Using Movie/Television Clips to Teach Philosophy

I have a friend, Julie Akaret, who is a documentary filmmaker, and she is working with a professor at Mount Holyoke College to develop a website called What’s the Big Ideas? that will help teachers introduce basic philosophical ideas through the use of Hollywood movie clips and network television shows. Right now, they have content up there around bullying and lying, with additional topics to come.

The other day, as my students were finishing up the wonderfully different novel, Regarding the Fountain by Kate Klise, we were tackling the idea of lying, so Julie visited our class as we unpacked what it means to lie, when it seems OK to tell a lie, and when (as with the book) a person using their political power or government post to tell a lie for personal gain. My students really got into the discussion, and the film clips we used at the What’s The Big Idea? site (from Liar Liar, Jaws, Freaks & Geeks, Seinfeld, and Breaking Away) perfectly hit on a lot of our discussion points.

See this sample:

 

All the materials at the site are free (thanks to a grant) and I encouraged Julie to develop the topic of Environmental Ethics next, as I personally would love to use that part of the site for our environmental writing unit, and I think that the connections between media, writing and science could be a benefit to a lot of teachers now considering shifts into the Common Core curriculum. I also like that each video clip has an introduction to the concept, and sets the stage for the video. Julie is also developing handouts and resources related to the content for teachers to use as guides.

What’s The Big Idea? is worth your time and another way to engage our students in critical thinking skills that moves beyond the black/white of important issues by leading them into the grey area, with movies and television shows as another way to engage them in these important conversations.

Peace (in the big ideas),
Kevin

 

 

Considering Mentor Texts 6: Reflections and Observations

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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)

It’s been quite a week as I joined some friends in the Blogosphere — Bill and Franki and Troy and Katie and Tony — around considering how mentor texts can help with digital composition and I have thoroughly enjoyed not only writing my own posts, but reading the rest of the tribe as they shared their experiences. I found it fascinating that as the week progressed, more and more us began to reference the work of the others — so that our work become mentor texts for each other.

Could that have happened in a traditional writing environment? Perhaps. But not in a week’s time. If we were writing a book together, instead of creating an RSS-fed site that collected our posts, we might slip our writing into the mail, wait for a response, and then revise and add references to our work, and then — no doubt, weeks or months later — ship our writing off to a publisher, wait for the editors to tear it apart, revise for a few months, and then a year or two later, a book might emerge. And much of the technology would have changed, right? That’s the textbook industry and all of its problems in a nutshell, isn’t it?

It also demonstrates how digital tools are changing the way we write and publish. Some of our posts, no doubt, could use more revision and more thought. But in this format of RSS-collected archived, that is less important than our ideas coming together and coalescing around the issue of Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Our ideas bounce off each other. We seek out resonance with each other’s thoughts, and validate or question what we are doing. We improve our own instruction by joining the conversation. It’s all good.

I’ve tried to pay attention to some common themes that have emerged among us, too.

Here is what comes to mind:

  • Many of us picked apart a digital composition from the inside-out, in order to deconstruct it and make the intent of the creator visible, so that a blueprint could be made available to our students. This requires a certain way of looking at things, particularly if you are dealing with video or other multimedia tools’
  • I started off my posts by talking about how teachers should be building a repertoire of digital mentor texts for students, and others also picked up on that concept. I think we recognize that not only do we need to be doing what we are asking our students to be doing, but we need to be reflecting on experiences in honest ways (the pros and the cons) with them, too;
  • Digital composition engages students in many non-traditional ways and that is one of the powers of technology. The question is how to guide the learning so that the tools are just that — tools — and their use is not the goal. The goal is a specific learning goal that the tool supports. Mentor texts help keep this learning visible;
  • Design elements matter, perhaps more than ever. Use of color, and media, and more influence the compositional skills in ways that rarely impacted traditional writing. This thread emerged lots of times in our posts, I think;
  • Assessment is still a difficult area for many of us. I tried to explore this a bit, but not too many of us explored how assessment tools can be created from mentor texts. I think this lack of discussion is emblematic of the difficulty that many of us educators have of how to best evaluate and critique digital compositions. They may look polished and professional, but what is going on in there beyond the flash? As teachers, we need to be addressing this lack of good tools more (me, included);

Although all of our posts are being collected at the RSS site set up by Bill, I wanted to draw your attention to some writing by my colleagues that really stood out with me this week, and will be worth a visit (and a revisit by myself). These are my mentor texts, in a way, that are inspire me to think about the issue of mentor texts in a new way.

  • Franki reminded me about “teaching the writer, not the writing” and how that holds even more true in the digital age. Since so much of technology is new, we can easily get sidetracked into teaching the tool itself. Franki draws a nice connection back to strong writing ideas around the writer/creator as the center of our activities.
  • Troy has been doing great analysis of professional videos as mentor texts. His ability to really dive deep into the concepts and production and construction of video projects is worth checking out. Touching up some complex elements of parody and emulation, Troy makes visible so much that at first seems hidden. His use of the “Dove Evolution” video was quite interesting.
  • Tony’s post about students using design principles to create, revise, and recreate a project was intriguing, and his ability to show us that work in stages was priceless. That’s what we need: more examples of student work in process. And that’s what our students need, too, so that they don’t feel overwhelmed when they encounter a piece of digital composition and think: I could never do that. Pulling back the curtain opens more doors.
  • Katie shares her journey into blogging with her students, revealing the rationale of why moving writing online has power for her young students. I noted in a comment that her post can become a mentor text for other teachers. Her references to authentic publishing and motivation of writers is an argument for other teachers to consider.
  • Bill’s post about how one video idea spurred on another, and then created a sort of resonance loop, was interesting, and it reminded me of how much of that is going on with my students outside of school, particularly around video. More and more of my students have their own YouTube accounts, and when they share what they are doing with me (and I ask them “why did you do that kind of video?”), they often answer with “I saw it on …” I suppose this was always the case — we saw something on TV and tried to replicate it — but now the tools for composition are in the hands of more young people, and they are unafraid to make a ripple in the world.

I thank my friends for all of their hard work, and hope our writing has caused some ripples of their own out there in the world. If you have been following this work, thank you. Another element of online digital composition? It remains archived forever. So, come on back when you get a moment and explore. Then, create.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

Considering Mentor Texts 5: The Emulation Issue

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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)

I’ll start with a little story.

Remember this? This was a commercial created by Google for the Superbowl one year, and the video itself went viral, partly because of it storytelling (as an advertisement, of course).

Two years ago, as we were discussing the concept of “inference,” we watched the Parisian Love video and talked about what we saw. We talked about what was missing and who the typist might be. I then brought my students up to Google Search Stories — a digital storytelling tool by Google that lets you create a short digital video using only search engine tools. The inferential part of it is that the viewer has to fill in the narrative gaps between the search criteria to understand the bigger story. As is usual, I had created a search story myself, and shared the video and my own reflective analysis, with my students. Then, I set them loose on the site.

The result?

About a quarter of the class created search videos that looked and sounded and “read” almost identical to mine. I hesitate to call them remixes but it was if my idea for my story had gotten lodged into their brains and could only be shaken free by creating a replica of what they saw the teacher doing. This problem of how we can bring students into something new, share an example of our own making, and hope for original work is one is that not confined by digital tools — but it seems to be made easier with technology. Visually, the digital stories were appealing (it is a Google template after all), and the student work seemed polished, almost professional. This is something a digital tool can bring to the table, right?

But underneath the hood, many of them had not gone off in their own directions, as I had hoped. They had closely stuck to what they saw in the Mentor Text and followed that line as closely as possible. I understand the reasons why this is, as they were no doubt thinking “if the teacher shares out a piece work with X, Y, Z elements, my project must have X, Y, Z elements to get a good grade”) but I wish it weren’t so. I always try to remain open for students taking a piece of work in a new direction, and actively encourage it.

For example, here is what I shared with students:

Here is just one example of a student video that echoed mine:

Sometimes, Mentor Texts hem them in.

And sometimes, given the affordances of a tool of technology (like the Search Stories, with its limit on search queries and its format), a user can still feel stuck and confined. I didn’t regret the use of my own Mentor Text for this kind of video project, but I did wish I had found more ways to encourage students to push beyond what they see, instead of just creating a bunch of “Mini-Me” replicas.

So, the next year, when we did Search Stories, I took a different tact. I had them create a digital search story based on a short story they were already writing — this gave them some of their own content to pull from to use as the narrative frame of their video, and allowed the Mentor Text to become a way to talk about format and technique, but not content, since my own story that I was writing with them was different from their own. The result was a much wider array of interesting videos.

 

Peace (in the story),
Kevin

PS: Also blogging about Mentor Texts and Digital Composition this week are:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, “Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens” will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

Franki Sibberson, a librarian of many skills and knowledge, and also from Ohio, over at A YEAR OF READING

 

Mentor Texts: The Search is On

I have been honored to be taking part this week in a blogging series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. For a post I am writing tomorrow, I am exploring some issues that include my students using Google Search Stories. I thought I might have some fun and create a Search Story that features the six of us bloggers.

Peace (in the search),
Kevin

 

Considering Mentor Texts 4: Collaborative Rubric Development

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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)
One of the most difficult parts of using technology and digital media with students remains with how best to assess a piece of student work. Given that there are not enough mentor texts with which we can use to showcase exemplar projects (see my post about teachers needing to be creators), we need to engage students more in the development of assessment tools. I’ll be honest: this guided collaborative thinking between teacher and students takes time and I owe a lot of work I do around to a fellow Western Massachusetts Writing Project friend, Mary Farrin, whose workshop on rubric development opened my eyes.

The way this works is that the teacher presents a piece of work — in this case, a digital text — and together, the students and the teacher identify areas that should be part of a final assessment. The broad topics then get broken down into categories. The role of the teacher is to guide the discussion and focus the students on elements of importance. As Mary used to say, it is the process of developing the tool that gets students focused on meeting our expectations for their best work. After the brainstorming by students, the teacher then takes those ideas and develops a scoring tool that makes sense for a project. The students feel as if their voices are part of the mix.

Last year, I used this process for a Digital Poster Project that was a companion piece to an environmental essay project. We were using Glogster, which is a great site with many tools and possibilities but it is also is a site that has so many tools that some students get caught up in the flash and forget the content. So, we worked together on developing a rubric.

First,we examined a few Glog projects from the classes from the year before. We were just “looking” at elements that seemed worth “noticing” and discussing why something like design might play a role in the way a teacher might assess a digital poster.

Next, I created my own Glog about the topic that I was writing about (just ahead of them) around Fuel Cell Technology.

Finally, I pulled up a blank rubric and together, we talked about what someone would be looking at when they looked at my glog. We decided that the four main areas would be: scientific content, design elements, and multimedia. (Later, I added in the usual Grammar/Mechanics, which they conveniently left out). We then began to break down each category with the question: what would a writer need to do to meet our expectations? This where I again guided discussions. (Depending on the project, you might need more than just “meets expectations” and “does not meet expectations” but this was part of a larger project and these designations met our needs. I could have also used the input from students at this level, and then extended out the rest of the rubric myself along these same lines.)

Here is what we came up with:
Environmental Project Brainstorm Rubric
And then, they were off on their projects, with our collaborative rubric on the whiteboard while they were working. As I wandered and helped students, I kept referring conversations back to the board. (“Does that dancing penguin really help your design?”) The result was a pretty strong crop of projects, including this one about Rainforests:

Peace (in the assessment),
Kevin

PS: Also blogging about Mentor Texts and Digital Composition this week are:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, “Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens” will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

Franki Sibberson, a librarian of many skills and knowledge, and also from Ohio, over at A YEAR OF READING

Considering Mentor Texts 3: The Power of Picture Books

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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)

 

I’ve long been a fan of picture books for older students for many reasons. They are perfect for teaching a specific writing skill. They are short enough to share and use in a single class period. Many students, even older ones, have fond connections with picture books and enjoy new discoveries in the classroom (which they might otherwise not find in the library on their own in middle school). And there is just such a great wealth of fantastic books for older readers coming out each year, it is a huge gap in literature if you ignore the possibilities.

I also have found that picture books, in particular, have the potential for becoming ideal mentor texts for digital writing projects with students. Certainly, authors and illustrators with picture books are not afraid to push against expectations and offer up creative ways to tell a story. Think about how many picture books (such as The True Story of the Three Little Pigs) break down that third wall and invite the reader into the narrative, or wreak havoc on our expectations of text — just like composing with digital tools can do. And the close partnership between image and text in picture books is something that most traditional novels can’t pull off, or at least, not in the same way.

Let me give you an example of how one particular picture book series set the groundwork for my students to create their own digital picture books, and one of the pieces of advice about the use of technology that I try to present to teachers is: Don’t fall into the trap of “this was built for this, and that’s all it can be used for.”

A number of years ago, I decided that I wanted my students to create science-based digital picture books.

We had limited technology at our disposal, but we did have some computers with MS Powerpoint software loaded on them. It may have been designed for presentations for businesses, and it certainly has been overused, but I saw Powerpoint in a different light. The slides could be pages, and animation, audio and other digital elements might provide some compositional tools for constructing a picture book with digital elements. Who cares what Microsoft built it for? We would use the technology for our purposes.

Now, back then, there were very few mentor texts out there for digital picture books. This is years before the iPad and other devices that have revolutionized the book publishing industry. This was the pre-App Age.

But there was one series of picture books that I knew had some potential. The Magic School Bus series by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen with its many layers of information and its many iterations made perfect sense. If you know anything about the series, consider the many layers of narrative and informational text and images that are folded into a typical Magic School Bus book. You have the characters chatting in speech bubbles; you often have notebook pages with scientific information and discoveries; and you have complex illustrations loaded with informational ideas. We’re not even considering the television show, the video games and other multimedia offshoots of the series, but those all demonstrate just how effectively the books were put together. Multimedia versions were no doubt relatively easy to pull off.

We use the Magic School Bus series as a piece of literature (most of my sixth graders get a kick out of re-reading a series that they remember from childhood) and that leads them into creating their own science-based picture books, as a digital project. Some students even emulate the Magic School Bus concepts, using similar ideas as a launching pad for their own ideas. In this case, the books were to be about Cellular Mitosis, which they were studying in science class. My science teacher colleague and I were hoping that the picture book project would help with the difficult science vocabulary, and give them an opportunity to compose with digital tools.

As I have mentioned in other posts in this series, I strongly urge teachers to create their own mentor texts, too, and bring those into the classroom as a means to reflect on the experience and allow students to question the compositional choices. So, I created my own science digital picture book just ahead of my students. It was a fictional story about a piece of yeast who infects a banana, and the topic was compost. The yeast flew around the screen, landing on different items, and I had some sound effects, and audio narration.

Here is my digital book (note: we converted some books from Powerpoint to Video, too):

 

Here are two digital books created by students:




Some interesting elements emerged as students were creating their books, too:
* Some students realized they could create a sort of “lift the Flap” book by “hiding” images underneath other images, and readers could click the mouse to uncover some fact or information or even “easter eggs” (hidden features of the book);
* Books could be set up for reader interaction. We included weblinks embedded right into the books, including online activities and quizzes associated with the content of the books. Readers read the books, but then become part of the experience;
* Some years, we were able to print out the books (copies of which are now in our school library) and students were disappointed by what they saw. They had created their book to be alive on the screen, not the page, and so the “flattened books” lacked much of what made them special to students.

The Magic School Bus provided us with a means to envision a book of many different layers and possibilities, and as is often the case, the students took it from there.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin

 

PS: Also blogging about Mentor Texts and Digital Composition this week are:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, “Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens” will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

Franki Sibberson, a librarian of many skills and knowledge, and also from Ohio, over at A YEAR OF READING

Considering Mentor Texts 2: The Evolution of an Idea

(NOTE: This piece will be part of an Ed Tech Blog Carnival at The Whiteboard Blog)
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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)

Yesterday, I wrote about how I believe that teachers need to be the ones creating and sharing out mentor texts as we make a shift into digital composition. Today, I want to focus on a project that began with a traditional text (sort of) that allowed my students to take advantage of the digital architecture of the web, and my ideas for how to take that project one step further.

8 Choose Your Own Adventure book covers

It all began with some students reading and enjoying the Make Your Own Adventure stories. I remember these books from when I was a kid, but they were making another comeback a few years ago. If you are not sure what these books are, they are stories in which the reader makes decisions about where the story is going. In the books, the reader moves to different pages, flipping around the novel and never going in sequential order. I had a small group of students who were fascinated by these books, and one asked me how did authors do that? How did they write a book with so many choices?

That got me thinking.

And as I thought more about it as a possible writing project, I began to see the Web as one possible place to create Make Your Own Adventure stories. In particular, those books reminded me of something we take for granted when we are online: the power of the hyperlink. In fact, it is the hyperlink that underlies just about everything that makes the Web a different kind of writing space. Your ability to connect one thing to another opens up a lot of doors.

Using the books as a mentor text, I guided my students to create their own Make Your Own Adventure stories (using yet another mentor text, Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick for story inspiration). We worked on mapping out the stories first, visually showing the choices that a reader might make. Then, we used a wiki site to publish the stories, embedding the choices as hyperlinks that lead to either dead ends or further elements of the story.

Want to learn more about how to introduce this idea to your classroom:

Yes

No

The project was very successful and I have been thinking: how do I take it to the next level? What I had in mind was a video I once saw in which the viewer made choices based on clicks made inside the video itself. I know, sounds strange, right? A recent post by Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers reminded me again of this idea. (The trick has to do with annotating the video and, again, the mapping out of the story as your compose it)

I have also been watching the videos put out by these three goofy guys: Chad, Matt and Rob. They make their videos “interactive adventures” that are fun to watch, and each one has choices for the views. See for yourself:

And, they put out a video showing how they go about making the videos:

So, I figured: Let’s give it a try. Here is what I came up with yesterday: The Mysterious Sweet Fruit.

It’s not as difficult as it seems, and it is a lot of fun, and just think of the critical thinking skills that would go into students creating such a composition. Choices around video production, story adventure writing and use of technology, plus the prospects of an authentic audience, would all come into play. Of course, this assumes you have YouTube access, and a school/classroom account.

Peace (in the choice),
Kevin

PS: Also blogging about Mentor Texts and Digital Composition this week are:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, “Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens” will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

Franki Sibberson, a librarian of many skills and knowledge, and also from Ohio, over at A YEAR OF READING

 

Considering Mentor Texts: Teachers as Explorers and Creators

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(Note: this blog post and a few more this week is part of a series around mentor texts and digital composition. The blog posts are all being collected over at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop)

A few years ago, I was part of an initial gathering to talk about and begin planning content for the National Writing Project‘s Digital Is website. The conversation often turned on the name of the site. In fact, I often had trouble getting my head around it. NWP Co-Director Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, however, patiently and continually explained that the concept of the resource site would be to acknowledge that we are now “in the moment” of a world infused with digital technology, and the time had come to determine where such a movement would be taking learning.

“Digital just is,” she would say, acknowledging that technology had already become a fabric of our world.

I think I get it now. And I know that Digital Is is one of those sites that continues to explore the various angles of intersection between the “why we use technology” (as opposed to the how to do it) and “why it matters for learning.” One of the valuable elements of a site such as Digital Is is that it provides a framework for discussion, and provides some mentor texts for teachers to consider, which is crucial. A few years later, we may still be “in the moment” and that means that, with some exceptions, there is still a decided lack of digital examples of  composition with technology that we can turn to as educators and provide as samples for our students.

For me, this conundrum often means that I am creating my own mentor texts just ahead of my students, and then sharing those reflections of my process with my class as a way to make visible the success and failures of my work. I’ve been making stopmotion movies, webcomic collections, digital picture books, digital stories, hyperlinked poetry, and even science-based video games over the years.

Teachers don’t need to be complete experts — heck, no one is quite the expert yet when it comes to composition with technology, which is the whole point of us being “in the moment” — but we do need to be intrepid explorers alongside our students. For some educators, this is scary business. You need to expose yourself as less than an expert. You need to be ready for failure on your exploration, and make quick turns in expectations. You may need to cede direction to your students, who may have more experience in an area than you (for me, this was with video game design). You need to see the “end goal” in mind (backwards design) and tiptoe forward along the path towards those goals. You need to document your journey, and reflect afterwards, and collect data and examples. In general, I have found that students respond well to the understanding that their teacher is trying something new and they appreciate the honesty of a teacher exploring new terrain.

What we need to be doing is constructing our own mentor text collections, even as we keep an eye out for what others are doing. This means, too, that we teachers need to be sharing our worlds of exploration with our colleagues, and with the world. Don’t keep your work hidden inside of your classroom. Use the tools of the modern publishing age to share out your expertise, and together, we can begin building a database of mentor texts in the digital age. And push the limits of what technology can do.

I realized this early on, when I began to teach my class how to create stopmotion movies, starting from the storyboarding, right through scriptwriting, and into production. At the time, there was very little out there. The Wallace & Gromit movies were not yet as popular as they are today and yet, I was determined to help my students become filmmakers. But I needed something to show them, something that they could build upon in their own way.

So, I started at home, working with my own young boys on our own little movie, which turned into a three-part series (they loved it that much). This short film is what I later shared with my students, talking through the process that we went through: what kind of props; what kind of story; what problems we ran into; how did we collaborate; etc. The result was a piece of work that we could dissect together, and then, when my student were working on their own movies, they could use that experience. And I, as the teacher, had first-hand experiences with stopmotion movies.

Here is what my sons and I produced:

 

Here is an example of student stopmotion movies:

Just last month, we launched into a video game design unit with a science theme. I could not find a game that represented what I wanted them to see, and not just emulate, but build upon. I struggled until I realized: I guess I better do it myself. So I did, creating a video game on the theme of Women Scientists in History, which then allowed me to deconstruct my entire design process for my students. They then designed and created their own geology-based video games. (Note: I purposely landed on a theme that I knew would not influence the content of their own games — this brings up the balance between providing a mentor text that provides a path forward, and one that is easily emulated by our young learners.)

Here is my video game (Women in Science):

Here is a student video game (Volcano Valley):

The experts are us, and our students. We need tor recognize this fact more often, and exploit the journey as much as the task, as we seek to build knowledge and experience to push learning and creativity in new directions.

Peace (in the exploration),
Kevin

PS: Also blogging about Mentor Texts and Digital Composition this week are:

Bill Bass, Technology Integration Specialist in Missouri and author of the upcoming ISTE book on Film Festivals tentatively titled, “Authentic Learning Through a Digital Lens” will be blogging on his blog MR. BASS ONLINE.

Katie DiCesare, a primary teacher in Dublin who runs an incredible writing workshop will be blogging at her blog, CREATIVE LITERACY.

Troy Hicks, author of THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP and BECAUSE DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS. He will be blogging at his site, DIGITAL WRITING, DIGITAL TEACHING.

Tony Keefer, an amazing 4th grade teacher in Dublin, Ohio will be blogging at at ATYCHIPHOBIA.

Franki Sibberson, a librarian of many skills and knowledge, and also from Ohio, over at A YEAR OF READING

 

Considering the Shift with Mentor Texts

In early January, I am going to be joining some blogging compadres with a series of posts that will center around using mentor texts for digital composition. The idea is to consider how we are using mentor texts for students as they make a shift toward writing with digital tools, and what that might look like. I am still mulling over what I want to write about, but Bill Bass is starting to pull together a site that will aggregate our posts together, so consider this the first shot across the bow!

🙂

And since I am doing this, here is a handout that I used this past fall for a workshop around mentor texts in a digital age:
Mentor Texts and Digital Writing: the handout

Peace (in the text),
Kevin