People’s Choice

Preface: I misunderstood the directions, thinking my selection for People’s Choice was supposed to go to Candance. Sorry…

I understand that I can’t give three separate awards but indulge me in recognizing my group members for their contributions. If you haven’t read their posts, you have to pay their blogs a visit so you too can enjoy how their unique voices come through so clearly and how their reflections stretch your thinking. Let me introduce you to them:

• Debi’s lighthearted tone and humor always make me chuckle, while her deep caring for students reinforces my conviction that general ed teachers have so much to learn from special ed teachers.
• Janice’s calm and serene tone clarifies issues yet continuously probes deeper, with words always carefully weighted, whether in person or on her blog.
• JoAnn’s strong voice shows her deep convictions: she challenges me and pushes my thinking in amazing ways through her blog and her diligent comments.
• Molly’s cheerful voice celebrates successes yet fearlessly admits doubt even as she keeps looking for the silver lining of this digital endeavor.

They deserve a group award of their own!

Choosing ONE post that shows strong voice, multimedia/multimodal, AND thoughtfulness, was tough because there are so many great examples of EACH of these separately in our cohort’s blogs yet few that have all three elements wrapped up in one… But if I must choose one complete post, it would be Mary’s post about digital literature.

Her voice comes through in the calm thoughtfulness that permeates her post as well as in the personal connections Mary makes with the artistry of digital literature and remixing.

The multimodal/multimedia aspect is evident through the embedded videos and the links.

And Mary’s thoughtfulness comes through in her understanding of the angst felt by many artists who, like us, are people who “want to have their voice heard.” It’s also evident when she explains the value of creating digital literature with students as it involves so many individual choices and “all the choice means everyone can be creative.” Mary’s thinking, here and elsewhere, prompts me to also “see life anew in our lives and our times.” Powerful stuff indeed.

And the winner is…

OK, this is really hard… I need to select three winning entries from this blog? It’s so much easier to pick what is great about other blogs! Before the drumroll begins though, I must admit it was fun to re-read the stuff I had written (and forgotten I had written). I see a true evolution from cautious to more deeply reflective, inquisitive, and unafraid to take chances. Cool...

Professional:

To Share or Not to Share was a post that brought forth a real issue for all of us: should digital work be private (and monetarily rewarded) or should be free for all to use? This question has implications that go far beyond the classroom. Because this post was triggered by a blog from “out there” (in the real world) it felt more authentic than a simple “respond to chapter 4” type of assignment. When I read the original article I instantly turned to blogging as a way to process the information while also reaching out to get other’s point of view. I loved the feedback I received through the long string of comments. This exchange of viewpoints helped me make new connections and form new understandings. This post exemplifies all that blogging has to offer. This was truly a full circle post.

Creativity:

Superior View: A Digital Writing Project was the first post where I showed a polished piece of my writing. Beyond the creative process of writing and putting together the Voicethread, it also shows my reflections on the during-writing and post-writing stages. This post shows the learning I experienced through the process of making a Voicethread. It’s the kind of reflection we want to encourage in students as well: reflect not solely on the product but also on the process so the process (and your creativity) improves each time you repeat it.

Design:

I think of design in two ways: the little baby steps I’ve taken in design and the infinite possibilities the digital world offers for design. So I’ll pick two entries.

Smilebox shows my baby steps into design. It started as a fluke: I was exploring Smilebox and thought “I have to create something to show that this is more than an online scrapbooking website: it could really be applied to classroom instruction!” Once I set out to create one, I had to think of content, page topics, the choice of pictures, the order of the pictures, their captions, which personal details to leave in and which ones to take out, etc. It turned out better than I expected on a first try!

I also chose my Digital Literature post because the whole topic made me think about the importance of design. Perusing these resources was like entering a whole new world where the conventional rules had been thrown out the window. There was so much creativity, so many emotions portrayed. I felt that I was barely cracking the door open onto a new world. Design: another thing I have to learn a lot more about!

So, feel free to agree or disagree with me: that's the beauty of blogging!

Glogster as a Teaching Tool

Check out this neat primary-level example of Glogster as a teaching tool! Listen to the songs at the bottom of the Glog then figure out which pictures are part of the -at family. If you're thorough, you'll even find the mouse hiding from the cat. What a great way to practice blending and segmenting onsets! Can you think of other teaching applications for Glogster?

Student Guidelines for Online Collaboration

I was disappointed that Beach didn’t include guidelines for teaching students how to collaborate online. Perhaps it’s not an issue at the secondary level, but if we’re going to use collaborative writing tools K-5, we need to scaffold not only the content but also the behavioral expectations. We can't simply expect that students will know how to do so effectively and respectfully. As Debi’s post reminded me, many of our students don’t even know how to collaborate face-to-face, let alone online! As teachers, how do our expectations change when the collaboration take the form of online writing? How do we communicate these expectations? How do we model and teach students to collaborate online? Our book’s wiki site, usually filled with an overwhelming number of resources, was bare… If Beach buried this topic under a different chapter I wasn’t able to find it. After much searching online, I finally found this resource, a contract for students writing collaboratively through a wiki. It’s a good start but is there anything else out there?

Collaborative Digital Writing

Collaborative digital writing is a no brainer: it possesses all the features that excite kids about writing.
• Working on a preferred platform: the computer.
• Letting the authors’ creativity shine
• Playing an intricate game of tag while bouncing ideas from one student to another
• Adding multimedia content to strengthen the impact of the writing
• Creating a real message for an authentic audience beyond the classroom or the teacher

Beware: without that audience, the whole thing will flop! Sure, kids can write online for the teacher but what kind of an audience is that? What motivates kids to write is what they value in the process. Students value the work they do when they know that someone “out there” is waiting to read their piece. They’ll give you their best effort because someone else cares about what they have to say.

Sure, there will be students who won’t want to work in groups because they think they work better by themselves. That’s where the whole-class modeling recommended by Bledsoe as his step 1 of collaborative digital writing comes in. It can prove to those students that their writing will be enriched by others’ suggestions. It’s the leap-frogging of ideas that leads Bledsoe to reflect that: “Students working independently would unlikely have reached a plot rich with so many twists and turns (p. 55).”

My word of caution? Think carefully about your assessment of the students’ work before you even begin. Who will evaluate the work? Bledsoe would recommend having the audience evaluate (at least partially) the students, because “The best evaluation will come from an outsider (p. 64).” Will students earn an individual grade? A group grade? Both? If you are going to assess a group grade, what will be its basis? Participation? Content & quality of the final draft? Self-assessments? My rule of thumb is: For every element you assess, ask yourself: if my own child received a poor grade there, what would I want the teacher to tell me? Be ready to justify your thinking around assessment. As a parent I’ve seen too many collaborative projects where my son’s grade suffered because of issues with the group. For example, someone didn’t do their part of the work and the teacher held the group responsible by lowering their individual grades. Children should not be expected to police each other: that’s the teacher’s job.

As for classroom applications at the elementary level, I certainly agree with Bledsoe that storytelling lends itself perfectly to collaborative digital writing. The same could be said for all genres of writing because they allow for total student creativity. But the process would also work for social studies or science writing, such the state brochures or regions projects we do or explaining the findings of a group’s scientific experiment. To increase the collaborative element of such projects, I would ask other groups to give feedback during the revising stage, asking probing questions that might help deepen the group’s thinking.

Finally, my favorite type of collaborative digital writing is the one done across grade levels, where older students work collaboratively to provide answers to younger students’ questions. For example, an intermediate or middle school class could respond to primary students’ questions about the motivation of literature characters: “Mr. Wolf, how did you blow a house down by puffing? And why did you eat two pigs? Wasn’t one enough?” or “Goldilocks, why did you leave such a mess in the Bears’ house,” etc. Likewise, older students could serve as the experts that younger students turn to explain scientific processes, historical events, etc. Think of it as your own in-house “ask an expert!”

There are so many other ideas! Please share yours!

Smilebox

Smilebox is an online tool that helps you create postcards, slideshows, and scrapbook-like albums. You upload your pictures or videos but there are no voice-over capabilities. Depending on the design, you can add between one line to several paragraphs of text. The slideshows come with a selection of background music that you can choose from.

What I like about Smilebox isthat you end up with a great professional looking product but kids won’t spend hours choosing their background, clipart animations and transitions as they often do with PowerPoints: that’s already embedded in the design they choose. As a teacher, I would pre-select 2-4 background options and let the students choose one. Then classroom time can be devoted to the actual writing and uploading of pictures or scanned drawings.

Some classroom applications could include:
Postcards: A thank you note to a volunteer or speaker; a “who I am” type of project (some postcard designs let you include over 30 pictures); invitations to an authors’ tea or other special event; recipes; etc.
Slideshows: Any project where you would want one line of text with each slide, all with a cool background and music.
Scrapbook: Any project where you want to display several pictures with each text, such as a class book to summarize a field trip, a science experiment, a state or region project, etc.

Oh, and did I mention it’s free? With the free version you upload your finished product to the Smilebox site and you can embed it into a blog or sent it in an email. You have to have the Club Smilebox subscription ($6/month or $40/year) to print it or burn it to a DVD. In between these two options is a sort of “Pay as you go” where you can pay for one premium design at a time: once you own that design you can also print it or save it as a jpg. There is also a Teacher Toolbox Program which gives many of the premium features for free but they are not currently accepting any new applications…

So here is my Smilebox picture album about our vacation to the North Shore.

Make a Smilebox postcard

Digital Storytelling

I can't stop blogging about all this: the wealth of formats and powerful stories are so exciting! I could easily get lost for days at the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)! I'm exploring and loving it.

When I think of legacy and history, I don’t think of mainstream social studies textbooks. Growing up and studying on two continents teaches you quickly that one country’s version of events can be very different from another. For example, as a school child, I never knew about the horrors committed by some French troops during the Algerian war or about the US Japanese Internment Camps. Those parts of history didn’t fit the immaculate honorable image these countries wanted to portray so they were swept under the rug. They might still be hidden if people had not told their story and refused to be silenced.

History should not just tell the story of the most powerful. It needs to include the stories that were silenced. Digital storytelling holds the power to give a voice to the voiceless. The intermixing of images, music, and the unique author’s voice creates a compelling vision of a person’s unique story. It draws you into real people’s lives. The empathy that comes from understanding their unique story helps us make sense of the world. It also helps us make deeper connections with different viewpoints and perspectives. To see what I mean, watch the Pralines video by Carol Burch Brown (below), or Breaking Free by Griffin Kinnard on the CDS website.



We, all of us, are the history writers of this generation. The collective sum of our stories becomes history. We still have a long way to go towards a truly equitable society. Why not use first account primary-source stories to get young people thinking about the reality of the world in order to figure out how to make it better for everyone? How powerful this could be, linking understanding, analysis, and social justice through service learning!

I hope we will give younger children a voice through digital storytelling. Broken friendships, conflicts, intolerance, family crisis such as divorce or job loss deeply affect our children. To ignore their voice is to ignore the impact of those events on their lives.

Digital LiteraTURE

Digital literature—not to be confused with digital literacy nor with traditional literature that has been uploaded online—sits in a realm of its own: the world of digital-born text. It’s the text that will never see a layout page spread, a printing press, or a bookstore shelf. It will never be marred by a coffee mug stain, get its jacket torn, acquire that musty old book smell, or be rudely discarded from a library’s collection. It was born, it breathes, and it lives entirely online in a myriad of formats, each more dizzying than the last. As long as the technology exists and electricity abounds, it will never get old. It will never disappear. Or will it?

I had never given much thought to a digital-born form of literature. My mind was more focused on the literature which, like me, immigrated to the digital world. But this concept of literature written solely for an online audience breaks all the publishing and marketing rules. So I asked myself the same old questions about “how can you make a living if you give everything away?” (see my October post “To share or not to share”). I guess notoriety must be accompanied by some sort of financial reward if people keep writing online (contributing to a textbook on digital tools comes to mind…). Or is it simply enough, as expressed in Thom Swiss’ poem Self Portrait as Drums and Crowd Noise, to ascend to “the hallowed realm of collective experience and memory?”

From the lurker’s standpoint, it was fascinating to see how this form of literature is completely freed to be truly interactive and multimodal. Thom Swiss’ digital compositions left me wondering at times “how the heck do I make this work?” I can just see him smirking as he created his poems, thinking “we’ll see who is smart enough to figure this out…” After the first few confusing seconds of “how am I supposed to see this?” his Narrative You Anticipate was a complete riot! The text doesn’t fully appear unless you mouse over it and the pages arrange themselves at random each time you “draw” it. I re-did it three times: it felt familiar yet fresh and novel each time.

I also really enjoyed the multimodalities of sound, pictures, voice, video. Forgetfulness by Billy Collins rang so true to my ever more frequent “senior moments” (see video below). The calm voice of the author added a reassuring yet inescapable element that drew me in all the way to the inevitable conclusion. It reminded me of listening to my writing group partners read their pieces: Voice comes through so much better when the author reads aloud. This poem was full of humor and bittersweet irony. Every time I try to help my 8th grader with his math homework I am indeed reminded that I too “have watched the quadratic equation pack its bag.” This is brain research in action: information devoid of meaning will not be retained. Alas, for many of us the downward spiral of forgetfulness will expand into a vortex of doom…

Digital literature… Using it as a teaching tool would open up the world of writing to students who may not think of themselves as writer. They would be drawn in by the multimodalities they have already embraced outside of class. But how do we--poor digital immigrants fresh off the boat--find school-appropriate digital literature without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of sites? Where do we begin? Are there any e-Caldecott or Newbery 2.0 e-awards to separate the great works from the so-so efforts?