For the past few weeks, I have been sharing out pieces of a resource around video game design as my sixth grade students have created science-based video games. I often brought along my video camera for the ride, interviewing my fellow teachers and some of my students, and capturing some of the events as they unfolded with the project. I thought I might produce a video. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to keep much of the segments separate, and a website resource really seemed to be the way to go.

So, here it is.

I’ve created this website called Video Game Design as a way to document our learning adventure around game design, science and writing in hopes that you might also consider the possibilities of video games in your classroom. It was quite an interesting project, which continues to unfold even now (some of my students will be revising their games for the National STEM Video Game Challenge). I’ve tried to show how the project touches on a lot of curricular areas, and connects with the Common Core initiative. And I have attempted to show how engaged my students were in their creation of a video game project.

Most of all, I want to emphasize that my young gamers moved from the “players” of other people’s games to the “creators” of their own projects, with a real audience (we used Gamestar Mechanic, which I highly recommend for this kind of project) and a real purpose. While there are areas I see in reflection that could have been done better, there is no doubt in my mind that this project transformed learning practice for a few weeks. It’s been a bit difficult to get back to the regular curriculum, to be honest.

I hope the site is useful for you. Feel free to pass it around and if you see things that need to be addressed or have some general comments, I would love for you to give some feedback here.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

I suppose any reader of this space knows that I can come across as a cheerleader for the ways that technology can be used to transform the possibilities of composition and publishing for young people. But not everything is all rosy all the time. I admit that I am lucky to work in a school where the administration understands the power of technology, and invests as much as it can in equipment, but we still run into all sorts of hurdles.

I regularly use the Dell PC Cart that is housed in my classroom (convenient!) and leave the MAC carts for other parts of the building, particularly for my colleagues in the younger grades. But the Dell Cart is now going on six years old. I remind my students that the computers they are using were brought into the school when they were in kindergarten. That opens up a few eyes. And softens the complaints of processing speed and error messages.

I do a lot to keep the cart running because I don’t want the technology to interfere with the learning. I am not always successful and if often feels like I spend some days in a wrestling match with technology, both of us determined to conquer the other. So far, I am winning. I think. But every day is a new battle, and I need to be light on my feet. It also makes clear, though, why so many teachers give up on technology when the glitches take place, or the computer won’t start, of whatever. It can be exhausting.

Here are just some of the problems that I regularly run into:

• Six-year-old PC laptops. ‘Nuff said. This would not be as big an issue if they were Macs (says the former PC evangelist);
• Wireless data flow. When 21 laptops are streaming a heavy-duty site (like Glogster, or Voicethread, or Gamestar Mechanic), the wireless system often gags, and loading of webpages slows to a crawl;
• The batteries on our laptops are deteriorating … I can barely make it through one hour-long class, and I have four hour-long classes each day. I do a lot of juggling at the end of class and at the start of class to leave a window open for recharging. It does give me time for mini-lessons, but sometimes I am just dancing around in the front of the room, praying for more time;
• Updates clog up the system, too. Between Windows XP updates, Firefox updates, anti-virus updates, the flow of data coming through the air and into the laptops makes me wonder we don’t see the bits and bytes flying before our eyes. And since that happens in the background, the laptops can crawl at times, and then suddenly, the students are confronted with a shut-down/update;
• Our Internet service is pretty stable but the other day, we lost it for about four hours, and that impacted an entire day of game design.

I should point out that the students roll with it. While they expect speed and instant connectivity with equipment these days, they mostly complain, ask for help and then wait out the fixes with patience. Maybe more patience that I show at times. But together, we use what we got, and we keep pushing the equipment to the edge of what it can do. We don’t give up. Well, at least most of the time.

Peace (in the gripe session),
Kevin

• Best individual blog: I have come to look forward to Audrey Watter’s Hack Education (http://www.hackeducation.com/) posts. They are long, and deep, and I often need to allocate more than a quick read. I appreciate that she doesn’t need to shorten or dumb down her ideas around education. While some of the focus seems to be on higher education, her unflinching look at trends and ways to push traditional education in new directions is a delight.
• Best individual tweeter: Pam Moran (http://twitter.com/pammoran) is one of my favorite tweeters. Her insights into education as an educator, writer and administrator show a myriad of thinking paths, and she is responsive to others and as likely to share an idea as she is to ask for help. You can find her at Twitter at @pammoran
• Best group blog: The Cooperative Catalyst (http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/) is an interesting stew of ideas that really pushes up against many topics and ideas. What I love about the various writers at the Coop is how they are fearless in the things they believe in and yet, they open invite opposing views. Unlike some group sites, the Coop doesn’t ever feel insular in nature.
• Best new blog: Jeremy Hyler (http://jeremyhyler40.wordpress.com/) Jeremy is middle school teacher who tells it like it is,a and yet, even when he is being critical of himself or the system or even his students, he ends his writing on a positive note that indicates his blog-based thinking is leading to action and change. He’s also a fellow National Writing Project teacher.
• Best class blog: I am biased here, but I still look forward to the posts by a kindergarten teacher in my school — Gail Poulin — who chronicles her year with her young students in many ways. Her classroom blog – http://poulingail.edublogs.org/ – showcases the various elements of literacy learning, community service, inquiry projects and technology integration. As her colleague on the other side of the school, I am honored to share the same building as Gail. Plus, I get to see my future students in the early stages of their development as learners. Pretty neat.
• Best student blog: I am not sure this is a classroom project. It probably isn’t. But I love the book reviews that Corey gives at his Book Talk blog — http://coreysbooktalk.blogspot.com/ — and the more insights I have into what kids are reading, the more I can steer my students towards books that will interest them. I like how Corey has a book of the month and asks questions to consider about the books he is reading.
• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog: So many resource blogs have sprung up in recent years. But I still rely heavily on Richard Byrne’s Free Tech for Teachers (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/) for not only sharing his discoveries, but also for the way he frames the technology tools as a way for learning. His writing is as rich as the tools.
• Most influential blog post: I found Will Richardson’s blog post — My Teacher is an App  (http://willrichardson.com/post/12686013800/my-teacher-is-an-app) — to be thoughtful and thought-provoking in the way he framed the discussion around online education and the possibilities and the dangers of that shift. What makes it influential to me is that it made me think of the issue in a new light, with the app metaphor … well, apt.
• Best Twitter hashtag: I loved this year’s Day on Writing’s #whyiwrite hashtag (http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23whyiwrite). The posts and the tweets over the course of the day were just wonderful examples of how we write and why we write. The hashtag collection was overflowing that day, reminding us of the importance of writing in our lives.
• Best teacher blog: I enjoy the posts coming out of Jeremy Kaiser’s Web 2.0 Edu blog (http://web20edu.com/).  It may be that our interests intersect a lot (stopmotion video, etc.) but I also find his thinking helps my thinking, and isn’t that the beauty of collecting RSS feeds from blogs?
• Best librarian / library blog: A Year of Reading (http://readingyear.blogspot.com/) with Mary Lee and Franki is such an insightful breath of fresh air, as they move between book recommendations and how to revamp a school library with technology and clusters of activity. They have created spaces, and this online space, that is informative and enriching.
• Best School Administrator blog: I think The Principal’s Page (http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/) is a good inside look into the world of the administrator. I suspect that many of us teachers don’t quite get the stress and pressure our principals are under these days as jobs are looked upon through the scope of data and graphs. This blog reminds us that there are struggled aplenty when you are in the front office.
• Best free web tool: I have to admit, I love Cinch (http://cinch.fm/) for its ease of use for podcasting for myself and with my students. With options for browser-based recording, mobile device apps and even via a cell phone, Cinch really is a great resource for finding your voice and adding it to the world.
• Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast: Teachers Teaching Teachers (http://teachersteachingteachers.org/) continues to be one of the best conversations around, and the step into using Google Video Hangouts added a new dimension this year. With topics right off the headlines (such as Occupy and more), TTT is a place to go for great conversations around teaching.
• Best educational wiki: The Cool Tools for Schools (http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/) is a great resource, chock full of interesting links grouped by topic.
• Best open PD / unconference / webinar series: I took a course at P2PU (http://p2pu.org/en/) with Bud Hunt around the writing components of the Common Core. It was my first foray into an open online course, and I have to say, it was wonderful. There was an interesting flow to the discussions and the platform made it easy to follow along and jump into conversations.
• Best educational use of a social network: Youth Voices (http://youthvoices.net/) continues to be a model for students coming together to write and to share and to explore. This year, organizers Paul Allison and Chris Sloan have made a concerted push to add an elementary/middle school element to the site, expanding the possibilities even further.
• Lifetime achievement: Bud Hunt (http://budtheteacher.com/blog/) continues to get me thinking with his sharp posts, and inspiring me with his reflective practice. I just hope a lifetime achievement award doesn’t stop the person from continuing to share their best practices with us.

Make your own nominations for the Edublog Awards.

Peace (in the sharing of resources),
Kevin

I had an interesting conundrum this week in which a website that I brought my students into had a temporary bug in the security feature that did not compromise the accounts, but it did invalidate a series of security questions that would allow my students to access their passwords if they should forget them or if they were to get lost. Unfortunately, unlike most educational sites these days, this particular one does not have a master list of student usernames and passwords available.

So, the day after I realized the bug (which was fixed), I gave each student a piece of paper and had them write down their username and password for me so that I could make a master list. I had to explain that no one would have access to the list (a few looked nervous, which is good) and that it would only be if they forgot their password or username.

This weekend, I created my list and began to notice some trends around passwords that I never really paid attention to before. And given that I am developing a digital citizenship unit for January, I see now that “Password Education” is going to be part of those lesson planning. While some students did a nice job of mixing up letters and numbers in a way that would be difficult to be hacked, I noticed some other things:

• One student, out loud in class, announced that he uses the same password for every site. And then he began to list out the sites that he uses: Facebook, YouTube, etc. Another student, one of his friends, announced that was true and that he knew the password. Not a good idea, I told both of them. I suggested he change his common password, and vary it for various sites.
• One of the usernames in our site appears to be the phone number of the student. Yikes! The site is closed to the public, but still … I found that very odd.
• A few usernames were their real first and last names. Again, the site is closed. But I specifically said they should come up with a username that is invented. Maybe I did not stress that clear enough.
• In a few cases, the password was exactly the same as the username. That doesn’t do much good, does it?
• One student wrote her username and password in sharpie marker on the front cover of her binder. I noticed it when they were filling out my sheet. Not too secure, I told her. She covered it up with a book, as if that would solve the matter.
• One password was clearly the home address of the student.
• A couple of the passwords were only three letters. That’s not as bad as some of the above, but the more characters, the harder it is to hack.

Of course, these are sixth graders and their main goal is to be able to remember their usernames and passwords, so they go the easiest route possible. My job is to teach them and remind them how to keep their data safe, and their accounts secure, and along with a conversation this week about it, it will become part of my upcoming digital educational unit, too.

Here are two resources that are handy when talking about passwords.

First, check out this infographic. It’s a good talking point.

Second, check out this site – Password Bird – which creates passwords based on some basic questions, and mixing up the words. I am going to come up with sort of activity that forces them to invent a few possible passwords. Another site — Strong Password Generator — is good, but the passwords that come out of the engine would be difficult for my students to remember, I think, even with the memory hints.

But I like this information from the Strong Password Generator site:

A strong password:

has at least 15 characters;

has uppercase letters;

has lowercase letters;

has numbers;

has symbols, such as ` ! " ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { [ } ] : ; @ ' ~ # | \ < , > . ? /

is not like your previous passwords;

is not your name;

is not your login;

is not your friend’s name;

is not your family member’s name;

is not a dictionary word;

is not a common name.

What it comes down to is an understanding of WHY we have passwords in the first place. This year, I notice, there is less of an awareness of security of online sites with my students. I’m not sure why that is. Without stirring up too much fear and anxiety, though, I want to inform them of ways they can protect their data, and also (when it comes to social networking sites) their reputations.

Peace (in the password),
Kevin

The Common Sense media group just released the results of a study of very young children (ages 0-8) and there are some interesting findings, including the increasing use of mobile devices and game consoles in young children’s lives. What is still in the air is whether this is good or bad, right?

Here is how Common Sense Media group describes the report:

Zero to Eight is a nationally representative survey of parents of U.S. children ages zero to eight, conducted to understand the patterns of media use among young American children. Covering TV, other video, reading, music, computers, video games, and mobile digital devices, we examine time spent and frequency of use; differences in children’s media use by gender, race, or socio-economic status; the home media environment; educational media use; and access to the newest mobile media platforms like smart phones and tablets.

One of the various findings (all of which are very interesting, by the way)  that stuck out for me is the continued Digital Divide concerns related to socio-economic factors in not only exposure to technology and media, but also knowledge of how to use it (thus, in my view, validating the ever-increasing importance of schools and teachers). They even reference an “App Gap” of who has access to mobile devices. That’s a new term for me.

Check out this chart from the study:

And this one around race and media use:

Some other findings:

* Half (52%) of all children now have access to one of the newer mobile devices at home: either a smartphone (41%), a video iPod (21%), or an iPad or other tablet device (8%).
* Half (51%) of all 0- to 8-year-olds have ever played a console video game, including 44% of 2- to 4-year-olds and 81% of 5- to 8-year-olds. Among those who have played console video games, the average age at first use was just under 4 years old (3 years and 11 months). Among 5- to 8-year-olds, 17% play console video games at least once a day, and another 36% play them at least once a week.
* In a typical day, 47% of babies and toddlers ages 0 through 1 watch TV or DVDs, and those who do watch spend an average of nearly two hours (1:54) doing so.

I continue to be torn between being an advocate for young people learning and using technology and media for their own reasons and exposing young people to these elements of technology and media. This tension comes to me in my role as parent as well as teacher. I keep an eye on trying to give kids the tools to “create” and become the composers with the technology, and not just passive users. That’s my lens.

But studies like this indicate that too many parents of very young children are content to plop a kid in front of any screen and let them at it, no matter the age. That unsettles and worries me, to be honest. No screen should be a babysitter, and all of the initial research around brain development and technology seems to indicate something is going on with our brains when young people use technology.

I am hoping to use parts of this study at a future Western Mass Writing Project event as a way to look at technology and pop culture and media saturation.

Peace (in the wonderment of the change),
Kevin

Our Western Massachusetts Writing Project is in the midst of planning a Technology Conference in the early spring, with a focus on the ways that technology, pop culture and writing can come together in the classroom. And since the inquiry focus of our WMWP site this year is our state’s shift to its own Common Core curriculum, we’re going to work to make visible the connections with the new frameworks around technology.

It’s a tall order, but I think our plan is in the right direction. Check out our “blurb.”

WMWP Digital Workshop, “Digital Composing and the Common Core: Using Pop Culture to Nurture Diverse Voices.”
February 4, 2012, 9-12:30, snow date, February 11, 2012; Place to be determined. 
How many times have you wondered just how influential popular culture is in the lives of your students? This WMWP Technology Conference will examine and then use elements from popular culture as a means for connecting with the new Common Core Frameworks and for examining the influence in the lives of young people.  The focus will be on Anchor Standards for use of digital media (#6 for Writing and #7 for Reading).  Topics from social networking spaces to media advertising to music videos will be on the agenda, as well as discussions about how to tap into cultural influences in meaningful ways, including through various rhetorical lens. Participants will also work with technology to create examples of how to use pop culture for composition in the classroom.  The workshop will be offered by members of the WMWP Technology Team.

We’re working to bring in a local youth video group to give an opening keynote address, and we are planning breakout sessions around video analysis, social networking, video gaming and more. We intend to engage teachers on a variety of levels, from learning about these topics to doing these activities themselves.

The theme of the day is inspired in part by Ernest Morrell’s keynote at the National Writing Project’s Urban Sites Conference, where he talked of the many connections/disco between the literacy in our students lives and how to tap into those experiences for meaningful work and play.

 

I’m pretty excited about what we have planned. If you are in our neck of the woods, I hope you can come, too.

Peace (in the event),
Kevin

I've written about how one of my personal goals this year is to jump in with my Promethean Interactive Board and try to use it to its fullest this year (as opposed to last year, when it was a nice expensive projector). Since the start of the year, we've used the ActiveVotes to study for quizzes and spark discussions before starting new units; I've used the "containers" system for some interactive activities at the board; I've handed the pen over to kids any number of times and let them come up and annotate text and answer questions; and more.

This past week, I grabbed the one set of devices in our school known as ActivExpressions for use in a vocabulary activity. These handheld devices are different than the ActiVotes, in that the user (student) can do a variety of things, including provide numerical answers and type in their own words as responses. You can even fashion an activity with a variety of kinds of responses (which is a nice bit of flexibility) and even quickly put a question on the board that comes up unexpectedly in discussions, and have kids answer it within in minutes. (Of course, they would have to have the ActivExpression at their desk). It's a bit like bringing texting into the classroom. The devices work just like a cell phone, as you punch through the letters to spell a word.

It was simple to set up and pretty interesting to watch.

On tough questions that required some deep thinking and responses, you could hear a pin drop in the room as they were writing out answers. Looking at the spelling of the words (which gets displayed on the board in a chart, which you can save and which allows you to also isolate data from individual users), you could see all of the mannerisms of texting (the dropped vowels and shorted word parts), even though I told them to spell the words correctly. In one class, one student urged his classmates to "use a capital letter at the start and a smiley face at the end" so that all of those would get grouped together on the chart. In each class, there was usually an informal race to be the first to finish (the marathon texters came to light).

They loved the devices because it reminded them of using cell phones outside of school, but was it a solid learning tool?

I don't know.

Honestly, I need to learn more about the possibilities and maybe see more models in action. From a "time" perspective, it wasn't a very efficient use of the class period. Some kids take forever to text. And you have to wait for everyone to be done before showing the graph. I could have done the same activity on paper, in about half the time, and gotten pretty much the same data set on my own.

I still have an open mind about it, but I'll have to have a better justification for using this technology other than it's just cool for my students and reminds them of their cell phone. I need more than that, as a teacher (even one who believes in technology). I need to do more work on my end before I have them doing the learning on their end.

Peace (in the expressions),
Kevin

PS -- And I kept thinking, what would my webcomic character Boolean do with this device? He'd hack into it for some sort of mischief, I am sure.

We’re only a few weeks into the year, but a few of my students are already on the radar. You are probably in the same situation — noticing and making notes of students who will be needing a little more support and attention as writers and readers. We’re still finishing up our digital story project, but as in other years, I am noticing how this kind of technology project can engage the reluctant writers I am already seeing. This one student really struggled with sentence flow, and syntax, and getting ideas down on paper, but they have flourished with the Dream Scene digital story project, so much so that every single day they are asking if I can share their project with all of my classes.

They would never, not in a million years, do that with a written piece of writing.

I was thinking of this the other day — of what is it about the technology aspect that can provide an inroad for some of our reluctant writers to be successful, and feel successful, even though they don’t see themselves as writers. In this case, this student gets so frustrated with other assignments, they often just give up, hang their head and shut down.

So why this project?

First of all, the “writing” is hidden. Their writing is a script, a piece of narration, and so all spelling, grammar and other mechanics that often gum up their writing is behind the veil. This gives the student some power and some authority over the “content” of the piece as opposed to the “mechanics” of the piece. We’ll work on mechanics this year, for sure, but here, that isn’t the main thing that readers/viewers will see.

Second, there was a set structure to their pieces (what is your dream, why is it important, how will you achieve it) that kept the writing from getting too open-ended and unfocused. We’ll be moving on to more open writing later in the year, and I know I will need work on hard with storyboarding, and graphic organizers, and more. But for now, this structure was a comfort zone for my reluctant writers.

Third, the art element of illustrating your own digital story empowered the strengths of this particular student. They spent a lot of time on the art, erasing and restarting a handful of times to get it just right. There was a real pride in what they were doing, and that pride-fulness carried over into the digital story component of the piece. I want to note that in the illustration, the self-portrait shows my student smiling and in full focus. I love that self-perception, which we don’t always see in them in the classroom, unfortunately.

Fourth, if you listen, you can hear this student perceiving an audience. They know we will be watching it together in the classroom (and we may be sharing these over at Youth Voices, too). The sense that more than me, the teacher, would be the viewer gave a little push to try a little harder, and to not be afraid to get the picture right, and get the narration right, even if it meant slowing down and starting over (something they would almost never do with a piece of written work. They write; it’s done.)

Finally, they were creating an original video, for the first time ever. Too many young people are cast into the role of consumer, or viewer, and not enough into the role of producer. Even with this short digital story, the expertise was in their hands, and they were creating something original. The power of that act is very motivating for young people.

I’m as proud of what this student has accomplished as they are of themselves, and my task now is to keep nurturing that motivation and using that interest to work on writing skills. I will keep referring back to this early success as an example of what they can do, instead of pounding it into their head the thing they lack. The deficit model won’t work so well in this situation.

This young writer is being built, one digital story at a time.

Peace (in the mulling over),
Kevin

Here is a version of the workshop I gave yesterday at the New England Reading Assocation’s conference on using mentor texts to inspire student digital composition. We had a great session, with lots of sharing and writing and questions. My last topic — gaming as a form of mentor text — sparked some interesting curiosity about how to bring that passion of some students into the classroom setting for writing and learning. We didn’t have answers, but we did have a lot of wonderment. That’s a start!
Mentor Texts in a Digital Age PDF Version
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

This is one of the handouts that I will be using in my session today at the New England Reading Association Conference. I am exploring Mentor Texts and Digital Writing, and how we can use traditional texts to inspire digital composition in our students.
Mentor Texts and Digital Writing
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin