Wordling Our Way into Day One

I am always curious to know what my new sixth graders are looking forward to and what they worry about. I had them use a Google Survey to gather responses to those two questions and used their answers to generate a few Wordles.

fears 2010

looking forward 2010
Can you tell which is which? Hint: MCAS is our state standardized test and Quidditch is our version of the Harry Potter game.

Peace (in the wordling),
Kevin

And Now Some Inspirational Words from Colleagues

Today, our students arrive. Yesterday, all of the staff in our district convened for our Convocation Ceremonies as a way to getting the year off to a start on a united front (we are a regional district) and the superintendent this year invited fellow teachers and administrators to be the speakers. Hearing those voices was a great way to begin the year, I thought, so kudos to our superintendent for passing the buck to the staff to motivate, inspire and lead us into the new school year.

Here are a few highlights:

  • My own building principal talked about coming into education as an idealist (and jokingly admitted how that idealism sometimes runs smack into reality when trying to bring ideas to fruition). He noted that no other professional addresses the needs so such a diverse population, and no other profession has a more meaningful goal in our society. Every day is a challenge. Yes. But that challenge is what we relish. “I pity the cubicle dwellers,” he said, to laughter.
  • A mom, who teaches kindergarten, and her daughter, who teaches third grade, took the podium collaboratively and in a very down-to-earth way, they talked about becoming inspired to be a teacher. The daughter: “I thought she (the mom) was the best teacher ever and I wanted to be just like her.” There were more than a few “awwws” in the audience. The two also did a funny bit about teaching styles today (ie, checking out lesson plans online) versus slightly more older teaching styles (ie, pulling out the old mimeograph copies).
  • Another third grade teacher, who had a career in the environmental sciences, told his story of how he went from that career into teaching, mostly because “it’s fun.” But that’s not all, he admitted. “Doing meaningful work has always mattered to me. One thing that charges me up … is knowing what happens in my classroom matters. I know this is a cliche, but what you and I do is important.
  • A high school math teacher took the stage to admit she is a full-fledged “math geek” who was a student in our district and came back as a teacher. She noted the many ways that colleagues helped her during her first years, and how she now tries to return the favor to her younger colleagues. And she loves seeing that spark with her students, noting: “I love to see students finding success where they don’t think it is possible.”
  • Another high school teacher, who teaches social studies, winged his talk a bit, and told of teachers from his Catholic school days who made impressions on him. One teacher was brilliant, and he still draws on those memories to inspire him as a teacher. Another was brilliant but could not connect with students, and was unfair in grading and unhelpful in nurturing young minds. “He expected a lot of his students but he did not expect a lot of himself. He had the ability but not the desire.”
  • Finally, a retired superintendent who now works for our state department of education concluded the Convocation with stories of her teaching days in Texas, and noted that so much of teaching is desire and drive. She also said that building a supportive school community, for staff as well as students, is crucial. “Our job is to be there for each other — to hold each other up. And when we take that as inspiration, we hold up all of our kids up, too.

What a great way to start the year!

Peace (in the words),
Kevin

Making Webcomics before the School Year Begins

Normally, as the start of school approaches, I include instructions in my summer letter home that asks my incoming students to write at our classroom blog a bit about what they did over the summer. This year, I am going to have us use Bitstrips for Schools webcomics, and so I changes my writing venue from the blog to our classroom webcomic space. It’s been pretty fun to see what they can do, particularly since they are on their own (for the most part — we don’t start school with kids until tomorrow).

Here is a snapshot of our “classroom” page. You can see that many of them are already creating avatars of themselves.
comic classroom 2010

I hope they view the activity as fun and engaging.

Peace (in the comic world),
Kevin

Balancing Concern and Possibilities

Like most schools in Massachusetts, where there is a new law around bullying issues, we spent much of our first day back in professional development sessions centered around bullying and cyberbulling. Under our new state law, there will be detailed reporting procedures, a trail of action taken by administrators, and introduction of a bullying curriculum. It’s an important issue and we need more discussions. But I wonder about the message that was sent yesterday to the elementary teachers by our first speaker.

Cindy Boyle, who is a community educator with the regional District Attorney’s team, was energetic, engaging, funny and clearly has talked a lot and worked a lot with kids. She cares about young people. That was evident.  She was also upfront, letting us know that her perspective on the use of technology to engage in bullying behavior (through messaging, comments, etc.) is seen through the prism of the justice system. She urged us to see the issue through the eyes of an educator, too.

She also made it clear that the fears over predators scouring the Internet for victims is so statistically rare, and happens in certain situations, that those fears are not what should be worrying us. It’s the regular kids that need to be in our field of vision. The kids with a cell phone, or a computer.

Then, she launched into a presentation about how prevalent technology is in the lives of young people, how often clueless many young people are about their “digital footprints,” how she works in small groups to help youths see what digital detritus they leave behind, and how technology can be used to decrease the social interactions of people to such a degree that bullying can take place easily enough. She also took gaming to task for its use of cheating by sharing codes, violence in first person games and anti-social behaviors of users.

A few things she presented were not quite correct. She used a recent Kaiser Family study in which young people were show on average to be consuming media about 7 hours a day. Boyle told us that the study showed that kids use the Internet for 7 hours a day. There were some gasps around me. And she told us that when you load a video to YouTube, anyone anywhere can write a comment saying whatever they want (she had a slide with some vicious comments to demonstrate her point). Another teacher questioned her on this, and she started to backtrack about privacy controls. Just to be clear: you can shut off all comments, all video responses, all ratings when you load your video, just to be clear. And the news articles she shared made their point dramatically, all right, with reports of teachers being penalized and students being reprimanded, etc.

I imagine that the majority of my colleagues probably just shut the door on the possibilities of using web-based technology with that one single presentation because even though Cindy Boyle made it clear that education is a key component to stopping bullying online, I imagine a lot of teachers thinking the easiest way is to not even bring technology into the classroom.

Although she had asked us to view the talk through our own eyes, I think the fears that she put in place may have overwhelmed any considerations of possibilities for Internet-based work, including writing for an audience, connecting with global partners, composing in multiple media, etc. Those positive learning elements seemed diminished in the shadow of worry that she cast over us.

Peace (in the balance),
Kevin

What I’ve been up to … Bassman Comics

While I was away on a blogging vacation in August, I also kept creating more Bassman webcomics, in which I am poking fun at my love of music and playing in rock and roll bands. My hope is to get my 12 year old son to take these basic comics and do the artwork. He started the project but then stopped.I think it was right around the time he finally earned an iPod touch. Hmmm.

This is what he drew up for me first:
Bassman drawn (1)
Here is a collection of the 20-odd strips I am working on with Bassman:

Peace (in the frame),
Kevin

My 25-Word Story Collection on Prezi

I’m back on my blog as I gear up for getting back to school next week. It’s been a nice vacation away from blogging, but I have been writing and doing other things. I’ll slowly share some of those things as the days go along. One of the things I’ve been doing that has me thinking a lot is writing 25-word stories on Twitter. This idea was made know to me by Brian Fay, a colleague in the National Writing Project, and you have to tell (try to tell) a story within 25 words. The concept fits perfectly with Twitter, of course, and there is a collection of stories at #25wordstory.

I’ve written about 20 or so of the little guys. It’s a challenge to lay the groundwork of a tale but use brevity in doing so. You leave out a lot more than you put in. You have to think in terms of hints and motivations more than character development. I am hoping this kind of activity will tighten up my other writing.

This morning, I popped them into Prezi. Take a look:

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin

The Great August Blog Pull-Back

blogvacation
It’s the time of year when I step back from blogging for a stretch and give my mind and my blog a rest. If you are a regular reader, thank you for coming by each day and I will be writing again when September rolls around. If you are a newcomer, welcome to my blog site and I hope you find me again in a few weeks.

I’ll still be writing here and there (on Twitter, at our iAnthology, for various websites where I write reviews — although I’ll be slowing down all around there, too, in August), but not here at Kevin’s Meandering Mind. I find that stepping away from the blog makes me appreciate the act of blogging more on the return, and allows me to concentrate on other things, like my family.

Write to you soon!

Peace (in rest mode),
Kevin

Environmental Glogging

envirglogs
Now that I have decided to join in with the Voices on the Gulf project for this coming year, I realized that I needed to go back to some environmental projects from last year and pull some together on a website. These projects were done on Glogster and were part of the culminating work after reading the novel Flush by Carl Hiasson.

The glog projects were built around an interest in an environmental issue, although most seemed to choose endangered animals as their topics. I want to have them on a website because I want to be able to show some examples as we move into doing writing and research around the Gulf oil spill and recovery efforts this year. I see Glogster as one platform for composition by my sixth graders.

Visit the Environmental Glog site.

If you want to learn more about using online poster sites like Glogster, I wrote an article over at Learn NC a few months ago called Digital Posters: Composing with an Online Canvas and created this glog, too.

Peace (in the glogging),
Kevin

Joining “Voices on the Gulf”

August means I am already thinking of the start of  the school year , and I decided this week that I am going to join in on the new Voices of the Gulf project that is being launched by Paul Allison, Chris Sloan and others to galvanize students around environmental issues.

I’m not sure how the work with Voices on the Gulf will emerge for my students, but I do like the idea of connecting many youth voices from all over the country together to share writing, images, videos and resources, and then move into positive community action, that stem from the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Disaster.

Last spring, I spent an entire day talking with my students about oil, the Gulf of Mexico, environmental issues and energy policy. I wish I had had that discussion earlier in the year, because they were so fired up to do some sort of community action project even as time ran out on us. I sort of felt like I let them down.

Ideally, I’d like to use the Voices on the Gulf site forinquiry projects for my sixth graders for the course of the year — a common theme that connects at various points. I need to think more, reflect a bit on what that might look like in my Language Arts classes. I’ll share out as I know more myself, and I hope that you, too, might consider having your class join the Voices on the Gulf venture.

Paul and Susan Ettenheim and others have been discussing the idea for a few weeks at Teachers Teaching Teachers, and the podcasts are slowly being published by Paul. It’s a good place for me to start thinking. Their guests have included teachers in areas directly affected by the oil spill, and their students will be part of the Voices on the Gulf, which is a great reason for me to get my students involved.

Right now, Paul is establishing some teacher leaders to help coordinate various elements of the site, and Gail Desler and I have been designated as folks who will be helping with the element of younger students (elementary) on a channel called Our Space (K-6) where students can share stories, poems, reflections, photos and more. Don’t ask me about the logistics, yet, since I am not quite there with the planning.

The other day, Paul asked teachers to begin checking out the Voices on the Gulf website, and adding content, so I created this poem about the Gulf  and shared it there.

(listen)

The Gulf:  A Poem

By Kevin Hodgson

Blackened
by negligence
Wind-swept
by storms
the coast groans under the weight
of our desires

We ignore the sun
argue against the wind
temper our fears of fusion
and dig deeper than ever
into the depths of the waters

and pray the pipes can hold
so that we can illuminate
and communicate
and move from here to there
in a trail of exhaustion

set out behind us
even as we ignore the near past
in order to gaze into the near future
with no consequences of our actions
on this fragile world

There’s room for you and your students, too, at Voices on the Gulf.

Peace (in the inquiry),
Kevin