I am off to Philly next week for a variety of events — including the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, a day-long conference called Digital Is that is the product of a partnership between NWP and the MacArthur Foundation, and the annual meeting of the National Conference of Teachers of English. I’ll try to write more about what I am going to be up to later, but on Saturday (11/21), I am going to be with my co-editors of our book Teaching the New Writing, pen in hand and ready to sign books.
A book signing! Wow. This will be the first. And my handwriting stinks, so it will be a challenge for me.
The book signing (at booth 702 at 11 am) comes right after a session that we (co-editors Charlie Moran and Anne Herrington and fellow chapter writer Dawn Reed) are doing for NCTE called Assigning and Assessing Multimedia Writing. We’ll be showing some student work (digital science books and podcasting work) and talking about ways to look at (or listen to) digital compositions from a teaching and assessment standpoint. That session takes place on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at Marriott/Franklin 4, 4th Floor.
Here is the blurb:
Title: Assigning and Assessing Multimedia Writing
(Sponsoring Group: National Writing Project) How can we responsibly assign multimedia writing projects when state and national standards favor the five-paragraph theme? And what criteria can we use to assess this new writing in our own classrooms? This workshop will offer two models of multimedia projects, one a sixth grade digital picture book project and one a high school ‘This I Believe’ podcast project. The presenters will focus on the ways in which they hve assigned and scaffolded their students’ work in multimedia, the criteria they have used in assessing these multimedia projects, and the ways in which they have aligned the projects with state and national testing programs. Participants will then collaborate to develop assessment criteria for another multimedia text.
Chair:
Diane Waff, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Presenter:
Anne Herrington, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Kevin Hodgson, Leeds, Massachusetts
Charles Moran, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dawn Reed, Okemos High School, Michigan
Reactor / Respondent:
Cozette Ferron, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
At 1:15 that same day, I am one of the presenters at the Technology to Go kiosks and I will be showing people webcomics and hopefully, I will have a ToonDoo site ready for folks to get into and try out for themselves.
But you should, particularly if you are interested in the ways that writing can use technology wisely with students in their role as composers with digital media. In this book, Troy lays out an entire realm of digital tools that are out there than can support and enhance the teaching of writing. He also touches on such ideas as Choice and Inquiry, Conferencing with students, publishing student work to a world audience, and assessing such digital work (always a tricky endeavor in my opinion).
In his opening statement, Troy wisely lays out the rationale for his work:
I argue here and throughout this book that if we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then on the writing, and lastly on the technology. (p.8)
Troy grounds his work in the foundations of the Writing Process movement — where the focus is on the writer’s exploration — but examines the potential of technology for students. Wikis can be collaborative publishing spaces, collaborative word processors (like Google Docs) can show revision history, podcasting gives students a voice to the world, digital storytelling as a way to merge writing with image and more.
Troy also provides plenty of information, such as his chart that shows the traits of effective and ineffective digital writers. He also wisely lays out the various technology and projects along a spectrum called MAPS: Mode, Media, Audience, Purpose, and Situation for the writer.
If you are a teacher interested in moving towards the digital writing world with your students, this is the book to get. Troy has made a useful and engaging book about the transformation going on in some classrooms, but not enough. I will be keeping this book on my desk at school and sharing it with colleagues when I can. You should, too.
As some of you know, the way we celebrated National Day on Writing at our school was through the use of a large and expansive Comic Strip banner that asked the question: What do you like to write?
I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the thing because it is huge. It’s also quite mesmerizing to look at. There are words and pictures and scribbles and notes and names all over the banner, every which way. It’s sort of a dizzying experience to read. Yesterday, before parent teacher conferences, I unrolled all of the parts and zoomed in on some areas with my camera. I mostly focused on the writing that answered the question posed originally.
I then took those photos and put them into the Animoto video machine and this came out. I’m not happy with the music I chose, but it works for now, I guess. I hope it gives a flavor of the banner.
Well, the Huge Comic Strip Concept for celebrating at National Day on Writing at our school was pretty successful. It was also completely chaotic, as students rushed into the cafeteria at lunch, forgetting that they were there to eat and only wanted to write on the comic strip banner. At one point, I had to leave my own classroom just to act as traffic controller for the cafeteria staff, but it was fun to see so much energy and excitement around the act of writing and drawing.
I started with one large comic strip banner, but quickly realized that it was filling up and three times, I had to rush out, cut another strip of banner paper and add it to the original. I would turn my head and when I looked back, that one, too, would be filled with writing.
The original comic asked the question: What do you like to write? The answers ranged from stories, to poems, to plays, to comics, to tales about pets, sports stories and songs. It was pretty cool, and I had some great discussions with the younger kids about what they like to write.
I went on our closed-circuit morning television announcements to tell the school about National Day on Writing and to show the students (we have more than 500 students) the original comic strip banner, and one teacher later told me: “There was this incredible buzz in the room about writing. My entire class asked if they could run down to the cafeteria right then and start writing on it.”
Yeah.
I hope you were able to celebrate your own version of the National Day on Writing, too.
I’ve written about the upcoming National Day on Writing which is being sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (and supported by my own National Writing Project) but it is coming up soon and I want to keep getting the word out about the event. (see the flier)
Here is how NCTE describes it:
Writing is a daily practice for millions of Americans. But few notice how integral writing has become to daily life in the 21st century.To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing we engage in and help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft, NCTE has established October 20, 2009, as the National Day on Writing. To celebrate composition in all its forms, we are inviting diverse participants –students, teachers, parents, grandparents, service and industrial workers, managers, business owners, legislators, retirees, and many more — to submit a piece of writing to the National Gallery of Writing.
The National Gallery is shaping up to be an interesting site where hopefully all sorts of writing will be posted and perused and show the power of our writing as a nation.
So, as part of the new venture that Bonnie and I are helping to foster — an online social space for National Writing Project teachers, mostly in the New England/New York areas which we call the iAnthology (and which now has more than 100 members) — we have created our own gallery for the National Day on Writing and are going to be trying to urge folks in our network to consider publishing some of the pieces they are developing.
It occurs to me, though, that I would love to find a way to get my students involved and I need to sort through the various release forms and think about what that would be. I know one person has set up a gallery designed specifically for graphic stories and comics, so that may be an option for us to consider (if I can get that far with my students).
And you can set up a Gallery, too, or at consider posting some of your own writing, or your students’ writing. Let’s celebrate our love of writing and show its power as a nation.
CAVEAT: I wonder how many pieces will be posted that in a multimedia format (podcasts, videos, etc.)
I do love this powerful statement from NCTE:
NCTE members value writing as a tool for learning and live the importance of writing daily.
They realize the importance of educating their students for the 21st century and incorporate the elements of the The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies into their classroom lessons.
Yesterday, Bonnie and I launched our experimental network for teachers in the New England/New York areas who are connected to our National Writing Project. We’ve called it the iAnthology, in reference to the eAnthology writing network that runs all summer for teachers involved in the four week training of the National Writing Project.
To be honest, we weren’t sure if anyone would come and get involved, but as of this morning, we have 35 members. That’s more than I would have thought and that was just in the first day. The network is not open to the general public (sorry) and we have a mix of new tech users and veteran tech users.
Our goal here is to use Web 2.0 tools to keep us all connected and involved in the work of the National Writing Project, which prides itself on developing teachers as writers and then writers as teachers. We believe that writing is at the heart of most learning.
So, this is exciting and we hope the network develops into something special and useful for our teachers.
I just finished reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (I know, I am about a year late to the conversation — the same thing happened with me and The World is Flat) and my reading of the book comes as I am working with my friend, Bonnie, to create a social network for members of the National Writing Project in the New England and New York region.
We are using a closed Ning social networking site and we hope to model it on a very successful networking venture that the National Writing Project oversees each summer called the eAnthology, which is open only for the summer months. We’re calling our smaller network the iAnthology. It’s experimental and we’re not sure how it will go. But we’re hopeful that we can grow the space into a supportive environment for teachers in our NWP sites to write, share and reflect.
So, as I am reading Here Comes Everybody, some of the concepts that Shirky so clearly articulates begins to resonate off my thinking of how to create the framework of a site that the users can take ownership of and see as their own. It’s clear to me that providing the structure is critical. If users of a network feel affinity with the group, and feel safe in that group, then the network becomes viable. If not — if the network is alien to the interests of the individual — then the network fails.
Here are some ideas that came to mind when reading the book:
Shirky explains the concept of the Power Law Distribution of networks. It’s a big term which shows how in any large group, there is not an even dispersion of activity. Instead, a large number of a group or network participate only once so often. A much smaller group is active every now and then, depending on their own interests. And a very small group is regularly active. While the network’s survival relies on the large numbers to remain vibrant, it is the small group of leaders who must remain engaged by guiding discussions, presenting new information and encouraging the others to keep connected. In our iAnthology, we have a group of “moderators” whose role will be that of encouragers and overseeing feedback for writing in a supportive way.
The idea of Small World Connectors is another interesting element to networks, in that people in a network have some natural things that connect them to each other. In our case, it is the National Writing Project and the experience of our summer program called the Summer Institute. We hope folks already self-identify with NWP and view our space as a mirror of sorts of the environment created by NWP in its programs. Also, given that we are limiting the NWP sites involved, we hope that members of our network will know, or know of, folks in the network. These personal connections (think Six Degrees of Separation) will provide a tighter framework for trust and support, or so we hope.
Shirky notes how small clusters of conversations work more powerfully that large conversations. People feel less invested if they are part of a group of 100 people talking than if it is a group of 10 people. Their opinion matters more because it is less dispersed. In our site, we are setting up “groups” where people can post their writing based on certain umbrella ideas: personal writing, such as poetry or short stories; professional writing, for journals or book projects; sharing classroom practices and lesson plans; and finding ways to connect with other teachers and classrooms within the network itself.
I’m sure there is more here, but these elements seemed important for us to keep in mind as we move forward.
Mark Twain arrived home this week, safe and sound inside an envelope. He is part of a group of Writer figurines making their way around the country by visiting various Summer Institutes of the National Writing Project. We’ve packaged the concept as a spy story, in which The Writers have been instructed by President Obama to investigate the National Writing Project and report back. The reporting has been done at a Ning site for technology-minded folks within the NWP.
What I’ve been doing, other than overseeing The Writers’ various journeys, is creating little stopmotion movies to keep the concept fresh and to poke fun at The Writers. Yesterday, I gave Twain his own feature, arriving home in one of my son’s Pirate Ships, floating along the blue waters of one of our futon couches. Meanwhile, we still have no word on the whereabouts of Edgar Allen Poe, who seems to have disappeared in the US Mail system.
I decided to try something a little different with this movie, using ComicLife to create the dialogue on images and then mixing up images and video. It was tricky and I am not sure I kept enough time for the reading of the lines. Let me know. I can always go back and re-edit, if necessary.
If you want to see the other segments of The Writers, go: First here and then here and then here. That should bring you up to speed.
This is just a bit of fun — but one of our Writers figures that we have sent out on a “mission” to discover more about the National Writing Project has gone missing. (You can read more about the project here) I am sure he will turn up but I used the opportunity to create this movie with Xnormal, where you turn text into video. I then used the option for YouTube, just to keep track of the videos.
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