Building a teacher/writer network

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Bonnie and I (and a few others) are about three months into a project funded by the National Writing Project to create an online writing community for NWP teachers called the iAnthology. It’s been pretty exciting. We are using a Ning and we have created it to resemble another online network that all NWP folks use during their Summer Institute (a four week professional development that will change the way you teach and connect with others … guaranteed).

Although we began with folks in New England and New York (our home turf, so to speak), we have slowly opened up the doors to teachers from other parts of the country. It’s a closed site with a public face, but we want to reserve the space for teachers who are connected with NWP.

We were looking at some raw numbers the other and I was amazed at the amount of activity it shows.

We now have 165 members

15 Writing groups

Total amount of posts: 173
Total amount of comments: 1,510

Combined total (amount of writing on site): 1,683

(Note: in late September, we had 443 pieces of writing on the site)

Some things I’ve noticed:

  • Our site follows the mathematical power law data tail that Clay Shirkey talks about in his book — Here Comes Everybody — in that we do have a large pool of teachers, but most are either lurkers or joiners, with a select group doing most of the writing and connecting. This a common trend for social networks. What we want to do is entice those in the middle of the data tail to remain engaged and join us from time to time.
  • We’ve set up the iAnthology site to resemble the site most of our folks used during their own Summer Institute (called the eAnthology — get the connection?), so that the interface will seem familiar to folks. Of course, there is not a direct correlation, as they are different platforms. But we used a lot of the same language for peer feedback and created groups with similar names to the other network. We want the hurdles low. We don’t expect the teachers in our network to be tech specialists.
  • We have places (groups) for people to develop longer pieces of writing (creative writing and professional writing) but Bonnie made the smart move early on to set up a weekly writing prompt. We have found that this simple activity brings a lot of folks to the site for some writing, and then connecting. Again, a low hurdle is key.
  • Our site has been used by folks writing for publication, for sharing ideas for the National Novel Writing Month and more. It’s a sounding board for review and revision of pieces of writing, and a supportive place to hang out, too.
  • We are all part of a common experience — the National Writing Project — and that common identity binds us together in really cool ways, so that geography is not so important, even though we bring our localized experiences to the online environment. I see this sense of identity as crucial for the life of any online social network.
  • It’s vital that a small group of people be the face of the site, welcoming new folks in and providing frequent feedback to any writing. The last thing we want is for someone to be excited about our site, post some writing and then receive nothing but a gaping maw of silence. So, we have a team of moderators who go in periodically to comment and respond, and to model commenting and responding for others. It did not take long, though, for members to take over themselves, which is what we want.
  • When Bonnie and I started, we did not know if anyone would come or want such a space. They do. And we know teachers are busy people — there is no right time to launch such a site — September is busy, then you are into the holidays, etc. — so we did it and then have been nurturing periods of growth.

We’re excited about what we set in motion and wonder where it will be heading. If you are part of the National Writing Project and want to join us,  leave a note in the comment box here, and we’ll send you an invite.

Peace (in the connections),
Kevin

Wallwisher and the UN Declaration of HUman Rights

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I am experimenting here with a site called Wallwisher, which I learned about from the Little Kids, Big Possibilities presentation by Kelly Hines at the K12 Online Conference, which launched this week. Wallwisher is a sort of brainstorming wall and I want to see if I can use it today with my students as we talk about Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the focus on educating young people. We are reading Three Cups of Tea and Greg Mortenson references the UN document in his opening.
I want to use Wallwisher to have each class brainstorm what young people have a right to in this world, including education.

SO, let’s see if Wallwisher will embed in Edublogs:

Peace (on the wall),

Kevin

Using Vocaroo for Voice

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I created this quick tutorial for our online writing community (iAnthology) for a possible online poetry slam for January. I suggested that we use Vocaroo for voice and posted this step-by-step tutorial. Vocaroo is easy to use and easy to embed, although the quality is not so hot. But it works.

First: go to Vocaroo
Then: click on ‘Click to Record”
It will ask you to allow you to use your microphone.
Click “allow”
At that point, you are recording, so you can do a test.
When you are done, click “Stop Recording.”
Then, click on “post to the Internet”
Copy the embed code and then paste it into a post here at the iAnthology.

Here is a visual tutorial:


Peace (in the voice),
Kevin

My roster of Edublog Award Nominations

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It’s time for nominating some folks for the Edublog Awards of 2009. Here are some sites and folks that I consider worthwhile:

Best individual blog: Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Best Educational Use of Audio: Teachers Teaching Teachers
Best teacher blog: Larry Ferlazzo
Best Classroom Blog: Watch out!
Best individual tweeter: Bud the Teacher
Best educational wiki: Teaching with Thinking and Technology
Best Resource Sharing Blog: Free Tech for Teachers
Best Group Blog: In Practice
Best Educational Use of Video: Longfellow Ten

That’s all I could think of.

Peace (in the nominations),

Kevin

Me and the National Writing Project

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I shared this over at our iAnthology site (an experimental online writing space for teachers in the National Writing Project) but I thought I would share it out here, too. I’ve been trying to create some sort of timeline (this is an idea that my friend, Susan, has talked about — documenting points of entry into the NWP) with digital tools of my life with the National Writing Project.
I worked for some time with Photostory, but the project just stalled out on me. And none of the online timeline makers seemed to do the trick. Yesterday, it dawned on me that my recent infatuation with Prezi might be worth pursuing for this project.
I’m still tinkering with it (there is too much text, I notice, and so viewing it full screen is best).

Peace (in the presentation),
Kevin

Prepping the kids for Three Cups of Tea

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Next week, I begin teaching the young readers’ edition of Three Cups of Tea to my sixth graders. It’s a fantastic story of one man trying to change the world by building schools and connections in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I wish the writing in the book was as inspirational as the story – I find the language wooden and choppy. So I will stick to the craft of the story more than the craft of the writing with this one (as opposed to reading such novels as Tuck Everlasting or True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle or Watsons Go to Birmingham, where the writing just soars).

I’ve been trying to find resources for pre-reading — things that will help situate my students to the story before we crack the book. I thought it would be easier, but I must be looking in all the wrong places. Luckily, a recent Time for Kids magazine article was centered all around building schools for girls in developing nations (the article focused on Africa but we extended the discussions to Pakistan and Afghanistan) that will segue nicely into Three Cups of Tea.

So, I turned to my classroom and realized that in terms of at least one facet of the story — climbing mountains – I had an expert right in front of me: my paraprofressional, John M.

Yesterday, John brought in a ton of climbing gear and gave presentations to all four of my classes about the art of climbing mountains, the science of it (thin air, types of mountains, air speed, elevation, etc.) and an overview of the dangerous beauty of the K2 Mountain that starts the book.

Although John had prepared a simple powerpoint, I encourage him to let me work with him on a Prezi version, and he agreed. He was very impressed with Prezi and it worked nicely on the Promethean interactive board I have in my room. He had kids climbing into sleeping bags, helping use ropes to navigate a “climber” through the treacherous terrain of the classroom and pretending to use special boots with massive spikes to go up a mountain of ice in winter. It was great experiential learning within the confines of the classroom.


We also showed the students a few videos of climbers up on K2 and yet again, YouTube has shown itself to be a valuable resource for us as teachers. Where else would you get such stunning footage of climbers reaching the summit of K2 and views of the Himalayan mountains.

Afterwards, we showed them this interview with Greg Mortenson and his daughter about the Three Cups of Tea book and the Pennies for Peace project (which our fifth grade class has been sponsoring, after they read the book earlier this year).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So, I think we are ready to get on with the book itself.

Peace (in the mountains),
Kevin

Young writers and technology

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A study from Britain by The National Literacy Trust looked at young writers and technology. It’s worth a reading.

One of the findings that stuck with me — the idea (again) that writing outside of school is more meaningful to many young people than the writing we are doing in school. How engaged are they?

Young people are ambivalent about their enjoyment of writing. 45% of young people surveyed said that they enjoy writing. However, enjoyment of writing is related to the type of writing being done. When young people were asked to rate their enjoyment of writing for family/friends and their enjoyment of writing for school separately, some differences emerged. Young people enjoyed writing for family/friends more than they enjoyed writing for school, with over two-thirds of young people enjoying writing for family/friends and only half enjoying writing for schoolwork. Most young people agree that they enjoy writing more when they can choose the topic (79%).

You can access the whole report or just the executive summary.

It does seem that we should be doing more inquiry-based research around the questions of students, writing and technology. But how? And what questions do we ask? How do we move forward to review whether technological tools can improve writing? I need some guidance here, if you have any thoughts on the matter. (Because, our Western Massachusetts Writing Project site is considering a research endeavor on these very issues).

Here, the study’s objectives were: to explore how much young people enjoy writing, what type of writing they engage in, how good at writing they think they are, what they think about writing and what the role of technology is in young people’s writing. This is all fine, but it is subjective, isn’t it? It’s opinion of the students and perceptions, not real data.

Peace (in the question),
Kevin

Of Muppets and Men and Youtube

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I was once again reminded this week of the power of YouTube as a place for archived videos. Here’s what I mean: my sixth graders have started our unit on theater writing for puppet shows (more on that another day). I like to show them views of the Muppets, Jim Henson’s wonderfully imagined world of incredibly characters. I can’t really waste 2 hours with a muppet movie, although sometimes we’ll watch a greatest hits collection of the Muppet Show if we can.

What I want is a fun and quick introduction. So, last week, bouncing around the Net is this new Muppets music video of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which is a hoot to watch (and it rocks!). I was looking for that video, when I came across the motherlode of muppet insights.

Someone has uploaded the entire documentary of a movie called Of Muppets and Men, which I have never been able to find on DVD or even VHS without having to spend about $100. That wasn’t going to happen. Yet here, on YouTube, is the entire movie — cut into pieces, of course. It’s pretty amazing, but then I stumbled on something just as good — a video of Jim Henson, Frank Oz and Michael Frith talking about the puppetry and character development of Kermit the Frog. My students were fascinated by the discussion. The video came at a perfect time because my students are just starting to flesh out their own characters and are beginning to construct their puppets in Art Class.

Here, then, are the two videos I showed the other day:

and


Meanwhile, my family used to watch a Muppets-Sesame Street video each year (a sort of tradition) called Muppets Family Christmas, but I only have it on VHS and again, it has not been available on DVD (and we don’t have a VHS player anymore since one of my sons jammed a Lego into it a few years back). I missed that movie. But … look … here is the entire move on YouTube. Man. Incredibly. (Of course, cuddling up in front of the computer is not like cuddling up in front of the television, is it? But the time is coming when all that tech will be integrated seamlessly, and then cuddling will just be cuddling, right?)
Peace (in the muppetville universe),
Kevin