Author Archives: dogtrax

Teaching Design and Digital Composition w/Glogster

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Yesterday (as part of Digital Learning Day), I brought all four of my sixth grade classes into Glogster.edu for the first time, and as expected (from past experiences), they loved it. They love the possibility of embeddable media, they love the clip art, and they love the colorful options of theme and “stickers” and more. But before they could even get their account information, we had a long discussion about “design principles.” For many of my students, this kind of thinking is new, although when we began to talk about Apple and its products, something clicked for a lot of them.

I began by explaining some of my own thoughts around design, with an emphasis on web design.

  • “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it”
  • Don’t make random decisions about your design – be thoughtful in your choices
  • The way colors look together is important
  • Images and video should be partners to text
  • Be consistent with your theme (background, text, images, multimedia, etc.)
  • Simple design is always better than complicated design


I then showed them my Glogster project (which I had shared with them the day before, as they knew they were going to be working on a Glog related to their short stories). I asked them to pick apart my thinking. Why did I choose what I chose, and how did those choices connect to my short story (which I had read aloud to them last week)? It was great. They noticed many of the elements that I wanted to notice.

Then, I shared this following Glog with them. I took the same text but purposely went anti-design. You should have heard the “whoahs” and “I can’t read that” and “yikes” that accompanied the first look. Then, again, I asked them to break down what I did NOT do when it comes to design choices. We talked about colors, about busyness, about lack of theme, about no connection to the original text.

I think they got it. Or most of them got it. Check out this project which a student began in class and then completed at home. I would say that it shows pretty decent design principles, don’t you?

Peace (on the Glog),
Kevin

 

We’re Glogging Our Way on Digital Learning Day

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It’s Digital Learning Day!

I am bringing my students onto Glogster.edu for the first time this year, but we will be using the digital poster site quite a bit as the year progresses for projects around multimedia writing in ELA, engineering explorations in Science, and a history poster in Social Studies (and who knows, maybe some graphing in Math). What we will be doing today is talking about “design principles” and then, they are going to working on a Glog that connects with the Adventure Short Story they just completed yesterday. Their Glog will focus on:

  • Summary
  • Protagonist/Antagonist
  • Setting

I want to keep it simple, and doable, but also, I didn’t want them to being a random project, either. Yesterday, I shared the Glog that I created for my own short story so they could envision what I am expecting. They also received a brainstorming sheet to gather ideas, so that today, we won’t have to worry about what is going to be written — just how it will look.

Peace (on Digital Learning Day!),
Kevin

 

WMWP Pop Culture/Technology Conference

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This Saturday, our Western Massachusetts Writing Project holds a technology conference in conjunction with Digital Learning Day. We will have about 25 to 30 people (including the presenters) attend as we explore the intersections of popular culture, technology and the new (Common Core-influenced) Massachusetts Curriculum Standards. I’m pretty excited about it. I am leading a session with my friend, Tina, on video game design and kicking off the day with a quick introduction.
Here is what I will be talking about to start off the conference:
Pop Culture, Technology and the Common Core PDF
 

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Book Review: The Best Teen Writing of 2011

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At a Western Massachusetts Writing Project meeting last week, we were given free sample editions of The Best of Teen Writing 2011, which is an anthology from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. It’s just page after page of wonderful writing, and the stories and essays and poems give such a great insight into not just the abilities of these young writers, but also their worlds. Loss and tragedy do filter through a bit too much in many of the stories, but I suspect those raw emotions are most powerful and most easily harnessed by the teens.

Each year, the Alliance accepts submissions from young people and then works it ways through the writing to come up with some of the best writing around. The stories here are from young authors who won medals in The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. If they published this without the moniker of “teen writing,” you would assume they were professional and published authors — that’s how polished and inventive and wonderful the writing is.

I haven’t gotten through the entire anthology yet, but I will. You should, too, and if you teach middle school or high school and you are looking to inspire some of your own students as writers, hand them a copy of this. It’s full of possibilities and inspiration. (One note of caution: there is profanity in here, so one option is to pick and choose the stories to share with your students.)

Peace (in the pages),
Kevin

 

Me, on the Web

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I have some writing scattered about the web today:

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

 

The State of Technology Webcomic

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This is an annual survey that I give to my students, with some changes each year, to give me a sense of my students. This year, it coincided nicely with Digital Learning Day and an upcoming unit around digital citizenship and safety.

You can access the full comic here, too, if the flash format does not work for you.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Literary Recipes: Ricky Ricotta and His Mighty Robot

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Over at our iAnthology network, where teachers write every week, the prompt this week is to create a “literary recipe” as creative writing. I was mulling over what to write about when I noticed my young son completely immersed in the Dav Pilkey’s Ricky Ricotta series. So, here is my recipe for the books:


Take one tiny mouse and add a dose of smarts and courage.

Introduce giant robot who loves the mouse. Add “protector” to robot personality.

Toss in some villains from distant planets.

  • Jurassic Jackrabbits
  • Stupid Stinkbugs
  • Mutant Mosquitoes
  • Voodoo Vultures
  • Mecha-Monkeys

Be sure to dose liberally with alliteration spices. Shake thoroughly. Shake ’em hard.

Add a bit of mayhem to the plot. It helps if the world is about to be taken over by villains and Ricky is the only one who can thwart the aliens.

Place mouse in danger. Maybe, have his held captive. Let robot know mouse is in danger. Watch robot act.

Sprinkle witty dialogue here and there. If you can add a pun, do so. In fact, be generous with puns.

Make sure the illustrations move the story along. For extra taste, add a few flip-o-rama pages for the battle scenes.

Flip the flip-o-rama. Flip – Flip – Flip.

Bake entire book .. eh, I mean read … for about ten minutes from start to finish. (Five minutes, if you are an adult).

Savor the goofy aftertaste of a fun Dav Pilkey yarn, and then move on to the next book.

Repeat as needed.

Peace (in the robot),
Kevin

Digital Learning Day: The Tech We Use

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Next week, on February 1, it is Digital Learning Day. I have some technology ideas brewing for my students, but I thought I would pull together some of the ways that we engage in digital media and technology in my sixth grade classroom. Since I will be bringing my students into Glogster EDU next week, I figured I would use Glogster as my platform to showcase a few of our projects, and explain why it is that I do those things with my students.

Here is my Glog overview (those of you reading this in RSS will need to use the link, I think):

 

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

PS — It’s not too late to get involved in Digital Learning Day There’s even a video challenge component to the day, sponsored by USA Today.

We’re Moving Towards the STEM Video Challenge

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We spent a good part of the month of December, working on our science-based video game project. But yesterday was the first day I have had a real chance to chat with my classes about what I saw when I was assessing their projects and to give another overview of the STEM Video Game Challenge. My teaching colleagues and I have identified about 15 projects (out of more than 50 video games) that we think, with some revision and more work, might have a chance. We haven’t shut the door to the others but I wanted to encourage students whose games really did rise up above the others and reflect interesting game play and integrated science themes.

We had long conversations about STEM, and what it is, and why that is the push of this challenge. They were most interested in considering how science, technology, engineering and math are going to be much of the focus of the employment world when they head off into the marketplace (in 10 years or so).

So, they are now going to review their games (made on Gamestar Mechanic) and consider if they want take the next step. I have given them about four weeks to make their decision. This work will involve game revision; writing a short narrative overview of their game; and then going through the registration process, which I have promised to help walk them through.

My guess is that we might have 8 to 10 games that move forward before the March 12 deadline.

This is the first year we have done game design at our school (and probably in our entire school district), and this is the first year anyone from our school will enter the challenge, so I am hard-pressed to know how it will go. But, there was a lot of excitement as we talked about the competition and our games, and whether our work would stack up against other middle school game designers in the country.

I think they do stack up, and they will be very competitive as game designers.

Peace (in the STEM),
Kevin

Collecting Videos: Writers Talking About Writing

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My students are in the midst of an adventure short story project. This is the first year I have required all of the stories to be typed, not handwritten, and so, much of our class time has given way to them using the laptops for writing. Most of them are in the rising action of their stories, but we have been talking mostly of how to create a climatic scene that the story will build towards and then resolve afterwards. One problem for a lot of young (and old) writers is starting with a great idea, moving it along and then …. the story never goes anywhere. We’re using structure to keep that focus and create a finishing point.

But, I am also spending time at the start of each class, sharing out videos of writers talking about writing. Here are a few worth sharing:





If you have links to videos like this, please drop me a comment so I can share it with my students and also, add it to my Writers Talk Writing Playlist.

Peace (in the advice),
Kevin