Sunday Morning X by X Poetry

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Each weekend, over at our iAnthology network for National Writing Project teachers, Bonnie or I or a volunteer post a writing prompt. It’s always sort of a challenge to find an idea that will engage as many of the close to 400 members as possible (on average, about two dozen folks will contribute to a prompt each week).

Yesterday morning, I was trying to come up with an idea when I got a link shared to me by Ira Socol, who was responding to my post about 25 word stories. I loved the poems he shared, which are structured poems. I didn’t see a name of the style, so I called it X by X (X being the number of lines and then X being the number of words per line).

The response has been pretty wonderful, and I have been using Cinch to record audio responses to everyone’s poems, giving some voice to my reactions to their writing. I love the simplicity of Cinch and how easy it is to embed into our site. And since it a site where geographic distance is everything, having a voice connected to your writing gives it a certain power of response, I think.

Here are the poems that I wrote and shared:

2×2

Coffee cup

filled, steaming

3×3

Dog walking, cold

fingers, cold toes,

silent morning frost

4×4

Four balls bouncing loudly

against the garage floors

echo like a shotgun —

can’t take it anymore

5×5

Lying here in the silence

of the night, no movement

in the house, save me,

and my own restless thoughts

6×6

The smiling face is silently mocking

the reason why I am crouched

on the floor, with my youngest.

I hold the plastic action hero

in the air, as if fighting,

when what I desire is peace.

7×7

“Seven” is what I said when asked

what is my favorite and magical number.

We sit, elbows touching, at the table

where his fingers hold a crumbling cookie

of fortune and mystical numbers of chance.

I expect the next question: “Why seven?

but it never comes; only quiet munching.

And here is my podcast, via Cinch:

Peace (in the Sunday poems),
Kevin
PS – If you are a Writing Project teacher looking for a supportive space for writing, drop me a comment and I will invite you into the iAnthology network.

Deconstructing a 25-Word Story

Date
Posted by
Comments9

car 25 word story juxio
I’ve been tinkering with 25 word stories over at Twitter for the last few months, and find it interesting to pack a punch in such a short amount of space. Someone called this “restrictive writing” but I find it challenging to find a way to leave out as much as you leave in.

Yesterday, I wrote the above story (recast on Juxio) and as I was driving my sons to their various basketball games, I started to think about all that was going on with the sentence. Later, I found that a bunch of people had retweeted it on Twitter, which made me think it was one of those small gems that strike a chord with folks.

So, a little deconstructive reflection:

  • I’m not sure where the story concept itself came from, since I have never really been stuck on the side of the road and my father doesn’t talk like that at all. And he’s no mechanic. I started with the idea of winter (my 25 word stories seem to reflect the seasons) and snow and went from there. In my mind, I saw a car off the side of the road.
  • I can see the character — a man, maybe in his 20s, still young in years — sitting alone and cold on a stretch of wintry road, stuck in his car and suddenly remembering his father’s warning. I imagine the character to be resentful of the advice, and also kicking himself for not heeding it.  There’s some inner conflict going on in the silence of the car. It turns out his old man was right all along. But that doesn’t help him one bit right now.
  • The father is one of those “I told you so” characters, for sure, and he is always spouting off one bit of advice, told harshly, after another until all his children hear is white noise. I can see the father as a bit rough around the edges (the use of language is my giveaway) and yet, he wants to impart knowledge on his kids. Too bad they don’t listen.
  • The interesting thing is that we are in the present with the story – the man remembering his father is stuck — but how did he get there? This is where inference has to come into play, and imagination. I imagined he hit some black ice, and stalled out on the side of the road. His heart has finally stopped racing and now he has to come with the grips with what to do (where is his cell phone?)
  • And then, the aftermath: after he is found and helped (probably by AAA or something) does he tell his father that the advice was right all along or does not say a thing? It all depends on the trajectory of their relationship, doesn’t it?

OK, so I plunged deeper than I probably needed to go here, but I find it useful to flesh out the story beyond 25 words. The 25 is only the start; the real story unfolds outside of our field of vision.

Peace (in the words),
Kevin

PS — Are you on Twitter? Search for the #25wordstory hashtag to read more stories and add your own.

Music and Learning and Discovery

Date
Posted by
Comments0


One of the more interesting elements of reading on the Web is the way that hyperlinks send you off on a journey, and how readers can add in as much substance as the writer. This morning, I followed a trail that began with an email newsletter from Edutopia. The headline on an article caught my eye: Using Music in the Classroom. (written by Gaetan Pappalardo).

I love Gaetan’s work around music and learning (we’ve crossed paths before with the National Writing Project) and so, of course, I wanted to read what he had to say. In the piece, he gives pointers on some simple ways to incorporate music into a lesson, including using an instrumental piece for writing.

“I want my students to use their mind’s eye so I reverse the roles. Instead of writing music to the story, I want my students to write a story, a thought, a scene, or a list to the music.”

So, I am reading Gaetan, and then I scroll down to the comment section and there, I find a long list of teachers who  have been adding their own ideas about music and learning, and suggesting lesson ideas.

For example, I found a link to an article about the benefits of having music playing while students are studying (Study, Stress and Music by Michael Griffin) and a series of songs that could help teach about bullying behaviors, and a link to another Edutopia piece about music and social behaviors and then I found myself off at this post called Teaching With Tunes: 21 Idea for Incorporating Music Throughout the Curriculum by Fallwell Dunbar.

And then, it was back to Gaetan’s article and off again to see Benjamin Zander TED talk about music and passion (Passion being one of Gaetan’s topics on his piece).  There, I found the video embedded up above of Bobby McFerrin and his visual demonstration on the power of the Pentatonic Scale, and music and movement.

But I noticed that the sign behind McFerrin said “Notes and Neurons,” so I had to figure out what was up with that, which led me to the World Science Festival site about music and the brain. That is a site I have to come back to one of these days, but not now.

My journey came all the way around, as I write here about what I found. I love that discovery process that began with a headline and expanded out towards a whole session of learning and music.

Peace (in the notes),
Kevin

Whither my Bookmarks?

Date
Posted by
Comments3

Ultimate Guide to Delicious Social Bookmarking

Thanks to a leak inside of Yahoo, news spread quickly yesterday that the struggling technology firm might be shutting down various elements of its services as a way to stay afloat. Someone inside the company apparently leaked a slide from an upcoming presentation that showed some of the Yahoo services in “sunset” mode. I don’t think Yahoo has made it public or outright confirmed the plan, so who knows what it means.

The one service that might be shuttered that caught my eye was Delicious, which is the bookmarking platform that I use almost daily, and I have been using it for years now with great success. I have a nice little Delicious tool bar in my browser and when I see something of interest or something to save for later, click a button and it is saved. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I even used the bookmarking function within the browser itself. That doesn’t make sense for me, working as I do on at least three computers each day (home, school).

I have more than 4,400 bookmarks on Delicious, I just realized. And, I have my delicious network set up for an RSS feed, so that when my friends add resources to their Delicious account, I get to see that in my RSS reader. I’ve stumbled across many cool tools, and had a strange inside glimpse into the thinking and planning of my online friends that way (which is sort of strange, too.)

So, if Delicious is going to be gone (and that is still up in the air, but there seems to be a gust in the wind), then what do I do?

Well, I have used Diigo before and I think that will be my first step forward. Last night, I exported my delicious bookmarks and then imported them into Diigo. (see this website about how and where to import bookmarks) I know there are a lot of them, but they still hadn’t shown up this morning, so I am trying again.

Diigo does a lot — almost too much for me. I liked the simplicity of Delicious. But I know I can use Diigo in simple terms, particularly now that I found its diigolet button, which you can drag into your browser for saving bookmarks. (One thing I did not like about Diigo in the past is that I installed its add-on for Firefox and it was just too much — too many choices, too much room in my browser — the diigolet is small and useful).

And this reminds me, once again, that we need to be ready for change and be ready to adapt (remember the end of free Ning?) and not get stuck to doing things one way. I may eventually realize the true power of Diigo and never wonder about Delicious.

I wondered about other alternatives to Delicious and Diigo, and came across this lengthy list. Go explore!

Peace (in the bookmarks),
Kevin

A Myriad of Resources from NWP Annual Meeting

Date
Posted by
Comments0


The National Writing Project sent out a flurry of posts the other day about its resources and materials gathered from the NWP Annual Meeting last month in Orlando.\

Peace (in the NWP),
Kevin

The Edublog Winners

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Last night, the winners of the Edublog Awards for 2010 were announced. Once again, the competition seems less important than the uncovering new resources and people in our ever-expanding network (ie: I didn’t win anything but was excited to have been nominated).

🙂

Here is a quick recap of categories I was following (you can see that Richard over at Free Tech for Teachers received multiple kudos for his daily sharing of so many interesting ideas and tools. Pop him into your RSS):

Congrats to all of the winners! I’ll be exploring many of the sites and the runners-ups, too, in the coming days. You should, too.

Peace (in the limelight),
Kevin


This Super Book is Super Valuable

Date
Posted by
Comments4

A whole bunch of folks added to this free ebook resource, The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators, which maps out various technology tools across grade levels, and provides a valuable narrative to the rationale for using the tool. Thanks to all the folks who added their knowledge to this book, which is available for download or for embedding/sharing. And thanks to Richard Byrne, of Free Technology for Teachers, for organizing the effort.

The contributors to The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators:
George Couros, Patrick Larkin, Kelly Tenkely, Adam Bellow, Silvia Tolisano,Steven Anderson, Cory Plough, Beth Still, Larry Ferlazzo, Lee Kolbert, and Richard Byrne.

Super book of web tools for educators

View more documents from Lee Kolbert.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin

NWP Makes Gets a Plug

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Dale Doughtery, of Make Magazine, wrote a nice piece about the National Writing Project’s Make session that took place at the NWP Annual Meeting. I was one of the presenters, doing a bit on stopmotion animation. The session represented an ongoing relationship between NWP and Make Magazine around informational, expository writing.

As Dale writes:

When I began talking with folks from the National Writing Project last year, we hit on the idea that getting teachers to see themselves as makers was a great way to encourage making in schools. Thus, the goal of this workshop was to provide a gentle introduction to making for about 50 teachers. There were about eight stations with a variety of projects. Without too much in the way of preliminaries, the teachers sat down and started making. They talked to each other while working (or playing, as I might prefer to call it) and they helped each other. The projects were not simple but they were fun. The teachers were making drawbots and brushbots, flickering mood lights, stop-frame animation, bottlecap jewelry, and bracelets that functioned as snap-circuits.

Read the rest of Dale’s article entitled “Teachers as Makers: Educators Discovery How Hands-on Learning Can Help Writing” over at O’Reilly Radar.

Peace (in the make),
Kevin

PS — this is what the teachers at my Make table made in our hour of play.

TTT: Using Current Events to Shape Learning

Date
Posted by
Comments1

A month or so ago, I was one of a handful of guests (including Suzie Boss) on Teachers Teaching Teachers, where we discussed how to tap into current events and unfolding news for learning in the classroom. While our main focus was the Voices on the Gulf site (which is up for an Edublog award for best use of a social network in education — vote for us!), the conversation was pretty wide-ranging.

Listen to the podcast

Here’s the blurb:

When the Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year, teachers across the country recognized an opportunity to bring real-world applications of math and science into their classrooms. Similarly, the rescue of 33 Chilean miners has triggered student discussions about everything from heroism to human biology.

In the wake of such dramatic events, some teachers are eager to do more than host current-events-style conversations. They want to use the news as a launching pad for in-depth student learning. But making that happen requires teachers and students to dive into topics for which there are no texts or guidebooks. What’s more, maintaining student interest can be challenging once the headlines start to fade and media attention shifts to tomorrow’s hot topic.

How do you plan for academically rigorous projects that are “ripped from the headlines”? Here are a few suggestions, along with some timely resources.

Thanks again to Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim for hosting the TTT show each week at EdTechTalk.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

How We Might Use Our iPod Touches

Date
Posted by
Comments2

Itouch 8

Finally, it appears, our classroom set of iPod Touches may be ready for action. We received a small bit of grant money for the set of Touches, but then, we had to wait for a sync/charging station, and now, as far as I can tell, the devices are just about ready to roll.

In some ways, we had bad timing in the purchase of the Touches, because if we had waited a month, we could have gotten the upgraded versions with cameras and (I think) microphones embedded right into the units. Instead, we have the older versions. I would have loved the video, audio and image element.

Still, our push is to use the Touch devices in Science (the heart of the grant) but I am sure I am going to steal them from time to time for work in my Language Arts class. I am perusing the ideas here with Tom Barrett’s Ways to use the iPod Touch, which is a great resource.

I like the ideas of:

  • Collaborative flashcards
  • Collaborative stories
  • Google surveys
  • Type Drawing for visual stories (new one to me)
  • Martian App allows you to create an alien (and then your partner has to draw a replica based on descriptive language)
  • Story Kit for writing and publishing a book
  • Using iPadio for interviews and sharing at our blog (hmmm — I will need a little iPod microphone, though)

Peace (in the touch),
Kevin