Teaching the New Writing: the third podcast

The third and final installment of podcasts about the book I co-edited and wrote a chapter for (called Teaching the New Writing) is up at Teachers Teaching Teachers. The first podcast centered on why us three editors (myself, Charlie Moran and Anne Herrington) decided to publish a collection of chapters on how technology may be changing writing instruction, particularly in the age of assessment and standardized testing. The second installment dealt with the idea of collaboration in a technology-infused writing classroom.
And this last edition centered on the concept of expanding sense of audience and how that might impact student writing and projects. We were joined by some of the chapter authors (Troy Hicks, Dawn Reed, Marva Solomon and Bryan Crandall) to discuss a variety of projects.
Listen in:

Or download the file.
Peace (in the podcast),
Kevin

Making Music: My First Gig

It’s Monday, so I am continuing to share out my evolving webcomic series about my life in music, as told through ToonDoo. This comic centers on the first time I played solo in front of an audience and the likely perceptions that were at play.

And here is the ongoing ebook collection:

Peace (in the notes),
Kevin

You Gotta Listen to the Kids on Leadership Day 2009

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Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant is once again holding a blogging Leadership Day tomorrow, in which he asks folks to blog about advice or help for administrators.
This year, I decided to write a song that tries to capture the idea of administrators and leaders getting out of their offices and into the classrooms to talk to students about what they do and what they need and what they hope for. Also, I want to say again that technology should be integrated into the curriculum, not the old model of “drop my kids off into the lab for a planning period” kind of integration.

Anyway:

You Gotta Listen to the Kids
(by Kevin Hodgson)

Here’s what I fear
Tech won’t disappear
It’ll still be apart from the whole

When everybody knows
that kids will grow
when they connect their school to home

‘Cause kids are gonna text
explore what’s next
but they need us as a helping hand

So listen up, leaders:
we need you as believers
and support us any way you can

You gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’re gonna show you the way
You gotta listen to the kids
they’ve got some things to say

None of us knows
where this all goes
so the tool doesn’t matter much

But if they can explore
it’ll open up doors
and the world will be right in touch

You gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’re gonna show us the way
You gotta listen to the kids
’cause they’ve got some things to say

Peace (in the song),
Kevin

PS — the song is also at this link.

When Writers Go Missing

This is just a bit of fun — but one of our Writers figures that we have sent out on a “mission” to discover more about the National Writing Project has gone missing. (You can read more about the project here) I am sure he will turn up but I used the opportunity to create this movie with Xnormal, where you turn text into video. I then used the option for YouTube, just to keep track of the videos.

Peace (in bringing Poe home!),
Kevin

Bringing Kids into the World of Stopmotion

It’s been a long but productive four days of co-teaching a Claymation/Stopmotion Movie Camp for middle school students. When I think about it, they accomplished quite a bit. All 16 of the students worked on small claymation clips, learned three to four new software programs and then created (mostly through collaboration with others) a longer Claymation or Stopmotion movie.

This year, the group worked better and more creatively than past groups. It all has to do with dynamics, I suppose, but you could really get a sense of the exploration in the air. For the most part, I show them something and then get out of the way. My co-teacher, Tina, and I were tech support and allowed students to bounce ideas off us. But for the most part, they were off and running before we even said “go.”

Yesterday, we showcased the nine movies before a crowd of family and friends. I had each group or each student come up before the crowd and talk about their movie first. They did a great job and the audience was impressed by the work, as was I.

Two movies come to mind.

The first is by two boys who had a great vision, but not quite enough time to get it all done. They used wooden artistic figures more than clay, and their original story involved two little wooden guys discovering a larger wooden guy, who comes to life. As the large guy walks, his footprints would morph into claymation art. They ran out of time, but their work is still pretty cool animation:

The second was a group of three older boys. What I loved about this group was how creative and collaborative they were, and how they realized they could use a bunch of technology in their movie. So, they began with a scene from a Pivot video they made in which two stick figures push a button. Then, they used Bendaroos to create physical versions of their characters, and clay for the others. They also decided to use the digital voice component on Windows for the voice of the villain, shoving the microphone into a set of headphones. Pretty nifty.

Peace (in the movies),
Kevin

PS — You can see all of the movies and more at our Summer Camp blog site.

Another Day at Claymation/Comics Camp

We had an interesting day at our Claymation and Comic Camps yesterday, as kids in the movie section worked hard on their longer claymation movies (which have to be completed today for family) and we had two visitors to our Comic Camp — Hilary Price, whose comic Rhymes with Orange runs in about 150 newspapers, and Bryant Paul Johnson, a webcomic who is now working on a historical fiction graphic novel.

First, here are two movies show some of the claymation work of a blob coming to life and also a character I created out of Bendaroos called Cal the Clayman as he visits the “sets” of the movies.


And then, here are some photos from the visits to the clay camp:

Peace (on our last day),
Kevin

Sharing out: Claymation and Comics Summer Camp

We’re about half-way through with the four-day summer camps — one that focuses in claymation/stopmotion movies and the other that centers on comics and graphic novels. Both have been incredibly interesting and the middle school students (mostly boys) are very engaged in the work they are doing.

In the movie camp, they have been working on a variety of movies, but are now focused in on creating a longer Claymation Movie around the theme of a  “buddy/friend” adventure. There are some pretty fascinating stories developing, including one that begins in the world of Pivot Stickfigure and then transforms into the “real world” with stick figures made out of Bendaroos (bendable sticks).

Here are some pictures of some of the scenes coming to life:

In the comic camp, we are doing a mix of paper work and using technology tools. We worked with ComicLife yesterday and then continued to use our ToonDoo site for webcomics. ToonDoo is a huge hit with many of them, and one student is even working on a 100-part series (yes, 100 pages) that is a spy mystery of sorts. I showed him how to create an ebook in our ToonDoo space, so that the reader can follow the story in sequence. Very cool.

Here are a few pictures from yesterday as they worked on a paper comic:

And here are some comics made in camp:

Peace (in the creative world),
Kevin

Talking about Student Collaboration on TTT

The second webcast of Teachers Teaching Teachers that focused on chapter authors from my book, Teaching the New Writing, has been posted by Paul Allison (Thanks, Paul!). This episode had us discussing the concept of collaboration in a writing classroom that integrates technology.

You can also view the very active chat room that was underway during the webcast over at Edtechtalk.

Listen to the podcast or download it:

The third webcast was all about audience and I will share that when Paul posts it.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Making Monday Music

Here is another installment of my series of webcomics about my life in music. In this one, I remember the excitement of getting my first saxophone. It was something that set me off on a lifetime of music, really, and although I don’t have that saxophone anymore, I still carry it with me in my heart.

And here is the ebook I am creating for this series of comics:

Peace (in reflection),
Kevin