(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.)
I took my 12-year-old son to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for the second time (we first went on opening weekend) because his friend had not gone yet. That seemed a shame. We had a blast in the cold theater on a hot day and my son’s friend loved the movie.
Once again, the scene where Cheap Trick’s Surrender plays hit me the heart of memory, reminding me of playing that song in my college-days rock band, Rough Draft.
So, I dug our cover of Surrender out. It was part of an audio track to a cable television recording we did, and then the studio lost the video tape so we don’t have that, only the audio. Maybe that’s a good thing …
That’s me singing and playing rhythm guitar. We used to have so much fun with that song. It was not a band of finesse. It was a band of loud energy. Rough Draft, indeed. Three of us from that band are still very close, and we get together once a year. In fact, that reunion is coming in two weeks.
We’re all all right! We’re all all right! We just seem a little weird …
Peace (no cheap tricks),
Kevin
PS — bonus song? Only if your ears can take it. This was early song of mine for Rough Draft. I was just starting to do some writing.
The conversations around the #DigCiz hashtag have certainly gone into different directions this past week. I’m still trying to create comics based off discussions, and blog posts, and tweets, and whatever folks are doing. The comic above, for example, was in response to wondering how people represent themselves different in different digital spaces, and how our multiple identities are both connected an disconnected.
There’s been more wrestling with language, too, and what words one uses to describe connector points. Communities. Networks. Conversations. I don’t even know anymore. Let’s just talk and worry about what to call it some other time.
We circled back to a talking point from a few weeks ago, too, on whether online sites should be open for readers to engage the writer, or closed to the readers to protect the writer. I fall on the side of open.
Interestingly, hashtags themselves became a topic of conversation, and what it means when discussion centers around a shared hashtag. Who owns it? Are there rules?
And what happens if you break the rules? (if there are any)
There was the theme of “hospitality” that many of us grappled with this week. I see it as, how do we welcome newcomers and encourage latecomers, and connect with those already there. Whatever “there” is. Or wherever. See? Language!
A discussion of what does the host give up of their identity and authenticity to make the guest comfortable led to this:
This is what I hope will happen …
… but then, not long after, I was critiquing Google and other companies for siphoning up our data even while pitching educational sites to kids. Sigh. So much for pondering the positives.
But … the slip was momentarily … for the idea of remixing and collaborating and making stuff with others still keeps me involved and engaged, and hopeful, and I hope you find a way in, too.
This is an audio story I wrote and recorded some time back for my friend, who asked for stories about music. But since it is about my dad, and this is Father’s Day, I wanted to pull it back out again. He was here just yesterday, in fact.
This post has been sitting in my blog draft bin for some time. I remember thinking, this is a useful slideshow presentation from Bobbie Newman for considering the ways we write and read across various media and mediums. I guess I never brought it out during Digital Writing Month. The show’s a few years old now, but it is still relevant on its focus on storytelling across a wide range of concepts, including the way humans interact with narrative.
Two articles crossed my RSS feed yesterday (yes, I still love my RSS). One piece is about student activists on college campuses advocating Bills of Rights, with at least some components related to knowing where their data is going when they use technology for institutional learning. The other piece is about how to best resists that collection as well as the sale of student data from tools being used in education.
… many students .. are still unaware of their rights when it comes to how their online footprints are tracked—whether by third-party companies or sometimes the school districts themselves.
Every day, we participate in a digital culture owned and operated by others — designers, engineers, technologists, CEOs — who have come to understand how easily they can harvest our intellectual property, data, and the minute details of our lives.
Both pieces are centered on awareness, advocacy and resistance to the this scouring and selling of privacy and data. The focus is on students — mostly university students — yet think of how many K-12 schools are now being more tech-focused, marketing themselves in this Age of Choice as digital innovation hubs to attract more students, and thus, more tuition.
Many schools regularly tap into outside EdTech — like Edmodo for social networking (and a recent target of hacking of student emails and accounts), Google and sites like Turnitin, the focus of the Digital Pedagogy piece, which notes:
A funny thing happened on the way to academic integrity. Plagiarism detection software (PDS), like Turnitin, has seized control of student intellectual property. While students who use Turnitin are discouraged from copying other work, the company itself can strip mine and sell student work for profit.
Profit. Money. Growth. Turnitin, for example, has access to more than 700 million pieces of student work that its terms of service says allows it to use for its business model. The article explores this whole issue with more nuance that I do here, but this bit of Terms of Service language gives you a taste of what the writers are objecting to:
You grant Turnitin a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to reproduce, transmit, display, disclose, and otherwise use your Communications on the Site or elsewhere for our business purposes.
I’ve also been wary, for example, of a new initiative by Google called Be Internet Awesome. My wariness comes not from the content of the site — which is centered around teaching young people privacy and responsible use of technology and more, all of which I agree with, and a look at the curriculum there shows some positive thoughts about approaching these topics with students — but more about the way Google is designed as a company to use our data against us, by selling us to the highest advertising bidders.
Isn’t it a bit ironic that Google is both teaching young people to be on the alert and also, the one they need to be on the alert for? How many educators will use this site but not make visible how Google’s business model works and how we “trade” our privacy for access to information?
We owe it to our kids to make as much of this visible as we can. It doesn’t mean not using Google Apps for Education (which my district does and which we use all the time, and which has opened up lots of doors for my young writers) or even Turnitin and its ilk (although you might want to dive deeper into terms of service to make sure you and your kids know what’s what) and others.
The Digital Pedagogy piece includes this graphic of questions to ponder before entering a contract:
We should not enter into the World of EdTech with blinders on. Most “tech solutions” are built to make money, not serve in the best interests of our students, no matter how glossy and pretty their advertising is. The business plan is often what matters most, and all but a few business plans are built around profit.
Young users are most vulnerable, I think, because they trust that the adults (teachers, administrators, etc.) who bring them into technology apps and sites know what they are doing, have done their homework, and have their best intentions at heart. The vulnerability comes because not all of those assumptions happen, and because companies like Google understand the long game — hook young users now and make money for decades to come.
Novelist (and teacher) Colum McCann (whose Let the Great World Spin was an excellent book) has put out a small tome entitled Letters to a Young Writer, in which he distills some of his teaching and advice to writers who are about to venture, or are already there, in to the world of stories.
His most consistent and best advice: Put your arse in the chair and write write write!
Along with that bit of truth, McCann circles the wagons on the power of words — in fact, he relegates worrying about plot to the second tier of writing, and instead, he celebrates how writers use language to uncover the world. His rebalancing here had me wondering about how I teach my young writers about stories, where I find my focus on plot and structure to be important. Maybe I don’t let them play with language nearly enough.
The book weaves through topics such as editing and revision, and getting unstuck, about observing the world with notebook in hand and how to use your red pen to remove unnecessary baggage from your writing, and what to do when you stare at a blank page. He acknowledges the discouragement of rejection of writing, and cheers on those who persevere. He’s funny, and thoughtful, and knows that true writers have the unrelenting urge to write, as something intangible in the heart.
I found his first chapter and his last chapter most moving here, as he captures all of the ways writers interact and make sense of the world, and themselves — and therefore, others, too. His short sentences in these chapters play like a poem, digging deep into the heart and soul of writing.
It was worth a remix of sorts, so here are pieces of the first chapter, as digital interpretation:
I might still do something else with the last chapter, where he widens his focus to the role of the writer in the larger world.
I have long been a huge fan of Grant Snider, who puts out regular Incidental Comics that makes you pay attention to the creative mind and imaginative sparks that come with writing. This collection by Snider — entitled The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity— is a perfect curation of some of his work, ranging along themes of Inspiration, Improvisation, Exploration, Frustration and Elation.
I see Snider as a visual poet, using visual and word puns to challenge the viewer to think about what it means to find and nurture ideas that often seem elusive. His graphic art reminds us of the “work” that goes into making art.
He even left the last page of his book as a blank art canvas, as an invitation to draw. I love that.
While there is some repetition of ideas here, Snider’s exploration of the creative mind through comics and graphics will surely make you contemplate the wistfulness of creativity, and perhaps inspire you to make your own. I’m happy if my purchase of his book allows Snider more time to make art. I also support him through Patreon.
(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.)
There are all sorts of reasons why people come to my classroom these days. A quick chat. Something forgotten behind. A borrowed book. Check-in with a student.
Mostly, though, it’s the cool air flowing.
I am lucky that I have the only air conditioned classroom in the building, a result of the room’s past life as the computer lab (we don’t have a lab anymore … we have rolling carts) and the home to the computer server, which thankfully was moved elsewhere a number of years ago (it hummed and rattled like crazy at times).
I don’t mind the visitors. I keep my head down when my colleagues complain about the heat and humidity — summer finally hit us here in New England — and I remain humble. I know I’m lucky and happy to share that luck with anyone who needs a moment of reprieve.
I had a visitor to my imagination the other day, and it sort of startled me. She was a character from a story I wrote (or tried to write) many years ago. The story collapsed under its own weight. Yet she apparently kept going.
I wrote this on Mastodon (I will write about that another day), under the auspices of #smallstories
A character I created years ago, in a short story I only now vaguely remember, came back to haunt me this week. Isn’t that funny? She skirted on the outside of my imagination. I welcomed her, of course, and wondered why she had returned. She had not aged. She was still that erratic, lovable, curious shadow from the page. We didn’t talk about where she had been. We haven’t talked about where she’s going to be, either. But we will.
She wouldn’t leave my head after that, as if mentioning her was an invitation to stay. Not that I wanted her to leave. But still … so I wrote about her again, breathing something like life back into a character from a story best forgotten (for now, anyway).
I wrote the story — What We Remember is Not What We Forget — over at Notegraphy. You are invited to read it. I’ll just be tinkering with words and hoping you’ll wander back …. here’s the opening few lines:
What We Remember Is Not What We Forget
Conversations with a Character
Kevin Hodgson
“Do you remember me?”
She twirled her hair with her long finger. I noticed she still stood on one foot, using the toe on the other as a sort of balancing fulcrum point. One slight push and down she would go. Or perhaps she would begin dancing on a moment’s noticing, balancing on air.
“Of course.”
It was true. I remembered her clearly, just as I had created her. She looked the same. Wavy auburn hair. Faded blue eyes. A nose slightly twisted at the end. A smile bordering on sinister.
“Are you sure? You look … doubtful.”
“I’m sure. I’m just remembering. That’s all. It’s been a long time.”
I wasn’t done. I still felt her voice in my head. She wasn’t content to remain on the page, digital or otherwise. She was restless.
So I wandered over to Google’s Story Builder, and removed all of the exposition, using only the dialogue between her, my character, and myself, the writer. Strangely, as my friend Lisa N. noted when I shared it with her, the character seems more alive here, in this version.
What do you think? Do you have character rattling around in your head? Do you listen to them?
I’ve mentioned before that I am facilitating a project with some middle school teachers in our largest urban school district (Springfield, MA) through a complex partnership between the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, the Springfield Armory and the Veterans Education Project. We’ve been doing a series of professional development days, with a focus on the historic primary source archives of the Armory, and offering a free summer camp experience at the Armory for urban middle school students. The project — which we call Minds Made for Stories, in reference to the book of the same name by Thomas Newkirk — is funded by Mass Humanities and the National Writing Project.
There are a lot of strands to our work, from writing to history, and yesterday, one of those strands — how oral history can enhance understanding of the world — came to life as a visitor to our PD session presented and talked about his childhood in Africa, during war, and his eventual journey to the United States, where he now works to help other immigrants navigate the culture.
Jowel Iranzi’s story is powerful, as he narrates how strife and violence in his native Congo (then, Zaire) led his family to flee, first to Rwanda, and then Burundi and then to Tanzania, living in refugee camps and dealing with the tragic loss of his father and separation from his younger brother and mother. He talks of adversity, of perseverance, of education, of the realization that he cannot look back and blame others for his life situation, but has to look forward and forge a new life out of the ashes of his old one.
We’ll be having Jowel come in to present to students at our camp — which has a social justice theme and is focused on immigration and the Springfield Armory. Our intention is that his personal story, through oral history, will bring to the surface how one struggles and perseveres, and the difficulty of being a refugee and immigrant in the United States can be.
We’re reminded again of the power of story. My sketch-noting of his talk is proof of how complicated a life can be. By listening to his narrative, we all came to better understand Jowel, and in doing so, the larger world, too.
(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.)
