Day 14: 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s note: I’m not sure why I was thinking of the giant trees in our front yard — maybe it is the dangling branches that have me worried. But, in the spring, our neighbor comes and taps them, and then we make syrup. It had me wondering from the tree’s perspective. So, a Haiku for you.)

In spring, when trees cry,
we collect tears as sweetness:
dripping on our tongue

Listen to the podcast poem.

Peace (in the flow),
Kevin

The National Writing Project Annual Meeting

It’s that time of year: the Annual Meeting of the National Writing Project. Next week, I’ll be heading off to Philadelphia to join my fellow colleagues in celebrating and exploring the art of teaching writing, and the art of writing, in a variety of sessions.

My hope is to blog and tweet about my experience there, including the exciting Digital Is conference on Wednesday that comes from an incredible new partnership between the NWP and the MacArthur Foundation. The work, which I am part of, helps take a look at where writing is going in the digital age. We’re in the process of developing online resources but this conference will bring together a lot of people to look at, discuss and then consider the implications of digital composition. I am presenting a piece of student work — a digital science book.

That same night, I am going to a a conference entitled: The Power of Youth Voice: What Kids Learn When They Create with Digital Media. I can’t wait for that!

My only other presentation at NWP this year is on Friday, when I am joining a number of other people in roundtable discussions about how to use an online social networking site to discuss books. A friend and I are focusing on a section of the online site where we talk about graphic novels and comics. We even had an interesting online book talk about a graphic novel that was fascinating and a bit frustrating, and shows the possibilities and the drawbacks of an online discussion site.

I am planning on going to three other sessions while in Philly:

Writing in a Digital Age

This workshop explores the evolving nature of writing and literacy today. Participants will examine students’ digital writing from a range of classrooms and consider the digital and physical environments that support such writing practices. Participants will have opportunities to discuss the implications of what they observe for their own classroom and writing project site work.

21st Century Literacy and the Graphic Novel

This session will focus on the prevalence and permanence of the graphic novel. We’ll examine its integration of multiple literacies as well as its impact on youth culture, youth identity formation, and the development of students as readers and writers. Participants will examine the graphic novel as a format and as a specific mode of communication and written self-expression and will explore its potentialities in the classroom as a tool for fostering the developing literacy of diverse student populations. Through discussion, participants will develop rationales for the increased use of graphic novels in 21st century classrooms.

Reading the Research: Living and Learning with New Media

This Reading the Research session examines a research report titled Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of their digital media and learning initiative, this report emerges from a three-year study carried out by researchers who explored the ways that the interaction with and use of new media impact the lives and learning of youth today. Facilitators and participants will explore implications for their local writing project work and applications for local programming.

Plus, all of the other fun stuff — like social gatherings, the big morning address to all NWP folks in attendance (a great way to see how many people are there at the conference), with guest speaker Billy Collins. (wow!) I wonder if I can get him to sponsor me with my 30Poems 30Days project. Ha!

And of course, my work over at the NCTE meeting on Saturday (presenting and then book signing. See yesterday’s post)

And, to top it off, I am hoping that we can gather up a bunch of folks from my Tech Friends networking site — where NWP technology liaisons like me come together online to chat, share and connect. We usually try to convene for a dinner and face time.

I hope to see you there!

Peace (in the City of Brotherly Love and losers of the World Series to the Yankees!),

Kevin

Day 13: 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s note: I feel a bit like I am running out of steam. 30 days is beginning to take its toll. So, I looked around our house and tried to focus on something simple for this poem. What I found was a bench piled high with books for the kids — picture books, chapter books, comics, graphic novels, sports books, etc. So, a poem to the pile!)

There’s no madness to this mess —
it’s just a mess of stories
that never rests —
nor do we want it to
even as the stack teeters precariously
under the weight of those words and stories
that provide buried treasure there
for even the most intrepid explorer.

Listen to the podcast poem

Peace (in the verse),

Kevin

NCTE: Focus on the work of Teaching the New Writing

I am off to Philly next week for a variety of events — including the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, a day-long conference called Digital Is that is the product of a partnership between NWP and the MacArthur Foundation, and the annual meeting of the National Conference of Teachers of English. I’ll try to write more about what I am going to be up to later, but on Saturday (11/21), I am going to be with my co-editors of our book Teaching the New Writing, pen in hand and ready to sign books.

A book signing! Wow. This will be the first. And my handwriting stinks, so it will be a challenge for me.

The book signing (at booth 702 at 11 am) comes right after a session that we (co-editors Charlie Moran and Anne Herrington and fellow chapter writer Dawn Reed)  are doing for NCTE called Assigning and Assessing Multimedia Writing. We’ll be showing some student work (digital science books and podcasting work) and talking about ways to look at (or listen to) digital compositions from a teaching and assessment standpoint. That session takes place on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at Marriott/Franklin 4, 4th Floor.

Here is the blurb:

Title: Assigning and Assessing Multimedia Writing
(Sponsoring Group: National Writing Project)
How can we responsibly assign multimedia writing projects when state and national standards favor the five-paragraph theme? And what criteria can we use to assess this new writing in our own classrooms? This workshop will offer two models of multimedia projects, one a sixth grade digital picture book project and one a high school ‘This I Believe’ podcast project. The presenters will focus on the ways in which they hve assigned and scaffolded their students’ work in multimedia, the criteria they have used in assessing these multimedia projects, and the ways in which they have aligned the projects with state and national testing programs. Participants will then collaborate to develop assessment criteria for another multimedia text.

Chair: Diane Waff, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Presenter: Anne Herrington, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Kevin Hodgson, Leeds, Massachusetts
Charles Moran, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dawn Reed, Okemos High School, Michigan
Reactor / Respondent: Cozette Ferron, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At 1:15 that same day, I am one of the presenters at the Technology to Go kiosks and I will be showing people webcomics and hopefully, I will have a ToonDoo site ready for folks to get into and try out for themselves.

So, if you are there, please say hello.

Peace (in the sessions),

Kevin

The Game: 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s note:  I used to live for Sundays in football season, just to watch the New York Giants. There were good years. There were bad years. And at night, I would dream in football plays — usually the botched ones. Thankfully, I have grown out of that phase. But I still love the Giants and catch a bit when I can. It’s just not the same.)

I used to dream in football back when I was fan
so that I could redraw the plays the way they should have been played
and not how they came out on the field
It is amazing how invested I could become
from my living room chair, with a beer can in my hand,
and my feet nowhere near the green grass.
And at night, I was the coach,
picking apart the film.
I still watch, but I am not the same;
Now, I wake up at night with worries of my family
or my classroom
my students
or my writing.
The game has changed in ways that I cannot even begin to fathom.

Listen to the podcast poem.

Peace (on the field),
Kevin

Composing: A visual poem

Take a word. Toss it into this Williams Words generator. Out comes a visual poem. Of sorts. Here is mine, using the word “composing” as the generator text. I am even going to say, this is one of my 30Poems 30Days poems, as a way to honor the non-traditional poet.

Peace (in the visual),
Kevin

A must-read: The Digital Writing Workshop

I’ll start out by saying that the author of this fantastic new book — The Digital Writing Workshop — is Troy Hicks, a friend of mine through the National Writing Project and one of the chapter authors in my own book, Teaching the New Writing. So, this is not a completely unbiased recommendation to go out and get this book.

But you should, particularly if you are interested in the ways that writing can use technology wisely with students in their role as composers with digital media. In this book, Troy lays out an entire realm of digital tools that are out there than can support and enhance the teaching of writing. He also touches on such ideas as Choice and Inquiry, Conferencing with students, publishing student work to a world audience, and assessing such digital work (always a tricky endeavor in my opinion).

In his opening statement, Troy wisely lays out the rationale for his work:

I argue here and throughout this book that if we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then on the writing, and lastly on the technology. (p.8)

Troy grounds his work in the foundations of the Writing Process movement — where the focus is on the writer’s exploration — but examines the potential of technology for students. Wikis can be collaborative publishing spaces, collaborative word processors (like Google Docs) can show revision history, podcasting gives students a voice to the world, digital storytelling as a way to merge writing with image and more.

Troy also provides plenty of information, such as his chart that shows the traits of effective and ineffective digital writers. He also wisely lays out the various technology and projects along a spectrum called MAPS: Mode, Media, Audience, Purpose, and Situation for the writer.

If you are a teacher interested in moving towards the digital writing world with your students, this is the book to get. Troy has made a useful and engaging book about the transformation going on in some classrooms, but not enough. I will be keeping this book on my desk at school and sharing it with colleagues when I can. You should, too.

Meanwhile, you can also join up with Troy and others who have read the book at Troy’s ning site: http://digitalwritingworkshop.ning.com/

Peace (in the exploration),

Kevin

Day 11: 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s Note: I have three boys. My mom passed away as the second one was nearing birth, so she knew our first, knew of the second but never of the third. I wonder what she would have thought about them and think about how she would have loved to be with them. A poem of memory, loss and celebration.)

How much life we have lived without my mother to see it;
she who died before the second one was born
and never even knew that a third one was destined
and only held onto the first one with such fierce love
that her echoes still reverberate around us.

Listen to the podcast poem.

Peace (in the 30 days),
Kevin

Day 10: A Double Dose of Poetry for 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s note: Today, I have two poems on tap for my 30Poems 30 Days adventure. The first is inspired by my older boys playing baseball. They’ve been playing since spring and they continue to play in a large pick-up game three times a week — although now, with the time change, it is down to just Saturday mornings. The poem came as I watched dusk descend on them one night. The second is a request from Gail D. to make a poem with my comic, Boolean Squared, and so what came out was a little rant about kids being locked into standardized education.)

The boys are playing baseball with the Sun again;
the daylight sits, glove ready, on the horizon
as the kids all spill out onto the field after school,
whistling some summer tune
even as the leaves tumble to the ground
as a mattress for winter.
Still, they smack the ball around and shout at the sun
to stay up and be ready and to not give in to the shadows
which creep into the game like a grumpy umpire shouting:
“You’re out!”

Listen to the podcast poem.

And now, Boolean Squared poetry.

Peace (in the poems),

Kevin

Day Nine: 30Poems 30Days

(Poet’s Note: I wrote this the other day, when the switching of the clocks wreaked some havoc on me.)

I’ll just put this extra hour in my pocket
for some day when I really need it —
when I am on the run with time flying by
as the list of things-to-do grows longer
than the clock itself

I’ll fold up this the hour and tuck it inside my wallet
next to the expired credit cards and unintelligible phone numbers,
knowing that it is there for me like some golden drachma
to be slipped inside the Time Machine

You’d know what I’ll do with this hour?
I’ll kick back with it, relax and try not to think of next year’s Spring
when the world takes back its loan
and pushes me behind once again.

Listen to the podcast of the poem.

Peace (in the time),
Kevin