Category Archives: NCTE

An Essay as Apology to Those Whose Names I Forgot

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Listen to the post:

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Who r u?
An essay as apology to those whose names I forgot

My friend,

I’m sorry I forgot your name. I apologize if my eyes darted quickly from your face to your name tag, and then back up to your eyes as you began to speak. Did I look confused? Lost? Or out of place when we were talking? I probably was. My brain was working to remember your name, to place you in my constellation. I blame Google for making me stupid. No. I blame genetics and memory cells. Darn you, Mom and Dad.

The fact is that as much as I love coming to educational conferences and hanging out with everyone in person after all the time that we spend in online spaces exploring writing and making cool stuff, I am finding it a wee bit trickier over the years to remember all of you when we finally get to a face-to-face situation. That’s not completely true. I never found it easy and I always thank the Conference Gods who provide us with name tags.

It’s not you; it’s me.

You seem to have no trouble remembering me. I appreciate that. Perhaps my restless online presence translates into a strong physical presence? <Cue laugh track>. Of course, you would not likely recognize me from my “dogtrax” avatar. Unless you squint your eyes, use your imagination and maybe do a few shots of whiskey first. And by the way, if we are at the same bar when you do that whiskey shot to spark your imagination, call me over. I am buying. We can imagine together.

Maybe it’s my walk and not my avatar that you recognize. My wife says I have a distinctive walk, and one of my former colleagues who I ran into at NCTE (no, I did not recognize her when she called out my name and she even taught two doors down the hall from me … 11 years ago … But still, I should have her face in my memory banks, right? Right. Sigh) said she recognized me from afar from the way I was walking down the hallway. I find that hard to believe. Do I have a funny walk? I personally think it is the rest of the world that is slightly off-kilter. I walk with perfectly normal strides.

But, if you recognized me by my walk or from my avatar or from some various hangout or whatever (maybe even from that whiskey bar), and I failed to do the same of you and your walk, I am so sorry. Perhaps your walk is on the so-called normal scale. There were a lot of people there, after all. (although now that I think of it, if we did hang out in that whiskey bar, both of our walks might be a bit funny by the end of our conversation.)

Still, when I hear someone saying “Kevin” or “Dogtrax” from across the room, I think: This .. is … so … cool. Someone I know is here. I get excited about the connection. I do. After all, what we do online should spill to what we do offline, if the possibility exists. When it happens, it’s an amazing connection, like some two-pronged electrical plug. Inevitably, though, I draw a blank when your hand reaches out to me and I feel dumb (again …. Google) and scramble my brain for your name. I mean, you took the trouble to remember me. I should remember you. I quickly calculate, what space were you in with me? What projects did we collaborate on? Are you sure we know each other? I don’t want you to ever think that what we did together is inconsequential nor without meaning, which is why a small panic builds inside of me. I valued our work. I just can’t retrieve your name from my data banks right at this second.

I have decided a strategy is in order. So I have begun stringing various name together, sort of like lights on the holiday tree. Or a run-on sentence. Names name names. I just need to make sure none of the lights go out on that string of ours, and I will be good to go. There’s a whole year to go until our next big conference. A whole year to learn how to remember.

Or a whole year to forget … Damn it. See you at the bar. I’ll be the funny-walking writer who looks a little confused. Come on over and let’s talk about things for a bit. Make sure you introduce yourself first.

Peace,
Kevin

What’s Your Community? The National Day on Writing

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Paper Circuitry NDOW Collage4 2014
Today is the sixth annual National Day on Writing, sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English and various partners (like the National Writing Project) and this year’s theme is Writing Your Community. I’ve been mulling over how best to do this, and decided that mapping out communities — either literally or metaphorically — made a lot of sense.

Check out this workshop that I led at our Western Massachusetts Writing Project this weekend, in which we played around with paper circuitry to illuminate nodes on maps of our communities. This workshop was part of our annual Best Practices conference, and the group of teachers were highly engaged in this hands-on activity around transforming notebooks with circuits and lights.

Peace (in the notebook),
Kevin

Inspired at NCTE: A Documentary MultiMedia Poem

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I attended an interesting session with co-facilitated with friends Ian and Greg (whom I met when they were facilitating the Massachusetts New Literacies Initiative). The session dealt with documentary poems (see Ian’s post about the session), and how to guide students to research a historical figure or time period, write a poem, and then use podcasting for publication. While in the session, I began a poem about Sojourner Truth, who lived for a time in my small city and whose statue is located just off the main road in one of the village areas not far from where she resided.

The other day, I returned to the poem, finished it up and then recorded it.

But I decided to take Ian and Greg’s idea even further, using Popcorn Maker to create a multimedia poem, with images, video and music. I like how it all came together here, even if the tool is still a little wonky at times, as I explore my own thoughts of seeing the Sojourner Truth statue, about the work she did around abolition and awareness of women’s issues, and about the world right now, still in need of the Truth.

Experience: Sojourner Tells the Truth

 

See what you think. I’d love some feedback. Is this doable for your classroom on some scale?

Peace (in the words),
Kevin

 

Bringing Home Knowledge … Tons of Books

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Books from Boston NCTE
There are many things to like about an educational conference like NCTE. Sure, the collaboration and sense of community, and shared knowledge and expertise is all wonderful. But there is also … the free books that publishers hand out in the Exhibition Hall, and this year, my wife and I took home many, many bags of free books (we drove this year so we just kept dragging bags to the car). Plus, we got a few bookmark packs, tattoes, and even a “graphic story” builder pack.

My students will love perusing the pile.

Peace (on the pages),
Kevin

 

Notes from the NCTE Ignite Session

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Ignite Collage
I had the great honor and pleasure to take part in a fast-paced Ignite Session at NCTE in Boston. Ignites are quick presentations, where the 20 slides move on a synced delay and you need be concise and in focus. Five minutes and you are done. My own Ignite presentation was about using video game design in the writing classroom. But to share the stage with Penny Kittle, Sara Kajder, Donalyn Miller, David Finkle, Sandy Hayes and others was a blast.

Here are a few notes that I scratched out on paper as I listened to the others on the stage (videos will be forthcoming from NCTE in the near future):

Sandy Hayes (who facilitated the Ignite session with the theme of Core Standards: Minding the Gaps)

  • We need more vigor instead of just rigor
  • There is room for many kinds of explorations of texts
  • “We want kids to make a difference … we want them to be doing significant things (in their lives) …”

David Finkle (Igniting Insight and Interest)

  • Using comics to define rigor, and asking students to define what that means
  • Great metaphor strategy: The Human  Mind is …
  • David loved that one of his students termed school “as the gymnasium of the mind.”
  • Many defined school as prison, box, etc.

Penny Kittle (Book Love: Building Reading Lives that Last)

  • “The difference between readers and non-readers is that readers have plans.”
  • Put more books into the hands of students
  • Build stamina as readers, and then depth and complexity will follow
  • Literature “is a powerful force about life.”
  • Talked about her Book Love Foundation — which raises money and creates libraries for classrooms

Kevin Hodgson (that’s me!) — (More Than a Game)

  • Gaming has taken over all our devices
  • Moving young people away from just consumers (players) and into the role of creators of video games
  • Connections to writing process and design process (iteration)
  • Engagement and audience — publish for other gamers to play
  • Gamestar Mechanic — teaches game design and provides space to play, build, publish

Troy Hicks (To Produce and To Publish Writing: Infusing Digital Writing through the Common Core)

  • Student writing has not circulated very far in the past (teacher’s desk, trash can, refrigerator)
  • Digital writing opens up audience and modality
  • References to technology in Common Core, but very limiting in nature
  • Create, Share, Repeat
  • “It’s not about the technology. It’s about the audience and purpose.”

Andrea Finkle (It Could Be Verse: The Lack of Poetry in the CCSS)

  • Common Core provides “teacher discretion” around poetry
  • Poetry is getting lost in new standards
  • “Words and play” — the heart of poetry
  • “Rhyme can enhance understanding”
  • Uses pop culture — commercial jingles, etc. — for seeing poetry in the world

Scott Filkins (Performance Assessment: Making the Reading Process Visible)

  • Notes the “four corners” idea of the Common Core — limiting
  • Annotating text, and using personal experiences, allows students to be “co-stars” of the text
  • Visible thinking strategies
  • Annotations “give us something to dig into.”

Zenatta Robinson (Make it Pop!)

  • Use pop culture (television, movies, music) to spur student interest
  • “Where’s the opportunity for creativity?” in the Common Core
  • Non-fiction, high-interest news websites about pop culture “hook students”
  • “Give students an opportunity to use pop culture” in schools

Sara Kjader (Pedagogies of the Possible)

  • Longtime tech adapter/ still learning
  • It’s not the tools that are important
  • Emergent technology use provides “ways for us to do our work better. That’s the pedagogy of the possible.”
  • Curate/Reflect/Annotate/Share
  • “My students read and write the world.”

Sarah Brown Wessling (Reading in Liminal Spaces)

  • Liminal spaces are the “thresholds” in between (ambiguity)
  • “We live in these places because we believe in books … we believe in the stories of our learners, the stories of our schools.”
  • These gaps provide opportunity for scaffolding
  • Where students struggle is where the learning takes place
  • “Where we see a gap, I often see a space” for growth

Donalyn Miller (Dead Presidents and Whales: Engaging Students with Nonfiction Texts)

  • Non-fiction is often “not the books that students often read.”
  • Genre avoidance
  • But non-fiction is “rich text that engages kids.”
  • Use good non-fiction for book talks, read-alouds, mentor texts and paired up with fiction
  • “Kids need lots of opportunities … so we need to weave non-fiction into their reading lives.”

I’ve linked as many Twitter accounts as I could find to presenters, and suggest you might want to follow them.

Peace (in the ignition),
Kevin

NCTE HackJam: Grab the Swag and Remix

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If you missed the NCTE Hackjam, you missed out on some great fun, and some great conversations among teachers (armed with tiny scissors and glue sticks and comics) about how to critically use media for analysis and meaning. It began with some stealthy signs and stealthy tweets, and Hackjam instigator Chad encouraging anyone walking by to take on a secret mission. Our mission was to grab some swag from NCTE vendors and use the materials to create new media. All of this as we huddled on the floor of the hallway off NCTE central.

In a nod to my friend, Anna, who created an Animoto while the HackJam was in progress, here is my own Animoto of the event, with a focus on the collage comic that I created to poke fun at a publishing company.

Chad then showed folks how to use some of the Mozilla Webmaker tools to create online hackjams, including a new Thinmble function for collaborating on a webpage project.

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin

PS — Thanks so much to Andrea Zellner and Chad Sansing for bringing HackJam to NCTE again.

Teachers’ Voices: So, You Want to Write for the Newspaper

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I led a roundtable discussion yesterday at NCTE around nurturing teacher voices, and my roundtable topic was about how to encourage teachers to use their local newspapers as a platform for writing and publishing, and changing the dialogue around education. The work is informed by a strong partnership that our Western Massachusetts Writing Project has with a regional newspaper to feature teacher-writers once a month. I used this handout as a way to encourage individual teachers but also groups of teachers to consider the local newspaper as a conduit for positive news.

NCTE Session Getting It in the Paper by KevinHodgson

Peace (in the news),
Kevin

 

At NWP/NCTE Annual Meeting

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I am going to be in Boston next week for the annual meetings of the National Writing Project and National Council of Teachers of English, and I am presenting a few times over a four day period. I created this little teaser video:

But more specifically:

  • Thursday, Joe Dillon and I are going to be in a session to talk about the Making Learning Connected MOOC experience from the Summer of Making and Learning. You can bet we’re going to making some stuff.  That session starts at 3:30 p.m. in the Hynes Convention Center as part of the NWP “c” sessions.
  • Saturday, I am joining a bunch of other teachers to talk about nurturing teacher voice, particularly through writing and publication. I am going to share out about our Western Massachusetts Writing Project partnership with our local newspaper to feature WMWP teachers as columnists. That session — called Writing to the Community — is an early one, starting at 8 a.m. at the Sheraton.
  • Sunday, I am giving an Ignite Talk as part of a collection of Ignites around the theme of Minding the Gaps. My talk is about video game design in the classroom. That is an early one, too, starting at 8:30 a.m. in the Sheraton.
  • Finally, I have been asked by NCTE President (and friend) Sandy Hayes to share a vignette from my classroom as part of her President’s Address to NCTE on Sunday (following the Ignite sessions). I am honored to be asked by Sandy, and look forward to being part of a group of teachers telling stories of learning. That takes place at 10 a.m.

So Long, National Gallery of Writing

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National Gallery of Writing
I suppose this was inevitable and not at all unexpected. But the National Council of Teachers of English is closing the virtual doors on the National Gallery of Writing. This online repository of writing (to date, there are more than 33,000 pieces of writing) was established for the first National Day on Writing back in 2009 (seems like a long time ago now). Each year, participants in the National Day of Writing have been encouraged to write and publish in the Gallery as a way to honor the richness of writing. I have writing in there, and networks that I have been part of (including the National Writing Project) have hosted “galleries” in the site over the years. (see my Log of Daily Writing from a few years ago)

But to be frank (and I was part of a small committee at one time thinking of how to re-energize the Gallery), the site was not really built for the times. What I mean by that is that the architecture of the site — from submission to search — was always clunky and difficult/complex to use, and one of the biggest drawbacks was that readers could not leave comments or contribute to writing that was in the Gallery.

Writing became static there. And that is in conflict with all the ways that technology enhances writing. We, the reader, expect to be able to add our thoughts. We anticipate the possibility of the remix. We hope that embedded media works in tandem with the written words. We expect writing to be alive. The Gallery tried to do that but then got stuck in time, I suspect, and NCTE did not have the funds (or did not want to allocate the funds) to upgrade the entire system.

Which is not to say the Gallery of Writing did not have value. It did. It was part of a push by NCTE and companion organizations to honor writing and to show how complex and amazing the writing is that we do. The Gallery may be going silent (I believe it closes down at the end of this month, so if you have writing in there you want to keep, I’d go get it) but the National Day on Writing continues.

On October 21, you can celebrate the National Day on Writing. This year’s theme is “connected writing,” as far as I can determine, which makes a lot of sense, right? I’ll be thinking about how to connect my students as writers this year. What about you?

Peace (in the times gone past),
Kevin