A Strange Concoction to Consider: Fan Fiction and State Testing

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aafad 225/365 under new management … flickr photo by lamont_cranston shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

We’re into state test prep season (our ELA test is a few weeks away) and our state of Massachusetts is in the midst of some pretty significant changes to what we call MCAS. The state claims to have moved away from PARCC, but that’s not really the case with its MCAS 2.o or MCAS Next Generation.

Everything MCAS is moving to computer-based testing over the next two years, which is already posing a logistical challenge at my school, and the kinds of texts and questions and tasks being asked of my sixth graders are also changing, becoming more complex on many levels (reading across multiple texts and genres, paired multiple choice questions, etc.)

As I work with my young writers on learning how to approach what is known as the Narrative Task, I find myself amused at how the whole concept seems like a riff out of the Fan Fiction textbook. This is something we were exploring in Networked Narratives, too.

Let me explain …

The MCAS Narrative Task is built on the concept of reading a story, or a passage from a novel or larger piece of text, and then writing the “next section” of the story, with consideration of some concept — mostly, we’ve been seeing a focus on character and setting in sixth grade but fifth grade has been about shifting point of view.

So, for example, in a sample we did last week, my students read about a girl and a nanny, in a rainstorm, rushing to meet an unknown aunt. Their assignment was to continue the story, with the characters and setting, and determine what happens next. And yesterday, I had them plucking minor characters from novels we are reading, or have read, and write a new story.

In other words, just like fan fiction, you take characters that exist in literature and bring them into an imaginary space (or world) that you create, with a story that you write, and you bring them to life in ways that you choose. That’s fan fiction, in a sort of nutshell, right? For example, let’s pluck Hermoine and Malfoy from Harry Potter series and send them off on an adventure. Or what would happen if Katniss Everdeen bumped into Luke Skywalker? (At least, they’re not siblings. Or are they?)

We’ve been talking about Fan Fiction in Networked Narratives, as a way that writers find spaces to write, outside of school confines, with interests that bring them into a larger, but slightly hidden, online community. Fan Fiction has many elements of what we term Connected Learning.

Now, granted, some fan fiction gets a little … adult, in content. I don’t think the state folks want to see any slash fiction (note: not necessarily violent and not about the GnR guitar player, but a genre in which two characters from different books meet, and likely hook up) in my students’ writing samples. But this notion of taking a character for a walk into your own story has its roots in fan fiction.

Which makes it odd, and interesting, that the idea behind fan fiction would be the underpinning of the Narrative Task on a state test.

Peace (a fan of it),
Kevin

 

Slice of Life: The Social Media Illusion

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

My pre-teen son confided in me that he had gone back into his Musically app the other day, for the first time in a few weeks, only to find out to his surprise that he was Number One on their charts of users. Musically allows you to create short lip-sync videos with all sorts of filters. It’s fun, but I personally find it a bit too much. People heart you. It’s one of those sites.

“It sort of freaked me out,” he admitted, on seeing his username at the top of the chart. “I hadn’t even made anything (new video) in a long time. I don’t know how it happened. Did something go viral?”

He said he even double checked it was his (since he uses a fake name to protect his identity … good boy) and that led us into a whole discussion about the role of followers and why social media is built on this aspect of users needing more and more confirmation or hearts or likes or whatever from an unknown audience. And how shallow that entire system can be, even if it feels good at the time.

This led us to talk about places he knows online where you can “earn” new followers, too. I’m still not clear on this — do you buy followers somehow? What are you giving up? Your data? Your information? Your eyeballs for intrusive ads? Something, right?

“Maybe I should delete the app,” he wondered out loud.

We were in the car during all this, so I told him I would look at the app later. When I did, I realized that he had been duped by an April Fool’s joke by Musically, in which every user who checked the charts found themselves Number One.

Pretty clever, and also, pretty interesting for a social media app built on users and followers to play on the desire of its own users for more and more followers as a joke on those same users. There’s something strangely meta in that circle of thought.

My son was amused when I told him about Musically’s April Fools joke. He seemed a bit relieved, as if there had been a huge weight to bear when you suddenly realize you have become the top dog in a social media chart.

He was also a bit wistful that his day at the top of the charts was all just an illusion. But really, given the landscape of social media and teens, and what constitutes popularity in such fleeting ways, isn’t most of what we do in social media merely illusion, anyway?

Peace (thinking),
Kevin

PS — “Dad, a whole bunch of kids at school got pranked by the same joke, and thought they were number one. We all did. That’s funny.” — the boy.

Tinkering with Voices/Playing with Poems

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Soundtrap Poetry Collab

The other day, my friend, Sheri, posted a blog piece that included a Poem for Three Voices about the struggle to start a piece of writing, from the viewpoint of a student writer.

I immediately thought: that poem should be recorded and heard, with three voices. Over the following days, Sheri recruited Melvina, and the three of us used Soundtrap, an online recording platform, to make a version of Sheri’s poem.

It was sort of a recording experiment, and I am now myself working on writing a Poem for Five Voices, with Sheri, Melvina and hopefully two others. Now that I know for certain that Soundtrap works well for this poetry collaboration (as I thought it might), it opens up some doors.

The difficulty with performing these multiple voice poems is the logistics, of leaving space in the tracks for other voices to fill. But Soundtrap at least solves one main and significant issue: we don’t have to be in the same room at the same time, and we don’t need to be sending audio files back and forth.

I’ve done these Poems for Multiple Voices in the classroom with students (last year, we did math poems), using Garageband and other recording platforms, and they really enjoyed the ways in which the voices come and go, and how words weave in and out of each other. It’s challenging to write and construct these poems, and they are challenging to read.

More to come in the days ahead …

Peace (like poems),
Kevin

PS — I once wrote this poem for my math colleague and I to read to the whole school over morning announcements. I still like it for the way it merges math and writing. We need to record it again, I think (our old version was at an old site that is now defunct).

TheWriter and the Mathematician- A Poem for 2 Voices by KevinHodgson on Scribd

#GloPoWriMo: Waiting on the Flowers

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Day Before Poem

My friend, Sheri, was sharing about writing poems this month for Global Poetry Writing Month  — #GloPoWriMo — (also, still known as National Poetry Writing Month in some circles, I guess), and so I am tagging along with Sheri, as best as I can.

This is a poem from the day before April, and is known as a haibun, which combines haiku and prose poem together. I wrote it at Notegraphy, which is a design platform that I will likely be using this month on a regular basis.

Still waiting on the flowers ….

Peace (poems),
Kevin

On Reflection: Ten Years of Slicing into Life

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Ten years is a long time to be doing anything.

I spent ten years, almost exactly, working as a newspaper journalist, covering politics, meetings, crime and education. Ten years seemed like forever when I finally left to become certified as a teacher (and take on role of caregiver with our boys at home in my stay-at-home dad chapter of life).

I am fifteen years into teaching now. That’s ten plus five. I remember the ten year mark as being important because it meant I had lasted and lasted longer than my previous profession as journalist. It was around then that I realized that, yes, I was a teacher.

My wife and I have been married nearly 2o years. Ten plus ten, with three kids. Those years have flown by. We still can’t believe it.

And it has been ten years in Slice of Life, too, as every March rolls around with the call from Stacey (and once, it was Ruth, too) and the team of too-many-to-count accomplices over at Two Writing Teachers. It’s a lot to ask of us, to write every single day about small moments that have larger implications. Yet so many did it — this March, the writers numbered in the hundreds at the start (more than 350 writers on the very first day) and still more than 240 at the end with the last posting on March 31.

Think on that. Hundreds of teachers who now see themselves as writers in digital spaces. And then there were the teachers who had their students writing Slices of Life, too. I hope they found an audience among other slicing students.

The mixed blessings to that kind of growth of anything online is obvious, too. There were so many people in the mix that I found commenting and connecting to be more like leaves blowing in the storm, at times. There was a less a sense of community. A bit disorienting. This is no fault of the organizers at Two Writing Teachers. It’s a natural part of online connections and a reminder of why many MOOCS (Massive Open Online Classes) falter over the long haul. The larger the crowd, the more the noise, and the less the signal. And when that happens, participants can feel as if their voice is lost in the wind. They drop out.

This chart shows some documentation of MOOCS, but it also translates well into how many online spaces flow:

The folks at Two Writing Teachers try to counter this by incorporating the “comment on other blogs” into their messaging on a regular basis. I continue to find that commenting as the first step into online conversation to be inadequate. I can’t easily trace my steps back to blogs where I have been, and then I feel guilty about not responding to every blogger who comments at my blog. And I wonder: how can I make a comment worth something and not just a few words on the bottom of a post? That would be a full-time job.

Meanwhile, you know, Life goes on. (And hopefully, it also provides more moments to write about later)

I did try to find new blogs to comment on this year, but I often found myself visiting the “early morning posting” crew, of which I am a member, and following bloggers I have come to know, either from the past or from the early days of this year.

I often felt a little lazy about doing that — of not reaching out more to. new folks as much as I could have. And I wondered if there were bloggers posting in the middle of the day who never got any comments on their posts because so many of us were either early morning-ers or late nighters. Those are the kinds of things that worry me, sometimes, and I am not even an organizer of Slice of Life. Sheesh. I guess when I participate in something, I feel a sense of responsibility.

March 2017 is now over, but the Slice of Life continues through the year on Tuesdays. The once-a-week gives a little breathing room, and you can write or not, read or not, comment or not. With no pressure, and only an invite to participate, the choice is yours.

I hope I see you there.

Peace (slicing it and sharing it),
Kevin

Slice of Life (Day 31): Celebrating Losing

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Yesterday was Quidditch Tournament Day at our school, and my sixth grade classroom team — the valiant Blue Barbarians — just barely lost the 2017 championship. Just barely, by just a few points. That fact that it was so close, particularly given the athletic talent of the team that won, was cause of some celebration at the end of the long day of playing in our Quidditch Tournament. The last game — which featured our team versus the team that eventually won before an audience of a few hundred students, staff and family members — was right down to the wire. Every player was giving it their all with teamwork and hustle and positive energy.

What more could you ask for?

At night, we teachers came together as Pink Fury, and we played our sixth graders in our own Students vs. Teachers Quidditch match, and boy, I am tired and sore today. We didn’t win, either. In fact, the students beat us pretty thoroughly, but it was a great time, and fun to interact with them outside of the academic classroom.

The problem is that each year, we, the teaching staff, get a bit older — and slower, and more likely to tire out quickly — while our sixth graders each year stay the same age, like Peter Pan on the athletic gym floor. And with nearly 65 students signed up, they kept coming at us with fresh legs and arms. Eighty minutes of running, jumping, defending, throwing. You don’t realize how long 80 minutes is until you are in constant motion for nearly all of it.

It’s a long time.

Still, they won, fair and square, and we teachers then had our own little celebration at a nearby “establishment.”

Pink Fury Quidditch Team

Peace (in the air),
Kevin

PS — Our Quidditch game is now in its 18th year, and is played in our gym. We call it “literation in motion” and connect writing, reading, art, music and dance to our Quidditch season.

Slice of Life (Day 30): Making Quidditch Animations

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

We do all sorts of celebrating for our school’s Quidditch season, which comes to a close TODAY with a day-long tournament for our sixth graders and then a students vs. teachers match this evening. I am tired just thinking about it. But it will be a lot of fun. Noisy fun. Exhausting fun. You get the idea.

Among the many classroom activities surrounding Quidditch, which includes various writing pieces such as diagramming plays and using expository writing to explain the plays, I show my students the basics of stopmotion animation using a site called ParaPara Animation (click the yellow wrench in the bottom right corner to get started). It’s simple to use, and a little quirky and a bit buggy, but the students love it. We had them making animations to celebrate Quidditch, and their teams.

Here are a few:

Peace (catch it),
Kevin

Slice of Life (Day 29): Let’s Hear it for the Kids

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I am the teacher-advisor to our sixth grade Student Council, which is hosting a Spirit Week all this week at our school. Yesterday was Animal Appreciation Day, and the Student Council organized a “supply drive” for the regional animal shelter. By day’s end, the table in the back of my room was filled with supplies.

Shelter Drive

This picture is BEFORE three push-truck-loads of paper towels and other items arrived from the preschool through second grade wing of our school. The entire table is now overflowing. We have cat food, office supplies, paper towels and other items that the Dakin Humane Society has asked for help with. Some families also sent in checks and cash donations.

The sixth graders on the Student Council were so excited yesterday, as they went around collecting donations, and they have another project on tap today — a “mystery project” to have the entire school thank the non-teaching staff in our building for all they do. This includes bus drivers, custodians, nurses, cafeteria crew, and office staff. They wanted to show appreciation for folks who often are outside of the focus of thanks.

I love that.

Looking at the ever-growing pile of supplies for the animal shelter, I suddenly realized: I have at least one trip ahead of me to deliver the donations. And, I promised anyone who would listen (colleagues, wife, kids) that I WOULD not be coming home with a new dog or cat.

Promise.

Peace (please),
Kevin

Slice of Life (Day 28): Who Was Here

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

We had a bunch of friends and neighbors over last night to celebrate what seems to be an overflowing group of March birthdays (including one of my sons, whose birthday is today). We had food, drink and lots of conversations.

Here’s who was here:

  • One college professor of political science
  • One chiropractor
  • One financial bookkeeper for a retail toy store
  • One school administrator
  • One teacher (me!)
  • Three students (two high school/one middle school)
  • One independent filmmaker and film editor

It was a pleasant gathering for a Monday night.

Peace (in talk and more),
Kevin