Last year, I created this Prezi based on some 25-word-stories I was writing on Twitter. I revised it a bit, with a few new ones, and share it out here for Valentine’s Day. I hope love creates stories in your life, too.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
My Pile of Books to Be Read
Over at the Nerdy Book Club, there was a call recently for photos of our piles of books “to be read.” Here is mine. Some of these have been there for a few months, but most are fairly new to the pile. I am currently reading Larry McMurty’s The Berrybender Narratives and may wander into I Walked with Giants or the William Gibson essays next. Not sure.
Peace (in the piles of books),
Kevin
PS — and the video compilation of all of the Nerdy Book Club TBR books was released yesterday, too.
Student Short Story Shards
I spent a lot of time yesterday, reading through my students’ adventure short stories. Some were fantastic; some were just OK. But all of the stories had some interesting nuggets that I wanted to be able to share out with the rest of the classes. So, as I was reading, I began to “capture” a line from every story — something interesting, intriguing. Some hint of the larger story. Then, I went into our Glogster site and created this Story Shard poster. Actually, this is the first of two that I am going to be creating (I am not quite done with all the stories.)
I like how it looks like a wall of stories, and there is something quite interesting about seeing all of these story shards together in a single place — sort of like a graffiti wall of ideas.
Peace (in the stories),
Kevin
Potential Massachusetts Ballot Issue: Teacher Evaluation
I’m trying to learn more about a proposed ballot issue put forth by a group called Stand for Children (which is a national group that seeks to influence teacher evaluations) in my state of Massachusetts. The ballot initiative — entitled An Act to Promote Excellence in Public Schools — has apparently gained enough signatures to be considered by our state Legislature to be put to voters. The Legislature has not yet taken up the measure.
The ballot initiative came to my attention because two colleagues and former Massachusetts teachers-of-the-year — Michael Flynn, who teaches at my school, and Wilma Ortiz, who is part of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project — have joined a lawsuit with other state educators, seeking to block the ballot initiative. Flynn has been part of a state effort by our governor to create a new teacher merit system that has a balance of test scores, administrative evaluation and more, and that system has barely begun to get put into place.
The key, as I understand it, to Stand for Children’s initiative would be to mostly remove collective bargaining from the equation, and eliminate the aspect of seniority, too. This would ostensibly free up principals to evaluate, and then rehire or freely fire, teachers who don’t meet the standards. A dismissal could be arbitrated, but (according to the Massachusetts Attorney General summary of the initiative), “In deciding whether the grounds for dismissal had been proven, the arbitrator would not consider a teacher’s seniority or length of service. ”
I can’t help but admire the use of rhetoric by Stand for Children. Who wouldn’t want to Stand for Children? Who wouldn’t want to “promote excellence in public school”? The accompanying website for Massachusetts is entitled “Great Teachers: Great Schools” and who wouldn’t want that?
I did a little research about Stand for Children. I don’t know who is backing the movement financially other than donations from the public, but the organization does seem to spring up as a PAC in various states, with similar themes as the one they are working on here in Massachusetts. (A 2010 article in the Illinois Times noted that Stand for Children had contributed more than $600,000 to political candidates, so it must have some deep pockets somewhere). According to Wikipedia, the organization emerged from a rally in Washington DC and was founded by Jonah Edelman (son of civil rights pioneer Marian Wright Edelman) and Eliza Leighton as a means to improve the lives of young people.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the developments here in my state. You might want to do the same, too.
Peace (in the news),
Kevin
Book Review: Horton Halfpott
I’ll be the first to admit that it took me about halfway through Tom Angleberger’s humorous novel to really get the flow of it. But I didn’t give up — partially because my son (whom I was reading it to) needed to know what would happen to Horton Halfpott and partially because, well, I was having fun reading it out loud (even though the Old English inflections and difficult vocabularly at times made me stop to explain a few things to my son). I should probably pause here, dear reader, to give the full title of this book, since it says so much about the tone of the book:
Horton Halfpott: Or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M’Lady Luggertuck’s Corset
Horton Halfpott himself is a kitchen boy in a castle who falls in love with an heiress, and all sorts of mischief abounds — from the above-mentioned “loosening of the corset” to a world famous detective come to find some missing objects to shipless pirates caught up in a kidnapping, and more and more craziness. But the story is told in a very formal tone, with addresses to the reader at times, and other odd narrative twists that take some getting used to.
But stick with it.
The book kicks into full gear about halfway through and steams right to the end, complete with a scene involving pickle eclairs that will do doubt have you laughing as hard we were. What more can you ask of a book than that?
Peace (in the mire),
Kevin
PS — this is an odd book trailer.
Multimedia Companions to Student Short Stories
I’m getting ready to dive into the adventure short stories that my students have written but I want to share out their use of Glogster.edu for creating “companion pieces” to their stories. This assignment was to learn about how to use the digital poster site and how to create a multimedia project that is an extension of their stories. I guided them on summary writing, setting, and protagonist/antagonist, and on the elements of design.
It’s been interesting to see their posters come together, particularly since I have not yet read most of the stories. Of course, I know a little of each story from our work in class, but not everything. The posters give intriguing hints. Now, I am thinking: what if the stories began on paper but then finished on a digital poster? (sort of like what Patrick Carmen has been doing with connecting his novels to media). The glog would be a final chapter of their short story, or the story might leave off in a cliffhanger to be resolved online?
Intriguing possibilities for next time ..
Here are some of the projects that have come to be completed. A fair number are almost done.
Peace (in the posters),
Kevin
PS — They also completed a bridge engineering project with Glogster, which I will share out tomorrow or Monday. They did a fine job on that assignment, too.
Book Review: Best Music Writing of 2011
Alex Ross is the guest editor for the 2011 version of Best Music Writing, which collects and highlights some of the most interesting magazine and journal articles about the music scene. The Best Music Writing of 2011 is a fantastic look at music from multiple angles, and (give Ross’s involvement and his role in writing about classical music for the New Yorker) the focus shifts from classical to jazz to heavy metal and beyond. Topics from Lady Gaga to the use of the vocoder device in music (from its origins in the spy services) to the plight of making a living as a wedding singer in the days of the DJ are like touchstones of the music world. These pieces move beyond our expectations of what music is and how music affects us. Ross has done a nice job of culling out intriguing topics.
This genre-jumping is right up my alley, and although I find some articles I just skim, I am always apt to stumble into interesting pieces that I would have otherwise missed. The article in here that remains fresh in my mind is one that explores one night at the Fillmore when Miles Davis and Neil Young performed on the same stage, on the same night (not together, though, but Davis opened for Young). Both artist were in the midst of change, and exploration, and I just had that “wow” reaction to thinking what it must have been like to hear Davis just as Bitches Brew was to be released and Young with the original incarnation of Crazy Horse on the same stage.
If you like music, and if you like reading about music, this collection is a keeper.
Peace (in the music),
Kevin
PS — I am reading now that the publisher of the series has pulled the plug. But series editor Daphne Carr is pushing ahead with a plan to raise money and publish next year’s collection independently. I’m in!
Scenes from the WMWP Pop Culture/Tech Conference
Since Animoto was one of the free tools introduced to folks at our Western Massachusetts Writing Project event around Pop Culture, Technology and the Common Core, I figured I would use images from the day to create a quick video for our WMWP website and to share back with participants.
Peace (in the exploration),
Kevin
Mad Mag: Dr. Seuss for the Digital Age
Shifting Student Identities in Online Spaces
(Taken from the CommonSense Media handout: Offline/Online Me)
We spent our second day in our Digital Lives unit talking about identity. For my 11 and 12 year old students, this can be a pretty complex concept, particularly when we are thinking about how we make shifts in our personality and the way we want to the world to perceive us based on where we are. Once again, the CommonSense Media site curriculum around digital citizenship has been a rich trove to pull from, including an interesting video about how kids represent themselves (and not always for the good) and a useful handout that breaks down how one student represents themselves online and offline.
The video and the handout led to interesting conversations in my classroom throughout the day, leading to an activity around the creation of avatars for their Glogster accounts. Their mission: create a visual representation of themselves so that if I, or anyone else, were to ask why an avatar was chosen or created, they could make a clear connection to some interest or hobby or facet of themselves. It can’t be that the avatar is cool. It has to be there for a reason.
But back to our discussions for a minute. Here are some vignettes that stayed with me.
- Many students who are gamers talked about the choices they make around usernames in gaming communities, like World of Warcraft and the like. They mentioned how they try to choose a name that represents the qualities of a hero or an adventurer. They like that part of a creation of an account, it turns out, probably because they can slip outside of their own name and identity.
- One student noted that he plays an app game on the family iPod, but that his father first created the account. For a while, both son and dad were playing, and sharing the account, but now dad doesn’t play nearly as much. The son, of course, still does. The gaming community for that app, however, must assume (and why wouldn’t they?) that it is just one player — the dad. So sometimes, messages come from other players directed at dad, but received by the son. Nothing inappropriate, but my student noted how “strange” it was to be perceived as someone other than himself, and as an adult, too. A real adult — his dad.
- A small number of girls are passionate about horses, and apparently there is a pretty popular equine social networking site that many of them are part of. They noted how they enjoyed how everything there is all about horses, and one student made the comment that in the network, she feels like an expert about horses and admitted to a certain confidence she doesn’t always feel outside of her equine community.
- I asked how many students have ever not given their real ages when signing up for an online site, and many raised their hands. Most choose older, not younger. Some have done this with Facebook in order to skirt the 13 year old age regulation. When I asked why they would create an identity that was older, most could not really explain. But one student did note that if felt that they could seem cooler if they were older.
Peace (in the shift),
Kevin
PS — Here is a good resource collection from National Writing Project’s Digital Is about identity.