Category Archives: Technology Resources

Reflecting on Adventure Story Search Stories

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There was a lot of “cool” and “check this out” in the classroom yesterday as my students used Google Search Story to create a different version of their adventure short stories. They had to put themselves in the minds of their main characters and give a flavor of their short stories with just seven (no more, no less) search engine queries.

The results were mostly interesting, I think. It’s always funny how the choosing of the music is the part they love the most. Even when we use Photostory, the same thing: they obsess over the music. Which is fine, but interesting to me.

I was thinking of the pros and cons of using Search Stories as a classroom tool.

Pros:

  • Inferential thinking is at the heart of composing and reading these kinds of stories;
  • Understanding character — from the writing standpoint, they had to imagine they were their characters — what would they be searching for?
  • It’s an easy-to-use digital story format;
  • Certainly engaging activity — my students were very focused on what they were doing;
  • YouTube as classroom outlet — we loaded up the stories into YouTube, which sparked some interesting discussions among my students about how they use YouTube at home.

Cons

  • It’s a Google site, and they have built it to generate more search traffic, thus more revenues. I made this clear as day to my students before we got to the site;
  • Having seven query slots (no more, no less) was tricky for some kids;
  • Spelling is critical because the search is built around the words;
  • Not every student is at the critical thinking stage, so some stories are stronger than others.

Here are a few of the Search Stories my students created yesterday in class.

By the way, if you are wondering, I have set up a classroom YouTube account, so they all uploaded into that account (I gave them the password and then changed it at the end of the day) which cloaks identity completely. I then made a playlist of all of their search stories, which I will share out at our class blog. Here, I made a playlist in my own Youtube account of a sampling of videos from my school account. Needless to say, I was toggling back and forth a bit with this but it is worth it.

Peace (in the search),
Kevin

My Edublog Award Nominations

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Each year, Edublogs (which I use for personal and school blogs) hosts its annual Edublog Awards. I know some folks frown on an awards idea for bloggers and it can often seem like shouting in an echo chamber (we all nominate the popular bloggers, who get more popular, etc.). But I like that it makes me stop for a stretch and reflect on those folks whom I read and learn from on a regular basis.

So, with a few disclaimers down below, here are my nominations. I did not do every single category. I only did nominations in the categories that I felt strongly about:

Best individual blog: Bud the Teacher http://budtheteacher.com/blog/

I find Bud’s reflections and passion for learning and technology to be as strong today as it was when I first found him online. Meeting him in person at various functions over the years has only cemented my view of Bud as someone to watch and follow, and think about. Bud often moves beyond the tool and into the learning of technology, and he is not a bandwagon jumper — he sees the technology and possibilities, and pitfalls, with clear eyes.

Best individual tweeter: http://twitter.com/#!/PaulWHankins

I’m fairly new to Paul’s circle of friends, I guess, but reading him on Twitter is like listening into a very interesting conversation. He clearly loves learning, he is passionate about books, and he loves writing (for himself and his students)  — and those three facets of his personality seem to come together in interesting ways with Paul’s tweets.

Best group blog: NWP Walkabout: http://nwpwalkabout.posterous.com/

A disclaimer: I contribute to this blog every now and then. It’s a home for National Writing Project folks to file reflections about various conferences, events and projects that they are involved in. The collective sharing out of what has been learned, and what is being learned, is always engaging.

Best new blog: Popgun Chaos http://www.popgunchaos.com/

This blog is hard to explain, since it is not about teaching; it’s about culture, and particularly the comic book/alternative music culture. The posts are often very funny and engaging, and the topics are (for me) so off-center to what I am used to reading that I look forward to what the topic is when it arrives in my RSS. It may not be a blog for everyone, but I hope it finds an audience. Plus, how can you not love that name?

Best class blog: http://poulingail.edublogs.org/

Here’s another disclaimer: I work with Gail, the kindergarten teacher behind this blog, and she nominated me for an award this year. So, nominating her seems like payback, but it’s not. I would have tried to give her class the spotlight anyway because her students are wonderful and their work in various modes of composition (skyping, voicethread, photography, and more) is such a rich window into the world of early childhood education.

Best resource sharing blog — Larry Ferlazzo http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

I feel like I nominate Larry every year and never regret it. If you don’t have Larry Ferlazzo in your sights, you are missing some great resources, particularly around parent involvement and English Language Learners.

Most influential blog post: Still Learning How To Be A Digital Writer (Troy Hicks) http://hickstro.org/2010/10/08/still-learning-how-to-be-a-digital-writer-digital-teacher/

Another disclaimer (darn it): My request to Troy Hicks that he talk about the things that did not go so great when he was leading online discussions of his book (The Digital Writing Workshop) led to this post, which I just loved. He made visible both the possibilities of technology, and the roadblocks that can come. And just as important, for me, he reflected on both of those ideas in his calm, reassuring tone of voice of this blog.

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: #speakloudly http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23SpeakLoudly

Remember Paul from my Twitter recommendation? He kept this hashtag alive and well during Banned Book Month, inviting people to really ponder our views towards suppressing literature that don’t meet the guidelines of so-called society.

Best teacher blog: Two Writing Teachers http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/

Ruth and Stacey are so great as reflective teachers, offering a nice balance between suggestions for writing activities and thoughtful analysis of classroom practice, complete with student samples.

Best librarian / library blog: A Year of Reading — http://readingyear.blogspot.com/

Franki and Mary Lee co-write this blog, really focusing in on literacy in the library at the elementary level. I loved the series of posts this summer about the ecology and physical lay-out of the library, and what that kind of thoughtful decision does to the learning environment.

Best school administrator blog – Practical Theory: Chris Lehamann — http://practicaltheory.org/serendipity

If you are in education, you should be paying attention to Chris. Enough said, I think.

Best educational tech support blog – Scott Sibberson – http://scottsibberson.blogspot.com/

Scott is husband to Franki, of A Year of Reading, and his views from the technical support room, and his ideas of supporting classroom instruction, are a great resource to turn to.

Best educational podcast: Teachers Teaching Teachers – http://teachersteachingteachers.org/

Yet another disclaimer: I’ve been a guest on TTT, which is a weekly webcast turned podcast that focuses on so many topics, including student writing in social spaces, but this past year’s involvement in the oil spill has been a great motivator for me to ramp up my work around environmental education with my students.

Lifetime achievement: Bud the Teacher – http://budtheteacher.com/blog/

Sorry, Bud. You’re not old. You’ve just been around for a few years longer than most of us and I appreciate the time you have spent sharing with us readers.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

326 Words in 9 Minutes: Defeating Dr. Wicked

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I had a friend turn me on to this odd site called Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die, which gives you a time period to write and then prods you forward with your targeted word count with electric cattle prods, zapping hand buzzers … well, not quite. But the site does use colored backgrounds to let you know you are staring at the screen a bit too long, and then begins to remove your words one at a time until you start typing again. At least, that’s what it did in the category that I chose — you can be more forgiving on yourself, or more harsh, too.

(There is a desktop version of this, which costs a requested donation of 10 bucks, and a modified online version that is free. I did the free online version. Some folks are using this as part of the National Novel Writing Month projects to spur them on.)

This could be a killer for some writers who stress over every word but not for me, who writes quick (too quick?) and is happy to plow forward in the draft stage. I actually found it was a neat experience to know I better get things going. I had to move my story forward, and fast, or face the wrath of Dr. Wicked, and I didn’t even know what I was going to write when I started at the site.

I wrote the first line that came to mind because I was writing early in the morning and sleep was not far away  — By night, she was wide awake .. — and began.) The story unfolded in literally the ten minutes I had on the clock as I imagined the scene, this character and a possible backstory. I threw the cat into the mix for good luck.

So, I kind of liked the experience. The site let me know that I wrote 326 words in 9 minutes, so I beat the clock (10 minute limit) and exceeded my goal (300 words). Take that, Dr. Wicked!

My Story:

By night, she was wide awake, knowing that her anxiety would not let her sleep. Her day tumbled over her, weaving some strange magic. Her cat purred at her feet. She gently moved, not wanting to disrupt him, too, with her wakefulness. He barely stirred. She felt a bit of resentment now, and poked him with her toe. The cat just rolled over, stretched, and fell back into canine slumber.

She pulled on her slippers. Her toes wiggled to create warmth. The stairs were dark, but she knew every step. The light was unnecessary, although it would not have awoken anyone. It was only her now. Her and the cat. Still, she kept the light off, feigning some sleep pattern that she hoped would eventually lead her back to bed.

The newspaper was folded up on the kitchen table. The headline was no longer visible. She reminded herself that she had done this on purpose. Yet, she could not resist. She took the newspaper and unfolded it out, spreading out the entire two pages on the table before her. She bent over the news, elbows on the table, and read it again. She searched for any clues to the real story behind the story. A former reporter, she knew what to look for in what wasn’t being said.

Even so, the story in the story remained a mystery. She ran her fingers over his headshot and thought how funny it was that he seemed so contained in that little square box. He looked younger than she remembered, and figured the newspaper had grabbed some old headshot of his from its files.

“Developer Disappears, Money Taken,” screamed the headline. She sighed, telling herself again that he would not likely be coming back anytime soon. Something brushed again her leg. She reached down and scooped up his cat, the one thing he had left behind.

“Sandy,” she murmured, scratching the creature below the chin,”I guess it’s just you and me now.”

— The End

Give it a try. If you dare …

Peace (in the fast pace of writing),
Kevin

PS — I tried to create a podcast with Cinch of my story but Cinch is having some technical difficulties, I think. If it comes through soon, I’ll add it in.

What Steve Says … it’s a cinch!

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I am following the lead of my fellow NWP friend, Steve Moore, who writes that using the site Cinch for podcasting from mobile device is one way to go, and I wanted to find something easy to use for the upcoming National Writing Project Annual Meeting.

And, well, Steve was right: Cinch is a cinch to use. I don’t have a phone with apps, but I just registered my phone number and called the Cinch Line and a minute later, what I said was on the site as a podcast.

And I can embed it:

Nice!

Peace (in the voice),
Kevin

Presenting: The Resources of NWP’s Digital Is

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nwp digitalis
About a year and a half ago, I went out to California for a meeting about a National Writing Project venture that was be entitled Digital Is. Supported in part by the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Is concept involved a web portal to explorations of technology, writing and learning in ways that would go beyond the “how to do it” of typical websites.

Yesterday, the NPW Digital Is site launched to the public, and it is a wonderfully rich potpourri of teacher reflections on the “why” of technology as much as the “what we did” of technology. There are plenty of examples of student work, too, and discussions will hopefully revolve around our changing ideas of what writing means when it comes to multimodal composition and the classroom.

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl,who directs the national programs and site development for NWP and whose insights into technology and learning are worth their weight in gold, explains in her blog post on the site about the launching of Digital Is:

…  there’s no mistaking the impact of both the development of new digital tools for composing and of the internet as a global communications and collaboration space. What it means to write, to research, to publish, and to work together has changed dramatically in the last few decades.  As educators, we know our teaching must change too.

As a start, I want to point to a few “collections,” which are curated resources that are constructed around themes. This idea of collections is a great idea, as it pulls together projects and frames them in an importance concept or question by the curator.

So, check these curated collections out as a starting point:

The site is designed to keep growing and you don’t need to be part of the National Writing Project, either. I encourage you to take a tour of Digital Is, become a member and join the conversations around what writing and composition looks like in this midst of technological change, and where our teaching might be going in the years ahead.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

K12 Online Conference: All the Info You Need (and more)

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There’s always time to check in on the K12 Online Conference, because it never goes away. I’m working to focus on the student-centered presentations this year, which are useful to me as a teacher.

Here’s some information that came my way from the K12 Online organizers:

We hope you’ve had time to watch and listen to some of the FANTASTIC presentations shared last week during week 1 of our 2010 conference! Remember our conference presentations are archived indefinitely, so while we encourage you to engage in live events and online discussions during the three weeks of our actual conference – the learning continues year round with K12Online! We now have over 170 presentations archived since our conference began in 2006. All our sessions for week 1 are linked from our 2010 conference schedule:
We have a variety of LIVE EVENTS coming up online tomorrow (Sunday, October 23rd,) Thursday, October 28th, Saturday, October 30th, and Wednesday, November 10th. These events will feature discussions with our conference keynote speakers including Colby Ratzlaff, Dolors Reig, Darren Kuropatwa, Allanah King, and David Warlick.
RSVP and get links to join each of these LIVE events on:
Remember the K-12 Online Conference is now available on iTunesU! A very special thanks to Peggy George, whose hard work has made this possible. All presentations from week 1 are available now for download, both as iOS-compatible videos and mp3 audio-only files, on our iTunesU channel. Link to it on:
Please continue to SHARE the K-12 Online Conference with others in your school community. Our marketing flyer is available on:
Embed code to add the K-12 Online Conference badge to your own blog or other website is available on:
Thanks to our WONDERFUL 2010 presenters for K-12 Online! We look forward to continuing to learn with you next week and in the months ahead. Thanks for YOUR continued support of the K-12 Online Conference.
Sincerely,
Your 2010 K-12 Online Conference Organizer Team
Amanda Marrinan
Jose Rodriguez
Maria Knee
Wesley Fryer
Kim Caise
Peggy George
Susan van Gelder

Peace (in the sharing of ideas),
Kevin

A K12Online Reflection (so far): Student Voices

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I just started to take some time this morning to view a few presentations at the K12 Online Conference (free!) and first, I watched an “education” story by a student named Colby and then a presentation about a music class where kids are composing and creating all the time.

A few weeks ago, I did watch Dean Shareski’s opening keynote (Sharing: The Moral Imperative) about the need for teachers to use the tools of technology for sharing their best practices, to help inform others. He argued that this is an obligation that we should have in the Web 2.0 environment — which supports the idea of lateral change — from teacher to teacher — as opposed to vertical change (administrator to teacher).

Today, I heard student voices, not teacher voices, and that was fine by me.

Colby’s story (The Life Practice Model)  is intriguing because he transferred to a charter school where hands-on learning was central to everything, and he uses his interest and knowledge of technology for learning. Man, it is good to hear student voices telling us their stories from their perspectives, instead of us teachers (me, included) interpreting their learning through our pedagogical lens.

The other presentation — Let Me Tell You MY Story — is all about a middle school music class and what the students are doing to integrate music into moviemaking (love the stopmotion work) and more. The music lab seems pretty incredible, and something that I will be you don’t see in a lot of schools — computers all over the place and keyboards galore. But the kids are clearly reveling in the creative environment, and come to see the importance of music in the world of multimedia. (See the teacher, Carol Broos, website)

Best quote from a student, in the music presentation:  “I don’t really follow the curriculum that much. I just hop from place to place. I put music in all of my projects.”

Peace (in the reflections),
Kevin

The Glogster Session at WMWP

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glogster website
(Go to my Glogster Website Resource)

Yesterday morning, as part of our annual Best Practices event with Western Massachusetts Writing Project, I presented a session on using Glogster.edu in the classroom. I had about 25 people in the session and guess what? The technology worked! They all had computers to work on, the site was not blocked by the University, and they had plenty of time to play around with creating a project and reflecting on the use of Glogster in their classroom.

Yea!

The things that I emphasized in the workshop were:

  • Teaching the elements of design principles
  • Copyright issues
  • Using multimedia for composition
  • The difference between regular Glogster and Glogster.edu
  • Technology being a learning tool for all curriculum areas
  • The importance of writing before technology (ie, planning, drafting, revising)
  • Advertising on websites and some strategies for avoiding it

Then, I set them up with accounts in my Glogster account, and let them have about 50 minutes (more than half the session) in playtime, which they all greatly appreciated. You can talk and talk about Glogster, but this is one tool that you have to experience to really begin to understand it.

As the Exit Slip, I had them use Wallwisher to leave a note on how they might envision using Glogster in their classroom:

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Joel Malley Video: Writing in the Digital Age

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This is worth a view, as fellow NWP teacher Joel Malley (who blogs at Buried in Wires) gives us some insights into the digital work of students and the classroom environment of his classroom. Joel produced this as part of an upcoming appearance at a Congressional briefing around technology and writing in conjunction with the National Writing Project, the College Board and Phi Delta Kappa.

Writing in the Digital Age from Joel Malley on Vimeo.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin