Kevin’s Meandering Mind

The Common Craft folks have done yet another great video — this time, it’s on searching the web.

Or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWHPf00Jkqg

Peace (in searches),
Kevin

So, today, my webcomic — Boolean Squared — got published on the website of the big regional newspaper and my venture into the world of creating comics is official. The newpaper (The Springfield Republican) also printed a short story in its paper version about the launch of the comic, so we’ll see where things go and how they develop.

Click on this image to go to the article:

I decided to take all of the many submissions for this week’s Day in a Sentence (actually, it became Day in a Question with the theme), and use a site called Jog the Web, which allows you to set up a series of navigational paths for websites. I like that I can move you to the blogs and sites of all of the folks who added their words to our feature this week.

So, without further ado, please tie the laces on your shoes and let’s hit the trail.

(either click on the image above or use this link for our Jog the Web)

I would love to get some feedback on the experience as a viewer, if you have time.

Peace (in reflection),
Kevin

I love the fertile imagination of my students. Give them a push and they leap forward. I presented them with a prompt in which they had to create a Vehicle of the Future that would run on something other than fossil fuels. This led to an interesting talk about the Earth’s resources and innovation.

Then, they got to work, using informational text/expository writing to label and explain their vehicles. I took their images and went into Animoto and … came up with this. I showed it to my students today and they were enthralled with it (and a few who had not yet finished their vehicles are now inspired to complete it soon before I do a revision of the video).

See what you think:

Peace (in green beans — which was my vehicle),
Kevin

This suggestion comes from Gail P., who teaches at my school. She came into the lunch room and said, Why not Day in a Sentence as an interrogative?

Well, why not, indeed? We haven’t done that one before, so: Please reflect on a day in your week or your week, and narrow it down to a provocative question or query for us.

Then, use the comment feature on this post to add your question and I will gather them up and publish over the weekend. (Thanks, Gail!)

Here is mine:

Will this push into Professional Learning Communities will make our school more collaborative in nature or will it just tighten the circles around our grade level teams?

I look forward to your words and invite everyone and anyone to come on board with this collaborative, community project.

Peace (in wonder),
Kevin

I just found out that the big regional newspaper will be running my comic — Boolean Squared — as a webcomic on its site.  More info to come later on all that as I talk it through with them, but I am pretty excited to be on the path to becoming a published comic strip creator. Neat.

And I decided to keep the name, Boolean Squared, as the title of the comic. Thank to everyone who took my little poll (there was even the kind suggestion of renaming it The Adventures of Binary Boy, which is quite catchy, I admit). Here are the survey results:

(note: there were sixteen responses and the numbers here reflect percentages, not raw numbers. Not sure why that didn’t come out in my graph.)

And, some of you also suggested some ideas for my characters. Here are a few:

• the school bought a new copier but didn’t have an electrical outlet to plug it into;
• something about adults not knowing how facebook or myspace work;
• some digital-age variations on “the dog ate my homework”;
• teachers having a life outside of school;
• dress down Fridays;
• server down or computer overheating;
• shared laptops;
• reading buddies showing alter egos of older kids;
• something about how a language teacher ends up stumping his class on a book report because he assigns a book SO OLD that there is NO reference to it digitally. So when the kids try to find a summary or anything, they can’t because the book is pre-digital age and is now out of print.
• and a few others.

Thanks for the ideas. Some of them mirror my own and comics that I have already created (I have a year’s worth already done at this point).

See ya on the funny pages!

Peace (in frames),
Kevin

As much as possible, I try to write with my students, and share out what I am doing — talking through my writing process and asking them for feedback. This week, we brainstormed a long list of possible short story titles that we will draw upon in the weeks ahead for writing prompts. It was quite a creative adventure and the list has already provided some nice inspiration for students.

Here are a few:

• The Day Cows Drove Cars
• My Homework Ate My Dog
• Personalities
• Never Put 200 Pounds of Salt in Your Locker
• A Demon Named MCAS
• The Greatest Robot Ever
• Magic Window
• CRASH: A Journey into the TV
• Alien Friend, Where Are You?
• I Wish I Could …
• Holy Monkey Muffins
• Lord of the Springs

(The MCAS one is funny. The MCAS is our state test.)

Meanwhile, I took one of their titles and wrote this story over four periods of writing classes during one day (I teach four sessions). The title was one of my student’s ideas and it just intrigued me.

The Eye in the Hourglass

Who knew the genie would be so cruel? And would bring such bad luck? Surely, three wishes would change my life for the better. But, it turned out that I found a bad genie, a wicked genie, and he twisted my words around like a tornado until the meaning of what I really wanted disappeared into a storm of unfortunate events. My first two wishes should have given me some clues. First, I asked for a bag of gold. What he gave me was bag of stones, with one flint of gold at the bottom.
“It has gold, does it not?” the genie sneered.
My second wish was for a new house. I was thinking of the shack where my father and sisters lived. A new home would be a perfect for my family — a chance to start anew. So what did the genie provide? What was the answer to my wish? A house that fit in the palm of hand. No bigger than a pencil, really.
“Very nice structure,” the genie laughed as I gasped in astonishment.
I should have quit there, but I didn’t.
Instead, I wished for the one thing I always wished I could control: time. I wanted to be able to stop the hands of time and hold off the disease that was raging through my father’s bones. I wanted to hold back time so that I could find a cure for him.
“Done,” said the genie, and before I knew it, he had blinked his eyes, muttered a few words and — boom — I found myself trapped inside some glass compartment. It was curved, with the top being wide and the lower end being narrow. A hole was right in the middle of the floor and there was sand all around me, pouring past me, down the hole into a chamber below me. I realized with a gasp that I was inside an hourglass. I looked up at the genie, who was done with my wishes now. His huge eyeball was pressed near the hourglass, making me feel tiny and powerless.
“So, boy, stop time,” he thundered.
“What?” I asked, confused. “Get me out of here!”
“Oh no. I can’t do that. This is your wish, come true, boy. Stop time. Put your foot in that hole and hold back the Sands of Time. All of time will come to a halt if the sand stops. Your wish has been granted.”
The genie started to laugh again. I stared down at the hold, watching the sand drop. This was my wish? Stuck in an hourglass? I bent down and glanced through the hole to the chamber below. Something else was down there, I realized. Something buried in the sand. It moved and I jumped back. But I could not resist. I bent over again. The movement continued, as if something were shaking off the dust of time. I gasped. There, beneath me, was an eye. An enormous eyeball. And it was staring up at me. I was not alone.
In a panic, I looked for the genie. Surely, he would get me out of here. But he had left the room, apparently, so I scooted a little closer to the hole to get a better look at the eye below me. The sand kept on pouring past me. It formed a powerful current, like a the undertow the ocean, and I must have stepped too close because I suddenly felt myself being caught up in the motion. I started to slip and before I knew it, my foot had become lodged right in the opening itself. I felt another wave of panic and then noticed that the sand was rising up at my foot. I knew I was in serious trouble.
“Genie! Genie!” I yelled. “Get me out of here!”

Either he couldn’t hear me, or he was ignoring me. In either case, the genie was not going to help. That much was clear. I struggled again, trying to free my foot. I turned and twisted, with no luck. That’s when I felt it. At first, it was just a nudge. Almost gentle. And I sense some movement of the hourglass. A ripple, almost. Then, there was a sudden and powerful thud against the bottom of my foot. Then, another. Something was pushing up into me. Something strong. I realized what it was: the eye.
I was frantic now and feeling every more helpless. The eye kept pushing upward. Amazingly, I felt my foot starting to get free of the hole. There was now a bit space, just enough for me take advantage and wrench my body backwards, falling into a pile of sand. My foot was free. And then sand now continued its journey downward. I could now hear the grains of sand hitting something with a thwacking noise.
It must be the eye, I thought. It was getting pummeled by the falling sand. By helping me get free, the eye had put itself into danger. I ran to the hole and looked down. The eye was looking up, sort of sad and mournful, if that was possible. I realized that it had saved my life. And now I was watching it die.
“Hold on,” I screamed. “I’ll try to save you!”
I began digging fiercely to keep the sand from heading into the hole. It was fruitless. Time was running out.
That’s when I noticed the genie. He bent down his head until his eye was just outside the glass window.
“Having fun?” he asked, in a cruel voice.
I was just about to yell at him and demand he free me and the eye from this prison when he reached out, grabbed the hourglass and turned it upside down. My entire world spun around and I bounced from side to side, banging my head and getting sand all in my mouth. Suddenly, the hourglass was reversed. Sand was now pouring down on top of my head. And I could just make out the eye from above, looking down at me just as I had been looking down at it minutes before.
I opened my mouth to scream but sand came in and choked me. Yes, I realized with the cruelest of ironies: Time was most certainly coming to a stop.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me that this would make a great graphic novel story and maybe it is something I will try (someday). Short, sweet but creepy.

Peace (in short fiction),
Kevin

We did some podcasting in my classroom yesterday with a portable voice recorder. Their first writing project for the year was a Biopoem and I had them take a line or two from their poems and read them out loud, creating a classroom collective audio Biopoem as they were sharing their words with the class. They were very excited about podcasting and I will play the files for them today in class (and remind them they can go to our classroom site - The Electronic Pencil - to hear all of them, and I will direct parents there, too).

Here is my homeroom class:

A Collective Class BioPoem

Peace (in voice),
Kevin

I was pleasantly surprised to see the rush of words come after I put out my first call for Days in a Sentence in about seven or eight weeks. The break was nice for me and I wondered if Days in a Sentence would still be on people’s radar screens. It surely was. And boy, folks can pack a lot of punch into just a few words.

Here, then, are this week’s Days in a Sentence, Six-Word-Style:

• My colleague, Gail P. (whom I ran into on the beach in Maine while we were both on vacation) teaches kindergarten at my school. Her year got off to a good start. It’s all working according to plan.
• Connie continues to innovate with energy and enthusiasm, with positive results. Successful with class redesign, I’m exhausted.
• Delaine also moves into new territory and then crops out the things she doesn’t want. If only life were like that. Surprise! I am effectively teaching PhotoShop.
• Liza is another one who found that some thoughtful planning is paying off. Routines are making a difference — Hurray!
• David’s six words remind of a day in my class this week, when my sixth graders came in talking about the new supercollider, and asking if the world were soon to blow up. So I talked science with them and also talked Media Exposure, too. David writes: Hadrons, hadrons, hadrons: subsidized, overhyped, uncollided.
• Sara made the rounds, checking in with students and making connections. conferring with every kid is hard!
• This was great. My Writing Project friend and colleague, Tina (who ran a claymation camp with me this summer) already has some students tinkering with tech. Moviemaker and microphones made students ebullient.
• Stacey was thinking of country, perhaps as part of the 9-11 ceremonies. I’m proud to be an American.
• Ben is no longer on the same pins and needles, thanks to longevity and experience. Open house feels different when tenured.
• I wonder if Janice feels like she’s on the narrow end of a time funnel? Three weeks work, crammed into one!
• Bonnie had Barack on her Brain. Barack is back, and me too.
• Ken, the wonderfully creative Ken, gave us a six word poem:
  • Full sky, beckoning spring,promising rainbows.
• Sheryl has some sort of construction going on. I hope her foundation is strong. Technology helped me communicate with contractor.
• Jeff had the tables turned on him, with students becoming the teachers (although I wonder what words he learned?). Students taught me some Portuguese slang.
• OK. I admit I had to look up the last word of Lynn’s submission. And then it made sense. My mind is overflowing with ephemera.
• Larry has both words and important lesson for all of us. First, his words: Raised my voice & a student cried. And now, his lesson that he wanted to share, too:
  Kevin, along with my six (sort of seven) words, I’d like to add a quote from Marvin Marshall, an extraordinary writer on classroom management, who wrote that before we act, we should always ask ourselves this question: “Will what I am about to do or say bring me closer or will it push me away farther from the person with whom I am communicating?” Needless to say, I didn’t do that in this instance.
• Anne continues to push into new terrain. Established new friends for online projects.
• Nancy experienced that frenzy of the week where it is gone before you know it. What did I do this week?
• From the mouths of the little ones comes this gem from Eric: Kindergartner asks me,
  Where are we?
• Amy K. had success by digging into the news. Literally. Newspaper number hunt messy and FUN!
• Cynthia is fighting off the Lovebugs (not Herbie!). Darn it! Lovebugs also survived Gustav. She explains: Those of us who live in the Gulf Coast states are cursed each September by an invasion of lovebugs, small black insects whose only purpose in life, as far as I can tell, is to procreate. They are nasty, disgusting, smelly, and invasive. They are supposed to be attracted to white houses. Someone forgot to point out to them that my log cabin is not white because I spent all Saturday morning vacuuming up these disgusting insects, but they just keep coming in.
• Gail W. is bringing some students into a meaningful project between the National Writing Project and Google regarding Letters to the President as the election in America gears up. Started 90 seniors on Google/NWP project:-)
• Nina is a decade old. Sort of. I’m celebrating the webheads’ tenth anniversary.

I could not resist taking our words and pushing them into Wordle and create this collaborative image:

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Peace (in brevity),
Kevin