I had the good fortune to sit in on a workshop at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project and the topic was how to use memes for literary analysis, with a look at poetry in particular. The presenter was a middle school teacher, Jacqueline Desmarais, and she had us looking at memes and then using them to […]
Search Results for: identity
Navigating Network Fluency
I am just starting up a mandatory graduate level course by our state’s Department of Education about how all teachers can best reach our English Language Learner students through Sheltered Immersion techniques. I won’t say I am overly-excited about the amount of work that will be expected of us in the coming weeks/months, nor am […]
Book Review: The Fire Chronicle (Books of Beginning)
The Fire Chronicle is the second in a trilogy underway by John Stephens, and my son and I are completely hooked on the story of three siblings with a powerful destiny ahead of them to reshape the world (or save the world, it’s not yet clear) with three books of power. The first novel, The […]
Graphic Novel Review: The Shadow Hero
As much as I enjoyed the story and art of The Shadow Hero, by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew, what I truly most enjoyed about this book is the explanation of how the book came to be. (You may know Yang’s name from his wonderful American Born Chinese and/or Boxers & Saints) After the […]
Peeling Back the Skin on the Infastructure
Thanks to Terry for popping the first Hangout for Connected Courses into Vialogues, so that we can contribute to discussions after the hangout (with Howard Rheingold, Alan Levine and Jim Groom) has come and gone. Here. they are talking about the concept of a Domain of One’s Own, and how someone might set up their […]
Where ‘Dogtrax’ Came From
(my first dog, Bella) The other day, a friend on Twitter posed the question of where my moniker, Dogtrax, came from. Actually, Maha Bali was riffing on the fact that Alan Levine, whose work with #ds106 is crazy fun, and I both have dog-related nicknames (he is Cogdog and I am Dogtrax). She wondered if […]
Staying Closed in the Age of Open
I’ve been having an interesting conversation among some friends about a networking space for National Writing Project teachers that has been active and nurtured for, gosh, at least five or six years now. My friend, Bonnie Kaplan, and I conceived and launched the iAnthology (with initial grant funding and support from NWP) during a time […]
Slice of Life: Lifting Off with Quidditch
(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. We write about small moments each and every day for March. You come, too. Write with us.) If you read this blog every March (who does that? Slicers), then you know our entire sixth grade is moving into Quidditch Season. That’s right. […]
DLMOOC: On Vocational Education, Portuguese Music and Minecraft
The theme this week over at the Deeper Learning MOOC has been about mentors, apprenticeships, internships and learning in the real world as a part of the learning experience. The DLMOOC Tweet of the Week asked us to remember a time when we were mentored, and two experiences have come to mind. Actually, three. <start […]
Social Media: A Note Home About Digital Lives
As part of Digital Learning Day (tomorrow), we have moved into our unit with sixth graders around Digital Lives. One thing we do is put together a letter/email for parents about Facebook and other social media sites, so that the conversations that start in school about privacy, identity and more can continue at home. Feel […]