Category Archives: Homepage

We got hit hard by the pre-Halloween Snow Storm in my area, losing power for almost three days. It was the oddest thing to see about a foot of snow on tree limbs still with green leaves or the color of foliage making their way. Although we did not have power in our neighborhood, our community still gathered for a version of our annual Pumpkin Contest and we even went out trick-or-treating last night (although our city postponed Halloween until Saturday, as if they can do that).
Here are some images from the morning after the storm…

Peace (in the snow),
Kevin

Last spring, another teacher and I gathered up notes from our colleagues in grades 3-6 and began the work of creating a cohesive writing rubric for our school that could be adapted by teachers for various projects, with similar lines of focus. It was not easy, believe me.
It turns out that many of us have different focuses, and the way we word things changes drastically from class to class, grade to grade. The rubric project is a push to try to have us all speaking the same language our expectations of our young writers, and also, to provide a line of consistency from one grade to another for all our students.
And the two of us who were working to pull all of the various strands together felt a lot of pressure to represent our colleagues faithfully and not impose our ideas on the school.
We’re still in the process of implementing these ideas but here is what we have so far:
Writing Response Scoring Rubric Grades 3-6

Peace (in the process),
Kevin

For years now, I have cringed whenever an article on young people and technology has come out in a popular magazine for the masses, knowing that fear and negativity would be front and center. There were always the stories of online abductions, and cyberbullying, and more. The reason why is simple enough: drama sells news. (As a former newspaper reporter, I even understand the tension that the journalists feel to put the most dramatic element at the top of the story.) Technology has all too often been viewed as some massive unseen force disrupting everyone’s lives in negative ways and corrupting the minds of our young people.

But just as I have noticed a huge shift in interest and acceptance about how technology has impacted our lives with teachers in workshops in recent years, I am beginning to notice lately that articles around technology and young people in magazines seem to be more balanced and offer insights into the positive nature of the digital world, too. Take a look at this week’s Parade Magazine, which has a cover story called Today’s Kids: Born to be Wired.

The story runs multiple pages throughout the magazine and covers a lot of interesting ground — from how kids use texting more than speaking, to the impact of gaming, to what all this may be doing to the wiring of their brains. There’s a nice balance here between being concerned and being aware of the changes now taking place, and offering advice on how parents can at least attempt to navigate through it all. They don’t quite sugarcoat the issues — sexting is an issue that we need to be aware of, for an example, and talking to your children about appropriate use of technology is a key way to address it — but they also point out the ways technology can connect more people together and open doors for collaboration and creativity, too.

This balanced view in popular culture is no doubt part of the Facebook Effect, a phenomenon that we often notice with teachers who come to understand the possibilities of technology for learning in their classrooms or schools only after they are part of the social networking movement.  I appreciate Parade Magazine for giving parents a wider view of the digital lives of young people and I hope it opens the door to more conversations at home and at school about the pitfalls and the potential of technology for exploring new areas of expression, writing and connections.

Peace (in the parade),
Kevin

PS — The magazine has an interesting quiz to find out what kind of “Internet Parent” you are. You can take the quiz here. I did it, and found out I am a “Prepared Parent.” The results say:

By and large, you’re quite confident that you’ve put the right measures in place to manage your children’s online behavior as they grow up—nearly all of the parents in this group had established rules for their children’s Internet usage and they were personally teaching them about the Internet. You feel that the Internet is an enhancement to a well-balanced life—the majority said their kids spent the right amount of time online. And you’re not seriously worried about the Internet and cell phones affecting your kids’ concentration or attention span, either now or in the future. About 23% of the parents surveyed in the PARADE poll were Prepared Parents.

 

Google’s latest interactive Search Page today is all about the Muppets, as a way to celebrate the birthday of the late Jim Henson. How can you not like this? Check it out when you get a chance today. (Notice that there are all sorts of hidden Easter Eggs in the animated doodle. You just need to experiment a bit.)

Peace (with the muppets),
Kevin

 

In the years after 9/11, I remember looking to writers and musicians to help me frame some understanding of the event. I wasn’t directly directly affected by the 9/11 attacks — I didn’t know anyone who was killed personally, but there have been ripples of impact over time: a brother-in-law who worked in the rebuilt wing of the Pentagon; two friends who have gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq; another friend who used to work in the towers and was there during the first bombing attempt.

As I turned to the arts for help in framing some understanding, there wasn’t much there, in my opinion. Some pieces in The New Yorker were eloquent and moving and were perfectly suited to the days following, but where are all the novelists making sense or at least trying to make sense of the event? (The only book that, for me, has done so is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. That moved me beyond measure, and I still think of Foer’s book from time to time.)

But when Bruce Springsteen came out with his The Rising album, and I sat down with it for the first time with headphones — just me and the music — I realized that Bruce had created what I was looking for at the time. It’s not a perfect album. An even more stripped-down production would have been more powerful. Yet, Bruce captures the feeling of loss and recovery of a catastrophic event on both small and large scales that it touched me as a listener in a way that only music can do.

This week, my friend Paul Hankins was writing about how he was using a song from the album in his school to remember 9/11 with students, and it reminded me how I had not listened to The Rising in so long. I had pushed it away, I guess. I dug The Rising out, and found myself back in that moment of remembering the power of the music again. The power of the songwriter to get at the heart of something bigger than it seems.

Three songs stand out for me because they are carved out of the empty spaces of people who are not coming back. The ghosts of memory haunt the music here. And Bruce sought to show the cycle of loss and recovery in the shadows of love and tragedy:

You’re Missing

My City of Ruins

The Rising

Peace (with music),
Kevin

 

This post may come out strangely garbled and maybe a bit incoherent, since I am really thinking through some things as a writer in online spaces. You may just want to skip over me in your RSS reader. Or maybe I am no longer even in your RSS reader. Which is part of what has me thinking of the ways that I find myself writing these days and why I use Twitter for one kind of writing, Google+ for another kind of writing, and this blog for yet another kind of writing. I’d include Facebook, maybe, but I’m not on Facebook. (Maybe that kind of writing is silent protest writing for privacy reasons? Yes).

Here’s what I was thinking about: how do the platforms I use shape the way I write and the reason that I write there?

This question came about the other day because my brain got a bit confused. I had something to write about and then I began wondering: is this a blog post? Maybe it is better suited for a blast on Google+! Wait a second. Maybe Twitter is the way to go. Or the iAnthology space? Arrr. It’s true I could have done all four and spread the idea around like a slab of peanut butter.

But … I decided maybe I should just step back and think about why I was having this rush of confusion about where to write. Maybe I should articulate some reason why I use each of those sites Here, I am trying to create a mental path for myself as an online writer.

I blog … because I want to develop an idea further, without worrying about constraints of space, and constraints of media sharing. I can write as little or as much as I need to to make a point. And this blog is my virtual home — a sort of breeding ground for ideas and sharing. If ever I had an anchor in online writing spaces, this is it. But I have to say, it seems as if fewer people are reading this blog or if they are reading it, they are no longer commenting. I suspect this is part of a larger trend away from blogs. I’ve seen other bloggers reflecting on it, too. And some of them are shifting away from their blog space. I’m not ready to do that. I still like it here. It feels a bit like home.

I tweet … mostly to share resources and links and items of interest that I have stumbled across. I used to do this with the blog but don’t all that much anymore. That aspect — “Hey, check this out! It might be of interest to you!” — has mostly disappeared from my mindset as a blogger. But Twitter, with its short bursts and quick spread of information, is ideally suited for sharing of links and more. (I do still experiment with Twitter as a writing space of 25-word stories and short poems, etc., but not as much as I used to.)

I Google+ (note to self: need better verb for what we do there) … as some intersection of those other two spaces. I’ve been using Google+ enough now to see that it does allow for more writing than Twitter but less than a blog post. Whereas I used to use this blog as a place to ask questions of followers and try to get conversations going, I now find that Google+ is more likely the space where I will wonder out loud about something and hope someone joins me in a bit of inquiry.

I network … at the NWP iAnthology because I want to be part of a larger group of writers. Unlike the other three, I know I am writing with others and not in some virtual vacuum. This shift is important, and hits home on the idea that collaboration and connections with other writers in a space we share together has many benefits (which is why I suppose so many folks use Facebook. Too bad Zuckerberg and company are out to make billions off our privacy data.).

The nagging question I had in my mind this morning was: would I be better served with one single space that does all of what I have written above? I don’t know. One hand, navigating three different spaces on three different platforms for different reasons feels like a lot of juggling. On the other hand, I find these differences – in the “feel” of each space and the use of each space — keeps me fresh and alert for different possibilities. Sometimes juggling is a beautiful thing, right? Sometimes, we drop the ball.

If you hung with me this far, thank you. I appreciate you being here in this space with me.

Peace (in the platforms),
Kevin

 

I took a stroll to the nearby river, to see the impact of Irene.

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Peace (on the river),
Kevin

I’m taking my annual blogging break, and getting a little writing R&R. See you in a few weeks.

Peace (in the world while I am gone, please),

Kevin

 

Paul Allison (quickly) released the Google+ hangout conversation from Wednesday night over at Teachers Teaching Teachers, where topics ranged from school gardening and local food projects to the use of the Youth Voices social networking space for writing. Here is the video of the night’s conversations.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

One of the more fascinating elements of being part of a network is that interesting discussions can emerge suddenly. This the journey of one particular thread that begin on one platform, moved into another, and then had a slight echo on a third. The experience had me thinking about how ideas “move” and also, how temporary they can be.

It began with my RSS. I get the increasing sense that more and more people are dropping out of their RSS readers for other ways to gathering content (just as I get the sense that blogging is now falling by the wayside for many people). But I still regularly read my RSS feeds, and yesterday, I found a post from Bill Ferriter, whose work and whose writing at The Tempered Radical I greatly admire. I am always interested in what he has to say.

His piece — entitled “Wondering (Worrying) about Graphic Novels” — certainly caught my eye. In it, Bill reflects on the possibility that graphic novels should not necessary be put into the vein as serious literature, and that despite the push by many (myself, included) to bring graphic novels into the classroom, he wondered if they really helped students as readers. He was questioning, more than criticizing, and so I ventured over to his blog.

There was already a very long queue of comments (it probably didn’t help that Bill ends his post by comparing graphic novels to The Jersey Shore in terms of substance), and I added my own thought about it being helpful to question everything we bring into the classroom, and that there are bad graphic novels, just as there are bad novels. And there are great graphic novels, just as there are great novels. What graphic novels bring to the table is a form of visual literacy, nuance, inferential thinking, etc, that many of the commentators noted.

As I usually do with posts that pique my interest, I shared Bill’s post on Twitter and on Google+, figuring I had some book-friendly friends who might be interested. They sure were.

Within minutes, a fast-moving, passionate defense of graphic novels was underway, and Bill himself jumped into the mix. I had trouble keeping up with the conversation but what I sensed was that here was the reason that I use Twitter — for sharing of ideas, for questioning of ideas, for passionate talk about things that matter. It was as if we were hanging out in the coffee shop. I felt bad because I had to leave the conversation early for a family thing but the talk continued long after I left.

Over on Google+, meanwhile, only Paul Hankins and I were briefly chatting it up, and in some ways, Google+ became a slight backchannel to the Twitter conversation that began as a blog post in my RSS feed. I find that amazing. You could argue that that is way too much media/tech for any conversation, but I find it a rich path of dialogue with each medium bringing something different to the texture of the discussion:

• Blog post: gives Bill a chance to articulate his ideas
• RSS: presents Bill’s ideas to the world
• Blog Comments: gives reader a chance to respond to Bill
• Twitter: engages many writers in a flow of conversation inspired by Bill’s writing
• Google+: provides backchannel, post-Twitter reflective space

Peace (in the reflective thought),
Kevin