A post I wrote about journal writing with students, and teachers as writers, for my blog over at Middleweb got a nice mention in the electronic newsletter of the ASCD (I tried to look up what ASCD stands for — I know it is an association of superintendents and curriculum coordinators and such because my wife is an administrator and we get their materials in the mail — and this is what their website says ASCD stands for “formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development” — now it is just called ASCD.)
Maybe if enough school administrators read the post, they will better understand the power of writing in a natural setting, and not for test taking purposes. Hopeful? You bet.
You can read my piece here at Working Draft at Middleweb, and feel free to add comments to the blog post. Maybe your administrator will read it.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
Over at the Make/Hack/Play, we are encouraged to Make in physical space. I returned to an idea from the summer and worked to remix the Sunday Comics. This is trickier than at first blush because creating a connected narrative from very different comics, writers, characters and story lines is hard.
Here, you have to read each comic with two frames of mind: the comic itself and the story within that small framed narrative AND the larger lens of how might part of this storyline or picture take part in a larger story to be remixed. And you don’t often know what that story will be until you have read all the comics in the section (unless you get lucky and find something neat right away in the first few comics you read). Once you have the larger narrative, you have to figure out which pieces will fit to tell the story, which — to be honest — will always be a bit jagged, due to the mix of art and narratives.
But that’s remixing for ya.
For this Sunday Comic Remix, I centered on a frame from Dilbert about an accusation of using Google Glass in a meeting without permission, which led to an almost dream-like sequence of embarrassment moments, and then there is an apology, followed by a meta-comic from from Doonsbury with a final combustible ending.
I wish the quality of the photo were better (sorry!) but I took it on the iPad. The frame and writing was added in Flickr with the Aviary suite of tools.
Peace (in the comic hack),
Kevin
I have to admit: I was somewhat familiar with the making of the first Atomic Bomb but I did not know how much spying, sleuthing and Cold War calculations went into the push during World War II to build the bomb that forever changed the world after the United States dropped the results of scientific discovery on Japan. Bomb: The Race to Build — and Steal — the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin came to me for free from the Scholastic Book Club (thank you!) just as a colleague was asking me if I had ever read the book.
That is enough of a kismet moment for me to read something. This oversized book for upper middle and high school students has a fast-paced narrative that begins with the discovery of a Soviet spy in our midst and ends with both regret and relief that the Atomic Bomb did what it was meant to do — end World War II. It also began the arms race that has forever put the entire world on edge, even as the Cold War thawed. Look to Iran and North Korea, and Pakistan, and beyond for evidence of how the work at Alamos made us all see the world in a different light.
In Bomb, Sheinkin does not shy away from this lens, although much of the non-fiction narrative is geared towards the race that the American scientists were in against their counterparts in the Soviet Union (ostensible, allies, but not to be trusted) and the Nazi Regime in Germany, where all indications were that Hitler was determined to build and use the first Atomic Bomb. Military efforts to slow down the Germans, kidnap their scientists, and beat them to the bomb, while stalling the Soviets and their own spy networks here in the United States, became a dangerous game of cat and mouse.
Even knowing how the story ends — with hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed in an instant and a legacy of fallout and radiation for generations to come — Bomb keeps up the pace, which should help keep readers involved in the story that has significant historical value, of only to question science in the corner of the military apparatuses of governments.
Peace (in the world),
Kevin
Yesterday, I shared out a video that I created for the Make/Hack/Play mini-course I am involved in at P2PU with facilitator Karen Fasimpaur. Today, I wanted to explain just how I did it — so consider this is a sort of process piece connected to the Make itself in which I sought to Make a Song, and Make the songwriting visible. Here, I try to make the process visible. I also created this diagram flowchart of my process.
For the first week, Karen suggested we make something in physical space, but I had my head wrapped around music this past weekend, and I decided that I would write a new song, but with the idea of the Maker Space in mind. What I did was sat next to the computer with my guitar and instead of my usual method of scribbling out notes and crossing out words on paper, I used the collaborative freeware tool TitanPad to write. TitanPad works sort of like Google Docs as a collaborative space, but the element that I really love is that it creates a revision timeline video format (of sorts), so you can watch a piece of writing unfold over time.
After finishing the song, which is called Set My Anchor on You, I played back my words, watching from the distance as my words were written, removed, revised and restructured. It’s pretty fascinating, particularly for someone like me who types very fast but also makes a lot of mistakes. You can see a lot of backspacing going on.
Since my idea of this Make was to capture the songwriting in process, I took a video screenshot (using my Snagit program) of the words flowing on the screen, and then moved that raw video into iMovie, so I could layer in my narration. I also recorded a version of the song in Audacity, created an MP3 file and used that as the background track – so you watch my words, hear my thinking and listen to the song.
I then edited the video in iMovie and shared out at YouTube, and linked into our Make/Hack/Play space and beyond, thus going from brainstorm to writing to recording to publishing in a short amount of time.
Peace (in the song),
Kevin
(This is for Slice of Life).
This coming Friday, a colleague/friend/collaborator (Gail Poulin, whom some of you may know through blogging and Twitter) and I will be facilitating a session around digital storytelling via iMovie with the colleagues at our school. I won’t say I am nervous, but I will say that I know the range of technology comfort is wide among our staff, and there are probably more than a few that would rather do anything than work with technology during a PD day. We were asked to do this session by our principal and I do want to find ways to engage my colleagues with digital writing.
Still, Gail and I both are aware of the trepidation among our teaching friends, and let’s be honest: iMovie is more complicated than Photostory3, but we are now a Mac school so … into iMovie we go. At yesterday’s staff meeting, as I talked about what to expect for the session (we’re going make digital stories in a hands-on session) and what to bring (Macs and images, etc.), I also tried to broaden the expectations around discovery, fun and reflective stance. I had created this presentation in Haiku Deck to help ease some minds.
Did it work? I’m not sure, and the fact that we will have a pretty large crowd on Friday for a technology session around digital storytelling means that Gail and I will be running around a bit, I am sure. But I also made clear that they will be called on to help each other, that this PD is going to be collaborative. We need one another. We’re a community of learners, too.
And my final point? They are going to make a digital story during our time together, and the story can be about whatever they want (school, family, vacation, etc.) but find and work on a story that interests them and which will result in a digital video that will be something they can be proud of. Find a passion. Just like our students. Right?
Peace (in the slice),
Kevin
I’m working in a short, open course called Make/Hack/Play that is being facilitated by my friend, Karen Fasimpaur. It is run through the P2PU site, and Karen is using elements from this summer’s Making Learning Connected MOOC to engage participants in a series of “makes.” (You can join us, too. Come on.)
For the first week, I decided to “make a song.” (Karen’s suggestion was to make something in physical space and I am not sure I followed the rules, although sound waves are physical, right?) Tomorrow, I will explain the logistics of the video, in case you are curious and want to make your own. But today, I just wanted to share the Make itself.
Peace (in the song),
Kevin
My latest post for my MiddleWeb blog — Working Draft — is now up. In it, I explore the notion of journal writing with my students, and of teacher being the writer as much as the student. It’s a messy, creative venture.
Peace (in the scribbles),
Kevin
It will be no surprise to readers here that I love comics, particularly comics that treat teaching, learning and writing as fodder for fun. This collection from the comic strip Foxtrot — entitled Math, Science and Unix Underpants — had me laughing up a storm through the house, even in places where the jokes were a little too geeky even for me. If you don’t read Foxtrot, by Bill Amend, the stories center on the family that includes a younger brother who is whiz at math and science and technology. He’s the kid who looks forward to that difficult math test and who hacks the family computer (the iFruit) on a regular basis.
There is no connected story theme to this collection, other than plenty of guffaws around science experiments gone awry, math problems as inspiration for mayhem, and computer nerdiness galore. The comics here stretch back years, so there are some outdated jokes about outdated technology. I didn’t mind. For me, it was enough to be laughing out loud. I am actually going to photocopy a bunch of these gems for my classroom.
You can even find this collection on Google Books now. How cool and nerdy is that?
Peace (in the frames),
Kevin
We explored the concept of the Learning Walk this summer with the Making Learning Connected MOOC — the idea that you walk with a camera and take images of what you see. In DS106, the term was PhotoBlitz. It’s sort of a visual Slice of Life. You pay attention with a level of detail you might not otherwise engage in. Yesterday, in my backyard, I was getting ready to rake up the leaves in my New England back yard and could not help but notice the rich beauty of color of what was on the ground.
Thus, the Learning Walk moment:
Peace (in nature),
Kevin
