentary about Ray Harryhausen, whose work with stopmotion animation and puppets thrilled me as a kid. You probably know the work if you stumbled into dark cinemas on rainy Saturdays for a buck and caught the matinees (Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, the Sinbad the Sailor movies, etc). Obviously, some of the effects and motion seems ancient, but that is only because technology has caught up with Ray Harryhausen’s imagination.

The rest of the documentary is found here:
Part 1 Here
Part 2 Here
Part 3 Here
Part 4 Here
Part 5 Here
Part 6 Here

I can definitely see using this documentary when we get into Stopmotion movies later this year (as part of the Longfellow Ten site).

Peace (in the motion),
Kevin

Storming the Castle with a five year old

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Last night, after getting tired of listening to “What can we do now” from my five year old, I pulled up Storybird and together, my son and I created this ebook story. He told me the story, I asked a few questions, and he created the pages. He loved it and you can see elements of his fascination with Star Wars in it (or, at least, I can).
The Castle Rescue by dogtrax on Storybird
I had somewhat forgotten about Storybird (which I tried a few months ago in a story about reading called The Book and the Frown) but it is easy to use and could find a nice place in some lower elementary classrooms. There are image groups to choose from and the interface is simple to use.

Peace (in the story),
Kevin

Vote for the Edublog Awards 2009

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The list of bloggers and blog sites for this year’s Edublog Awards are up and open for voting. Even if you don’t have time to vote, you owe it to yourself to scan through the lists and gather up some resources. One of the projects that I helped with — The Longfellow Ten — is in the running under the use of video in education. How about a vote for stopmotion movies by our students? Go here to vote for LF10.

The Edublog Award Categories….

  1. Best individual blog
  2. Best individual tweeter
  3. Best group blog
  4. Best new blog
  5. Best class blog
  6. Best student blog
  7. Best resource sharing blog
  8. Most influential blog post
  9. Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
  10. Best teacher blog
  11. Best librarian / library blog
  12. Best educational tech support blog
  13. Best elearning / corporate education blog
  14. Best educational use of audio
  15. Best educational use of video / visual
  16. Best educational wiki
  17. Best educational use of a social networking service
  18. Best educational use of a virtual world
  19. Lifetime achievement

Peace (in the list),
Kevin