What They Suggest (Students Inventing Passwords)

Student PW Suggestions

One of the activities I like to do with my students during our Digital Life unit is to have them explore and think deep on the notions of passwords for their many apps and accounts with technology. We use a site that tests the strength of passwords, and I have them use password creation strategies to invent password suggestions for their four main teachers.

Student PW Suggestions

It then becomes a classroom challenge, where groups of students share the password that they have for me, their ELA teacher; share and agree on a single suggestion from the group; and then we pit each one against each other to see how strong it is. Each of these images is a slide from each of my four classroom’s challenge. One rule is that I would have to be able to memorize the password, and that is must contain different elements of password strategies (mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols).

Student PW Suggestions

Most of these contain clues and elements of what they know about me — from my teaching to my family life to my interests. During the activity, I was actively interviewed about favorite foods, favorite numbers, music I like to listen to, etc.

Student PW Suggestions

They like the game element of it, but as I remind them, what this lesson is all really about is reflecting on the kinds of passwords they use in their lives and how to make them stronger.

I know I have hit a nerve when students start asking, “Can you show me how to change my Google password?”

Peace (safe and secure),
Kevin

At Middleweb: Empowering Students as Digital Leaders

My latest column over at Middleweb is an interview with Jennifer Casa-Todd, whose new book — Social LEADia — closely examines ways in which technology and social media can help empower young people in the larger world on issues that matter to them. The book has many short profiles of young people doing pretty amazing things, and Casa-Todd helps explain how teachers can help foster those shifts.

Read the piece at Middleweb

Peace (and change),
Kevin

 

Of Flowers and Poems (CLMOOC Emergence)

CLMOOC/Emergence Flowers

I was grateful to have about 25 people in my virtual session last night for the 4T Virtual Conference on Digital Writing as I shared some of my experiences with the concept of “emergence” in open networks, and how to make the ground fertile for ideas. Or, a bit more catchy: How to Expect the Unexpected.

An invitation to doodle flowers met folks as they entered the Blackboard room, and it was lovely to see the flowers slowly blooming on the page. I then went into my presentation (a version of it is here, but the full presentation was recorded for eventual archive at the 4T site).

Here are the links that I shared during the presentation:

CLMOOC website: https://clmooc.com/

CLMOOC Make Bank: https://clmoocmb.educatorinnovator.org/home/

Terry’s Emergence WikiBook: https://www.scribd.com/document/286795651/Emergence-A-Wikipedia-Production  

Chalkboard Man: video teaser — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3rDHbMnDug&t=3s and ebook — https://www.scribd.com/document/357500041/The-Adventures-of-Miss-Direction-Searching-for-Chalkboard-Man

CLMOOC Coloring Book: http://www.lulu.com/shop/clmooc-crowd/clmooc-coloring-book/paperback/product-23316680.html 

CLMOOC Postcard Storify (Karen): https://storify.com/kfasimpaur/clmooc-data-postcards

CLMOOC Dance Party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53aBEQO6a0E

And I ended with both an invitation to keep an eye out for a Pop Up Make Cycle on the horizon for November on the theme of  “maps” as well as a link to collaborate on a poem, using some of the words from the presentation as an acrostic invitation.

Hey .. you come, too .. grab an open letter and add some words.

Emergence Poem Collaboration

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

 

National Day on Writing is … Friday

Why I Write TShirt

(wearing my new Why I Write t-shirt)

The annual National Day on Writing, hosted by NCTE and other organizations like the National Writing Project, is coming again this week. On Friday, Ocober 20, the National Day on Writing — with the theme of Why I Write — will again take to the social media airwaves. Join the mix. Add your voice, your words, your images, your videos. Whatever.

Why do you write?

Peace (write it to make it happen),
Kevin

WMWP: Teachers Teaching Teachers

WMWP Best Practices 2017 from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.

Our Western Massachusetts Writing Project held its annual fall conference yesterday — Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing — with many workshops from teachers, for teachers, and a powerful keynote address by Sydney Chaffee, a Massachusetts teacher who is the National Teacher of the Year.

The conference really embodies the notion of “teachers teaching teachers” and workshops ranged from writing in the content areas, technology-infused writing concepts, student journaling, and more.

The video is a little teaser of some of the writing, learning, sharing going on all throughout the day at the University of Massachusetts.

Peace (learning it),
Kevin

Writing in Federated Space: Kintsugi Magazine

Kinsugi Magazine

I’ve been spending more and more time, writing and making new connections in Mastodon, a federated social media space not run by some corporation intent on selling our data and invading our privacy for stockholders. It’s run and overseen by people. I donate to the Mastodon effort through Patreon. I’m appreciating the many connection points there, from music collaborations to daily writing to remix efforts. I am also greatly appreciating this new eMagazine that is designed in and of the Mastodon space.

It’s called Kintsugi. Here’s what its editor and Mastodon friend, Erdal O. writes about that word, Kintsugi, and the intent of the magazine:

Kintsugi borrows its name from the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery to give it a new lease of life. The philosophy behind this has its roots in the Wabi-Sabi tradition, which sees existence as  imperfect, incomplete and impermanent; instilling a sense of appreciation, acceptance and harmony in the way we live and interact with nature and people.

Kintsugi is a project organised and put together through social media, mainly the Mastodon network. The contributors have not met in person or face to face. Our aim here was to show that people can do good and put together something unique and different. We wanted to encourage others to come forward and do the same.

Here, we celebrate the diversity of people and ideas.  The Kintsugi magazine covers a diverse set of themes and ideas. We celebrate the value of goodness and and the broken lines in each one of us, akin to repaired pottery.

I was so intrigued by the first edition (now available in different format at Internet Archives) that I submitted a piece about “small writing” and added a few comics to the mix for the second edition. (My friend, Terry E., meanwhile, had some poems posted in the same edition.) I also sent in another piece for the third edition, whenever that comes out.

I love the open nature of this kind of publication — the way Erdal puts the call out via the open network and invites a variety of voices into the mix — and the range of articles and media in the magazine is a lovely experience. All for free. All in the open.

Peace (in federated space),
Kevin

Sharing History/Writing/Social Justice Connections

WMWP Best Practices

Tomorrow is the Western Massachusetts Writing Project‘s annual Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing conference, and I am joining some of my colleagues in presenting a workshop around how we developed professional development and then ran a youth summer camp at the Springfield Armory historical site. The project was funded by the Mass Humanities organization (thank you!) along with the National Writing Project (thank you!).

I led/am leading the WMWP end of things — facilitating all of the professional development and guiding the development of the summer program for middle school students. The teachers — two of whom are co-presenting with us — are from a social justice magnet school in Springfield, our main urban center. The Springfield Armory is an often-forgotten piece of local history. The project connects the school to the Armory (and continues into the school year … we just had another meeting this week, planning out activities.)

In our presentation at the WMWP conference, we aim to share strategies for engaging students in writing with primary sources and historical perspectives (and we aim to get folks writing as well). The Minds Made for Stories title, which is what we called our project, refers to Thomas Newkirk’s book of the same name, in which he argues that everything is story.

Another objective here, along with sharing our story, is to give our Springfield teachers a chance to be in the spotlight and to present in a conference setting, in front of other educators. They seem a little nervous, but we’re all here to help them.

As a bonus, we have the National Teacher of the Year — Sydney Chaffee — as our keynote speaker for lunch, and the title of her talk is “Composing Change: Equity and Civic Engagement Across Content Areas.” That should be interesting.

Peace (in busy times),
Kevin

Book Review: Refugee

I picked up Refugee by Alan Gratz with an eye towards my sixth graders (my seventh-grade son read it before I did), and I quickly found my heart and mind tumbling into the uncertainty of the three characters here as they each navigated an escape from their homeland. I teared up at the end, too, when Gratz effectively pulls all three story threads together in a way that I won’t give away in this review.

You need to read this book.

Refugee focuses on three stories: a Jewish boy escaping Nazi Germany, a young girl leaving Cuba for the United States as part of one of Castro’s boat-lifts, and a Muslim boy trying to make his way to Germany after his country of Syria has been reduced to rubbles by the current Civil War. Each story, from a different time. But the narrative arcs that Gratz spins brings each character’s story closer and closer to each other.

The terror, the uncertainty, the fear, the setbacks, the dangers, the hope … the reader experiences and lives all of these emotional entanglements through the eyes of these three characters, so much so that I am not sure I can use Refugee as a class novel, as I had hoped when I started the book. The brutality of the Nazis, in particular, is too intense. Gratz doesn’t pull punches. I don’t think I am being too protective of my sixth graders, although I wonder how much of the ugly world I should expose them to.  The world is ugly, after all. I’m never completely certain how far to go, to be honest.

I really appreciated what comes after the end of the novel, in his author’s note section, where Gratz shows the three maps of the three journeys of his refugee characters, and then he writes for a few pages about his research and where the stories emerged from, in regards to the world — in both the past and the present. He then goes on to share some organizations that help refugee children in the world, using the book as a platform for reaching out.

All in all, this book is amazingly powerful, and its narrative arcs and sympathetic characters will pull you deep into the experience beyond the newspaper headlines. It does what a good book should do: transforms your view of the world, and leaves you with some hope amid the horror.

Did I mention you should read this book?

Peace (let it be),
Kevin