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

Today .. I Get to Write

I’m excited. Today, I found some time in the weekend schedule (thank you, honey) to join the first of a series of Writing Marathons being sponsored by my Western Massachusetts Writing Project. We’re gathering over at Smith College for a few hours, just to write, share and connect.

What am I going to write today? I have a whole list of ideas and am struggling with what to focus on (a common problem — thus, Kevin’s Meandering Mind).

Here are some ideas:

  • More Boolean Squared. I have a handful of potential stories and ideas for my comic and it would be nice to have time to write them and begin putting them together.
  • Our new bike path in Leeds. I love it but people are already leaving trash along the edges. That drives me nuts. And it lends creedance to those who advocate AGAINST bike paths. I’m thinking of a letter to the editor on this one.
  • I started a piece about how I write for myself, but in a public sphere (such as this blog) and what that means. I’m not sure what that means and the piece needs a lot of work.
  • This year, I am co-teaching an inclusion classroom for the first time (well, I piloted it a bit last year) and I would love to write about how that is going and what we are learning along the way. It’s been a day-to-day navigation, made easier by the fact that we get along so well. But, I wonder, what if we didn’t get along? This so-called system we have right now would just fall apart.
  • Short stories and poems. Got a head full of possibilities there.

Oh well, we’ll see where it goes. If you live in Western Mass and want to join us, we’re meeting at the Smith College Art Museum at 11 a.m. Bring a lunch, something to write with and a $3 fee to cover some costs.

Peace (in the words),
Kevin

The Pat Hunter Award

I had the honor this weekend to be given the Patricia Hunter Award for the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. The award is named after one of our site’s founders, and although Pat Hunter passed away before I became part of our network, her spirit remains infused in our site today.

Pat Hunter nurtured teacher leaders and saw things in people that they may not have seen in themselves. She was a mentor and a leader. In a monograph book project that I worked on for a few years for the National Writing Project about the history and inquiry done at our WMWP site, Pat Hunter’s name and legacy came through loud and clear in many of the stories that formed the center of our work.

I am greatly honored, therefore, to have been this year’s recipient of this award and follow in the footsteps of many past recipients whose teaching and leadership I greatly admire. I also took the time during my acceptance to encourage teachers to continue, or begin to, explore multi-modal composition with their students and to use technology as a means for composition in the classroom. I guess I couldn’t miss a chance to stand on the pedestal for a second or two.

Peace (in humility),
Kevin

Today: rafting; Tomorrow: writing

Today, we take our entire sixth grade on a whitewater rafting trip down the Deerfield River. It looks like it might be mostly sunny, but cold. Darn that cold! But the leaves are changing already and so maybe we will have some wonderful foliage on our 10-mile ride on the river.

Tomorrow, I head out to the University of Massachusetts for the annual Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing conference offered through my Western Massachusetts Writing Project. The day will be filled with writing, activities, workshops and inspiration to bring back to the classroom.

I’m attending a workshop on poetry inspired by art and then a session about using hip-hop influences in the classroom. The keynote address is by Dr. Lisa Green, whom I am told is an inspiring teacher who will center on the topic of how student’s language can differ from classroom language, and what happens then? If I have time, I may stay for the writing workshop session at the end of the day, too.

Peace (in the weekend),
Kevin

Using Concepts from “Here Comes Everybody” for building a network

I just finished reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (I know, I am about a year late to the conversation — the same thing happened with me and The World is Flat) and my reading of the book comes as I am working with my friend, Bonnie, to create a social network for members of the National Writing Project in the New England and New York region.

We are using a closed Ning social networking site and we hope to model it on a very successful networking venture that the National Writing Project oversees each summer called the eAnthology, which is open only for the summer months. We’re calling our smaller network the iAnthology. It’s experimental and we’re not sure how it will go. But we’re hopeful that we can grow the space into a supportive environment for teachers in our NWP sites to write, share and reflect.

So, as I am reading Here Comes Everybody, some of the concepts that Shirky so clearly articulates begins to resonate off my thinking of how to create the framework of a site that the users can take ownership of and see as their own. It’s clear to me that providing the structure is critical. If users of a network feel affinity with the group, and feel safe in that group, then the network becomes viable. If not — if the network is alien to the interests of the individual — then the network fails.

Here are some ideas that came to mind when reading the book:

  • Shirky explains the concept of the Power Law Distribution of networks. It’s a big term which shows how in any large group, there is not an even dispersion of activity. Instead, a large number of a group or network participate only once so often. A much smaller group is active every now and then, depending on their own interests. And a very small group is regularly active. While the network’s survival relies on the large numbers to remain vibrant, it is the small group of leaders who must remain engaged by guiding discussions, presenting new information and encouraging the others to keep connected. In our iAnthology, we have a group of “moderators” whose role will be that of encouragers and overseeing feedback for writing in a supportive way.
  • The idea of Small World Connectors is another interesting element to networks, in that people in a network have some natural things that connect them to each other. In our case, it is the National Writing Project and the experience of our summer program called the Summer Institute. We hope folks already self-identify with NWP and view our space as a mirror of sorts of the environment created by NWP in its programs. Also, given that we are limiting the NWP sites involved, we hope that members of our network will know, or know of, folks in the network. These personal connections (think Six Degrees of Separation) will provide a tighter framework for trust and support, or so we hope.
  • Shirky notes how small clusters of conversations work more powerfully that large conversations. People feel less invested if they are part of a group of 100 people talking than if it is a group of 10 people. Their opinion matters more because it is less dispersed. In our site, we are setting up “groups” where people can post their writing based on certain umbrella ideas: personal writing, such as poetry or short stories; professional writing, for journals or book projects; sharing classroom practices and lesson plans; and finding ways to connect with other teachers and classrooms within the network itself.

I’m sure there is more here, but these elements seemed important for us to keep in mind as we move forward.

Peace (in the networks),
Kevin

A Week of Claymation and Comics

Next week, I am co-teaching two summer camps for middle school students with very creative aims: help young people make movies and create comics. These offerings are a collaboration between the local Vocational High School and the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, which is seeking to expand our offerings to youths.

The first camp in the morning (which I will teach with my friend, Tina) is a claymation/stopmotion animation class. This will be the third year that we will be doing this camp and among other things, the kids will be:

  • Exploring animation through Pivot Stickfigure freeware
  • Using Stopmotion Animator freeware with webcams to create short adventure claymation movies
  • Learning how to use Moviemaker
  • Exploring the world of movies on a small scale

The Comic Camp is something new this year, and I was explaining to Tina and Tom (who will co-teach the comic portion with me), the impetus came from walking into a comic book store during last year’s 24 Hour Comic event and seeing the store packed with young people writing and creating. This was clearly composing done outside of the classroom and I figured there might be some interest for a Comic/Graphic Novel camp. There was. It filled up quickly.

Our intentions are to balance students’ learning about the genre of comics, reading through some graphic novels and creating their own comics. We’ll be introducing ToonDoo (my pilot closed site) and ComicLife (see this great Comiclife resource for educators), but allow for them to create on paper, too, if that fits their needs. Our focus will be on character development and how character can drive a story (graphic novel) or a series (comic strips). While they won’t have time to create a graphic novel, they will begin planning for one.

I am also excited because I have at least two local artists coming in to talk with the kids (one is Hilary Price of Rhymes with Orange syndicated comic strip). We’re not quite sure how this camp will unfold but it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

I created a blog for both camps, if you are interested in following some of the progress through the week: http://claycomics.wordpress.com/

Peace (with the kids),
Kevin

Social Networking with the Writing Project

A few years ago, during a session with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project‘s Summer Institute, I was discussing how we were going to use blogs and a networking space of the National Writing Project for sharing and reflecting and connecting. I went slow and step-by-step. I could see, however, that many in the room — these mostly veteran teachers — just could not wrap their mind around what we were asking them to be doing with technology. I tried to create mental pictures, drew a diagram on the whiteboard and racked my brain for other ways to explain it.

But many remained confused and one person got so frustrated with me, she stormed right out of the computer lab. I was taken aback, to be honest, because the term “blog” had long been in popular culture and MySpace was all the rage in the news. I thought they would have some cultural references to at least get a hook on. (Some teachers that summer did “get it” but not many.)

I was reminded of this because yesterday, I worked with this coming summer’s group of Summer Institute teachers and it was a world of difference. We use a closed Ning social networking site (see above) for our institute and within minutes, with no fuss, we had all fourteen teachers signed up, writing, commenting and changing their homepage themes. Another few minutes and they were registered with the National Writing Project so they could take part in the eAnthology, a wonderful closed writing network tool that connects participants in summer institutes across the country. Before my hour was up, everyone was online and connected and no one seemed overly confused or pissed off at me (I like that).

Is this emblematic of the shift that we keep talking about? Has Facebook made it easier for us to talk about social networking? I think so, although only a few hands went up when I asked who uses technology with their students. But they seemed ready to learn and to be more open to new ideas. I left satisfied that this group might use our Ning site in the month between yesterday’s orientation session and the day when the month-long institute kicks off in July.

Peace (in the shift),
Kevin

PS — Don’t know what a National Writing Project Summer Institute is all about?

At our site, the goals of our institute are:

  • to help participating teachers reflect upon their own expertise as teachers of writing and share this knowledge with their peers;
  • to help participating teachers organize and prepare ways of presenting this expertise to teachers outside WMWP;
  • to make available to participating teachers the latest theory and research in the field;
  • to help participating teachers see themselves as writers.

The Invitational Summer Institute program embodies these four goals, which reflect the philosophy of the National Writing Project. Participants will prepare and present professional workshops, read currrent theory and research in their chosen area, conduct informal action research projects in their classrooms, do their own self-directed writing, and help their colleagues with this writing through writing response groups.

A Visual Metaphor of WMWP

Here in Denver, as I work on the visioning process for redesigning the website of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project (now projected to be a year-long inquiry collaborative endeavor and not a solo journey), we were asked to create a visual metaphor of the work of our writing project site.

I turned to music and thought of our site as its own musical composition, with different elements of our site (outreach, continuity programs, inservice opportunities) working together to create a piece of Theme and Variation (ie, writing is at the heart of how we learn), but the door remains open for innovation and new elements of the composition.

The DJ here is a new teacher, with new ideas, and how they can help keep us fresh and informed and invigorated with new sounds.

Peace (in the hippity hoppity world of writing),

Kevin

PS — I had a fun time out and about in Denver last night with Bud the Teacher and a few other new friends. We went bowling (!) in a place with huge video screens showing modern art, played pool and talked on a range of topics from digital identity (hmmm .. Boolean Squared material) to leadership and advocacy in schools to the possible changing face of education towards virtual schools.

Considering Web Presence

I flew to Denver, Colorado, yesterday (impression: it seems flatter than I imagined) for a weekend visioning retreat in which a number of us from various sites of the National Writing Project are working to consider how an organization presents itself on the Web in a coherent, inclusive and relevant way for its audience (for us, teachers) and the general public.

Our aim is to do inquiry this weekend into our organizations (mine is the Western Massachusetts Writing Project), work through some essential questions and then map out a plan for collaborative planning around the content and design/redesign of websites that will better reflect our sites.

We began last night with prewriting and discussions. Among the things we were asked to do was to brainstorm what “web presence” means to us and then work on coming up with a visual metaphor for this understanding. I pitched the idea of a Talent Show, in which the public sees a variety of different concepts and ideas but behind the scenes, there are a lot of people collaborating on the show. In the end, our group chose the metaphor of a huge eye, with the eye representing “vision” and also a list of “i” words such as a inquiry, inviting, insightful, inclusive, etc. That worked for me, too.

At the other tables, the metaphors included: an interconnected table of people, holding hands and connected through many nodes (think a modern version of King Arthur’s Roundtable, with no king); a portable children’s museum that has exhibits that invite participation (not a static museum where you can’t touch anything); and a metaphorical walk through the woods, with trees and the road representing elements of inclusiveness.

It’s all very fascinating, particularly if you push these ideas into digital identity of people (as one person said last night, we’re all cool on the Internet) and consider audience, design, and more.

More to come later …

Peace (on the Net, where no one knows you’re the dog),
Kevin