An Audio Interview with my Blog

I am keeping an eye on the Teacher Blogging Challenge now underway with Edublogs and saw this post by Ann, asking advanced bloggers to be reflective on their blogs. One of the options was an interview with your blog, which struck me as fun and odd (something I can’t resist).

So, here I go, and I included an audio version, giving “voice” to my blog with some effects to separate the interview from the interviewee.

Listen to the “interview”

1. Good morning. Are you always up this early? I’m always up. I’m a blog.

2.  True. Well, I hope you don’t mind that I am going to drink my coffee while we chat. Now, your name is Kevin’s Meandering Mind. Can you give me the lowdown on your name? Certainly. When Kevin created me, he didn’t really know what he was going to write about. He knew that teaching would be part of it, and writing. But he figured that music and some other areas that he is interested in would also come into play. That led to the meandering.

3. And meander it does. I’m surprised you have any faithful readers. Do you worry that covering a wide range of topics might be, well, confusing for the reader? It is a potential issue but I think Kevin often writes for himself, as much for an audience, and he has some faith that readers can come along with him. If not, they can make that choice. But I am grateful for readers who come around on a regular basis, particularly those who make comments and leave notes.

4. Do you encourage comments? Of course! I’m a blog! Comments from readers are what we crave. Of course, I have my trusty spam filter, too, so not all comments come to my attention. I really don’t need new shoes or desire to send money to someone on the other side of the world. Not that I have money.

5. So, your blog does not generate revenue with advertisements? No. We don’t do that. In fact, Kevin pays to keep ads off of me. Some of my cousins out there do have advertising tattoos, but I would rather do without them. And Kevin agrees.

6. So, why does Kevin write on you? He writes because he is a writer, and he has found that our partnership — him, the writer, and me, the blog — gives him a chance to explore, compose and connect with others like him in the world. He’s been writing for years, but never quite like this. I think I opened up a door for him that will be difficult to shut. Plus, he often uses me to explore sites and technology that he is considering for his classroom.

7. You’re some sort of techno-guinea pig? That’s a harsh way to put it, pal. But I suppose it’s something like that. I don’t mind. It’s what I do.

8. How long have you been around? More than six years. Can you believe that? Kevin started me up after a week-long technology retreat with the National Writing Project. A friend of his who had been blogging (and still does, I should add) in Washington DC urged him to start a blog. In fact, he had already been doing blogging with his students. But I was his first push into a personal blog. It’s been a nice partnership.

9. What advice do you have for all of those new blogs out there? I’d say find a niche, but you know, I never really have. So, instead, I’d suggest you find a voice. Establish a voice and project your thoughts into the world.

10. It’s been nice chatting with you. Any last thoughts? It’s been a pleasure. Kindly take that coffee cup off the mouse pad, would you? I don’t want you to leave any lasting impressions with the interview.

Peace (in the conversations),
Kevin

Thinking: Mentor Texts and Digital Composition

My friend, Franki Sibberson, has me thinking about mentor texts and how they can be used in the classroom for digital composition with students. She has me thinking because we are part of a group trying to pull together a proposal for the NCTE Conference in November, with a focus on elementary levels.

And since I was already doing this thinking, I figured I would adapt that same idea for a session I will be doing next fall for the New England Reading Association around New Literacies. The idea of using some “mentor texts” that can provide examples, and inspiration, to students who are working with digital tools for composition seems more important than ever, given where we are in the development of technology in learning environments (relatively early in that stage, I would say).

So, I’ve wracking my brain a bit, thinking of how I have done this without really naming it as “mentor texts” all that often. Here are some of the things that I came up with:

  • When we launch into our Digital Science Picture Book Project, I always turn to The Magic School Bus series for help. If you look closely at the original series of books (and even some of the Scholastic series), the various levels of text and information going on all over the place — the paper multimodal-ism — you realize quite quickly how layered it is. And for our digital books, which uses digital tools to layer in animation and information and a fictional story, the Magic School Bus books provide a perfect launching point, particularly because of the array of other non-book materials that followed the books: video games and television shows, etc. Here, the concept of science told through story with a sense of humor is a great mentor text. (See my work around Digital Picture Books at the National Writing Project’s Digital Is website.)
  • Last year, I decided I really wanted to have my students write a challenging story that brought the reader into the fold. I had them create Make Your Own Ending stories, using a wiki, in which stories would branch off in various directions for the reader through the use of hyperlinks. The mentor text we used to demonstrate this was one of the Make Your Own Ending novels (which are now being revamped and re-issued, I see). We also talked about some of the Goosebumps series that did the same thing, often through the use of Second Person Narrative (which was a lesson plan within the project, and great way to talk about Second Person). I also recently reviewed a graphic novel series that does the same approach, combining narrative text with graphic text, with the reader making choices on which way to go. (See my website about making Make Your Own Ending stories in the classroom).
  • Making stopmotion movies is very engaging for students, but they often need a sense of how long and how meticulous one needs to be to produce a quality video. Therefore, we often turn to the creators of Wallace and Gromit, watching some of their short videos (and noticing how polished they become over the years) and then, I show them a neat behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit feature film as a mentor “text.” From there, they film and publish stopmotion movies (usually, with a literary theme) to the Longfellow Ten collaborative website.  (See my Making Stopmotion Movies)
  • An Exquisite Corpse Story is a collaborative venture in which one person begins a story, and another adds to it, and then it gets passed along. (The Folding Story activity that I have written about recently is a small version of the Exquisite Corpse). Last year, we turned to a website that featured a year’s worth of well-known authors (at the Read.Gov website) whose task was to write a new chapter to a story every other week. Although we did not last the year, my students followed the story closely for about three months, and were writing right alongside the published authors, too. We even podcasted a Voicethread of a chapter as written by students. This mentor text, which unfolded for us online, then led to a collaborative story project in which we used a wiki for writing. That activity was strictly voluntary, but they had the Exquisite Corpse saga (in all of its strange glory) in the back of their minds. (see the Voicethread podcast).

And I expect to keep thinking …

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

1 Minute 18 Seconds: An Analysis of My Blog

mymind
(From December 2010)

I don’t put a whole lot of weight into all of the sites that can analyze your blogs (because I am not a business selling ads) but I figured it was the start of the new year and why not take a look at my site through the lens of some data? This is a bit of a narcissistic post, then. A bit of navel gazing.

I first went to my own blog dashboard to get some overall basics.

First of all, I have been blogging here for almost six years (wow – has it been that long?) I started during a Tech Matters week with the National Writing Project, at the urging of a friend, and never looked back. This blog has really become the centerpiece of my online writing. I go to other places, and do other things, but this blog is where all of my connections and reflections begin.

In that time, I have pressed that “publish button” almost 1,800 times, and approved more than 3,000 comments. Meanwhile, my spam filter has been awfully busy, catching and deleting 27,000 errant comments. (Take that, you spammers! You won’t be using my writing to sell your sneakers!)

Second, I plugged my site’s domain (which is hosted by Edublogs, by the way, which has served me well over the years. Sure, there are periodic bumps in the road, but mostly, James Farmer and Sue Waters at Edublogs have been responsive, helpful and forward-looking when it comes to developing Edublogs) into The Website Grader. This analysis site let me know that:

  • the readibility level of my blog is secondary/high school level, which is a fine mix of where I want it to be;
  • that I have “too many images” which might bog down the load time for viewers;
  • that I have 259 sites that are now linking to my blog. I’m not sure who they are or what they doing with me, which is a bit unsettling and yet I feel strangely appreciative for being noticed enough to be linked;
  • my site has been bookmarked 100 times on Delicious;
  • my “traffic rank” is a measly 0.02 % — not sure what that means, except it uses the Alexa system to rank my blog in the midst of every website out there.

Next, I turned to my Feeburner, which tracks direct RSS subscriptions activated right at my blog, to what it has been finding out for me. It tells me that:

  • I have an average of 49 daily RSS subscribers;
  • I have an average daily “reach” of 7, which is the number of folks who click through to go deeper into my content.

And then, I was off to my Google Analytics for another view of my visitors. Here, I found out that:

  • in the month of December 2010, I had about 1,800 visitors to my blog;
  • 75 percent of those visitors were deemed “new” to my site (probably a result of the Edublogs Awards);
  • The average reader spent about 1 minute 18 seconds at my site (speed readers?);
  • Visitors arrived from 77 different countries, although mostly from North America;
  • 38 percent of my visitors used Firefox compared to 27 percent who used Internet Explorer. I couldn’t help but notice that Chrome is making a good dent, though. I wonder if 2011 will be the year of Google Chrome?

Isn’t it amazing how detailed information you can now get from turning your website inside out? With Google Analytics, the data gets broken down even further than what I have shared here and while it is more useful for a business (again, ads), I found it interesting to get a sense of who comes here to hang out with me.

That would be you, right? Thank you and I hope you can stay for your 1 minute and 18 seconds of reading time. Feel free to add a comment, too.

Peace (in the information),
Kevin

Some other Beginning’s End

2011
There’s a great line in the song “Closing Time” by Semisonic that always seems to capture the end of the old year combined with the start of the new year.

Closing Time
every new beginning comes from
some other beginning’s end

So, farewell 2010, and welcome 2011.

To anyone who is reading my blog on a regular basis, or even periodically stumbling across my words, I want to wish you a Happy New Year and one that is full of love, laughter and exploration. Thank you for coming along on this blogging journey with me. I appreciate that you are there, even if I don’t always know it.

Peace (in the year ahead),
Kevin

Ten Albums I (Really) Liked in 2010

I was inspired by a post over at Popgun Chaos to think about the albums I bought this year (the first full No-CD Year for me, ever, I think. Everything was downloaded). I won’t say how much music I bought this year. Suffice it to say that my iPod is loaded and on most of the time I am around the house (much to the sadness of my family.)

So, here, in alphabetical order, are ten albums (that’s not even a term anymore, is it?) that I kept listening to long after the download had gone cold and which came out in 2010:

1. American Slang, by The Gaslight Anthem.

I really liked their last album — That ’59 Sound — but it was the pure energy bolt that I get from listening to this band that I love so much. (I’d love to see them in concert but they haven’t come to my neck of the woods yet). Sure, there’s more than a bit of refurbished Bruce and others in their sound, style  and lyrics, but I find The Gaslight Anthem as a band that is propelling itself forward in an interesting way.

2. Contra, by Vampire Weekend.

There’s something about these guys that is just too … fake, and yet, I like the off-kilter groove they have going on some songs. Like The Gaslight Anthem, Vampire Weekend has a chance to make some creative strides in the future. Or they might just keep sounding the same. It’s a crap shoot on that one. I was playing this album the other day and my son checked out the title. I thought it was because he liked the song, but he said “that’s the song I keep hearing on that commercial.” Already, Vampire Weekend?

3. Croweology by The Black Crowes.

Many years ago, some friends and I went to go see ZZ Top in concert (yep, many many many years ago) and this scruffy band took the stage as the opening act and blew the audience away. It was The Black Crowes, right on the edge of releasing their first CD (or was it vinyl?). I haven’t always kept up with the band over the years, but this double CD of mostly in-studio acoustic songs is a real keeper, capturing the vitality of Southern blues and rock in a real way. The mix also allowed me time to hear the lyrics and realize, these guys were the real deal (“were” because this is supposed to be their last album before the final break-up, although with brothers, you never know.)

4. Heaven is Whenever, by The Hold Steady.

I’d heard about The Hold Steady for years but never got to listen to them. I finally did, downloading a few of their albums at once, and found the raw energy was just right for me (not for my family, though). They come across like a garage band that has been steeped in both rock and roll, and literature. I like that kind of mix.

5. Infinite Arms, by Band of Horses.

This is one of those critically-acclaimed bands that I took a chance on. At first, I wasn’t all that impressed. But (this seems to be happening more and more), when I plugged in my headphones to listen (as opposed to speakers in the house), I suddenly was transfixed by the aural elements of the songs, and the soaring range of the voice. I had missed that when it was just ambient sound. Up close, the music and lyrics really touched me.

6. The Pursuit by Jamie Cullum

I came to Jamie Cullum when I heard a pop song of his on the radio that caught my attention. What I didn’t quite expect (since I didn’t know anything about him) was his jazz background, and suddenly, this whole mix of fusing pop and jazz opened up to me. (And made me wonder: why don’t more bands do that?) He has a wonderfully rich voice, and his piano chops are great. He’s another one of those young artists on my radar screen for the future.

7. Record Collection by Mark Ronson and the Business International

Ronson was the Producer of the Moment a few years ago, and still has his hand in a lot of European pop and soul. He fuses that old Stax/Memphis/Motown sound with dance beats. That has the potential to be ridiculous, but it’s not. Ronson has some amazing ears and the ability to recruit some amazing talent. This album is sort of like a disco mix, revisited. That sound worse than it is. What it is is an album that will get your butt shaking. It deserves a spin tonight (New Year’s) in your dance mix.

8. Soulsville by Huey Lewis and the News

I know. I know. Huey Lewis? And the News? They’re still around? Yep, and this album of soul songs is a classic. The band has never sounded tighter, and Huey’s voice has held up nicely over the years. Even the originals here sound like classics, as if there had been some time warp into Detroit or Memphis in the 196o’s.

9. Symphonicities by Sting.

I closed my eyes and hoped for the best when I bought this one, since I had not heard any of it. I was doing a purchased based on a music review, which is always an iffy proposition. Here, Sting reworked his and the Police songs into symphonic pop. And you know, it doesn’t always work as well as it should (strings can do that to you) but mostly, the orchestral arrangements give another layer of depth to some old familiar songs. Of course, there is a part of me that remembers listening to The Police back when it was sort of underground and snarked at (in my neighborhood, where the Beatles and Led Zep were kings of the musical heap). That part me — that kid who used to groove on the offbeat drummings, firework guitar and amazing bass —  sort of recoils at this purchase. Still, maybe my old tired ears need some soothing sounds now and then. (ha)

10. Wake Up, by John Legend and the Roots.

I haven’t had time to completely digest this one, since I only recently bought it. But … wow … what a partnership between Legend and the Roots, as they tackle some classic protest soul songs in their own way.

There you go. Some albums of mine. What about you?

Peace (in the songs),
Kevin

The Common Core Before Us

The theme of the Massachusetts Curriculum Summit this week (where I co-presented on the topic of New Literacies) was all about the Common Core Standards and how our state is going to make the move forward (now that we got our Race to the Top bucks). The 300 or so superintendents and curriculum coordinators (with another few hundred on tap for the second day) listened intently as state officials explained the path that we are going to take to adapt to the Common Core Standards, and how that will be reflected in our standardized tests (or some variation of our standardized tests).

Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester told the crowd that the Common Core movement in Massachusetts reflects a second round of education reform for our state (the first happened in the early 1990s) and reflects a need on the national level for common benchmarks of learning for all students.

“The unevenness of what we expect of students varies tremendously, from state to state,” Chester noted. “We’re focused on creating rigorous standards” so that a student in one state deemed “proficient” is on the same level as another proficient student in another state.

First of all, there are no changes in the curriculum standards for this year in Massachusetts, meaning our spring 2010 tests will not reflect Common Core standards. But Dr. Julia Phelps, of our Department of Elementary and Secondary Education department, told folks not to sit around. “You should get started (with curriculum updates) now,” Phelps states.

In early 2011, the state will be releasing what is calling “crosswalks” that will connect the Common Core standards to our existing Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. The state will also sponsor a series of regional workshops around these curricular crosswalks for teachers and school district administrators to begin the shift. The state will also be developing exemplar lessons and units around the Common Core as models for the shift.

The standardized testing in spring 2012 will reflect these shifts — testing the standards that are at the intersection of our current standards and the Common Core. And by 2013-2014, our state will be completely shifted to Common Core standards and Common Core assessments, according to Phelps.

Knowing the pace of change, that year is going to come up quick on us, and I am hopeful the crosswalk concept will be beneficial for us at our schools as we look at our own curriculum. I know that our new standards-based reporting system will have to be adapted and I imagine that we will need to some serious lateral looks at when topics and skill are being taught and learned, and where the shifts need to take place.

So far, I am not a harsh critic of the Common Core. I like that literacy and content-area literacy is a heavy focus, although I am going to lament the loss of a lot of creative writing, since expository informational writing and reading is at the heart of the Common Core standards. And I do like that media literacy and new technologies are embedded in various elements of the Common Core language (a point I brought up in my presentation). That may provide more support for teachers struggling to find ways to use technology in a way that meets state standards (which right now barely reflect any sort of technology).

One of the guest speakers at the Curriculum Summit made a good point. He noted that as curriculum development takes place in our schools, we want to avoid placing sole importance on single curriculum areas. While the Common Core is centered around math and Language Arts, the other content areas are woven in with the literacy strands.

“We need to be careful that we don’t pit people against each other, that we don’t put English at the top, followed by math, and then on down the line. We’re all in this together,” said Dana Brown, a high school principal.

Yep.

Peace (in the changes ahead),
Kevin

Thank You: Edublog Award Nomination

Thank you to those of you who nominated my blog for the 2010 Edublog Awards. I am honored and humbled to be in the same list as those other bloggers. Wow.

General information about all the categories is here and the section for individual blogs is here. Even if you don’t vote for me, these blogs should be part of your RSS feeds. In particular, I love the Most Influential Blog Post category — some great reading there.

Thanks, again, if you are a reader here. I see you every day I write.

Peace (in the blogging world),
Kevin

Seven Lessons Learned by Watching My Kids Play Basketball

I am rambling a bit here in this post because I am still trying to make some connections, and I do that best by writing it through. The writing helps me think, and glimpse the bigger picture.

Yesterday, two of my sons played organized basketball and both events offered some glimpses to me about learning. First of all, my oldest boy has been playing basketball for years now, and is on a traveling team. He’s in middle school. My little guy is in kindergarten. So the context of these experiences are very different.

My youngest son started on a kindergarten team with the city’s recreation department. He was so excited the other day, he started to do push-ups to get “strong.” He’s been pulled to many basketball games for his older brothers, so he has some sense of the game. Or so I thought.

Lesson One: Don’t assume (I seem to remember that from The Bad New Bears movie, but I won’t break down the word into its parts as Walter Matthau did.)

He is on the Wizards, which has him all in tizzy (he loves magic, Harry Potter audio tapes, etc.) The volunteer coaches seem nice, but when the kids were asked to dribble the ball, my son was clueless. He could barely bounce the ball. It kept bouncing off his foot. When the coaches told the kids to shift to the left hand, my son did not know which was his left hand. It was comical and that inner voice of mine was saying, how come the boy doesn’t know his left hand?

Then, the coaches started up with some drills. Now, remember, these are five and six year old kids. In the span of about 20 minutes, one coach talked about “crossover dribbles” and “pivots” and “in the paint” and “athletic position” and “the BEEF method of shooting.” The kids all nodded, but I don’t think a single one knew what they were nodding to. It’s a good thing they weren’t signing over the deeds to our house.

Lesson Number Two: Teaching requires appropriate vocabulary

The hour of practice ended, and we started to go home. My son was jumping around, yelling about how “magical” the Wizards were. His first practice was a resounding success, in his mind.

Lesson Number Three: Don’t suck the fun out of learning.

As we headed home, I mentioned that he might need to work on his dribbling a bit. He nodded (just like he did to the coaches, I noticed, so he may have not heard a word I said), and I suggested we get his older brothers to show him how to dribble the ball. He smiled, liking that idea.

Lesson Number Four: Use your natural resources.

Later in the day, my older son played his first game of the season in a regional tournament. You know how President Obama used the word “shellacked” to describe the recent election? The same word applied here to this game, and our team was on the bad end of it (we sympathize, Mr. President). It was a blow-out from the opening drive. The other team was bigger, faster, quicker — in just about every category.

Lesson Number Five: Sometimes, the odds are against you, and it is all about how you respond to the adversity.

My son’s coach kept calling timeout, gathering the guys around him. I wondered what he was saying to keep their spirits up. The boys played hard, as hard as they could, but it didn’t do much good. I watched the coach cheering on his team, shouting out encouragement and rewarding good plays with claps and cheers.

Lesson Number Six: Celebrate the accomplishments, even amidst difficulties.

The game ended, and I expected my son to be bummed out by the blowout. He wasn’t. He was disappointed, but he laughed at some of the plays. He seemed to shake off the losing in no time at all and turned his mind towards the game today.

Lesson Number Seven: Perseverance is part of learning.

So, there you go: seven lessons learned from the hard, wooden stands of two basketball events. I guess that idea of sports being a metaphor for life, and for learning, does hold up. It’s all in the lens we use to view it.

Peace (on the court),
Kevin

Blogging for Real Education Reform: Empower Students

(see the overview of the National Day of Blogging — which is today! The overview: November 22, 2010 has been declared a Day of National Blogging for Real Education Reform, promoted by AASA andASCD. ASCD has gathered 10 articles, in advance of Monday’s Day of National Blogging, in The New Faces of Ed Reformthat discuss reforming education with teachers as leaders and partners in meaningful, lasting change.)

I’ll keep this short and simple: We need to let students become more of the leaders in our classroom when it comes to exploration of learning. I know this sounds counter to the push for accountability, and I don’t mean to suggest that we teachers stop teaching.

We teachers must still provide the framework of activities, the tools of assessment that help with reflective practice, the mini-lessons that guide students at a more individualized pace and the rationale for a project that has meaning, and then, we need to allow our students the space for creativity, collaboration and self-inspired learning. Our perception of the teacher in front of a room of rows of students, writing down notes of what we say, must begin to become transformed into us, the educators, listening more to our students. Let their voices ring out.

If we are all in agreement that we are preparing our students for the world, then we need more creativity in what we are doing and not less. But this also means that all of us teachers have to raise our game, too, and not let our standards of how we teach to fall. We need to get better at what we do. We need to do more integration of new ideas into our curriculum. We need to find more ways to engage our students in their learning. We need parent support, and we need administrative support, and we need society support.

Peace (in the ideas),
Kevin