I decided to do a reflection on running a Comic Camp for middle school students over at The Graphic Classroom, where I am a staff reviewer and contributor. I hope my reflections are useful to anyone else considering this kind of camp, which really engaged young writers in meaningful ways.
Peace (within the drawings),
Kevin
Mark Twain arrived home this week, safe and sound inside an envelope. He is part of a group of Writer figurines making their way around the country by visiting various Summer Institutes of the National Writing Project. We’ve packaged the concept as a spy story, in which The Writers have been instructed by President Obama to investigate the National Writing Project and report back. The reporting has been done at a Ning site for technology-minded folks within the NWP.
What I’ve been doing, other than overseeing The Writers’ various journeys, is creating little stopmotion movies to keep the concept fresh and to poke fun at The Writers. Yesterday, I gave Twain his own feature, arriving home in one of my son’s Pirate Ships, floating along the blue waters of one of our futon couches. Meanwhile, we still have no word on the whereabouts of Edgar Allen Poe, who seems to have disappeared in the US Mail system.
I decided to try something a little different with this movie, using ComicLife to create the dialogue on images and then mixing up images and video. It was tricky and I am not sure I kept enough time for the reading of the lines. Let me know. I can always go back and re-edit, if necessary.
If you want to see the other segments of The Writers, go: First here and then here and then here. That should bring you up to speed.
.
Peace (in the fun),
Kevin
Andy over at http://iteach20.blogspot.com/ is launching a great concept for commenting on other people’s blogs. He wants to keep the concept simple and manageable, so his idea is for folks to make one comment per day on a blog you don’t often come across.
Here is what he says:
Here is the process.
1. Read a blog
2. Post a comment that is insightful and constructive.
3. Tweet a link to the blog and your comment. Use the hash tag #OneComment
EXAMPLE: I just read a great piece on iTeach blog, check it out! #OneComment
4. Bookmark the blog and return to it another time.
It is just that easy! This Project will help create a positive forum for all who blog and comment. There are so many good educational blogs out there and I look forward to hearing your feedback and engaging in your comments!
The second phase of this project will be a featured blog a week project. This forum will review and promote one educational blog per week. It will also try and introduce new edu-blogs into the learning community. I will be setting up a Ning for this venture. The sole purpose of both ventures is to promote learning and create an engaging dialogue between so many great academic minds. The twitter hash tag for this will be #1Newblog
Please send me your thoughts, suggestions and feedback on both new ventures!I would also like to put together a small team to help with this venture due to the time consuming nature of the project. If you would like to help your fellow bloggers and be an integral part of this venture, please contact me at onecommentproject@gmail.com
I have also set up a separate twitter account for this second phase. It will be @1commentproject. Please follow it for blog updates and blog promotions. When we spread the word about great blogs, we all shine!
Go on. Give it a whirl!
Peace (in new explorations),
Kevin
The third and final installment of podcasts about the book I co-edited and wrote a chapter for (called Teaching the New Writing) is up at Teachers Teaching Teachers. The first podcast centered on why us three editors (myself, Charlie Moran and Anne Herrington) decided to publish a collection of chapters on how technology may be changing writing instruction, particularly in the age of assessment and standardized testing. The second installment dealt with the idea of collaboration in a technology-infused writing classroom.
And this last edition centered on the concept of expanding sense of audience and how that might impact student writing and projects. We were joined by some of the chapter authors (Troy Hicks, Dawn Reed, Marva Solomon and Bryan Crandall) to discuss a variety of projects.
Listen in:
Or download the file.
Peace (in the podcast),
Kevin
It’s Monday, so I am continuing to share out my evolving webcomic series about my life in music, as told through ToonDoo. This comic centers on the first time I played solo in front of an audience and the likely perceptions that were at play.
And here is the ongoing ebook collection:
Peace (in the notes),
Kevin
Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant is once again holding a blogging Leadership Day tomorrow, in which he asks folks to blog about advice or help for administrators.
This year, I decided to write a song that tries to capture the idea of administrators and leaders getting out of their offices and into the classrooms to talk to students about what they do and what they need and what they hope for. Also, I want to say again that technology should be integrated into the curriculum, not the old model of “drop my kids off into the lab for a planning period” kind of integration.
Anyway:
You Gotta Listen to the Kids
(by Kevin Hodgson)
Here’s what I fear
Tech won’t disappear
It’ll still be apart from the wholeWhen everybody knows
that kids will grow
when they connect their school to home‘Cause kids are gonna text
explore what’s next
but they need us as a helping handSo listen up, leaders:
we need you as believers
and support us any way you canYou gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’re gonna show you the way
You gotta listen to the kids
they’ve got some things to sayNone of us knows
where this all goes
so the tool doesn’t matter muchBut if they can explore
it’ll open up doors
and the world will be right in touchYou gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’re gonna show us the way
You gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’ve got some things to say
Peace (in the song),
Kevin
PS — the song is also at this link.
This is just a bit of fun — but one of our Writers figures that we have sent out on a “mission” to discover more about the National Writing Project has gone missing. (You can read more about the project here) I am sure he will turn up but I used the opportunity to create this movie with Xnormal, where you turn text into video. I then used the option for YouTube, just to keep track of the videos.
Peace (in bringing Poe home!),
Kevin
It’s been a long but productive four days of co-teaching a Claymation/Stopmotion Movie Camp for middle school students. When I think about it, they accomplished quite a bit. All 16 of the students worked on small claymation clips, learned three to four new software programs and then created (mostly through collaboration with others) a longer Claymation or Stopmotion movie.
This year, the group worked better and more creatively than past groups. It all has to do with dynamics, I suppose, but you could really get a sense of the exploration in the air. For the most part, I show them something and then get out of the way. My co-teacher, Tina, and I were tech support and allowed students to bounce ideas off us. But for the most part, they were off and running before we even said “go.”
Yesterday, we showcased the nine movies before a crowd of family and friends. I had each group or each student come up before the crowd and talk about their movie first. They did a great job and the audience was impressed by the work, as was I.
Two movies come to mind.
The first is by two boys who had a great vision, but not quite enough time to get it all done. They used wooden artistic figures more than clay, and their original story involved two little wooden guys discovering a larger wooden guy, who comes to life. As the large guy walks, his footprints would morph into claymation art. They ran out of time, but their work is still pretty cool animation:
The second was a group of three older boys. What I loved about this group was how creative and collaborative they were, and how they realized they could use a bunch of technology in their movie. So, they began with a scene from a Pivot video they made in which two stick figures push a button. Then, they used Bendaroos to create physical versions of their characters, and clay for the others. They also decided to use the digital voice component on Windows for the voice of the villain, shoving the microphone into a set of headphones. Pretty nifty.
Peace (in the movies),
Kevin
PS — You can see all of the movies and more at our Summer Camp blog site.
We had an interesting day at our Claymation and Comic Camps yesterday, as kids in the movie section worked hard on their longer claymation movies (which have to be completed today for family) and we had two visitors to our Comic Camp — Hilary Price, whose comic Rhymes with Orange runs in about 150 newspapers, and Bryant Paul Johnson, a webcomic who is now working on a historical fiction graphic novel.
First, here are two movies show some of the claymation work of a blob coming to life and also a character I created out of Bendaroos called Cal the Clayman as he visits the “sets” of the movies.
And then, here are some photos from the visits to the clay camp:
Peace (on our last day),
Kevin