The Classroom as a Research Study: Digital Composition

It’s been about two years in the planning, but this month, two professors (and associates through the Western Massachusetts Writing Project) will be launching a research study in my classroom around the ways in which my students use technology and digital media in school and out of school. The study is entitled “In the Midst of Change: Young People Composing in a Digital World.”

The two visiting professors — Anne Herrington and Donna LeCourt — intend to observe the work that we do around composing with digital tools (in conjunction with a new unit I am doing around digital citizenship and the use of Glogster), and then they will be interviewing a few students about the compositional choices they make when they create something with technology. I admire both Anne and Donna for their work around composition and rhetoric. Anne and I were co-editors (along with Charlie Moran) of the book collection, Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change and Assessment in the 21st Century.

One focus of the conversations that we have had in the last year or so is what my students do with technology and composition outside of school. We are curious to know and document the kinds of writing with technology that goes on outside of the school walls. Anne, Donna and I (and another professor who is no longer part of the initiative) have long talked about ways to document the choices that young people make around composing with these new tools, and what influence the world outside of school has on the writing in school, and vice versa.

So, I am excited to see the project almost underway. I am also a little nervous. It’s strange to have visitors looking in at what is going on, although that nervousness is countered by the fact that I know the researchers quite well. Still ….

Peace (in the study),
Kevin

 

It’s Nice to Get Noticed: Game Design

Yesterday, I shared out my new Video Game Design resource, and it generated a lot of interest across various networks, including Twitter (which I hope translates into possibilities for more students to use video game design in the classroom). The site also got a few mentions here and there on other websites and blogs, which is always an honor. It’s not always easy to stand out in the cacophony of the web world.

First, Richard Byrne at Free Tech for Teachers gave me a warm shout-out. I always appreciate the sharing of resources that Richard does at his site and encourage you to visit Free Tech for Teachers on a regular basis.

View Free Tech for Teachers Blog

Second, the Gamestar Mechanic teachers’ blog also focused on my website. The blog is a place where gaming projects are coming into focus, so to have mine in the mix is a nice honor.

View Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog

Finally, I am working with a few new colleagues (mostly from Canada, it seems) to create a wiki resource space around gaming in the classroom. Julie Johnson is spearheading the effort, and it is just beginning, but we hope to have a collaborative site that can be of use to other teachers considering gaming as a possible learning activity. It’s exciting to be part of collaborative adventures!

View Game in  Ed Wiki Site

Thanks to everyone who did drop by the game design site, and gave feedback through my various networks. I appreciate it!

Peace (in the connections),
Kevin

 

Site Launch: Video Game Design for the Classroom

Video Game Design Screenshot
For the past few weeks, I have been sharing out pieces of a resource around video game design as my sixth grade students have created science-based video games. I often brought along my video camera for the ride, interviewing my fellow teachers and some of my students, and capturing some of the events as they unfolded with the project. I thought I might produce a video. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to keep much of the segments separate, and a website resource really seemed to be the way to go.

So, here it is.

I’ve created this website called Video Game Design as a way to document our learning adventure around game design, science and writing in hopes that you might also consider the possibilities of video games in your classroom. It was quite an interesting project, which continues to unfold even now (some of my students will be revising their games for the National STEM Video Game Challenge). I’ve tried to show how the project touches on a lot of curricular areas, and connects with the Common Core initiative. And I have attempted to show how engaged my students were in their creation of a video game project.

Most of all, I want to emphasize that my young gamers moved from the “players” of other people’s games to the “creators” of their own projects, with a real audience (we used Gamestar Mechanic, which I highly recommend for this kind of project) and a real purpose. While there are areas I see in reflection that could have been done better, there is no doubt in my mind that this project transformed learning practice for a few weeks. It’s been a bit difficult to get back to the regular curriculum, to be honest.

I hope the site is useful for you. Feel free to pass it around and if you see things that need to be addressed or have some general comments, I would love for you to give some feedback here.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

Student Podcasts: Reviewing Video Games

Norris Gamers Icon
As part of our work around video game design, my sixth grade students were also assigned to play and review a video game. The game could be on any platform (and there was a wide range — from iPods to Wii to Xbox Live to web-based games) and the criteria for the review would be along lines of design, challenge, media and other elements that we have been discussing. What they didn’t know was that they were learning persuasive writing techniques, and use of rhetorical stance. They just thought they were able to play and write about video games.

This assignment was inspired by an online friend, Julie, who shared with me her own graphic organizer around game reviews. I adapted her organizer for my own needs, but I was grateful to have a starting point. If you need a starting point, here is the link to my own graphic organizer.

I wanted to give my students some voice, too, and so we used our iPod Touches and Cinch to record podcast versions of their video game reviews. I was impressed with how they came out, and have now pulled them together into a single folder of game review podcasts. Feel free to share with your own students, and let me know if you do a similar assignment. For me, this was yet another writing component to our video game design project.

Oh, and something interesting emerged, too, as the owner of a website called Gametrender kindly offered to provide publishing space on his website to feature our young writers. (He later told me he is a former teacher and sees the opportunity to nurture future journalists. You can read his post about it here.) I told my students this was an opportunity to publish to the world (the site gets a lot of traffic) in a meaningful way, with authentic readers. They were pretty excited about it, and I sent forward about  a dozen reviews to be published there in the coming days and weeks.

Take a listen:

Peace (in the review),
Kevin

 

WMWP: Pop Culture, Technology and the Common Core

Our focus at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project has been on ways to make the new Massachusetts State Standards (influenced by the Common Core) a workable reality for teachers in the areas of literacy. Our upcoming technology event will do that from a slightly different angle: looking at how our popular culture, technology and learning can come together in the classroom. This event was inspired in large part by Dr. Ernest Morrell’s presentation at last year’s National Writing Project Urban Sites Conference, in which he encouraged teachers to turn the lens on the culture that influences and shapes student interaction, writing and engagement.

We’re hoping to do that with a keynote presentation from a group of high school video producers called Video Vanguard, and then provide some opportunities for attendees to “learn and play” with technology around topics of gaming and social networking and more. We’ll also be providing time for reflection and connection with other educators. Our aim is to show how to validate the worlds of our young people while exploring the ways these cultural ideas can connect to the curriculum that we teach. In fact, the Common Core opens up a lot of doors to using technology, media and more for research, writing and publishing.

If you live in Western Massachusetts, please consider signing up for our event, which is taking place on Saturday February 4. (You can now register and pay online for WMWP events.)

WMWP Technology Event Feb2012

This event is also in conjunction with the national Digital Learning Day, which seeks to highlight the ways that technology and digital media can transform education and engage students. We’re also putting together a survey for Massachusetts teachers around their use of technology and digital media in the classrom for Digital Learning Day, in hopes of creating a database of educators who are on the leading edge of this movement.

Peace (in the culture),
Kevin

 

Book Review: Building the English Classroom

I won’t even try to be unbiased here. Bruce Penniman, the author of Building the English Classroom: Foundations, Support, Success, is not only a colleague (and past director) in the Western Massachusetts Writing Project but he is also a former college instructor of mine, a writing partner for a National Writing Project resource, and a friend. But those connections won’t stop me from saying that Bruce’s book (which I notice is currently sold out on Amazon, which says something about the book’s appeal) about constructing a rich, diverse and challenging English classroom is a wonderful resource worth reading.

Early on in the book, Bruce, a former Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, among other accolades, explains the rationale for the book:

“Teaching English is challenging in part because it is many subjects in one — traditionally, writing, literature, public speaking, and grammar, but now all of those plus media literacy, computer technology, social justice, and much more … The job of organizing those demands can be overwhelming, especially to a teacher still developing a repertoire of management strategies.” (p. x1)

In engaging prose peppered with personal anecdotes from the classroom, Bruce distills his 40 years in the classroom into practice advice around curriculum development and assessment in the era of standardized testing while keeping his focus on for main themes that all of us teachers would do well to heed as a sort of professional motto:

  • Collaborate
  • Plan
  • Reflect
  • Believe

Building the English Classroom is structured around how to plan, teach and assess a wide range of writing and reading activities, using the Backwards Design model, and he puts a strong push later on in the book around opening the door to multicultural voices and authentic writing for students. Along with the traditional essay, Bruce has always been ready to provide a range of writing assignments that can demonstrate student knowledge beyond the five-paragraph model. While Bruce’s experience is in the high school (and now at the university level), the book can be of use to middle school teachers, too.

Of great value in here for anyone, however, are the many charts and graphs and samples that Bruce provides to the reader.

When I was a first year teacher, I took a graduate course through the Western Massachusetts Writing Project with Bruce as one of the co-instructors, and to this day, I keep his concept of “stakes writing” handy in my mind, and in my desk. Bruce thoughtfully lays out the ways that some writing is personal for the student (low stakes), some of the teacher and the classroom community (mid stakes), and some for the world itself (high stakes). In each of those tiers, there are a variety of expectations of the writer. This kind of thinking opened a lot of possibilities for me, which I continue to use to this day.

Peace (in the classroom),
Kevin

PS — You can sample some of the book at the NCTE book website.

 

 

Book Review: At Home

AT HOME A Short History of Private Life  by Bill Bryson

Leave it to Bill Bryson to shift his view from expansive (A Short History of Nearly Everything) to contained (At Home: A Short History of Private Life) and still draw the reader in with the rich storytelling has come to mark Bryson’s work for the past few years. At Home begins, aptly enough, in Bryson’s own home, as he begins to weave a rich tapestry of history behind each of the rooms, the furniture, the architecture and more that we mostly ignore in our day-to-day lives. At Home makes us look closer at what it is that makes our home our home. We spend some time in each chapter inside his home as Bryson focuses his gaze on his own English place, even providing us with the original architectural plans (and the revised ones that actually got built). All you need is a cup of tea, and maybe a cracker or two, and it is like spending time with an old friend who can talk your ear off for hours in a way that rarely gets boring.

The book is as much a history of England (with some early America thrown into the mix) as it is about why we have bathrooms, why the best bed in the house was often the one not slept in, how the nursery came to evolve in a time of high child mortality, and more stories of disease and illness than you really want to know, and yet, Bryson keeps you hooked amid all that pestilence and grief. Don’t even ask about the rats, lice and other critters …

I find it fascinating how Bryson is able to cobble together such rich prose out of some mundane ideas, or so I often thought, and yet, I could barely put At Home down, and I even know in whose hands I am going to pass this book to. That is the mark of a good read — you know who would love it next. At Home is a sure winner for those looking for an unexpected non-fiction treasure right inside your own four walls.

Peace (in our homes),
Kevin

 

Connecting Video Game Design to the Common Core

I’ve been spending some time thinking about the ways in which our science-based video game design project connects with the Massachusetts English Language Arts Standards, which were built off the framework of the Common Core. I created this chart to help me make the case (to myself, if no one else) that the project does indeed connect in a number of areas around reading, writing (or better, composition) and science.
Video Game Design Connections to Common Core
Peace (in the connections),
Kevin