It’s Just Another Music Monday …

Today, I offer up my second installment of my new Webcomic series about my life in music called Making Music, using ToonDoo as my composition site. I made some changes this week, as I started to use ToonDoo’s Traitr program to create my own comic version of myself, instead of using one of the prefab characters. It was fun but tricky to try to try to mirror myself as a comic character, particularly as the character needs to get older as the comic strips develop. The art element of comics has always been my weakest link (ie, see Boolean Squared).

And here is the Making Music book itself:

Anyway, here is this week’s Making Music comic. If you are looking at this in your RSS reader (hey, there!), then you most likely can’t see the comic, so here is a link to this week’s comic, entitled “Six Strings” in which my mom tried her hand at guitar. And here is a link to a ToonDoo book that I am creating with the comics.

Peace (on the funny pages),
Kevin

The Web 2.0 Smackdown from EdubloggerCon

This is the Ustream video from a session at EdubloggerCon 2009 in which folks quickly gave an overview of some new and interesting Web 2.0 tools. (not sure I like the Smackdown label, but it is catchy).
Thanks to Wesley Fryar for sharing out his notes and some resources at his blog, The Speed of Creativity.
It’s worth a view:

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

How I used Tech this School Year

(from a student)

The school year finally came to an end yesterday (Kids left on Thursday) and I am left in a bit of a reflective mode, even though the end of the year rush has not yet settled in for me. (Plus, I have two summer camps to get ready for — Claymation and Webcomics). But, I am thinking about my increased use of technology in the classroom these days and so, here, I present a brainstormed list of some of the projects we did that integrated technology into my curriculum:

  • Before school even begans: Blogging at The Electronic Pencil
  • First two days of school: Dream Scenes digital stories
  • Writing Prompts that became Podcasts
  • Using Wordle to demonstrate power of words of collective student writing
  • Using Google Forms to collectively brainstorm social action projects and then vote on ideas
  • Using Webcomic platform (Make Beliefs Comics) to pose questions for presidential candidates
  • Stop-Motion Animation movies at Longfellow Ten site with literary themes (authentic publishing and collaboration with other schools)
  • Origins of English Language: collaborative, across-years wiki/podcasting with Wikispaces — The Crazy Dictionary
  • The Heroic Journey— using Google Maps and Picasa to tell a story of a heroic journey (after reading The Lightning Thief novel and The Odyssey graphic novel)
  • Podcasting letters to the new president (in collaboration with social studies teacher)
  • Podcasting Expository Writing (how to do something)
  • Narrative Paragraph Writing — as digital storytelling
  • Blogging with high school students as part of our transition process (moving from our elementary school to a regional high school next year)
  • Digital Picture Books: cellular mitosis as frame for fictional story (in collaboration with science teacher)
  • Podcasting Poems for Multiple Voices
  • Creating Webcomic poems with ToonDoo networking space
  • Claymation Movie Projects — on the theme of tolerance
  • Hyperlinked Digital Poetry Books

Wow. That seems daunting even to me. But it all did seem to come pretty natural and the students were very engaged in all of this work. Technology was a huge hit with my students and I saw many benefits to their learning process.

Peace (in reflections),
Kevin

Twitter This! (and pass it along your network)

I had the idea to write a quick song about Twitter, so during one of my last writing classes with my students — as they were working on writing their own songs — I jotted down some lyrics. I think I was inspired by my students’ enthusiasm.

Last night, I worked on the song with my music loop program and then recorded it.

Twitter This

I get up in the morning and I twitter all my dreams
140 characters is just enough for me
Then, each moment of the day becomes a Twitter storm
until the world is at my doorstep and everyone belongs
to

This Twitter space
inside this Twitter place
I’ve got a little bit of smile
on my Twitter face
Take me as a friend
or leave me out cold
I’m gonna keep on Twittering
until the platform gets old

I’m reading all my friends — the ones I haven’t met
from all across the globe, it’s a safety net
We’re putting pressure on Iran — let the China wall fall
let the information flow so we can all crawl
to

This Twitter space
inside this Twitter place
I’ve got a little bit of smile
on my Twitter face
Take me as a friend
or leave me out cold
I’m gonna keep on Twittering
until the platform gets old

If you like the song, do me a favor and send the link to the song (http://www.box.net/shared/5848z0cba8) along to your own Twitter network (if you Twitter and I am @dogtrax on Twitter) or blog space. I’m just curious to see how far the song might go along various network lines.

Peace (in the groove),
Kevin

Your Day in a Sentence as a Stixy Note

Let’s celebrate our day or our week with Day in a Stixy Note. Just follow this link and use the Stixy site to add your sentence this week. Photos are welcome, too. I hope to see you stuck to the virtual whiteboard at my Stixy site (don’t worry, I have virtual GooGone to help get you unstuck)

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Join me for Round Three of TTT

Tonight (9 p.m. eastern time), I help wrap up the third episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers that center on the book I helped edit (and contributed a chapter to) called Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change and Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom.

Two weeks ago, TTT hosts Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim interviewed us editors about the project, which looks at changes in the writing classroom through the lens of technology and assessment. (listen to the podcast of that show over at TTT) Last week, Paul turned the host reins over to me as I chatted with some of the chapter writers about the concept of collaboration in the technology-infused classroom.

Tonight, as Paul once again allows me to host the show, we’ll be looking at the concept of audience and technology is opening up new doors for publication and expanding audiences and what that does to writing in the classroom.

Chapter authors Dawn Reed, high school teacher and teacher-consultant with the Red Cedar Writing Project; Troy Hicks, associate Professor and director of the Chippewa Writing Project; and Bryan Crandall, high school teacher and a teacher-consultant with the Louisville Writing Project, will share examples of their classroom practices to prompt a discussion about audience in writing using digital technology. The topics they discuss will include high school students using multimodal ways of writing in a speech class and an example of what happens when you take the senior project “digital.”  In addition, Marva Solomon will be joining us to talk about her work with a small group of struggling elementary school writers. The title of her chapter is “True adventures of Students “Writing Online: Mummies, Vampires and schnauzers, Oh My!”

Come join us in the chat room and listen to the livestream tonight at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times.

Peace (in the conversations),
Kevin

Using Voicethread for a Tolerance Project

This comes via my inspirational friend, Gail Desler, who worked with elementary students on a project around tolerance using Voicethread. I love her narrative, as it gives a great overview of the work and rationale behind the work of the students.

There’s more about this project at her Blogwalker Blog.

Peace (in the thread),
Kevin

Making Music: A New Webcomic Adventure

With Boolean Squared winding down for the year (the comic will end temporarily next week, but I will reflect more on that project on another day), I have been interested in creating a series of comics about my life in music (so far).
So, I am turning to ToonDoo to create a series of comics and see how it goes. I’ll be putting the comics in a ToonDoo ebook as I go along. I hope you enjoy them. I’ll be posting the comics — called Making Music — on Mondays, to keep the alliterative theme going.

Peace (in comics),
Kevin

The first TTT podcast on Teaching the New Writing

Thanks to Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim for allowing me and my co-editors to take over Teachers Teaching Teachers for a few weeks. Paul just put up the first of three shows, in which my co-editors (Anne Herrington and Charlie Moran) discuss Teaching the New Writing. The second show focused on collaboration and this coming week, we’ll be discussing the use of audience when it comes to writing and technology. (I’ll post about that another day)

Go to Teachers Teaching Teachers
See the chat room transcript
Listen to the podcast

Peace (on the air),
Kevin