tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46060535927018321662024-03-04T20:25:15.983-08:00Teaching with Technology in the MiddleSucceses, failures, and and lessons learned in forging a 21st Century middle school learning community.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-35779663081910729502016-05-03T17:41:00.002-07:002016-05-03T17:58:25.171-07:00My Favorite Poetry Project, 8th Grade-StyleA few years ago I stumbled onto the <a href="http://www.favoritepoem.org/index.html" target="_blank">My Favorite Poem Project</a>, who has produced about 50 or so videos of people reciting well known poems and talking about how that poem intersects with their life. T<a href="http://www.favoritepoem.org/poem_WeAreCool.html" target="_blank">his one</a> was the first video of I saw, where a man named John Ulrich read and discussed We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Books. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_t_kkjAhDNw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_t_kkjAhDNw?feature=player_embedded" style="clear: right; float: right;" width="320"></iframe>I remember thinking about how I would bring this to my students. There was no "if" because in these videos was something captured about poetry that my students, and everyone else, needs: an understanding that poetry isn't just about analyzing figurative language, word choice, and (ugh) answering multiple choice questions; reading poetry is about finding ways to articulate the complexity of the human experience. Finding a new lens to see the world or perhaps the words that capture what you've felt but never been able to say.<br />
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Anyone who teaches middle school knows about the strange and complex place students are working their way through, and, like these videos show, poetry, even written in a different time and place and circumstance, has the power to help one make sense of the world and feel a bit less alone.<br />
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For the last two years I just played around with this idea, having students pick out classic and contemporary poems, recite them to the class, and explain how that poem spoke to them. This year we took the leap to make the project multi-modal and digital, producing our own version of My Favorite Poem Project videos.<br />
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We spent plenty of time reading and discussing poetry, and students did quite a bit of exploring on their own to find just the right poems. They wrote and thought about how and why that poem worked for them, and did a little scripting/story-boarding. They used the Chromebooks' webcams and the video editing software <a href="http://wevideo.com/" target="_blank">WeVideo</a>. And, after spending way more time than I initially planned (crazy how kids so used to selfies and Shapchat are terrified of recording their image or voice), the results were epic.<br />
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Today we viewed each others finished videos gallery crawl style (most didn't feel comfortable posting them to their blog), and in these videos my students had the chance to see one other, life, poetry, and all the connections in between in cool new ways. It was what teaching poetry should be about.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-49538897621037203242016-02-24T13:14:00.001-08:002016-02-24T13:46:58.646-08:00Launching 8th graders into the TwitterverseTwitter has been invaluable for me for my own professional learning. It's enabled me to follow my interests and interact with like-minded teachers around the world. Much of what happens in my classroom in some way connects back to my own activity in the Twitterverse, for example through shared resources or discussions with other educators, but it wasn't until this year that I finally decided to make the leap and invite my students, just old enough to legally use social media, to join me.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikvqfyPg7fwxGM5D3YAhIAIGoeSL8AYbACrocpG6UIArmeWpycPhixhVP6FYDTwd0aw1rNTk5DPZgNXIyNGb9oM5aIXOFjpLe4pArqYKYGpA3_xRkXyuetCieSowlbO9mmHUpqG0-I6Y/s1600/Screenshot+2016-02-24+at+12.05.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhikvqfyPg7fwxGM5D3YAhIAIGoeSL8AYbACrocpG6UIArmeWpycPhixhVP6FYDTwd0aw1rNTk5DPZgNXIyNGb9oM5aIXOFjpLe4pArqYKYGpA3_xRkXyuetCieSowlbO9mmHUpqG0-I6Y/s1600/Screenshot+2016-02-24+at+12.05.57+PM.png" /></a>What I envisioned was that we would use Twitter as a space to both connect with each other as learners and speak into existing conversations in the world, tweeting beyond the walls of the classroom. I wanted this experience to be one where students learned how to use social media responsibly by actually using social media, not just being lectured about it. I wanted this experience to be a significant step for my students' digital footprint, creating an impression that reflects positively on them, showing them a engaged and saavy 21st century activists.<br />
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It's a lofty goal, and one that is worthwhile for schools. And while this isn't a new realization, it's taken me quite some time to get to the point of implementation because I knew that inviting students to use social media would invite scrutiny. Parents and administrators would have questions and concerns. How would I monitor what students did? How would I ensure that students are kept safe? How will academic content fit in with social media? Do I even know what I am doing on twitter?<br />
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jow8wrZ5_E0Vsa7W5dM2XauR87aXHjHgiIseCnDnxAU/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Here is a letter </a>that I wrote to parents where I both answered the above questions and guided parents in how to be connected and involved. I sent this home one month ago, and in just that time twitter has had a transformative effect on the learning that my students are doing in class. I in my next post, I'll share more about what's happened. But, in the meantime, you can keep up with my classes conversation on twitter at #<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kmseagles?src=hash" target="_blank">kmseagles</a>--like, reply, and/or retweet to join us!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-90280339359329691972015-01-31T14:16:00.003-08:002015-03-01T17:48:05.588-08:00Teaching kids to curate <br />
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quite a bit of what I read online are pieces that have been remixed and re-purposed. It’s content that has been taken from various places on the web, then collected and organized, or “curated,” by someone other than the original author of that content. It’s a form of composition that is definitely real-world, but until this year, it wasn't a format I had given much thought to inviting my students to write. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asking student writers to curate, though, is a worthwhile venture. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In addition to being an authentic, curation also has value because it gives students a chance to engage with web stuff differently than the passive-reader role we often ask them to take on. When we invite our students to curate, they can speak back to and narrate the importance of what others have posted. We enable them to view web content as a conversation where they can participate and invite others to listen in. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the case of my class, the content that I planned to ask students to curate was their classmates’ work posted in a g+ community, titled Making STEAM, that we and several other schools use to share our STEAM focused “makes.” I wanted students to “round-up” collections of pieces that were unique, important, or spoke to them in some way, thus giving greater depth to what was happening in this online space. Through writing and sharing round-ups, students' words would narrate unique stories of learning taking place, and conversely, student makers would see new significance to the content they posted by seeing it reflected and discussed by their classmates. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The challenge for me was figuring out how to teach curation as particular form of composition. Like any other type of writing, it’s a form with a certain set of conventions. I needed to familiarize my students with them and craft an assignment that contained enough parameters to guide but without the rigidity that could limit creativity and the myriad of exciting directions that this activity could take. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My plan went something like this:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part 1: Inquiry into Round-Up (35 minutes)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I shared the following set of round-up posts with students, and assigned them each one to read. As they read, I asked them to think about what the writer is doing in this piece. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.edutopia.org//new-teacher-resources" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Teachers: Resource Roundup</span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.onedirection.net/daily-1d-tweet-round-2392014-nialls-warning-fans-zayn-teases-album-track-titles/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Daily 1D tweet round up</span></a></div>
<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 0.9782608695652174; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.seahawks.com/news/articles/article-1/Tuesday-Round-Up-Marshawn-Lynch-calls-into-The-Barbershop-on-710-ESPN-Seattle/aa72815a-0a83-4ea1-8345-f3c2e78f6e47" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tuesday Round-Up: Marshawn Lynch calls into 'The Barbershop' on 710 ESPN Seattle</span></a></h2>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/09/24/u-s-morning-links-the-too-thin-iphone/?mod=WSJBlog" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">U.S. Morning Links: iPhone too Thin</span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://www.rimonthly.com/Blogs/ridaily/September-2014/The-Weekly-Round-up-Sept-25Oct-1/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Weekly Round Up</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (from the Rhode Island Monthly Newsletter)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After reading, students met with others who read the same post and discuss:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What was the post about?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How was it organized?</span></div>
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</ul>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each group took a turn presenting their responses to these questions to the class, and students not in that group pulled up the post being discussed on their computers so that they could see the post the group was talking about. Students could also share aspects that they noticed the group left out of their presentation. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After all groups presented and all students were exposed to all roundups, students got back into groups to discuss:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What did the round-ups have in common?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How were the round-ups different?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What sort of things happen in a round-up</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What doesn’t happen in a round-up?</span></div>
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</ul>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Share out and make a list on butcher paper of the last two bullets. Below is a typed up version of what one of my classes came up with:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; width: 624px;"><colgroup><col width="*"></col><col width="*"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 134px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Round-ups do:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-explain what is being rounded up</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-have a point, focus, or argument</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-use stuff made by other people</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-include text, images, tweets, videos</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-have hyperlinks to sources used</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Round-ups don’t:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-have random, disconnected stuff</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-have long paragraphs</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-use really formal language</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-use really informal language</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-contain spelling errors</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-have outdated news</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part 2: Making STEAM Round-up Writing (1-2 hours)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I explained to students that they would be creating their own round-ups, curating the content posted in our G+ community. This assignment was about them telling the story of something important that they noticed happening in what people were doing and saying in the Making STEAM community. It was up to them to decide which posts they would select and what they would say about them. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These were the requirements I gave them (the amount of artifacts and to include was something that we negotiated as a class):</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 22.5pt; margin-top: 6pt; text-indent: 4.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Write a post that curates a collection of postings made in our G+community. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 22.5pt; margin-top: 6pt; text-indent: 4.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Should include</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 12px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3-5 (5-7 if with a partner) posts from the Making STEAM community (screenshots and links)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; margin-left: 12px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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" 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" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your commentary on those posts (what they have in common, what you find interesting about them, why they matter, etc)</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 22.5pt; margin-top: 6pt; text-indent: 4.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Format</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: You decide--Google Slideshow, Google Doc, Prezi, Blog Post, something else?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 22.5pt; margin-top: 6pt; text-indent: 4.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Publish your roundup on G+ Making STEAM community under the “Curation and Reflection” category. Include a brief description of what your round-up is about and be sure to tag any students whose work you featured in it (type +their name). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also shared </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mdKUw4EiUkq9_gFg815HMjaYRE7NUdNjO1ctPrtKO3E/edit?usp=sharing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this doc </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with them as a reference for the requirements of the assignment and a how-to of posting to g+</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">----</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After two days of students mostly working by themselves, and sometimes with partners, most completed roundups and had them posted in our g+ space under the category of curation and reflection. As I had hoped, these round-ups took all sorts of directions (though most students chose to use the same tool (Google Slides) to create them. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My next project is to round-up these round-ups, examining the sorts of things that students did through them. Stay tuned….</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-36308532699099947972015-01-17T13:32:00.001-08:002015-03-01T17:50:05.453-08:00Google Classroom--From Tinkering to Committing, and ReflectingFor about the last five years I've been fully committed to using Google applications with my students. From Sites, to Docs, to Chrome, to Blogger, I've found the the Google ecosystem can work pretty well to support all different aspects of learning. So, of course, when I caught wind of Google Classroom, I enlisted the help of my students to help me figure out if and how it could work.<br />
<br />
Like with any new web tool, at first, I'm a tinkerer...and while each tool is different, there's a certain process that I'll typically go through. I'll try it out myself, signed in as a student. Then, maybe I'll have a student who finishes an assignment early try it out and report back to me. And, depending how that goes, I'll determine the next steps to take. <br />
<br />
With Google Classroom, the initially tinkering I did went pretty smoothly, but I continued with this tinker-er mindset a bit longer because, well, Google Classroom was more than a web tool that I may have students use to compose a project. Classroom could be THE web tool that would connect just about everything else digital that students did in my classroom. This is a quite a commitment, and, after a couple of months of feeling it out, it's one that I'm happy to make.<br />
<br />
I'd like to devote this post to writing a bit about why I'm sold on Google Classroom, as well share a little of my thinking about what it enables and constrains.<br />
<br />
Prior to this year, I had been playing with the idea of shared folders in Drive for class assignments. Creating and sharing folders for each class and different assignments where students could "turn-in" work. This wasn't ideal for a classroom environment (for a few reasons that I'm not going to go in here), but I did like how it created a shared digital space for students' work that also took advantage of the features of Drive. Google Classroom takes this organization method a bit further, making everything more tightly integrated. Assignments are easily distributed, progress is easily tracked and feedback is simple to give, and everything is stored in Drive. <br />
<br />
Below are a few ways that Google Classroom has already changed things for me:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZclE-xIC4sf2f7UMeG4CG_OdTs1FoXEXcja0y-ZGXXuJZRB1kpIFMT23oy1StD_5oWiz0Rrn-_DuHEgaUYBkDuKTN2xWDDSHPeJLdY2LArNcbKH1dUZMrlSsamRUvm4d7xnSHobyFCk/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.15.55+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZclE-xIC4sf2f7UMeG4CG_OdTs1FoXEXcja0y-ZGXXuJZRB1kpIFMT23oy1StD_5oWiz0Rrn-_DuHEgaUYBkDuKTN2xWDDSHPeJLdY2LArNcbKH1dUZMrlSsamRUvm4d7xnSHobyFCk/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.15.55+PM.png" height="94" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Type up an assignment on a Doc, and Classroom will make each<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
students a copy that gets stored in Drive and can be easily </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
turned in when students are finished. </div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li>Making the paperless workflow smoother. While I like the idea of using technology make much of the classroom paperless, most of what I've tried has felt disjointed for me (and for students as well, I'm sure). I've struggled to find a simple and organized way to keep track of assignments, attach grades and meaningful feedback, and post resources. Google Classroom has changed that, as it provided us a single space in that allows for both posting and turning in multiple types of digital files. I can post assignment that contain resources from Drive, the web, or my computer. I can make a handout in Docs, attach it to an assignment, and with one click have Classroom make a copy of that Doc for each individual student so they can type on it and turn it in when they are done (a cool turn in button appears on the top of the Doc!). <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm0Hz0od38RMIbxO5rKHdRpizylHFWipnb2x9vdUMNg0gFDhjUqL5xHLZnZ-dnB_bAIoZ504KiA2QlNmmXbw-eanZi23FU6NGBKyojdsDh4J4tP3Phv2rkHvclew7Ze8rvuKqw0pRMfZQ/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.28.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm0Hz0od38RMIbxO5rKHdRpizylHFWipnb2x9vdUMNg0gFDhjUqL5xHLZnZ-dnB_bAIoZ504KiA2QlNmmXbw-eanZi23FU6NGBKyojdsDh4J4tP3Phv2rkHvclew7Ze8rvuKqw0pRMfZQ/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.28.57+PM.png" height="115" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Classroom allows for multiple types of<br />
files to be attached and shared by the <br />
teacher, or turned<br />
in by students</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Broadening students' use of digital tools. What I especially like is that the work students' turn in is not limited to that created in Drive. I can let students create a project using any digital tool they like, as Classroom also gives students' the option of turning in their work as a link. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Increased flexibility. A big part of the reason why I don't always have multiple assignments and projects going on in my room at once is that I just can't keep up. Maybe it's because organization has never been my strong point, but it seems that whenever I let my learners lead me and have the tasks grow organically (something that I often do), I eventually find myself at a place where I'm not quite sure what's happening where, who is starting and who is finishing, which end is up, and which is down. Of course, I still put myself in this position from time to time anyway during the school year because this is when the best learning happens. But now, with Classroom, I can dive headfirst into the mix more often and let Google sort it all out. </li>
</ul>
<br />
There is a lot more that Google could do to Classroom to make it function more like classroom network sites such as Schoology or Edmodo, but taking it too far in that direction would compromise it's greatest asset....simplicity. Simplicity keeps the learning curve small for teachers and students, simplicity allows it to meet a wider array of teacher needs, and simplicity enables it to both stand on it's own or be integrated into a teachers existing digital hub. <br />
<br />
I hope that Google decides to keep Classroom simple. Of course, it will evolve in response to the needs of teachers and functionality of technology. I've already sent them quite a few suggestions, a couple of which I've seen them quickly adopt. Below are a few others that I'd also like to see that I think could work while still maintaining the platform's simplicity.<br />
<ul>
<li>Integration with forms. I frequently use Google forms for class assignments (quizzes, surveys, exit tickets), but in classroom a form cannot be added from Drive as an assignment. Rather, the form has to be added as a link. This may not seem like a big deal (I didn't think that it was, at first), but it has caused quite a bit of confusion on the part of my students because when the open the form and complete it, the assignment is still marked as unfinished. If I give an assignment as a Document, a button appears on the document that the student can press to turn it in, and when they do, the assignment is marked as turned-in on their Classroom dashboard. It's a cool feature and it's what students are used to. It would be even cooler if forms could be made to work this way too. </li>
<li> A customizable notification system. (connect to the idea of differentiation and flexibility discussed above). I don't want my email inbox filled up with notifications of students turning in work. That something that has annoyed the heck out of me with other teacher workflow tools. But, in classroom, if a student turns in an assignment late, I have no way of knowing apart from the student telling me or going back and checking old assignments. </li>
<li>Integration with add-ons and scripts. I'm just now figuring out the beauty that is the world of add-ons and scripts in Docs. For example, I use the Flubaroo script to instantly grade assignments that give through a Google Form, and currently I'm getting ready to try out Doctopus and Goobric to attach completed rubrics to students' work in Classroom (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0NXeDKPyls" target="_blank">here</a> is the tutorial that inspired me). It's all really exciting technology, and it'd be even more exciting if Classroom were to integrate it within its ecosystem.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Et5e_Cdz3XAjivRtBJABIqDxh3oSYAQE2CRTx2J8LIPDVzVhS9s5RB5aQeNLhU-6wH2R5TRuzVk1kUuVaRoraxrWTa0mg1bJOxit3j-wqzGcpkyUbxD4mn2zruH-qEtd2BzGsE9gd4E/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.23.35+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Et5e_Cdz3XAjivRtBJABIqDxh3oSYAQE2CRTx2J8LIPDVzVhS9s5RB5aQeNLhU-6wH2R5TRuzVk1kUuVaRoraxrWTa0mg1bJOxit3j-wqzGcpkyUbxD4mn2zruH-qEtd2BzGsE9gd4E/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-17+at+4.23.35+PM.png" height="200" width="107" /></a></div>
</li>
<li> A<strike>n app </strike> Before I could publish this post, this changed. The Google Classroom apps are now available in iTunes and for Android. Woot woot! I've got them both freshly downloaded and will be tinkering with them in class next week. </li>
</ul>
---<br />
<br />
<br />
As I've mentioned at the start of this post, I'm sold on Google Classroom. They've got a winner with it, and I'm sure that teachers will realize it. In a lot of ways, it's what I've been searching for since the first post I published on this blog in '08 (really...it is....<a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2010/08/creating-classroom-social-network-my.html" target="_blank">read it</a>). <br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-67381629844575847622014-11-21T08:09:00.002-08:002014-11-21T08:09:59.782-08:00The Chromebook learning curveInitially, my students' response to the Chromebooks was mixed. Some were excited about the opportunity to use new and unfamiliar technology. Others wanted nothing more than to have their iPads back in their hands.<br />
<br />
But after two days of using Chromebooks, just about all of my students are team on Team Chromebook. That's not so say that novelty or peer influence isn't a significant variable affecting students' present attitudes. I'm sure that it is. This transition, and pretty much universal shift in opinion, is significant though. That's what this post is about.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNM9Zfn-VDIigMMUyvmy9DqL-jNSKp27_0aapRJoygxDp6A6MpHuBWevfSTUbUJDTQjKag0tWMQN1maxpeZ5KeibFQ0Cr1B-oHuz_fJqit8h_GLbBatXgTYhGuYUf-QR6WzrPAvFC7Xo8/s1600/2014-11-21+11.06.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNM9Zfn-VDIigMMUyvmy9DqL-jNSKp27_0aapRJoygxDp6A6MpHuBWevfSTUbUJDTQjKag0tWMQN1maxpeZ5KeibFQ0Cr1B-oHuz_fJqit8h_GLbBatXgTYhGuYUf-QR6WzrPAvFC7Xo8/s1600/2014-11-21+11.06.46.png" height="320" width="227" /></a></div>
<br />
The Chromebook is different than anything my students have seen before. It's not a tablet or mobile device. It's not a laptop or netbook. There is no server or locally stored files and programs. The touchpad and keyboard navigation isn't completely foreign, but it's different enough to be just a bit confusing and a little bit weird.<br />
<br />
Initially, I thought that I would just allow students to figure out how to navigate their Cromebooks as they used them...sort of like I did when we started out with iPads. But, in a last minute decision, I decided against that approach. Not all the features of the device are easily learned through tinkering and intuition, and students would also want to play around with this new technology. I decided to postpone the lesson I had planned (which involved students using the devices for some web research), and have students do an activity that would give them the opportunity to learn how to use their Chromebooks.<br />
<br />
That Chromebook 101 activity was a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17mvk4WuAPPI3as2hklOBvB42PU7tKAwEOT3VjXx9_mA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">scavenger hunt </a>that I modified from<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_kSaLcLarVMjh8fiL0TeZlqdoJ4G9O6aGcaLKm_mebY/edit" target="_blank"> this one</a> I found on the web. I tweaked the original to better fit with how I envisioned using the device with my class. I'd like to shake the hand of whoever made it because it's awesome. It introduces students to the navigational features of the Chromebook, the capacities of Google Drive, and...importantly, it guides students in playing around with the one feature they are most interested in using: tweaking their profile picture and background.<br />
<br />
When I completed the activity, it took me about 20 minutes. I figured an hour for my students, since they were completely new to Chromebooks and they could work in groups. It ended up taking two hours, but it was two hours very well spent because it enabled both the students and I to quickly work through the initial learning curve and gain a sense of control over these new devices as well as a sense of the cool stuff that can be accomplished through them.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-54379557710225310362014-10-05T11:21:00.000-07:002014-10-05T18:12:19.094-07:00Chromebooks!?Two years ago, when I learned that I would be receiving a set of iPads, my classroom use of and personal learning about technology underwent a paradigm shift. It was a process that, from the beginning, I was exited about. It led me down the pathway where I was able to learn about iStuff (before this, my experience was limited to the pc/andriod realm), teaching with mobile devices, and composition across platforms and apps.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm finding myself an another (really, really, really exciting) spot where I'm going to be able to figure out how to make Chromebooks fit into teaching and learning, as I was recently told that my class was selected to pilot a class set of them for the district.<br />
<br />
Before I begin writing about what is sure to be my next edtech paradigm shift, there is a secret that I need to share. One that I have never before told anyone...<br />
<br />
Back when I was told that I would be receiving a set of iPads, part of me was a little sad. I was at a place where I could have a set of netbooks in my room on most days. I was excited about how well different Google apps were working in my teaching, and I was feeling like I had a great handle on making technology work really well in my classroom. I felt like I found excellent balance of different Google apps, a host of web tools, and a whole lot of writing. I had also just began using the Chrome browser more purposefully in my class, teaching students how to make different Chrome extensions work for them. <br />
<br />
With the iPads, the typing required for large scale writing assignments would become arduous, and since most the web tools I had been using didn't work (or at least not as well) on the mobile device, I would have to go out and find free apps that would sort of do the same thing. The iPad was new and shiny, I definitely would have liked them in my students hands for some tasks, but I was worried that if they were the sole device my students could use then the pace and quality of students learning (and my teaching) with technology would slow way down.<br />
<br />
Around the time when I found out that I was receiving iPads, I heard about these devices that had just hit the market called Chromebooks. They cost way less then iPads, were purposed around the Chrome browser and Google apps, and would seamlessly fit into the system I had going in my class. I secretly wished that it was these devices that my students would be receiving instead. This is something which I have never told a soul, because as any teacher knows: you just don't complain about getting a class set of iPads. You just don't.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
Of course, as I learned about the capabilities of iPads, my attitude towards these mobile devices changed. There was plenty that they could do that a netbook couldn't (or just couldn't do as well), and I was really starting to like the way that these features were reshaping my class.<br />
<br />
It was about the time that I was feeling pretty glad about not telling anyone about my initial doubts about iPads, that I got an email from my district's tech person that I would be receiving a class set of Chromebooks as part of a pilot, and that the iPads I had been using would be relocated to another classroom. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKxHrmnMtG7beuEaRcjmkl1BYE5Y216lrbu7F5ShTlcuwhxtkSEjm-efGi-EgjYODcGyBY2YuZyejJPH3E1ZgWE9_omV1R_ZOt034EJKQ8ld9qTjF0UGJD8Us3iioJo2IHProJ_OEE8TQ/s1600/20141005_141323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKxHrmnMtG7beuEaRcjmkl1BYE5Y216lrbu7F5ShTlcuwhxtkSEjm-efGi-EgjYODcGyBY2YuZyejJPH3E1ZgWE9_omV1R_ZOt034EJKQ8ld9qTjF0UGJD8Us3iioJo2IHProJ_OEE8TQ/s1600/20141005_141323.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Part of me wants to keep in my initial feelings (a lesson I found valuable in the anecdote above). But a bigger part of me knows that I should write them down, because I think that it would have been really valuable of me do more of this the last time.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to get into all the particular details about what I'm thinking about doing with the Chromebooks. Those will have to go in their own post later. My initial feelings, I think, are what I want to get down here. So yea, I'm a little sad to no longer have the set of iPads in my classroom. That my students won't be using all these cool creation apps and smashing them together to compose, and I won't be continuing to read and write into an educators' conversation that I feel like I'm just getting to know and find a place in.<br />
<br />
So now that that's said, documented, and out of the way, I also need to say that the other 80 percent of my initial feelings are pure <i>excitement. </i>I'm excited that my students get to pilot new technology for the school, That I can re-immerse myself in the thinking I was doing about the Chrome browser. My students can access the full version of Google Apps and type on a full keyboard (which, by the way, almost all of my students swear up and down that the prefer to type on a touch screen...having watched them do this for a couple of years, I'm really interested in seeing how they write with physical keys).<br />
<br />
Lastly, and most importantly, I'm excited because I know that there is so much I don't know about Chromebooks in the middle school ELA classroom, and that is soon about to change.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-18287940974628951352014-01-29T11:28:00.001-08:002014-01-29T11:28:27.483-08:00From Blogger to Kidblog to G+ and now...back to Blogger<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blogging serves an important purpose in my class...it has for the last five years or so, and I've written quite a bit about it. At first,<a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/06/revisioned-student-blogging.html" target="_blank"> I had my students use Blogger</a> because I wanted them on a real, public blog. I wanted the to be able to feel the same sort of experience that I have with composing my ideas to the world. But two years ago, this changed. I made the switch for my students over to Kidblog. Blogger was great, but Kidblog afforded me something that I couldn't get with blogger: a stream of student posts as they were published that all students were able to see, as well as the complete ability to moderate students posts, drafts, and comments. I tried to make the shared visibility piece work with Blogger through teaching my students how to use Google Reader and to follow each other's blogs, but considering the death of Google Reader (and the limited success I had with teaching students to use it) I gave in, adopted the Kidblog platform, <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2012/09/caught-off-guard-by-kidblog.html" target="_blank">and haven't looked back</a>. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In tinkering with Google+ in my classes this year, though, I've made a few discoveries that have got me contemplating the move for my students back over to Blogger. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tinkering with Google +</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first this year, Google+ was an experiment. My students and I are involved in a collaboration with a couple other schools and this work would require the creation and sharing of all sorts of media...text, images, videos. A private G+ community was the space that we all planned on using to make that sharing and connecting possible. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google + worked well for this purpose. Really well, actually. Here are a few of the high points I noted about using it:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upload speeds were super quick, if not immediate. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Students were able to include text with the content they posted. So, for example , they could post an image of their project and type in commentary about image in their post.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The display of the content feed allowed students to quickly browse through and view the work of their classmates without having to open individual links. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Viewers can comment on posts as well as +1 them, giving authors two ways to receive feedback on their content posted. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Notifications. Love this feature because of how well it keeps users connected to related activity in our digital space. Someone posts in the community, students receive a notification. Someone leaves a comment or +1, the poster gets a notification. Someone gets mentioned in another post or comment, the person mentioned receives a notification. Notifications allow a tighter community to happen in a vast digital world.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course there are also some drawbacks. Even though we operate in closed communities that I have the ability to moderate, G+ is an open social network with all sorts of activities happening on it. Because of this I have to be real clear with students about my expectations for use and monitor them closely as they use it. This makes for a little more work on my end. I have had to have a few individual conversations already with students about appropriate use of the site in school, and I’ve had to be more active in teaching safe and responsible social media use. This is something schools should be teaching anyway, though, and what better teaching context for these skills is there than a real-world social network. This is the same truth that drove me (initially) to use Blogger. It is what causes me to feel a little bit bad about switching my students over to Kidblog, and it’s part of what’s causing me now to consider having them switch back. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rethinking Blogger</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In addition to the needs that G+ is already meeting for my class, I think it may also provide a solution to one of the main reasons I veered from Blogger in the first place. This being making student posts readily accessible to classmates as they get published. Both Blogger and G+ are Google products, and Blogger makes it easy to share a post on Google+ as soon as the publish button is pressed. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If G+ works for other types of media sharing in my class, why not also integrate student blogs? Students can publish their posts on Blogger, and select the option to share on G+ in the community I’ve created for my classes. Doing so puts their published writing in a place where it can easily be read by students in the class, and because of how the two sites are connected activity on the posts (+1, comments) on one platform is visible in the other. </span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-701e004b-df72-62a1-d3c4-7f2e6dc9cb9e"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This, I’m hoping, would give students real experience and skills with using real tools for composing, connecting, and learning in the types of social environments that people use in the real world...not just in a closed school community. I’m looking forward to piloting this move to Blogger and G+ sharing with my first period class next week. </span></span><br />
<span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The experience will surely give me plenty to reflect on in my next post here….</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-79298314915500568222014-01-27T04:47:00.000-08:002014-01-27T18:20:43.077-08:00Tired and Inspired: Reflections from a classroom makerspace<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b>I spent one week making with my students in October for our second make cycle. At the end of every day, I tried to do a little written reflection on the experience. Towards the middle of the week, I came to some important realizations that I captured in this reflection. The following post is one I adapted from the reflection I wrote after the third day of making with my students. </b></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-621a7f5d-ce40-aa4b-2992-149cee308ba7" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was going to post on day two, but to be honest, I just didn't have the writing in me at days end. I don't think that I have it in my today either, but the inspiration I’m feeling from the events of today is driving this post on. Something special happened...something that wasn’t there on the first or second day...or at least not to the same extent. There was widespread flow...that space where the subject and the object had come together and it becomes difficult to tell where the artist ends and where his or her art begins. The kids were into it….the completely-lose-track-of-time-and-space sort of into it, and what they were making was no longer a set of boxes and pipe cleaners, papers and paint. Kids had direction and purpose. There was still tinkering, yes, but there existed a sense of ownership that before today was only apparent in limited amounts. Today was awesome. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was talking with other teachers before today...talking about the concern I had that <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2013/11/make-cycle-2-overview-noticing.html" target="_blank">the requirements that I had set forth for the project</a>...about it being connected to students histories, future career interest, and science...were sort of falling to the wayside. Kids were making cool stuff, but it really didn’t seem like what they were doing was considering these elements. And their makes sure as hell didn’t look like they fit anywayshapeorform into our broader Cycle theme of mapping. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this disconnect seemed to shift today. Once students had an idea of exactly what there make was to be, they seemed to move forward with it with a greater consideration on these requirements that I had given them. This observation is important for the making classroom and teacher. This idea of “backwards planning” (or in our case backwards making), or making with the end object in mind, is closely tied to the common approach to teaching. There is an objective, a lesson gets designed around teaching that objective, and in the end students are measured on how well they mastered that objective that was clearly understood by all involved beforehand. Yes, I do see some faults in the model (because learning is a complex thing based on more variables than can possibly be considered, and regardless how clear the objective is or how well the instructor designs the lesson, no two students are going to see something exactly the same...let alone the objective as the instructor sees it), but still, I’d be lying to say that I didn’t adhere to it a little….the fact that I was frustrated and confused when I saw that the requirements weren’t shaping students' make is a testament to my holding this belief. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This school model, though, runs counter to the making (and learning) process. The learner does have some vision, yes, but as the composition as formed that vision is revised and revised based on the makers' experiences, struggles, and new learning. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, coming back to this topic of requirements. I don’t think that they were a bad thing. I’m just seeing now that students’ not adhering closely to them in the first days of the project was perfectly fine. I didn’t beat the requirements into them when I noticed they weren’t being considered...and I’m seeing now that was a good thing. Requirement beating wasn’t necessary. Space, encouragement, and freedom to make was. Before students fully understood exactly what it is that they were making, they weren’t yet ready to consider the requirements. Now, with direction in place, I’m seeing all sorts of deep thinking happening on the parts of students about just how those requirements (and even how the idea of mapping) applies to their make, and this thinking is shaping the final vision...or revision, about what they are composing. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So my take away….requirements are OK, so long as they do not become restrictions. It’s fine to plant the requirement seed in the beginning, but give it space for it to grow. It’s not possible for students to develop a close connection and vision of their make if they are making it to meet a focused objective. Let the connection happen and the make become personal. Forget the vision of what it should, or even could, look like. Let them discover it for themselves and then figure out how the requirements should apply. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And oh, here are a few other things that I noticed.</span></div>
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<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space for collaboration is valuable...because of it, students draw on each other for their skills, experience, and expertise. Partnership form between individual makes already started, forming new, more complex integration of ideas.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Painting...it’s messy, but seeing it in the hands of students makes me even more sad that art was cut. It allows for more than just a creative outlet, it brings about really deep and complicated thinking...like Maria’s Pink Floyd album-looking painting that speaks to the disconnect between humans and machines when it comes to her knowledge of the medical field...or Sebaistians' black box that connects his knowledge of minecraft to his future in computer engineering. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time. An hour a day for five days is hardly enough. I worried about this before we started, but I was thinking we’d have too much. Nope, not at all.</span></li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cardboard is the ultimate making material. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="" id="id_eb2_3957_9dc8_8315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQMvV2k9PnuS1wH_fui8gcLxuWKt2uC5EOL2R2nwbD4g39K1dHWgOYBVxcVMUZdkUOUd2FEXe9-W2q06gSm5kR9Tgbol_Y3Xu1U8QnqVXor05c3AQ1fvQyNPQuMHN0WtrzV7p_slqWCE77/" style="height: 468px; margin: 4px; width: 341px;" title="" /></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-57429091747466443632014-01-10T12:24:00.003-08:002014-01-10T12:24:34.148-08:00Excited about Subtext Seems like I change my lesson plans every year. If I don't scrap the previous years' content, I usually at least do some heavy duty modifying. The process keeps me fresh, and there isn't a lot in my classroom that is the same year to hear...how read the Tell Tale Heart is an exception, though. About 6 years ago I came across <a href="http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/writer/telltaleheart_play.asp" target="_blank">this interactive website</a> where students can read and listen to Poe's story, while they also add their own annotations to specific parts of the text. The annotations we then save and use for class discussion on subsequent days. It is always an engaging and productive where students' literacy is concerned.<br />
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But this year technology forced me to change up this lesson. The website uses flash, our iPads don't. In searching for a solution, a replacement for this website that I liked so much, I came across an app that met the same needs for the interactive reading piece of the lesson, and even opened up some new possibilities for interactivity and social interaction.<br />
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With Subtext, I was able to create a group for each of my classes and having students join them was a breeze. They just signed into to Subtext with their Google account (a great recent update) and entered the group by typing in the code that the app assigned to each class. I uploaded and shared a pdf version of the Tell Tale Heart, that students in each class were then able to access. <br />
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The lesson that I planned had students re-read the text (we had read it the previous day, before I started experimenting with Subtext), and insert their own questions and reactions directly into the text of the story. These annotations could be seen by the rest of the class as students entered them, and during and after students' rereading of the text, they took time to read and respond to the questions posted by their classmates.<br />
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<img alt="" id="id_70_7181_c77d_4542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGNSMLRXo8OJ9lfgLbanXyPtDorxXCA5fNmNh8GdQRwThT4KT6zFaStVbm7X8vWJT-roeipcFxxMajBAzi4HwCeVtPKEzGnMS2lZZoJeg2Ji4j9-axojuWvjDIJXNy3CgcqQ3HqJIQJCk/" style="height: 329px; margin: 4px; width: 238px;" title="" /><img alt="" id="id_d98a_b9c2_3c84_31c1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcvsTj90mTeth3PfhzL6UJGKIVCYd7ngQWr-rHKCwsenrQckRHI_xTx0unEj9o6FAgDi5_mKvdXZzB3mt7JKb_Az1DHgmCOcVNcSchBoqZTqVnT3HxZDJILDYS4CiEcbQZVJ8N_vX7J78/" style="height: 338.309423347398px; margin: 4px; width: 254px;" title="" /><br />
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While the asynchronous online discussions that transpired in response to these questions lacked the energy and flow of our face to face discussions (which we still had the later part of class), I really liked how this feature of Subtext facilitated conversation that was closely connected to the text and enabled students to move between questions, revisit the text as needed, and respond at a pace that best worked for them. Often during the f2f conversations, some voices get left out and the flow of the conversation keeps students from being able to revisit and/or dig further into ideas. </div>
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I played a little with the feature that let me create, distribute assignments connected to the text. I made one where students had to select and tag lines that contributed to the mood of the story, then explain how the author's word choice in those lines contributed to the overall mood. This was also awesome, but I didn't like how that since this was a premium feature, I had to distribute and redistribute student licences every class period because Subtext only provided me with 30 for free. That was about the only complaint I had. I'm a big fan of free.<br />
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Overall, I'm way excited about how Subtext met the need I had for finding technology that allowed for an interactive reading of the text. It's on my list of keepers for our class, and I'm looking forward to trying it out for other texts and purposes in the months ahead. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-36058659804615138012013-04-26T13:33:00.002-07:002013-04-26T13:38:06.454-07:00Transitioning to an iPad classroomIt's been two weeks since iPads have been in the hands of the students in my class, and the focus of the work we have been doing can be summed up in one word: transition. Much of the work of my class has been carried out through various free web tools accessed via netbooks, so for my students and I, moving from pc to Mac and one device to another, we have focused on becoming acclimated by using it for processes and tasks that were already familiar. Here's a quick recap of what we did and how it went:<br />
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<b><u>Writing spaces</u></b><br />
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We use Google Docs regularly for drafting and collaborating, and Kidblog for our blogging platform. While both of these tools can be accessed from the web browser, they both also have apps for the iPad. Overall it seemed that students had very little trouble at all moving from using these cloud-based tools on the netbook to the equivalent iPad app. Though the apps did not look the same as the interface students were used to, they were simple and user friendly so students didn't have much trouble making the change. </div>
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The Kidblog app was a little buggy, as a couple of students lost posts that they had started writing, but the Drive app worked smootly, was reliable, and eventually most studnet who were using their blogs to draft theri writing switched to Drive, then copied and pasted in their blog to publish. The Drive app was missing some features available on the desktop version that my students had come to love (like the ability to chat and post comments), but the writing we were working on this week didn't necessitate collaboration, so this didn't come up as an issue. I'm interested to see what happens when students do come back to writing collaboratively. I asked one class if they were concerned about loosing this feature, to which they replied that they would find a way to make it work. I'm sure they will.<br />
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<b><u>Browsers and Bookmarking</u></b><br />
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Recently our school had made Chrome available as an option for internet browsing. The experience of using it in my classroom has been a huge success. It was faster than the version of IE we were using, worked seamlessly with all of the Google apps, and had a Diigo extension that was awesome for bookmarking.<br />
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The mobile version of Chrome, while a great app to have, doesn't have near the features of the full version. I do like that with Chrome you can view bookmarks and history across browsers, but not having that Diigo extension available was a huge drawback for the research that we were getting into. My students were familiar with Diigo, and while bookmarking in Chrome is fairly simple, it doesn't offer the handy annotation features of Diigo, features that we've built our research process around.<br />
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The solution: installing the Diigo web highlighter on the iPad Safari browsers. To do this, I had one of my classes go through the steps of installing it as directed by the app. Of course, what I thought would be a five minute process ended up being about 30. I eventually figured out that I could save one iPad, whose browser I already set up, as the back-up in Configurator, then when I applied this back-up to all devices the web highlighter would show up in Safari. I've got to remember that for next time.<br />
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Students didn't seem to have much difficulty using the iPad web highlighter to bookmark and annotate, though with the touch screen it did seem to take them a bit longer to select the text on the webpage they wanted to highlight. And as for the actual Diigo app, I ended up deleting it from the students' iPads. About the only thing that the app was useful for was making the process of installing the web highlighter a bit easier. The web-based version of students Diigo libraries seemed be fully functional and more user friendly.<br />
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<b><u>Learning the basics of iPad navigation</u></b><br />
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I assumed that since the iPad was fairly easy to use students wouldn't have a whole lot of trouble figuring out how to use it. And for the most part, that has been the case. iPads don't have the same ability to multi-task, but students seem like they are figuring out how to use the gestures features to swipe between different apps they are using. For example, when when created annotated bibliographies, students had to move in and out of their Diigo library, the Bibme site, and their blog, while also occasionally referring back to model and requirements that I had posted for them on my website. This was a bit more time consuming than what they were used to, but it was also a good exercise in learning the multitouch gesture feature, and most students when I asked them didn't seem to mind. <br />
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<b><u>Next steps....</u></b><br />
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The transition from working in spaces where we had already been has thus far gone pretty smooth. What I'm most excited about is venturing into tasks that take advantage of capabilities that are specific to the iPad. As I'm finishing up this post, I've got some of my students in a reading class experimenting with using the apps Flipboard and Zite to create personalized magazines around topics of their choice. In class we are also working on creating documentaries with iMovie and Explain Everything. I'm also getting acclimated with Apple TV. It's been a pretty awesome experience, and I look forward to writing and thinking more about it in my next post. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-20756496479644852502013-02-07T17:48:00.001-08:002013-02-08T12:38:09.785-08:00In preparation for a class set of iPads...I was excited last week when I opened an email from my technology director, letting me know that I would soon be getting a class set of iPads. A huge part of what makes this news so awesome is that I have spent the last two years engaged in an iPad pilot set up through a professor at a local university. With a single iPad, I explored the potential benefits and limitations of the device, which was in both my and my students' hands daily. <br />
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Since my students were already immersed in a technology-rich environment (most days I had my students use net-books-- researching, collaborating, and composing), the direction of my inquiry took shape around both comparing the two technologies and examining how the iPad could be integrated into our existing (PC-based) digital writing workshop. <br />
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Though the greatest limiting factor was that I only had a single iPad to work with, I learned quite a bit, and it will be this learning that I will build from when my class set arrives. But now, before that day gets here, I'd like to use this post as a space to share some of the conclusions and realizations I've made over the last couple of years about the use of iPads in my 8th grade ELA classroom. These are points that I've discussed with colleagues, shared in professional development, and presented at conferences. I'm not sure why I'm only now posting them here, but I know that I need to. This will likely be the first of many iPad related posts.<br />
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<u>What I've taken from the single iPad pilot: </u><br />
<ul>
<li>One of the greatest strengths of the iPad was its physical properties...long battery life, portability, and quick boot time. It can easily be moved from student to student, and I did not have to plan around the time that would take to turn on and be ready to use, as I do with my net-books Since there were no moving parts, I also feel like the device will undergo less wear and tear from everyday use. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Since my starting place was the tasks my students carried out on their net-books many of the apps I first searched for were those that could carry out equivalent tasks to what my students were doing on websites accessed through the net-books. Many of the web tools I had my students use were not accessible to on the iPad or could be accessed on a limited basis. So, for example, since a student couldn't use the <a href="http://piclits.com/compose_dragdrop.aspx" target="_blank">Piclits </a>website on the iPad, I had to download an app like <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instant-poetry-hd/id353592334?mt=8" target="_blank">Instant Poetry</a> to carry out a similar task. I discovered that most apps I found were inferior to the equivalent free PC web tool that the rest of the students were using. </li>
</ul>
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<li>What I am most interested in learning more about are apps that allow students to carry out tasks not possible on a PC. This is an area where I feel lies the greatest potential for understanding how best to integrate the tablet into teaching. And also, as it true with the web-based tools I have learned to integrate, I am interesting in learning more about how different apps and functions can work together in particular learning situations. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The iPad was great for web browsing, media consuming. As for producing, it's great for taking quick photos and videos, and editing with iLife package apps, like iMovie and iPhoto. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Most of my students initially claimed that they didn't mind typing on the iPad for writing pieces of longer lengths. Almost every student who made this claim changed their minds after a couple of days of typing on an iPad during writing workshop time; touchscreen typing was slower and more labor intensive. Students who wrote on the iPad, while they were able to use Google Docs as a drafting space with the Drive app, were not able carry out digital conferences through using the chat and comments features not available on mobile devices. These are functions of Docs that many of my students have come to appreciate. Not having this access is what I have come to believe will be the greatest constraining factor when integrating iPads into my class, at where our digital writing workshop is concerned. *And by the way, I shared my concern with the students today, and they assured me that they would find a way to make it work out...and I am sure they will. </li>
</ul>
So, I guess if I were to sum up what I had discovered through the last couple of years with toying with an iPad would fit into my classroom, I have learned that:<br />
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<ol>
<li> An iPad is not a laptop</li>
<li>Thinking about iPads from netbook/laptop paradigm hinders their learning potential. </li>
</ol>
I'll more easily transition to this new iParadigm after I have a class set of these devices up an running, and I am looking forward to getting that process started. I think that ideally, though, the best learning environment for students is one where they will have access to multiple types of technology. Where students are able to use iPads for some tasks and laptops for others. I know that this is what it's like for me in my own daily use of technology Since I began using mobile devices in my personal and professional life, I have been in a continuous process of experimenting with which device is most ideal for particular situations. I'm still figuring this balance out, but it seems to me that finding this balance deciding which tool to use and when, is an important skill that we ought to give students the chance to develop in school. I hope to explore this area is well. <br />
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I can't wait to get started...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-77954192965907132972012-11-27T18:03:00.001-08:002012-11-27T18:32:01.799-08:00The literacy of the image search<br />
The last several classes I have had my students spend quite a bit of time searching the web and learning, doing informal web research to find out just what is out there about a topic they may know little about. In our case the subjects of our googling have in some way connected to the context of Night, by Elie Wiesel a novel that we'll soon start reading together. Last week we inquired into the Holocaust and World War II. Today our lesson focused on trying to learn a little more about how the concepts of Jewish Mysticism mentioned in the first three pages of Night connected to each other, so that we could better understand Wiesel's childhood and background.<br />
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I have used this time to teach students a little about how to search the web and also a little about website evaluation. Actually, I imagined that I would be writing this post today as a way of reflecting on the process of how these mini-lessons on digital skills have gone. I'll have to hang on to that idea for another time, though, because I noticed something today that I'm feeling needs more thought. I noticed how many of my students, while searching for information on the internet, do an image search. It's a habit that I'm seeing become more common among my students, and I'm wanting to think more about value of it.<br />
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My first reaction as a teacher is to say, "Hey, were doing research (even as light-weight as these mini-research assignments have been)! Those pictures aren't going to give you the information that you need. Stop being lazy and read some complex text or else you wont be college and career ready." But I don't feel like that's the right reaction. Partially because I do the same thing sometimes....actually a lot of times. I am reading or watching television and something sparks my interest. I go to the web, and depending on the topic, I usually end up at some point doing an image search. Having those pages and pages of images from the web help me "see" the concept I'm trying to know in a way that searching blogs or news articles don't. Of course, there are other times when I specifically search for blogs, journal articles, news articles, or even tweets. Usually I'll end up meandering through several of different genres of web text, and at some point stumble across something that gets me thinking about something that makes me feel like I need to do an image search to better understand what I want to know.<br />
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By the last class of my day today, after I had the first three classes to observe and wonder about students internet searching habits and the value of image searching, I was a little more conciseness of my students' internet search habits. I noticed that most of my students didn't begin with searching for images. I noticed that at some point most students at some term that they searched in images. They were basically doing the same thing that I did when I sat on the couch at home and wanted to learn about something.<br />
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Both my students and I understand that there is value in having a visual reference to a concept that we want to know more about, especially one about which we are unfamiliar. Image searches are worthwhile, I don't doubt that, but I'm wondering about the place the practice has in the context of literacy instruction in my classroom. Should I incorporate lessons that guide students in doing image searches, and what would such lessons focus on? I'm not sure exactly what the guidelines are for being an effective image searcher. Maybe we could create some. It could also be interesting to "read" pages of images, examining the story they collectively tell, and looking at this story critically. Maybe even looking at the results as augmentative texts. Perhaps even students' findings of image searches could work their way into the more formal research papers that we'll write later in the year....<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-87109762851912829782012-09-18T12:31:00.000-07:002012-09-19T15:48:12.634-07:00Caught by suprise by KidblogI found my self in a bit of a bind this week as my school's process for issuing students their school email addresses has been hung up. I was planning by now to have all students set up blogs in Blogger and begin composing and publishing there. Any account that students make online through my classroom is supposed to be created with a school email, so without them, I had to put the plans for the Blogger and Google setup on hold. <br />
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I decided that as a temporary solution I would have students create blogs using <a href="http://www.kidblog.org/" target="_blank">Kidblog</a>. They are excited about the writing that's been happening (right now we are creating narratives), and I felt that making sure they had the space to share and respond would be important for both students' sense of audience and also for the community that we are building. Today is my second day with using the platform, and I've got to be honest, I'm starting to reconsider just how temporary this Kidblog fix is going to be. It seems to be working pretty well for all of us. <br />
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The set up was a breeze. I decided to create a separate class for each of my classes, and all I had to do was share the codes that the site generated for each class, along with <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2012/09/september-16th-blog-set-up.html" target="_blank">these simple instructions</a>, with students. Within minutes they had created user names and passwords, and were part of the class. On that first day, I gave students very little background about the site or it's purpose other than telling them we would be using it to compose and share our writing. I gave a overview of how to get around the dashboard, and within 10 minutes, all of my students were writing from daybooks into their first blog posts.<br />
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Between our workshop time yesterday and today, we have had very few problems, and yea, I'm impressed. Here are a few reason's why:<br />
<ul>
<li><u>Kidblog's user-friendly interface</u> makes it incredibly easy for students to navigate. It's lay-out is logical and includes the most important components that bloggers need to compose. </li>
<li><u>The administrative controlls</u> makes it easy to adjust student accounts. The number of forgotten passwords when kids logged on today was on par with what I usually see (a handful in each class), but the fix took very little class time. I opened their profile on my iPad, let them type in their new password, and the student instantaneously was able to sign in on the netbook at their desk. </li>
<li>I could see student drafts as they were automatically saved while they typed. As students worked I would flip through the posts they were writing and then approach individuals for a conferences as I saw appropriate. In the past (when not writing on Google Docs that they shared with me), I accomplished this by reading over students' shoulders as they wrote for a bit then initiating a conference. The conference process today was one of smoothest I've experienced. </li>
<li>On the same note as the point above, being able to open the most updated version of their draft from my device didn't require the student and I to share a screen, a task not possible in Blogger unless a student had published the post. </li>
<li><u>Students could see the posts of their classmates</u> as they were published without having to take the additional step of following each others' blog or learning to use RSS and a feed reader. Kidblog combined the benefits of a class blog while still letting students have individual blogs. </li>
<li><u>I was able to see comments as students posted them</u>. Actually, I was surprised to see that students were even posting comments, since our commenting day wasn't until tomorrow. But, as I pointed out with the point above, students know immediately when a blog gets published. </li>
</ul>
I'm excited about Kidblog, and I wasn't expecting to be. It's not new. I've played around with it before. I've introduced it to other teachers in my building, and led pd sessions for teachers using it in other schools. I knew the site and its capacities well, but I made the decision last year to have my students use Blogger. I wanted them to use the same site that real bloggers use. To have the freedom to customize, not feel policed, and develop a sense of ownership of their digital composing spaces. I wanted them to feel like their words were on the same playing field with others in the global blogosphere. And I thought that using a "big-kid" (not made specifically for school) blogging site, I would then have more possibilities for teaching students the real-world lessons in digital literacy. <br />
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I still believe in the value of all of these initial reasons I had for using Blogger, but my two days with Kidblog as got me thinking if, when, and how I'm going have students make the transition to Blogger when students' emails become available. I'll have to keep thinking and writing about that. But in the meantime, feel free to check out what my students have been posting and leave them some feedback. I'm sure they'd love it!<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b> My student's blogs by class:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b> <a href="http://kidblog.org/Block1-11/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Block 1</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b> <a href="http://kidblog.org/Block2-6/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Block 2</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b> <a href="http://kidblog.org/Block5-3/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Block 5</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b> <a href="http://kidblog.org/Block6-2/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Block 6</a></b></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-1689220147073653532012-07-19T20:12:00.001-07:002012-07-19T20:55:51.744-07:00Dear John --my response to your inquiry into fostering student bloggers<i>Like I often do, I was sitting up tonight past my bed time reading some blog posts that I subscribe to in my Reader. I came across<a href="http://www.educationrethink.com/2012/07/how-should-my-students-approach-blogging.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JohnSpencersBlog+%28Education+Rethink%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher" target="_blank"> this post </a>by John Spencer (if you don't follow him, you should) about some thinking he was doing about getting his students blogging. I've spend quite a bit of time thinking and blogging on the subject, so I had to respond. But as I wrote my response, I noticed a new strand of my thinking about sustained student engagement with blogging come up, and because of that (and the fact that my comment was getting a little lengthy), I decided to post it here and leave him a link to it on his blog. So John, in response to your post, here is what I'm thinking:</i><br />
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Hey John, I got my students into blogging a couple years ago, and I thought (and still think) about many of the questions that you're asking yourself here. I like how you pointed out that the blogging your students were doing bared little semblance to the blogs you write and read. I've thought about this difference between school blogging and real blogging before also, eventually deciding that if I want my students to blog like "real bloggers," then I need to rethink the conditions in my classroom that support or inhibit the motivations of people who blog. That seems reasonable, right? <br />
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The approach I eventually decided to take in my class was for students to all have individual blogs, use them as a space to publish writing assignments (often fairly open) produced in our writing workshop, and set class time aside for students to read and respond to each other. Over the course of the year, kids began to take ownership, create amazingly thoughtful and creative writing pieces, build off of ideas they found in others' writing, and value this space. If you'd like to read more on this process, I blogged about it <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4606053592701832166#editor/target=post;postID=3818529046859375097" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
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Considering the context of my students' engagement and the tightness of the blogging community we had formed, I thought that for certain my students blogging practices would continue well after school was out. And I had reason to believe it, too.<br />
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The day after the last day of school, one student emailed me this:<br />
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<i>Wow.... I can't believe everything is over. I was in your class and now I'm going to High School, but the legacy for me to write is still on!!!! You taught me so much!!!. When you said write what is on your mind, I basically wrote everything that was on my mind. . I hope you and the little ones have a great summer and know that I will be writing on my blog for the rest of my life!!!!!!!</i></blockquote>
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Another student amassed a following of student bloggers from outside of our class because of the amazing writing she was doing. In response to a comment she received on <a href="http://16geeleblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/pain-is-only-feeling-i-can-feel-anymore.html#comment-form" target="_blank">this post</a>, she stated:<br />
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<i> Thank you! It's a really sad poem, but I felt the need to publish it. I'm glad that you do check my blog. I try to post something at least every Friday, so you can always count on a new poem then.</i></blockquote>
The first student had not posted since the school year ended. The second posted a <a href="http://16geeleblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/plastic-world.html" target="_blank">blog post</a> the week after school got out. It was the last post she has written to date, and she was the only one of my students who had returned back to her blog.<br />
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But even with this engagement with blogging and the tightness of the blogging community we created, I've only seen a handful of students' posts come across my Reader since school got out. I've been thinking about this, why not more of my students have been blogging when during the school year they seemed so into doing so for their own purposes....like you and I do. Maybe it was because the blog started in the context of school, as an assignment. That's one possibility. <br />
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Another explanation, which I'm thinking is more likely, is that the blogging my students were doing was not entering them into the larger "conversations" that were already taking place in the real (rather than k-12) blogosphere. During the school year, my students knew their words were heard by classmates, and they knew that students around the world may come across their blogs through the blogging communities<span style="background-color: white;"> I had them enter into, like <a href="http://www.comments4kids.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Comments 4 Kids</a> and the <a href="http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/" target="_blank">Student Blogging Challenge</a>. But these spaces for audiences had limited existence outside of school. Maybe that's the problem. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">So now, I'm wondering....</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">I'm wondering now about how to guide my students toward blogging into the existing real-world, conversations. I'm wondering if there are other communities of student bloggers out there sustaining their blogging practices. I'm wondering what that would look like and how to go about it. I've only just begun to think about it, and I'm open to any ideas. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">So John, that's what I got for you. I'm not sure if this is the response that you were looking for. I'm certain that you're content, school, and students are all much different than mine, but it is for these reasons, though, that I decided to respond back to you with my story and thinking, rather than suggestions. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
I hope you'll continue your inquiry in the public space of your blog. I enjoy being part of that conversation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-70597787179933046362012-06-21T11:11:00.000-07:002012-06-21T11:50:03.145-07:00A year in the life of an 8th grader--A digital end-of-year project<div style="margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; widows: 2;">
It seems like every year after the first round of EOG testing, the learning community we have created throughout the first 170 days of school begins to lose shape. Remediation and retesting takes center stage, schedules change, kids get shuffled around, and for many students, particularly those who passed their tests, the time spent in regular content classes becomes and exercise in passing time.<br />
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I've never considered such an end to the school year desirable. After a year's worth of building connections and knowledge, the end of the year should serve as a point to celebrate a year's worth of achievements. It should be a time to look back and reflect on all that had happened with new eyes, realizing the value of our time together and the effect it will have on the rest of our lives. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY5QmIxGZsM7Kz9pTmfi5L-O63D-CDzOnt6sJIyBscXHqrTyWDdyZjo30JfchpCHcZ1jr69L_l0XIA2nZOlNcfbUSA1U4tryLU8-YZH3O5XjE7IoIDcPBFJlsO0i0hPDOI4XWbb3s6z8/s1600/asia+google+doc+conference.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY5QmIxGZsM7Kz9pTmfi5L-O63D-CDzOnt6sJIyBscXHqrTyWDdyZjo30JfchpCHcZ1jr69L_l0XIA2nZOlNcfbUSA1U4tryLU8-YZH3O5XjE7IoIDcPBFJlsO0i0hPDOI4XWbb3s6z8/s200/asia+google+doc+conference.jpg" width="200" /></a>I've been thinking throughout he second semester of school about the idea of doing such a reflective final project, contemplating what it could look like. One that was was intellectual and reflective, while also flexible and engaging. One that would enable students to refocus their attention from standardized tests and the summer break around the corner, to celebrating and sharing the the amazing transformations that had occurred within them this year. </div>
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Going into the last week of school, I felt like I had pretty good idea of what this project would be, and I was hopeful that it would be awesome. So, on Tuesday after my students and I were back together in class after a long weekend, we dug in.<br />
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<b><u>Writing into ideas for our project:</u></b></div>
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To begin the process, we opened our daybooks, stretched out our hands, and wrote for a few minutes in response to the following questions:</div>
<ul>
<li>Describe yourself as a writer at the beginning of the year. You can talk about your attitude, likes, dislikes. </li>
<li>What are some important events that have occurred in your writing this year? </li>
<li>How have you noticed your writing change this year?</li>
<li>How has your writing changed you?</li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">What other important ways have you changed this year?</span></li>
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With some thinking fresh in our heads, I presented students with three possible directions their projects could take. Below are the directions I gave:</div>
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<u><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>A Year in the Life of an 8th grader--Digital Reflective Project</b> </span></u></blockquote>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><b>Pick one of the following options for the focus of your project:</b></div>
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<u><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span></u><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;">1. Show the path of your journey as a writer/reader this year</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;">2. Retell one of your writing pieces with images or other media</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18px;">3. Explain lessons you learned about life as an 8th grader</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><b>And use one of the following tools to create it:</b></div>
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<a href="http://www.animoto.com/" target="_blank">Animoto</a>, <a href="http://www.glogster.com/" target="_blank">Glogster</a>, <a href="http://www.prezi.com/" target="_blank">Prezi</a>, <a href="http://microsoft-photo-story.en.softonic.com/" target="_blank">Photostory</a>, Movie Maker </div>
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I gave students brief demonstrations of each of the digital tools, adding that if they knew of another tool in they would like to use, they could, and I encouraged them to use one that was new to them for the purpose of learning something new. I also told students that they were more than welcome to do more than one project option, combine options, or, if they wanted to, come up with their own option for a reflective project. </div>
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Students took the next 10 minutes or so to write in their daybooks about their plans, then took a few minutes to share ideas and get responses from classmates. I gave students the last 15 minutes to either plan in their daybooks, experiment with possible tools, or dive into their projects. </div>
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From what I could tell, it seemed like just about all left class with a sense of direction and, importantly, motivation. Students seemed excited and engaged, and I could feel a level of energy in the room that, like I had hoped, would make this last week we had together powerful and productive. </div>
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We were all excited to begin. </div>
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<b><u>The best laid plans.....</u></b></div>
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My plan for the week was to use the next two days as workshop time, and Friday for presentations. Two days wasn't a lot of time to work. I knew it was going to be tight, but if students used their time productively, a couple full class periods should be enough. Motivated 8th graders can accomplish just about anything. </div>
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Students arrived at class chattering about their projects. While they logged on to their computes, I reviewed the project they would be working on, explaining that they would have two days to work and that Friday would be our presentation day. As computers logged on, daybooks opened to yesterday's planning, and the class grew quiet as students eagerly dug into their projects. </div>
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Right away, I noticed something wasn't right. Some students noticed that the internet was slow. Others began loosing their network connections. And some were not even able to log on. I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't the wireless connection. I was connected and so were about half of my students. Not knowing what else to do, I instructed students that if they experienced problems with their computers, they should try restarting, and while they waited should use their time to continue their project planning in their daybooks. Restarting worked for some, but was incredibly time consuming. But having more time to work ideas out paper proved to be a good thing, though.</div>
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Our first work period wasn't a total loss, but we couldn't afford to lose another day. Motivation is hard to come by in 8th grade during this time of the year, so I spent my planning period in our technology facilitator's office. Eventually she figured out the cause of the problem.</div>
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It turned out that, while nothing was wrong with our school's network, many other classrooms in the school</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">were streaming movies and videos from the Internet, using up quite a bit of bandwidth. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Teachers were instructed to stop streaming, and while our web connection was better the next couple of days, many of my students were still not able to finish their projects. A few barely had the chance to start. </span></div>
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<b><u>Presentation Day</u></b></div>
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We went ahead and presented projects anyway, even though for many students this presentation consisted of them talking through what they were planning on doing. It wasn't exactly what I had planned, but even so, what students had made or were wanting to make was pretty impressive. Here are some examples:</div>
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<li><span style="background-color: white;">Jacob created </span><a href="http://prezi.com/ybrax-iexe1v/my-journey-as-a-writer/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">this Prezi</a><span style="background-color: white;">, showing how he had transformed as writer this year. And indeed he has. Check out </span><a href="http://jacob-theworld.blogspot.com/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">his blog</a><span style="background-color: white;"> to see the amazing work he produced. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Diana created </span><a href="http://16puentd-beingme.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">this Glog</a><span style="background-color: white;">. It didn't turn out exactly as she wanted it to, with some parts being cut off, but it was an awesome idea. In it she reflects on her growth as a writing and includes quotes from the writing of her classmates and comments that people left on her writing. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Josh created <a href="http://superhackproductions.blogspot.com/2012/05/lesson-of-being-8th-grader-by-josh.html" target="_blank">this photostory</a> reflecting on his writing and life as an 8th grader. In it he includes screenshots of his writing and writing of his classmates that he found particularly powerful. He ran out of time in class and recorded this presentation from home. </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Alycia's project took the form of a letter to next year's 8th graders that she posted on her blog <a href="http://leaciiesblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/life-on-8th-grader-advice-what-to.html" target="_blank">here</a>. In it she addresses subjects such as work, principals, teachers, and cliques, writing in a way that is sure to capture the interest of her audience.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">Weston created a Prezi and embedded it in his blog <a href="http://weston-edwards.blogspot.com/2012/05/journey-of-writer.html" target="_blank">here</a>. In it, he describes the growth he experienced as a writer this year. </span></li>
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It's rare that a project my students and I take on for the first time goes as planned, and, of course, this one was no exception. The technology problems that we ran into were out of our control, but with respect to what students could control, the directions they took with the freedom they had was awesome. They carved out ideas for what they would create based on their own experiences, taking directions that I hadn't considered. It was fascinating to watch their process as they experimented and worked with different mediums for creating. Many took me up on my challenge of learning to compose with something new, and many also thought considerably about the possibilities and limitations different tools presented with respect to how their message was conveyed. </div>
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The presentation day, regardless of the projects' stage of completion, was indeed a celebration. Students were eager to share just how far they had come this year and were supportive of their classmates. I think I was the most excited though, as many students highlighted elements of learning and growth they experienced in my class of which I was completely unaware. <br />
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This was how the school year should end; it didn't go as planned, but it was exactly what it needed to be. I'm sure that I will build upon this project next year, but without question my students and I will again head in this direction <span style="background-color: white;">during the wild time that is the final days of school. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I'm excited to be able to share my experiences here. Perhaps I will inspire others, and next year bandwith loss will be less of an issue. Perhaps.</span><br />
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*In the meantime, I'd love to hear additional suggestions for end of year projects. I'm also all about collaboration, so if you're interested in heading down a similar road with your students next year, please get in touch!</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-44366437573276749262012-03-05T12:40:00.004-08:002012-03-20T18:18:10.881-07:00Opening New Spaces in the Digital Writing Workshop with Google Docs<div style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
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Writing workshop is, and always has been, where some of the most powerful learning has taken place in my classroom. Last year, I made the move towards a more digital writing workshop, mainly though the incorporation of blogs as a space to compose and publish. I noticed that this move drastically changed writing instruction as I knew it. Technology provided a new space and a new way for students to create, share, and develop ideas. <br />
Three weeks ago I added another layer to our digital writing workshop: I introduced students to Google Docs, and with it learned the power and potential of yet another space that again is changing writing instruction as I know it.<br />
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Getting students started with their first Google Doc was easy. My students already have Google account as they maintain blogs on Blogger, so having them begin their first Google Doc was as simple as directing them to log into Google, click a couple tabs, and begin a new document (if you've never done it before, create an account on Google, visit google.com/docs, and hit the "create" button).<br />
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To be honest, my main purpose for getting my students to begin using Google Docs wasn't composing; rather, it was the possibilities presented for collaborative writing and conferencing. But even so, after a couple days most of my students expressed to me that they preferred typing in docs over the text editor in Blogger. They cited the larger screen and more familiar format, as well as the ability to access previous revisions. Others mentioned that they liked being able to access their drafts on their phone through the Docs app for Android. I also noticed that I had fewer students coming to me with the problem of loosing work they had previously thought was saved, like would happen on occasion with Blogger. <br />
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<b><u>Getting Collaborative</u></b><br />
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The transition to using Docs as a drafting space went pretty smooth, and after all of my students seemed to have drafts underway, I introduced them to the Google Doc conference. Google Docs provides users the option of sharing documents, so others can have the ability to edit and add comments to a document in real-time. It is an option that, I've felt for some time, had potential to change the way conferencing is done in writing workshop. I was pretty excited today to take my first real step into it with my students. <br />
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In order to invite collaborators to a document, the user simply clicks the blue "share" button in the top right corner of their document and enters the email addresses of intended collaborators. Before my students could do this they needed access to each other's email addresses, which we accomplished in about two minutes with a Google Form and a link to resulting spreadsheet posted on my home page (Google Forms is yet another handy feature of Google Docs). <br />
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After students had time to fill out and submit the form, I introduced them to the conference they would soon be having. Students in my class have an established writing group they have been working and sharing with since the beginning of the year, so the idea of a writing conference was not unfamiliar to them. Actually, the way I framed this conference using Google Docs was with the exact same instructions that we had been following the past two weeks:<br />
<ol><li>Students would meet sit together with their group</li>
<li>One student would read aloud his or her writing</li>
<li>Other students would listen, ask questions in response </li>
<li>The group would have a conversation about the piece</li>
<li>The author would get any help he or she felt they need</li>
<li>Repeat </li>
</ol>Before meeting in their groups, I gave students time to refer to our list of student emails and invite their group members to their document. When the invites were sent, students got with their groups and began their conference, just the same as they usually did, but this time instead of just listening, they would open that author's draft and read along; and in addition to just responding and asking the author questions, students used the insert function to type their comments onto each student's draft. <br />
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Responding to each other's writing in a Google Doc enabled group members to attach comments to specific places in the text, while also leaving the author the option of accessing the feedback on the draft at a later time. These two posibilities alone made writing conferences more engaging and worth while, like I expected they would. But there were also some things that happened that I didn't expect. Things that began after the initial conferences had ended. <br />
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<strong><u>Opening New Spaces</u></strong><br />
Well, maybe "ended" isn't the right word to use. Because, what I noticed was that after students moved back to their seats and continued their writing quietly, many of the conferences didn't end. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkD8DQ_SxWeVMUu6YYiA-kotnzEbMZuVyq-MecH-hCyy-SkzMemusa10rZXam5QhyuvwO5sfYEWgL7qfdOZXglmBk6ZV4M_bmTTcUbFetey-RgJeKwXVXsT-J5Ve9EjsxU80XlXU8Yek/s1600/googledoccollaboration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkD8DQ_SxWeVMUu6YYiA-kotnzEbMZuVyq-MecH-hCyy-SkzMemusa10rZXam5QhyuvwO5sfYEWgL7qfdOZXglmBk6ZV4M_bmTTcUbFetey-RgJeKwXVXsT-J5Ve9EjsxU80XlXU8Yek/s320/googledoccollaboration.jpg" uda="true" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A student collaborates with several others on a Google Doc</td></tr>
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Rather, I saw right away that many students took it upon themselves to continue to post comments on each others drafts, reply to those comments, and in some cases, carry on conversations about their writing using the chat feature on Google Docs. This, I didn't expect (especially since I didn't mention anything to students about the chat feature). Yes, I planned on later giving students the option of having Google Doc conferences during workshop time, but I had not figured it was something they would just begin doing on their own. Clearly, they were ahead of me. So, I decided to just get out of the way, watch, and learn.<br />
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In the writing workshop sessions that followed it became clear that Google Docs was opening spaces for writing in my classroom that I didn't know existed. Spaces, that I wasn't aware of until I saw students carve them out before me:<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://xwpaper.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jacob</a>, <a href="http://luis-thesombreroblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/hi-my-name-is-frank-but-i-get-called.html" target="_blank">Luis</a>, and <a href="http://xwpaper.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Cody</a> shared a common interest in wanting to write science fiction. While in different writing groups, each invited the other to their Doc where they were drafting the next piece. During class workshop time, each had three documents open. Each spent the majority of the time working on his own writing, but would also pop in and out of the chat side bar of the others' Docs asking for help or a response to part of their writing. The three would chat briefly about the part under consideration, then move back to work in their own Doc, every so often checking in on each other to see how their stories were progressing. </li>
<li>After it was received well by the class at our Friday Open Mic, <a href="http://adaywithrusty.blogspot.com/2012/02/final-frontier-2nd-entrie.html" target="_blank">David</a> decided to create a sequel to the first part of his sci-fi piece. Josh, inspired by David's piece, decided to write the sequel as well, but from the perspective of a different character. Each invited the other to their drafts, and collaborated </li>
<li><a href="http://16ybarri.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Isaac</a>, wanting to get new ideas for his writing, whispered to Jhonny, asking him to send an invite to his draft. <a href="http://jaramillo123.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jhonny</a> did, and while Jhonny continued to revise his writing, Isaac chatted with him about parts of it that he liked and ideas it was giving him for his next piece. </li>
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Above are highlighted a few specific examples of how students adapted the features of Google Docs to meet their needs as writers. In each case, I didn't instruct students to confer or collaborate. They just did. They recognized the need, were aware of the value that collaboration had on their writing, and used the tools and space afforded to them to carry it out. <br />
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I feel it's important for me to point out the the examples I shared above were not the exception to how writing was being done in my classroom. After having now used Google Docs in my classroom writing workshop for three weeks, frequent collaboration while writing has become the norm. It has become increasingly difficult to draw the line between writing time and collaboration time. And this collaboration, which seemed to be taking place at any given time between pairs and groups of writers, looked different in each case, dependant upon on the needs of the writer.<br />
In just this short period of time, with Docs in the mix, I've seen a significant change in my students writing and identities as writers. Not only are they coming to see themselves as writers on an extent to which I had never before seen, but they are also developing an appreciation and understand of the writing process and the nature of writing that I had not considered possible with 8th graders.<br />
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This is the most engaged and creative group of writers that has ever been inside my classroom walls.<br />
I say this every year, and I always mean it. <br />
Writing is going well, and there are a number of variables that explain why. The workshop model is part of it, my students are part of it, my teaching is part of it, and the technology is part of it. I'm sure that there is a really interesting explanation in the intersection of it all. But with respect to the technology, specifically Docs, I'm pretty sure that the difference is being made in the space the technology creates. <br />
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Google Docs creates a space where writers can move seamlessly and more effectively through the steps of writing. Regardless of how it often gets taught, as straight-forward and rigid, the process that real writers use is anything but linear. With Docs being cloud based, students can write whenever they are inspired on whatever device they have with them. With the collaborative features, students can give and receive feedback quickly and quietly (which is pretty important when 30 students are writing in a classroom) at any given time, as well as write collaboratively. And with the ability to access past revisions, it's easier to try out different approaches and take risks in writing without fear of irreversible damage.<br />
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The space of Docs is also highly conducive to the development of new and better ideas for writers. It is a space where ideas can move as quickly (or slowly) as they need to, collide with other ideas, and give rise to new ones. It is a space that is a catalyst for creativity and innovation. It's one that affords opportunities not possible in physical space alone, and one that fits in pretty well with the digital and physical elements present in our workshop already: daybooks and blogs, conversations with me and between students, and mini-lessons and mentor texts. <br />
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Adding this new layer to our workshop has redefined the act of writing for my students. It's changed me, too. I've noticed that I've developed a new awareness of and appreciation for my both the workshop model and my role as a teacher of writing. I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen all of what is possible through Google Docs in the few weeks we have been using it, but I've seen enough to know that it's a place significant enough to be permanent. And I also know that my students, so long as they are allowed to take the lead, will gladly continue to carve out new possibilities for composing and collaborating within the space of our Digital Writing Workshop.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-51200941642845674932012-02-24T09:44:00.000-08:002012-07-10T09:27:34.953-07:00Learning Showcase Reflection Posts--just another reason why blogging is awesomeNext Monday evening, our school is hosting a Learning Showcase Night, where students will take their parents to each class and lead a conference about their learning over the course of the year. <br />
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Today I put my regularly scheduled lesson aside to give my students a chance to stop, look back, and reflect on their learning, so they will be prepared to talk with their parents about it. <br />
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Fortunately, as much of student work for my class has been published on blogs, students had a chronologically organizaed portfolio ready for them. All they needed to do was sort through and make some sense of it. <br />
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In their daybooks students made the chart below, which they used to record notes about pieces of thier work that best hightlighted their ELA accomplighments to date:<br />
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Then, after having some time (most only needed about 20 minutes) to get their ideas organized, I told students that they would next take the inforamation on thier chart to create a new blog post, one that would assist them as they led thier parents through the conversation about their learning this year. Here were the guidelines that I gave:</div>
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I gave a brief demonstration on creating hyperlinks within their writing, something I've touched on before but never required, and gave students the rest of the period to work on it while I circulated the room and talked to as many kids as I could. What I saw and heard was pretty amazing. </div>
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The first thing that initially struck me was how few issues came up with students being uncertian about what they had done that reflected areas such as creativity, growth as a writer, and themselves as a thinker and/or learner. Figuring how ones work shows these characteristics requires some reflective and tough thinking. But students seemed to know right away what parts they needed to pick and why. After a talking with a few students about their process and selections, it became apparent that this reflection came so readily because they had already been through it a few times with the reflective self assessments that I have them complete after each piece. <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2012/01/february-11th-narrative-self-assessment.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is one they used with a narrative writing piece (using Diigo), and <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2012/02/published-writing-self-assessment-feb.html" target="_blank">here</a> is one they did with a Google form for a writing workshop piece. </div>
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One area in particular, students' growth as writers, was the most fun to see them write about. For many students, this was the first time going back through everything they posted on thier blog since the beginning of the year. And as they did changes in their writing seemed to jump right out at them. </div>
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Some of the students I talked with were able to trace changes back to a particular minilesson or conversation. <a href="http://beingthirteen-16larioe.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-progress.html" target="_blank">Emeli</a>, for example noticed how her sentence structure and use of imagery in her writing changed after we did a lesson using Maya Angelou's <em>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings</em> as a mentor text. Jhonnatan pointed out to me how after I had a conversation with him about puntuation that his subsequent posts weren't written in the same multiple-run-on format that his earlier posts were. </div>
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And there were also other students who saw apparent changes in their writing but were not able to trace these changes back to any particular lesson or event. Quite a few students just told me that that their writing just seemed to get better the more they wrote, such as <a href="http://weston-edwards.blogspot.com/2012/02/showcase.html" target="_blank">Weston</a>. Erin is another such student, and while she wasn't able to pinpoint a specific influence, she was able to tell me that she could put her finger on the piece that caused her to move from being a hater of writing to discovering that writing was her calling. She showed me the draft in her daybook, I snapped a picture with my phone and emailed it to her so she could include it in <a href="http://16deesee.blogspot.com/2012/02/ela-showcase.html" target="_blank">her showcase post</a>. </div>
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Since I started having my studnets use blogs to publish thier work, I've been meaning to do a lesson like this to encourage reflection and direct thier attention to just how far they have come. I had honest plans to so something like this last year, but things got busy and I was too focused on the flow of learning moving forward to build in a day of looking back. I can't say enough about how glad I am that today we finally did it. After what I saw, I couldn't imagine any parent leaving Monday night unimpressed with the learning taking place; I sure am, and more importantly, so are the students. <br />
<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-53519176903388274782012-02-02T07:01:00.000-08:002012-02-05T10:51:04.279-08:00Finding new hope for research papers (and a new use for Diigo)<span id="internal-source-marker_0.5852288885177774" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font: medium "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.5852288885177774" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Guiding my students through the process of writing a research paper is part of the 8th grade curriculum. Having done plenty of research writing myself, I value and respect the importance of the process. But to be completely honest, I have never really enjoyed teaching it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There always seemed to be something missing from the research papers students wrote in my class. Even when students had complete control over what they researched, their writing just wasn’t meaningful. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">It was forced, mechanical, and impersonal.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"> Every year, I revised my both approach and the assignment, and while the changes I made to my practice usually yielded an improvement, they never affected what I had most hoped to change. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I had just about accepted that research papers were lifeless, when a few weeks ago I tried out an idea for a project with my students that has given me new hope. The project, a research paper, was a little different than anything I had done with my classes before, and I began it before I fully had my head around where it would go. It combined a novel we had just finished, The Hunger Games, with a little brainstorming, some<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.diigo.com/" target="_blank">Diigo<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>assisted web research, and a lot of writing. The result was paradigm shifting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here was the idea for the project: Students would select and research a topic related to The Hunger Games, then use what they found through their research to write a paper that connected the novel and the topic. It sounds simple, but of course, it wasn't. </span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>In short, this is what we did:</strong></span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I told my students we would be researching topics that related to the book. As a class, we made a list of related topics that were<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>researchable. Below is the list of what we brainstormed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Students picked a topic and did a couple quick-writes in their<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>daybook<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>about what they knew already about the topic and how it tied in with the book. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With their topics fresh in their minds, students turned to the Internet to search for more information. I intentionally didn’t give much direction as to what they needed to find through their research. Instead I just directed them to read-up on their topic, and while doing do, use<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Diigo<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to 1) highlight important information they found, and 2) attach sticky notes to the site that explained connections they found/realized between their topic and The Hunger Games. For example, a student researching "relationships" may find a site giving information about healthy relationships and put on a sticky note on a fact that she/he felt explained a characteristic of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Katniss<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Peeta's<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>relationship. They took a couple days to find as much information as they could.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Next came the writing part (here's where it got really cool)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I told my students that they would be using what they found online to write a research paper. The paper didn't have to be a particular number of paragraphs or have a particular organization. What it had to do was show how their topic connected to The Hunger Games, bring in information from three sources (web sites), and give their reader a deeper understanding of both the novel and their topic (<a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunger-games-research-project.html" target="_blank">here<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>is the full assignment that I posted for students). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And this is also where my planning also started to fall apart. I didn’t know what exactly a paper that did these things would look like. So, my students and I figured it out together.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We brainstormed ways in which such a paper could be organized, and eventually decided that most would fall into one of the following categories:</span></div>
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<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Use the topic researched to analyze something in the book (like with the relationships example above),</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Explain the facts behind the fiction (how real hovercrafts differ from those in the book)</span></li>
<li style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Show multiple connections between the topic and the book (how types of roman gladiators mirrored characters in the book). </span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How kids decided to organize their paper depended on what they found in their research, particularly the connections they wrote on their sticky-notes. Fortunately,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Diigo<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>makes accessing these notes, as well as the content highlighted, pretty simple.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6IWK528k7IFMxjTPpkza39gp8tcEfDOO9C1oztgf8jP6OoYOd_yd8EQZogSOukSKraRWDUxmaH7cuaC1rip8e_HUpR6pFyAcEw3_ciVOPMRapjrdxwIRKtd2pUVvylQMooBopPJuInE/s1600/asia's+diigo+screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="569" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6IWK528k7IFMxjTPpkza39gp8tcEfDOO9C1oztgf8jP6OoYOd_yd8EQZogSOukSKraRWDUxmaH7cuaC1rip8e_HUpR6pFyAcEw3_ciVOPMRapjrdxwIRKtd2pUVvylQMooBopPJuInE/s640/asia's+diigo+screenshot.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">Screenshot taken from student's Diigo library</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We made some rough outlines, and started writing. The content I usually teach with research papers (quoting and paraphrasing, bibliography, citing sources) and essays (introductions, paragraph organization, conclusions) I back-loaded in through mini lessons and conferences while students were writing. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu5GR05S-qknFIpoRRXYKKMOY1_tRdAKqUE8ifhXEJ-oGuyvz3lRpqLcKqCiZLKH2vZacS6P3JvUYcXrnzKRxw2sbVEcVoAFjtqUHqoblao0BJHozU664vCNgbXmgT9059bQh8qHnCWsQ/s1600/hg_self_assessment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu5GR05S-qknFIpoRRXYKKMOY1_tRdAKqUE8ifhXEJ-oGuyvz3lRpqLcKqCiZLKH2vZacS6P3JvUYcXrnzKRxw2sbVEcVoAFjtqUHqoblao0BJHozU664vCNgbXmgT9059bQh8qHnCWsQ/s320/hg_self_assessment.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Students published their projects (research papers) on their blog, we took a day to read and post comments on each others, talk about ones we thought were really cool, and complete a brief self-assessment of the experience (right). Also, the rubric I used to grade the self assessment and project can be found<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1brR9eaTgpYLMb6kMMQAz4dvnvTIlkczUoHBZlhI8HgM/edit" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Unlike the research papers that my students wrote in the past, these make for pretty interesting reads. Below are some links to a few of them:</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">For<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://16geeleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunger-games-research-paper.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;" target="_blank">Liz's project</a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">, she analyzed and drew comparisons between poverty in the US and in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Panem.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Weston made some interesting comparisons between the Hunger Games and Jersey Shore in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://weston-edwards.blogspot.com/2011/12/similarities-between-jersey-shore-and.html#comment-form" target="_blank">his piece</a>. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Alycia<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>used her research to write a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://leaciiesblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunger-games-research-project.html" target="_blank">post examining the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>scienc</a>e behind the genetic mutations featured in the Hunger Games</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Asia analyzes Katniss' relationships as well gives advice to anyone caught in a love triangle in this<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://asiaisawesome22.blogspot.com/2011/12/relationship-problems.html" target="_blank">tip sheet</a>.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Jacob researched force fields, and wrote<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://jacob-theworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunger-games-research-topic-writing.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;" target="_blank">this post</a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>about figurative force fields that exist in the Hunger Games. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Luis<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://luis-thesombreroblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-wilderness-survival-realte-to.html" target="_blank">wrote about his analysis</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the wilderness survival techniques used by characters in the Hunger Games.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">David wrote<a href="http://adaywithrusty.blogspot.com/2011/12/huger-games-research-project.html" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>this brief, but interesting, piece</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that compared Hunger Games characters to types of Roman Gladiators. </span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Making sense of what worked</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Earlier in this post, I called this experience “paradigm shifting” for me. And it was. I now look upon writing research papers more favorably. What made this experiences so different was that it treated my students like writers. The writing they did was the real type, not the scripted, certain-number-of-paragraphs, topic sentence-supporting details type. It put students in a position, where writers often are, of having to make a number of decisions based on the information they have and how they want to get it across.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was hard, too. I saw my students struggle a lot more through this process than any time we had written research papers in the past. By not knowing myself what these papers would turn on out to be, when a student asked me for help, I wasn’t able to give them a quick answer. Instead, we would end up having these long conversations about what they found through their research and what they were trying to make happen in their writing. There really wasn't much more I could/should do. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"> The eventual form this paper took was up to students, as writers, to figure out.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When the process was all said and done, the final product was amazing. Not necessarily “amazing” in the sense that all of my students produced the greatest research papers ever written (though there were a few that were better than any produced in my classroom before). What made these papers so great was that they had life and personality. Their words had a voice of their own, not separate from the author who wrote them. And all of them, even the ones that were a bit rough around the edges, clearly reflected a considerable amount of thought. These were papers written by students who were not just going through the motions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This isn’t the last experience my students will have in my class with writing research papers; I never planned for it to be. My intentions were for this assignment to be an introduction to the genre of research writing in the context of a creative activity that would also extend their thinking about a novel. Later in the year, we will build off of the skills introduced here to write a more formal research paper. A paper that I'm going to be doing more thinking about before I begin taking my students through the process. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I need to think through more this idea of formal writing. In my mind I've kept it separate from creative writing (I even said above "an introduction to the genre of research writing in the context of a creative activity), but now this separation is seemingly less distinct. Formal writing need not be formulaic, and creative writing need not be it's own, segregated genre apart from the more academic types. I know this to be true now from my experiences with this project, seeing my students give life to writing that I had dismissed as hopelessly dead. </span></div>
</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-7799814256293993432012-01-18T12:12:00.000-08:002012-01-18T12:13:15.181-08:00Say Something 2.0 (beta)A couple weeks back my student teacher, Kim, was reading aloud to students from the novel, the Hunger Games, while students read aloud in their books. Throughout reading, she would take short breaks, allowing students to participate in Say Something, a "during-reading" activity is exactly what its name describes. For it, students stop reading, turn to a partner, and say something about the text. The partner responds, then takes his or her turn saying something and getting a response. The entire process doesn't take more than a minute or two, after which students continue reading.<br />
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While I circulated the classroom during one of the Say Something sessions, I overheard multiple conversations that I thought were absolutely brilliant. There were students making these incredibly insightful comments on what was happening in the story that had rarely spoke up in class. But just as I started thinking about how much I was liking this activity, it occurred to me that there was something that I did not like. Here were all of these great ideas about a text popping up around the room, but outside their own conversation, students didn't get to hear them. I was thinking about solutions that didn't necessarily involve a whole class discussion (which I love but would take away from the amount of time that doing Say Something allows to be spend actually reading), when my thoughts drifted back to an evening last week.....<br />
<br />
I was sitting on my couch alone, family asleep, and was watching one of the Republican debates. Not after long, my interest began to fade, and I decided to check my Twitter account. I noticed that a few of those I followed were tweeting about the debate, and curious, I decided to search Twitter for all debate-related tweets. My engagement level began to shift almost immediately as I moved between the debate on television and the real time commentary in response to the politicians on the stage. In some cases, the statements made on the tweets made me laugh out loud, others presented a perspectives I hadn't considered, and other tweets were so ridiculous that I was left with no choice but to tweet back to them.<br />
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It then occurred to me that my activity on Twitter was a lot like that of my students during Say Something--I and others commented to a common experience and shared responses in return. But being able to carry out these interactions in a medium like Twitter (as opposed to the physical classroom), had some distinct advantages: I didn't have to wait my turn, I could comment at any time that I liked, and the size of the group with whom I interacted had no limits.<br />
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Seemed to me like moving the Say Something activity in my class to a digital space could make it a lot more productive and engaging. I couldn't wait to try it out.<br />
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Since Twitter is blocked in at my school, I set up a chat room in <a href="http://todaysmeet.com/" target="_blank">Today's Meet</a>, and shared the link to it with my students on my website. The instructions for this new version of the activity (yes, I did call it Say Something 2.0) were modified after my own experiences with Twitter. I would play the audio version I had of The Hunger Games, while students would also read along in their books. When students wanted to Say Something in response to what was happening in the book, they would type their comment into our chat room, where other students could then read it and respond, if they so chose. Afterwards, students would refer the the transcript and write a brief reflection on their contributions and learning during the activity.<br />
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I had a feeling that this lesson was going to be awesome. It was going to pull kids into a book in a way that just reading alone couldn't do. They would extract levels of meaning from the text that they otherwise never would have known. Even my most weak and reluctant readers would not want class to end. Students may even want to applaud at the end of the lesson....like sometimes people do in the movie theater. <br />
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But looking back on it now, I guess I really shouldn't have been that surprised when the lesson crashed and burned shortly after it got off the ground first period. <br />
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After only reading a couple pages in the book, blank looks began to creep across my students faces. Comments typed became less connected to the text. No one was even attempting to follow along in the book. And I, still clinging to the hope of what I thought this day would become, let the lesson continue until my students finally brought me back to reality.<br />
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One of my best students stood up and shouted, "I have no idea what's going on!"<br />
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"This book sucks!" another shouted. Seeing others nod their head in agreement, I realized that class would not end today with a standing ovation. I decided to cut our loses and salvage what I could. We closed the computers, turned off the audio, and reread together as a class. <br />
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Seems that it's near impossible to follow along in a novel while typing comments and reading a string of others scrolling across a screen, even when that novel is being read aloud. <br />
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I chalked this up to a learning experience about kids, technology, and multi-tasking. But my learning did not end at the realization that this was a failed lesson. Actually, that's just where my learning restarted. <br />
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When my second period class walked in, we tried the lesson again, but this time with one minor change: we didn't try to read the novel and write at the same time, so it was sort of structured like the no-tech version of Say Something. I made a few other changes as the day progressed in response to what I saw happening with my students. By my sixth period class, here's roughly what the lesson looked like, with my revisions written in bold:<br />
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<li> Students entered the class, logged on to their computers, signed in to the chat room. <strong>Students needed to join the room using their real first name</strong> <strong>(having taught for this many years, I don't know why didn't foresee the need to make this one explicit from the start).</strong></li>
<li>I reviewed the procedures for the Say Something activity we did the previous day, and explained how throughout or time reading today, we would stop and say something, but type our comments in the chat room, as well as respond to the ideas of others using <strong>the @ symbol and that person's name</strong>. Commonly understood abbreviations or text-speak was fine, <strong>so long as the abbreviated words were school appropriate. </strong></li>
<li><strong>While we read the story together, all computers were left closed.</strong></li>
<li>At various places throughout the story, we would <strong>stop reading, open computers, and take 5 minutes or so to have a Say Something conversation about the text. Students could refer back to what they had read in the text while participating in the conversation, but not read ahead</strong>.</li>
<li>After with about 10 minutes left in the class we would stop reading, and students would complete a self assessment/reflection of their reading, learning, and participation in the activity. To do so, they would look back over the transcript of the conversation and complete <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-13th-digital-say-something.html" target="_blank">this Google Form</a> that I had posted to my class blog. </li>
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That's it. The lesson took about an entire hour, and it rocked. That change in format I made after first period made all the difference. Being able to direct their attention on the novel, students understood it and were able to have a conversation in our Today's Meet room that was productive, and in many ways, transpired like I had initially hoped it would. The online space for the discussion enabled multiple conversations to take place at once. It was difficult to follow them all, but I remember at most points noticing the majority of my students to be involved in at least one strand at any given time. And when compared with our conversations in person, it did not seem like anything was lost on the depth of the ideas being shared. Actually, it seemed like having students put ideas in text format (that they could spend more time with to process and return back to if needed), combined with the exposure to a wider ranges ideas shared and conversations to drop in on, deepened the level at which they experienced the novel. <br />
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<strong>Discovering new possibilities</strong><br />
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There was something else that I saw happen, something that I didn't expect, that also added an additional layer to this activity. My students didn't want to do it silently....like I had directed them to do. I figured that the reading and writing happening in our chat room would require students' full attention, so in my attempt to keep students from experiencing the type of information overload that afflicted my first period, I shushed the whispers I heard among students during our Say Something breaks. <br />
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After a while, though, I began to notice that many of the comments I was trying to stifle were in fact tied to the conversation taking place on-line. So, after trying in two classes to redirect students' verbal comments to the chat room ("talk with your fingers," I heard myself say), I decided to see what would happen in my last class if I just let them talk. And what happened blew me away.<br />
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Sure enough, my sixth period began whispering to one another in response to what they were reading in the chat, and when I didn't make any move to stop the talking out, other students joined it. It was as if the conversation just changed spaces, but after listening to it for a little while, I realized that there more going on than just a venue change. <br />
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I noticed that some of the comments students saying out loud were weird. Not weird like off-task or silly, but weird like disconnected. One student would respond to another even though they didn't ask a question. Or someone would interject a comment that was insightful but completely unrelated to the topic conversation taking place. <br />
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It wasn't until that I looked down at my computer that I realized what was happening. The online conversation never stopped. Students were still using this space to respond to others' ideas, both posted in the chat room and shared out loud. And the same thing was taking place in our physical class discussion. <br />
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I had never before thought about bringing such a hybrid-type conversation into my classroom. But I really liked what I saw, and it's got me thinking.... <br />
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I feel like physical class discussion and conversations carried out digitally (chat, disc forums) have their respective place in my classroom. Each has their own strengths and weakness with respect to the exchange of ideas and student learning. But in these hybrid conversations that I saw unfold in my classroom when I let students chose the mode in which they expressed their ideas, students seemed to interact in both spaces simultaneously without much trouble; actually, this is where they gravitated to naturally. <br />
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And from what I can tell, they benefited from the experience, with these benefits stemming from the advantages that were afforded through interacting in this unique hybrid environment. I saw students draw out deeper levels of meaning from the text from being exposed to a greater number of interpretations during the short bursts of interactions that the activity allowed. All students seemed to be engaged. The overly vocal ones got to say what they needed to, and those who were typically quiet or just had a hard time getting a word in, had an outlet for their ideas. <br />
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I'm excited about what we stumbled accross, but I'm still processing it. <br />
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I'm wondering what it means that my students so naturally were able to carry out a conversation in two spaces at once. I didn't set up the lesson like this; it was they who pulled it in that direction. One that I found to be incredibly surprising considering how much trouble students in my first period had when trying to follow along in a novel while also conversing online. I'm sure the complexity of the language used in the novel had something to do with it, but I'd bet that it is also, in part related, to their communication experiences outside of school.<br />
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I'm wondering what this means for my teaching. I've known that there are some communication differences between my students and I ever since I've seen the ease at which they can carry on a conversation with a few of their friends in-person while simultaneously texting others. I couldn't do this to save my life. So on one hand, my experiences with our hybrid discussion may have been a lesson to me about engaging kids at their level. But on the other, I keep thinking about <a href="http://www.rasmussen.edu/images/blogs/1299064473-multitasking-effect-on-brain.png" target="_blank">this infographic </a>I saw the other day on the decrease in brain activity scientists are finding in people who try to multitask, and it makes me wonder if encouraging such types of interactions would actually be a disservice to my students. <br />
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So, I'm thinking now about what role, if any, such a hybrid conversation could play in my classroom. What would a class discussion or Socratic Seminar look like if it was carried out in this manner? Is this a step in the direction of 21st Century Learning? Or is is a step backward for the learners of today? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-31721743378668768612012-01-05T16:47:00.000-08:002012-01-06T19:31:05.304-08:00Blogging to get myself bloggingI've always been better at starting than finishing. In part because I can be scattered, but mostly because I like to bite off more than I can chew, trying to juggle so many tasks that I don't have time to really do any of them well. I just do my best to keep from loosing grasp on too many of them at any given time.<br />
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Last year, when I decided to coach wrestling, I did so at the expense of writing to my blog. For two months I didn't touch it. This year, in taking on coaching again, I made an agreement with myself that I wouldn't neglect my blog writing.<br />
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It wasn't easy, but I held myself to it. The past two months, I ended up writing five posts, four of which I felt were worthy of being read. I know, it doesn't sound like much, but I'm pretty proud of my accomplishment. I'd be even more proud, though, if I actually managed publish more than one of them. <br />
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With the wrestling season over and a little more free time on my hands, these three perfectly good starts, hiding out as drafts in my dashboard, are eating at me. I'm not completely sure why these few unpublished posts are so unsettling. I actually have more drafts than published posts. It probably has something to do with the tremendous amount of effort that went into finding the time to write these past months. </div>
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In any case, I'm going to make another agreement with myself. By the end of next week, I'm going to get a couple of these posts finished, revised so they are at least partially intelligible, and published to this blog. </div>
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This post is part of the process. I know that if I say it and put it out there, I'll hold myself to it. And perhaps having this additional pressure will help me to resist the temptation I'm feeling right now...the one where I'd rather keep the post in draft form than hit that publish button. </div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-37981276100605037892011-11-27T10:32:00.001-08:002011-12-03T18:48:29.391-08:00Hunger Games Blog-Out!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As I wrote about in my last post, my students and I have spent the majority of our learning time this year engaged with the Hunger Games. With the second half of the novel, students mainly spent class time either reading it, writing about it, or talking about it. They kept an ongoing double entry journal in their daybook that they would write in each day, responding to events in the text as they read.</div>
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<a href="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/attribution/pictureattrib/mangle.php?url=http://farm5.static.flickr.com/6177/6173966553_02e66cdc33_b.jpg&original_url=http://www.flickr.com/25098122@N04/6173966553/&license=flickr_1&flickr_id=6173966553&size=full&picturename=The%20Hunger%20Games" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/attribution/pictureattrib/mangle.php?url=http://farm5.static.flickr.com/6177/6173966553_02e66cdc33_b.jpg&original_url=http://www.flickr.com/25098122@N04/6173966553/&license=flickr_1&flickr_id=6173966553&size=full&picturename=The%20Hunger%20Games" width="128" /></a>Every Thursday, students would build off of what they had written in their double-entry journals in an extended piece published to their blogs during our weekly Hunger Games Blog-Out. My requirement for the blog post was deliberately broad, so as not to stifle student creativity, ownership, and the opportunity writing with meaning. I only asked that students write blog posts that were thoughtful and focused primarily on their response to the text, rather than simply retelling what had happened. I've linked a few of my student's posts <a href="http://wwwtamarishaw-tamari.blogspot.com/2011/11/hunger-games-chapter-19-20.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://lexus-itscomplicated.blogspot.com/2011/11/chpt20.html#comment-form" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://16geeleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/hunger-games-response.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Friday, for the second part of our Blog-Out, students would read and respond to the posts written by their classmates, writing comments that spoke back to the ideas of the author or other commenters about evens from the Hunger Games. With about 15 minutes left on our commenting days, students would complete <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-11th-blog-post-reflection.html" target="_blank">this brief reflection/self-assessment</a> I made on a Google Form and posted to my classroom blog; it focused on both their writing and the ideas they encountered written by others. <br />
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We pretty much followed this routine of reading and writing, blogging-out and commenting for six weeks, as we read the second half of the Hunger Games. It went incredibly well, with students coming to look forward to both having the space and time to compose their thoughts, and receive responses from their classmates. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf6BPC6Fc4a1Bhk22XRIhyphenhypheni-B0MoRWg4FHmpN6B3c8KzCj40bP5yh0UqbNYCoBWYTcuUlir28q3h02NRGCBipe6g1BKSSICp0PP0ZZozx6P3v0JL-c7z9-awUi2WJ47XSmiNYVSQmWYvY/s1600/ipad+hg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf6BPC6Fc4a1Bhk22XRIhyphenhypheni-B0MoRWg4FHmpN6B3c8KzCj40bP5yh0UqbNYCoBWYTcuUlir28q3h02NRGCBipe6g1BKSSICp0PP0ZZozx6P3v0JL-c7z9-awUi2WJ47XSmiNYVSQmWYvY/s200/ipad+hg.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Browsing student blogs and comments<br /> via Flipboard on a Friday Blog Out</td></tr>
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This commenting time gave students the opportunity to learn and practice something that I always have trouble teaching....responding to writing. The comments students left for each other spoke to the ideas within writing, not the writing itself. Only rarely would a student leave a comment saying something like, "you need to add more detail," or "you misspelled a lot of words." Because of the nature of the Blog-Out assignment, with it being response-based around a common text, it was natural for students to write comments that served to converse with others' ideas. Honestly, I didn't foresee our blog commenting time having this affect, but I'm excited that it had. It will definitely ease the creation of the larger-scale writing community we will be building as we enter into our writing workshop in the near future.<br />
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I also found that responding to each others ideas, Students' attitude toward writing changed dramatically over this time, as well. Many of the posts written at first were minimal, clearly written to get over with. But as the process progressed, students writing became more about clearly articulating a position with a clear audience in mind. Students were writing for their own purposes, rather than mine. They began to see that their writing didn't have to be a certain way, that it was their thoughts and thinking that mattered and doing so they formed a deeper connection to and understanding of the book. <br />
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We finished the book and had discussions of it in students' reading groups. The conversations went well, but this didn't feel like the right place to end the unit. From reading students blog posts and listening in on their conversations, it was clear that students had and/or were forming deeper understandings of events from the text. They needed the opportunity to develop and share these ideas, and for it I designed a final project. One that incorporated students' blogs and let them take their creativity beyond text alone. One that empowered them to use digital tools to create something awesome.<br />
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I'll write about this final digital project and share some of my students' work in my next post.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-25175772712589393262011-09-12T18:58:00.000-07:002011-09-29T07:44:27.585-07:00Glogging into the School Year with Mixed Media Poetry ProjectsThe first real project that my students dive into combines poetry, writing, and multimedia composition through several minilessons and the website <a href="http://edu.glogster.com/">Glogster</a>. The project takes about a week to complete, and within it students write, collaborate, use digital tools, and self assess. It's an awesome project that is perfect for starting the year; it introduces students to each other and elements of my class that they will build upon throughout the year. <br />
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<u><b>Writing</b></u><br />
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The writing component of this project serves both to introduce students to each other and enter into the writing process. For it, we focus our attention on two poems that address different aspects of one's individual experience. The first, <i>Being 13</i> (author unknown, but I linked to it <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qP1_kPMCiXuXyzLt62FPvyku8dXZYWMWLUzzqAI0Gp8/edit?hl=en_US">here</a>) defines this difficult age through timeless experiences that many adolescents can relate, and <a href="http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html"><i>Where I'm From</i></a> by George Ella Lyon, where the speaker captures aspects of her past that were important in defining her present identity.<br />
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Over the course of a class period, we read the poems, do some focused freewriting in response to each, discuss, then spend a little time creating copy change poems where students model the author's structure and organization to create poetry of their own. The lesson is a tight squeeze for into a one hour class, but it gives students an excellent experience with writing for different purposes as well as the start of two drafts and an aching hand.<br />
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When students return the next day, they freewrite in response to the following quote from Peter Elbow's <u>Writing Without Teachers</u>:<br />
<blockquote><blockquote><i>To improve your writing you don't need advice about what changes to make; you don't need theories of what is good or what is bad writing. You need movies of people's minds as they read your words</i>.</blockquote></blockquote>This writing invariably leads to discussion about their past experiences with learning writing in school, and it also leads in to the conversation about the importance of feedback for writers and the types of feedback that are most useful. I then introduce students to the concept of writing groups, and introduce them to theirs, whom with which they will have their first meeting today and will be working with throughout the school year. This first meeting, which consists of each writer reading their piece aloud and listing to the responses of group members, tends to be fairly short, and after students finish, we have a quick conversation about revision, and they spend what is left of the class time revising and developing one of their poems.<br />
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<b><u>Glogging into Digital Writing</u></b><br />
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Glogster has established itself as a digital tool in most teachers' toolboxes, and as a result, my students need little overview about how to go about using it. Once signed on, I instruct students that they will be creating a Glogster poster with their poem being primary focus. I ask them to consider the mood of their poem, and to be deliberate about picking a both a wall for their poster and text box for their poem so that these visual texts build upon they mood their text creates. <br />
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We also review the idea of symbolism, and I ask them to make decisions about the graphics they include so that they in some way way symbolize the concepts that are expressing through their writing. After it appears that most students have these aspects of their poem well under way, I bring in another mini-lesson on using images and fair use, inviting them to include CC images in their digital poster as well. <br />
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As they take the better part of the class to type (and continue to revise) their poem and make selections about visual elements, I make sure to talk with as many students as I can about the decisions they are making. I try to keep our conferences encouraging and positive, which this year has turned out to be incredibly easy.<br />
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After a couple days spent creating their digital posters, I introduced students to an additional layer they would use to add to the meaning the reader of their poem would experience: video.<br />
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<b><u>Author Interviews</u></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0AvxtBLuICwJ6N_Jr8Sz5hwNQ-Z3a5zHgYYjhyphenhyphenOLllsdND9r2FajR_LzGuBZ9wYS8k0i-d-YeYqF80HgDxWFly7vroQCrRZFn0h8MvLpDwbGN5qwJUim5Iz59wPz2CSVPvGmpT6sokkU/s1600/author+interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" nba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0AvxtBLuICwJ6N_Jr8Sz5hwNQ-Z3a5zHgYYjhyphenhyphenOLllsdND9r2FajR_LzGuBZ9wYS8k0i-d-YeYqF80HgDxWFly7vroQCrRZFn0h8MvLpDwbGN5qwJUim5Iz59wPz2CSVPvGmpT6sokkU/s320/author+interview.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
A neat feature of Glogster is its ability to grab a video and/or audio to be included on the poster directly from a computer's webcam and mic. After introducing this feature and brainstorming a list of questions they could ask each other about their writing, students got back in their writing groups and took turns interviewing the author of each Glogster poster. Each student included their interview on their poster, adding yet an additional layer of expression and type of media to their projects.<br />
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<b><u>Sharing</u></b><br />
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Students embedded their completed Glogster poster into a post on their blogs, and after a brief conversation about leaving comments, visited the posts of their classmates to view their projects and leave feedback. I asked students to first visit and comment on the projects of those in their writing group, as they have privileged insight into the journey undertaken by the author of these projects. Afterwards, they were free to visit and leave comments on any of their classmates' posts.<br />
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<b><u>Assessment</u></b><br />
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Grading writing is always tricky. On one hand, students should know what is expected from them and how they will be assessed. On the other, using a rubric with set criteria neglects the differences that students bring with them to my class and emphasizes product over process. Using standard criteria to assess a writing-based project can't begin to assess the thinking and learning that occurred through creating the project.<br />
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So for this project, and those that will come after it, I focused on assessing the important, but often unseen, aspects of this project the only way I know possible: by having them assess themselves. I posted the directions to the self assessment <a href="http://fultonsela.blogspot.com/2011/09/9-8-11-glogster-poem-poster-self.html">here</a>. <br />
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<b><u>Reflecting on Reflection....</u></b><br />
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But also, as expected, there were quite a few students who were thrown off by the idea of assessing themselves. For years, they've been given the message that learning is determined by the teacher, not them. Some students, in their assessments expressed relief that I wasn't just judging their final product because it did not truly reflect all of the effort and hard work they had put into their writing and/or learning how to use Glogster. There were others that quickly created sophisticated digital posters, who weren't able to say a whole lot about their writing or learning. And there were also a handful of students who were angry that they had to assess their own learning, wanting instead for me to do it for them. <br />
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Like or hate the concept of self assessment, my students will have plenty of opportunities to practice this sort of metacognition this year, and it's my hope that as we continue the process of writing and reflecting, that all of my students will feel more free to embrace the messy process of learning and the opportunity to reflect on the importance of what they have done. <br />
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Overall, this project turned out to be a terrific experience. Through carrying it out, I got to learn about this amazing new group of students, and the students got to learn about and connect with each other in ways they previously had not. They got to compose through multiple mediums and experienced moving back and forth in their writing between physical and digital spaces, and they experienced the practice of writing to think and learn, as well as writing for publication for a public audience.<br />
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This project served an important role in building our new classroom community, and it set the tone for the writing we will be doing for the next 175 or so days together. I'll be sure to keep posting about how that goes.<br />
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Below are a couple examples of projects by students who asked me to share them. I'm sure they'd love to receive some feedback!<br />
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Callie's project, titled <a href="http://anything-callie22.blogspot.com/2011/09/callies-poem.html">"Callie's Poem"</a><br />
Justin's Project, titled <a href="http://blackconscious.blogspot.com/">"Being Me"</a><br />
Megan's project, titled "<a href="http://16wallem.edublogs.org/2011/09/07/4/">Being Megan" </a><br />
David's project, titled "<a href="http://adaywithrusty.blogspot.com/2011/09/stylevisibilityhiddenwidth0pxheight0px.html">Being 13"</a><br />
Katelynn's project, titled "<a href="http://sponngebobbaby.blogspot.com/2011/09/being-me.html">Being Me"</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-38185290468593750972011-06-10T10:42:00.000-07:002011-07-11T17:49:47.906-07:00Revisioned Student Blogging<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><em>*This post is a follow-up to two posts I wrote earlier in the year, </em><a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2010/09/rethinking-student-blogging-for-real.html"><em>Rethinking Student Blogging, For Real</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2010/10/collaborative-word-processors.html"><em>Headfirst into Blogging</em></a><em>. </em></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><em>It is also the extended version of a piece I wrote for the UNC Writing Project Newsletter. Portions not included in the Newsletter article are written in bold.</em></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="150" id="internal-source-marker_0.49513548203133323" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/4g0jHAVLsLb3qyYj5LEUjYHUZWzZ5yAOSOcp2fa2EqV_68Qj6rReIrI1BFTtIomYwPG5qqYI0BzjL0z9ILUeOYL8mJebX-SkMUyygiud3BrC0vi2wUw" width="200" /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I was first presented with the idea of using blogs in the classroom, it was suggested that they be used as a way for students to respond to a question or text and the ideas of others. I set up a classroom blog, had my students use it as a space to respond to a story we read, and quickly decided that I wasn’t impressed. Physical class discussions elicited greater depth and participation, and besides, there were better online venues for students to interact share.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recently, however, something happened that has caused me to rethink the blog and its potential in my classroom. I started blogging for myself.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I created my own blog where I write about what matters to me and enter into a conversation with others of the same interest. I learn from these other bloggers and integrate their ideas into my own, composing my new knowledge in a digital space where writing is no longer constrained to a pencil and daybook, where the world is my audience.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How I have come to know blogging hardly resembles my initial conception of it, as a teacher-centered space for student response. Real bloggers are engaged writers because they write about what is important to them, and knowing this helped me to understand that meaningful writing needed to exist at the heart of student blogging if it is to be successful. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With this realization in mind, I decided this year that I would make a second attempt at using blogs in my classroom. I've always had my students compose and share pieces of thier choosing in our writing workshop, and if meaningful writing was my goal, our existing workshop provided just the place to begin our journey into blogging.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Getting Set Up</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In order for students to feel a sense of ownership of their blogs, I decided to have them each create their own (as opposed to creating a single class blog where each could contribute) on the educational blogging site, <a href="http://edublogs.org/">Edublogs</a>. While it wasn't my first choice because of the learning curve presented to new bloggers, Edublogs was free, provided plenty of options for composing and customizing, and had an incredibly simple sign-up process. Within minutes, students created accounts, named their blogs, and were ready to start blogging. </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To give students access to the blogs of their classmates, I created <a href="https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGxwaGdnbTdMTzVsMzJnR09lWk5Hdmc6MQ"><span style="color: blue;">this Google Form</span></a>. On it, students typed in their name and pasted the url of their blog. I then shared the <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/kcs.k12.nc.us/fulton-s/home/students/links-to-student-blogs"><span style="color: blue;">resulting spreadsheet</span></a> on my website, were students could then be able to browse through their classmates (and those in other classes I teach) and access their individual blogs. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Becoming Bloggers</span></u></b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">During class time that we devoted to writing workshop, I made sure to have computers on hand so that students could write their final drafts to their blog when they were ready. Every two or three weeks students would publish a new piece to their blogs and also take time in class to read and post comments on the published posts of their classmates. The process was fairly simple and on the surface wasn’t much different than how we did things before blogs. What happened after we began these digital sharing sessions, though, was pretty exciting.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I noticed it on our first commenting day when a student turned around and told her friend about a post she read that was really good. After she made this comment, I noticed that student in earshot was reading the piece the student mentioned. By the time I got to my computer and read it, seven students had posted comments. By the time the author arrived to my class (the last of the day), 25 comments had been posted on it. She came in the next day with the sequel to that post in hand, and her enthusiasm for writing has only grown since. And she was just the first.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As we continued to blog, so did this trend of students talking during class and in the hall about student writing. Students gained reputations for their writing, and networks began to emerge both in our school and beyond. They established their identities and started thinking like writers, borrowing ideas from the posts of others and viewing the events that unfolded in their lives and in the world as new topics to write about. They jotted down notes in their daybooks and freewrote with purpose. Revision was taken seriously, and proofreading gained a new significance. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In years past, I've observed my students growing in such ways as writers over the course of the year through writer's workshop, but the scale at which this growth took place this year was unlike anything I had seen before, and I'm confident that blogging had a lot to do with it. Sure, I am a better teacher of writing this year thanks to participating in SI last summer (shout out UNCC Writing Project!), and without question my students' experience would not have been near as powerful it were not for my improved practice. That being said, <span class="mceItemHidden">writing as <span class="mceItemHiddenSpellWord">bloggers</span> afforded my students opportunities not</span> avaliable to writers in physical spaces alone. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Blogging gave students a chance to do more than tack their final drafts to the classroom wall. It broke down these walls, and entered students into a new type of writing community, one where their words could be read by anyone at any time, where their ideas were widely received and could be disseminated instantly, and most importantly, one where they were able to feel that writing about what mattered, mattered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><u>Blogs as Digital Daybooks</u></strong></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As students became more familiar with writing in these digital spaces, it wasn't just their attitudes that changed. The role of their blogs evolved as well. Rather than only using them to publish final drafts, students would use their blogs to jot down ideas and start new pieces with the “save as a draft” feature. Sometimes they would abandon drafts and began new ones. And other times they would return to the ones they’d abandoned. By the end of the year, students’ blogs functioned much like their daybooks, and many found a balance between working through ideas in both spaces. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
<b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Growing into Digital Writers</span></u></b><br />
<strong><u></u></strong></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The types of writing that students were doing changed, too. Blogs provided students the opportunity to add new depth to their writing through integrating various digital elements. Of course, this didn’t happen all at once. Along with those I typically do on craft and mechanics, I also led mini-lessons on different digital composition tools, many times learning right along with students. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By the end of the year, they became quite good, too, at drawing upon digital tools to compose ideas beyond words alone. Within their pieces, students included hyperlinks to outside web pages, past posts, and the posts of others; they inserted Creative Commons images, videos, and music within their writing; and they also embedded digital projects they created themselves like podcasts, slideshows, animations, and comics. Listed below are a few examples. I'm sure they'd welcome any feedback that you'd like to leave!</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After writing <a href="http://15lopezc.edublogs.org/2011/03/15/mirrors/"><span style="color: blue;">this poem</span></a>, Carol retold it in <a href="http://15lopezc.edublogs.org/2011/06/01/mirrors-2/"><span style="color: blue;">this post</span></a> using only images that she created using <a href="http://www.pixton.com/"><span style="color: blue;">Pixton</span></a></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Juan created <a href="http://juanj.edublogs.org/2011/06/01/192/"><span style="color: blue;">this comic</span></a> retelling a scene from our team's canoe trip, using <a href="http://www.toondoo.com/"><span style="color: blue;">Toondoo</span></a>. Pierre, his canoe partner told his version of the event with <a href="http://15cortezp.edublogs.org/2011/06/02/canoe-feild-trip/"><span style="color: blue;">this animation</span></a> he created with xtranorml. Will, who did not go on the trip, created <a href="http://15martiw.edublogs.org/2011/06/02/final-blog-post-video/"><span style="color: blue;">this animation</span></a> with <a href="http://goanimate.com/"><span style="color: blue;">Goanimate</span></a> to explain how the day went for those who stayed back with the substitute.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Heather created </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://storybird.com/books/how-they-look-at-himus/?token=rtvj6u"><b><span style="color: blue;">this book</span></b></a><b> using </b><a href="http://www.storybird.com/"><b><span style="color: blue;">Storybird</span></b></a><b>, which was inspired by previous posts she had written. Check out </b><a href="http://15sperlh.edublogs.org/"><b><span style="color: blue;">her blog here</span></b></a><b> and see if you can notice the recurring theme of her writing :)</b></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Allison created and embedded <a href="http://15tuckea.edublogs.org/2011/06/02/zooburstd/"><span style="color: blue;">this 3D pop-up book</span></a> about her experiences in 8th grade using Zooburst</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lorenzo embedded a video slideshow that he created on Animoto into a <a href="http://15delgal.edublogs.org/2011/05/13/child-abuse/"><span style="color: blue;">post he wrote about child abuse</span></a>. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shaytania and Katelyn wrote <a href="http://15garcis.edublogs.org/2011/04/06/loving-himher-by-shaytania-katelynn/"><span style="color: blue;">this poem</span></a> on a relationship told from perspectives of both people in it. Along with the text, they also recorded themselves reading their poem, which they posted as a podcast created using <a href="http://www.audioboo.com/"><span style="color: blue;">Audioboo</span></a>.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ta-Layza wrote a rap about what she had learned about gymnastics and recorded it using Audioboo. She posted her performance of it <a href="http://15millet.edublogs.org/2010/12/09/gymnastiics-safety-rapp/"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Erin created the <a href="http://15hoopee.edublogs.org/2011/04/12/the-2nd-story-of-alice-jacob/"><i><span style="color: blue;">Alice Jacob</span></i><span style="color: blue;"> fictional series</span></a>. With each chapter, she gave readers links to other pieces in her series. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Belen wrote this piece on <a href="http://15valdib.edublogs.org/2011/04/14/song-genres-and-artist/"><span style="color: blue;">her favorite music</span></a>, where she included multiple links to related pages and sites to listen to the songs. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-45000159982482003282011-05-18T14:40:00.000-07:002011-06-02T06:27:12.003-07:00Reflections on Digital TeachingLast week my friend and colleague Josh sent me an email, asking for a favor. Below is an excerpt from it:<br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYAyPt1GEJGq28at98VPD3t7h50qeHcmZDEtCf80NaZJbQxog4GrdcKaDDcPtuyPDTq89sIbLYgfaoZjS50M2QZcig0gpvPBVni6widQM11mcwC2hvYsp_doAUOzpESCI7tiY8bLztPY/s1600/anthony%2527s+blog.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><i>Steve, <br />
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Early in the month of June I am participating in a panel discussion entitled “Using Technology to Enhance Teacher Effectiveness” that is being put on by the NC Network of Grantmakers and being supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I believe many of the practices in your classroom are incredible and should be a model of instruction. That being said, I would like to outline some of your pedagogical approaches as examples of how technology can increase teacher effectiveness. Below is the session description and below that are some specific questions. I would love to have your thoughts regarding these points so I can help share the great things you do. You are da man!</i></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This sounded like a great opportunity. I love sharing my practices, and I'll do whatever I can to further the integration of technology in our school. Besides that, I can't possibly turn down anyone who thinks that I'm da man.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">So Josh, of course, I'll help you out. Thanks for keeping me in mind, and also thanks for giving me permission (I did ask him first) use this opportunity to reflect on the ventures my students and I have undertaken this year, and post my thoughts in my blog while they are all still fresh in my head. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">First, I'll start with some of the high points of how my students and I learned with technology this year. There is overlap between them, but I'll break it down as best as I can.</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><b><u>1. The Digital Inquiry Project</u></b></div><br />
Earlier on in the year I reflected on an observation I made that many of my students didn't know what they wanted to learn about. It struck me as odd that group of teens who are growing up in a world so rich with information were not continuously thinking about new questions and subjects they wanted to learn about. Everything they could possibly want to know was only a few mouse clicks away, and I felt that if I didn't give them the chance to learn how to be a digital learner and contribute to this continually expanding wealth of knowledge on the web, I wouldn't be doing my job as their teacher in preparing them to live and learn in the 21st century. <br />
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Out of this perceived need grew what came to be the Digital Inquiry Project, which I wrote about in detail in <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/01/digital-inquiry-project-and-new-culture.html">this post</a> here. This project gave students the chance to be the directors of their own learning. <br />
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In short, students decided what they wanted to learn about, scoured the web for content that answered their questions, organized relevant content through social bookmarking, and then used what they learned to inform pieces of writing they published to their blog. As students wrote, thought, and responded to the writing of their peers, they developed new questions and interests, which they reflected on and used to guide future learning and writing. <br />
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<b><u>2. Diigo for (and beyond) Organizing Web Content</u></b><br />
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When swimming through the sea of content on the web, students could quickly get lost and even drown without a way to keep track of and organize sites they find. It was for this reason, that initially, I introduced them to the social bookmarking site, Diigo. With it, students bookmarked sites, tagged them to keep them organized, highlighted text that was important, and included sticky notes of their own thoughts and ideas. <br />
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As the Digital Inquiry project continued to evolve, my students developed the ability to use Diigo seamlessly in their web browsing, and I experimented with and discovered new ways to use this cool web tool. <br />
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In my most popular post, <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/04/diigo-for-digital-writing-reflection.html">Diigo for Digital Writing Reflection</a>, I discussed how Diigo provided a great way for students to reflect on their own writing that they had published digitally. In my post <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/02/writing-research-in-record-time.html">Research Writing 101</a> 2.0, we discovered how Diigo simplifies and expedites the research writing process. <br />
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Most recently, we stumbled upon an another unexpectedly handy use for Diigo, which I have yet to write about. My students had just completed a couple days of web research, gathering information for their research papers. I was introducing them to the concept of creating an outline for their papers, and after introducing one of my classes to the concept of sub topics, a student pointed out to me that she could easily determine the sub topics in her paper by looking at the tags she assigned to the sites she bookmarked. This is a great idea, and I'm still thinking through how this is going to influence how I have my students research, bookmark, and tag next year. <br />
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<b><u>Blogging</u></b><br />
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Every year my students write. I love seeing them develop their identities as writers and learn the power of their words. This year, though, the growth I've seen in my students as writers has occurred on a scale more grand than I any that has graced my classroom before. I thank blogging for that.<br />
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I put a lot of thought into just how blogging would fit into my class. In my post, <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/02/writing-research-in-record-time.html">Rethinking Student Blogging for Real</a>, I wrote about my own journey as a writer through blogging and contemplated how I could guide my students in conceptualizing blogs as real bloggers do. I can honestly say that my students are now blogging for real, and the journey to get where we are we all learned a lot about the potential that exists in these digital writing spaces. <br />
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Like in years past, much of my students' journey as writers has occurred in the context of a writing workshop. The principles of this workshop have all stayed the same. Students wrote about what mattered to them, engaged in writing as a process, collaborated with and supported the writing of classmates, took writing pieces to publication, and shared published work with the class. <br />
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With most writing pieces, students began working through ideas for their drafts on paper, and when they were ready, typed out and developed their pieces on their blog. And while the words they typed evolved from what they started with pencils, continuing the process in an digital space afforded them to add entirely new levels of meaning to their pieces. With their blogs they were able to hyperlink to outside sites, their other pieces they had posted, and even related posts of their classmates. They added videos, and podcasts, and slideshows, inserted and attributed Creative Commons images, as well as embedded polls and surveys to make their posts more interactive. <br />
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In addition to using existing digital elements to support and add depth to the meaning of written words, my students' blogs are also a space for them to publish multimedia elements that they create themselves. A student may tell a story through images and music through <a href="http://www.animoto.com/">Animoto</a>, through a cartoon or comic strip with either <a href="http://www.goanimate.com/">Goanimate</a> or <a href="http://toondoo.com/">Toondoo</a>, or create a multimedia poster with <a href="http://www.glogster.com/">Glogster</a>. Though these tools are hosted on different websites, each site gives users the option of embedding their composition on a blog or website. Because of this, my student's blogs serve as places for them to both post their writing and digital stories that they create elsewhere on the web. <br />
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Having the opportunity to compose their ideas digitally has, without question, engaged my students in a depth of thinking significantly greater than that afforded through the written word alone, and while many students embraced and enjoyed this process, the most engaging aspect of publishing their words to the web was the audience that blogging gave them.<br />
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Every other week we devoted class time to reading and responding to the blogs of our classmates. On these days, I would overhear students whisper during class and talk in the halls about posts they really liked. It was not uncommon for a student for a student to enter class and find a piece they published the day before to have 20 comments or for a student to be approached by a peer in another class who asked hopefully if they planned to add a second part to a story they started. The power of this authentic and captive audience drove my students to want to write, to value written expression, and it gave them affirmation that their voices and ideas mattered. <br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">And while I believe it was the peer audience that most contributed to the fire that blogging kindled for my students, their passion for writing continued to grow as they began to notice that it wasn't just classmates for whom they were writing. Particularly after we began the <a href="http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/">Student Blogging Challenge</a>, students quickly began to see that the words they published to the web were also being read beyond our school, state, and even country. This image below is a screenshot of the visitor tracker from <a href="http://15lotita.edublogs.org/">Anthony's blog</a>, with each dot on the map representing a view his blog had received. I can't imagine that anyone, even the most reluctant writer, could not be inspired and motivated by seeing by seeing they had such an audience. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><img border="0" height="133px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYAyPt1GEJGq28at98VPD3t7h50qeHcmZDEtCf80NaZJbQxog4GrdcKaDDcPtuyPDTq89sIbLYgfaoZjS50M2QZcig0gpvPBVni6widQM11mcwC2hvYsp_doAUOzpESCI7tiY8bLztPY/s320/anthony%2527s+blog.JPG" width="320px" /><br />
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<b><u>On Students and Learning</u></b><br />
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So, you want to know how I know meaningful learning is taking place through the activities that I described above? <br />
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That's an easy one to answer....<br />
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<strong>I know my students are engaged in meaningful learning because they have the space to reflect on their own thinking and learning</strong><br />
With such a wide variety of writing students are publishing on their blogs, it would be impossible to evaluate each with a single rubric. And even it it was possible, attempting to do so would serve counter to the goals which I had in place for conducting our digital writing workshop. The main goal was not that each student demonstrate an ability to compose writing that fit into a particular predetermined mold. Rather, the goals of having students engage in such a process were for them to grow as thinkers, learners, and as writers; and therefore, it is these areas that were assessed. <br />
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In order to cary out such a personal and metacognitive assessment, students reflected and wrote in response to several points posted on <a href="http://fultons.edublogs.org/2011/04/13/april-14th-published-writing-reflectionself-assessment/">this assignment.</a> Here is an example of one of these assignments. Through completing this reflection, my students better made sense for themselves the significance of their experience with the assignment, while also making their thinking and learning visible to me.<br />
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<strong>I know my students are engaged in meaningful learning because I read what they write. </strong><br />
On their blogs, students have a chance to write about what matters to them. Many of these pieces focus on issues that are central to adolescents. They write about love and relationships, popularity and fitting in. Through these pieces, they seek to better understand the world in which they live and in doing so, better understand themselves and their place within it. In each post I read, I see aspects of students' identifies emerge that previously did not exist, and in reading the comments that other students leave on these pieces, I see connections between students that would not otherwise be made and affirmation to all involved that the rocky road of adolescence need not be traveled alone. I cannot think of any learning that is more meaningful.<br />
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And as for their actual abilities to express and convey their ideas through the written word, one needs only to visit the blog kept by any of my students and read from their initial posts to the present. Though all have grown differently, the changes that my students writing has underwent in both content and mechanics is amazing. In some cases, this growth is obvious, such as in developing and understanding of correct punctuation, capitalization, or paragraph organization. In other cases, it almost appears that writers change little or even revert, but upon looking at previous posts, it is evident that the student is experimenting with new styles and types of writing, thus indicating a growing confidence with taking risks as a writer and a developing writer's repertoire.<br />
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<strong>I know my students are engaged in meaningful learning because I watch and talk with them. </strong><br />
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My students are far from a uniform group. They all have unique interest, backgrounds, and abilities. As such, I understand that their needs as learners are as individual as they are. For this reason, I build in plenty of time during class to conference with students, focusing on addressing their individual needs. Here, I use technology as well to record annotations of what my students are learning and the skills I focus on with them. Using a Google spreadsheet, I take notes on each child after we talk. I may work with one student on punctuating his writing, and another on editing html code. With each conference, I refer back to previous annotations I have taken on that student, so that I can see their growth and the areas where they still need to develop. <br />
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And even without the data in front of me, when I watch my students undertake a digital assignment in my class today, what I see is in stark contrast to what transpired at the beginning of the year. When the year began, most of my students struggled to navigate the directions on a web page to create an account on a given web tool without assistance. Fast forward to this week when I gave my students the assignment of creating a digital story using a new web tool from a list, and then embedding the final project on a blog post. Other than a brief overview of the purpose of each tool and a link to it, I gave my students NO instructions whatsoever....they didn't need it. They dove into the project without hesitation, and learned themselves how to use web tools that, for most, were completely unfamiliar with little, if any, help needed from me. <br />
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<strong><u>Final thoughts on digital teaching</u></strong><br />
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Without question, technology needs to play a role in creating learning experiences that adequately prepare our students for the future. In my class, as I've described above, technology has had an incredible impact on my students learning. But there is one point that I feel like I have to make before I end this post: appropriate and effective instruction that integrates technology is complicated. It's about more than just the tools. It involves not only having teachers who have a degree of tech-savyness, but have adopted a pedagogy that uses technology to meet learning needs and develop skills that are relevant to life and learning in our modern society. <br />
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I by no means claim to posses mastery of this knowledge. Honestly, I'd question anyone who claims that they do. The field is too new and changing too rapidly to have it all figured out for anyone to be the authority. In a sense, this reality of there not existing a single authority over information underlies how I understand this new pedagogy and perceive our responsibilities as educators in teaching our students to learn. The past traditional paradigm where the teacher is the master of the content which he or she distributes to students is quickly becoming irrelevant. With a reality where anyone can find just about any information any time, anywhere, there is less of a need for us to be designators of subject matter content in a traditional sense. Rather, what our students need of us is guidance and support in using the digital tools at their disposal to find content on their own, evaluate and organize the information they find, make meaning of it through collaboration and composition, and contribute their own ideas to this vast and ever-growing collective authority. <br />
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This is what I'm coming to see being a 21st century educator entails, and while my teaching approach this year was far from perfect, I feel that the points that I mentioned above are all steps in the right direction. I hope that this helps you Josh, and of course if you (or any other reader of this blog) want to get in touch with me to continue this conversation, hit me up on Twitter @steve8071.<br />
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Take care and good luck at your meeting, <br />
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Steve</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4606053592701832166.post-42603019345922022882011-04-15T15:03:00.000-07:002011-04-16T10:34:37.069-07:00Diigo for Digital Writing ReflectionAs I've written about in past posts, I feel quite strongly about the role of educators in equipping students with the skills they need for both life and learning in an increasingly digital world. With respect to the essential skill of organizing web content, I've been having my students use the social bookmarking site <a href="http://www.diigo.com/">Diigo</a> since the start of the school year. They've used it to keep track of information they find on the web, to share information with our class group, and also to respond to digital texts they read. And even though the bookmarklet, <a href="http://www.diigo.com/tools/diigolet">Diigolet</a>, is significantly less convenient than the Diigo toolbar (which can't be installed on our school computers), most of my students are now are at a point where they have seamlessly integrated this bookmarking tool into their web browsing. <br />
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It was because of their proficiency with it that when an idea came to me today 5 minutes before the start of class of a new purpose for which I could have my students use Diigo, I didn't hesitate to throw out the plan I had in place and give it a try. It went amazingly well. So well, in fact, that I have resolved to finish writing this post before I leave school today and officially start my spring break.<br />
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It seems like most of the posts in this blog have been in some way or another focused around my students using digital tools to compose. Presently, the writing my 8th grade students are doing has taken the form of a fairly open writing workshop, where students write across various genres about about topics of importance to them, publishing these pieces to their blogs every couple of weeks. <a href="http://stevefulton.blogspot.com/2011/04/most-recommended-student-blog-posts.html">Here are</a> some of the pieces they've done recently.<br />
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The purpose of such writing is for students to develop as writers and thinkers, while also establishing their presence in a global community of learners. Assessment of how students meet these goals is done by the students themselves, as for each piece they publish they write a reflection where they identify and explain aspects of their piece that show the following:<br />
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-evidence of themselves as thinkers<br />
-evidence of using revision to improve their writing<br />
-evidence of how they worked through challenges<br />
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I love using this method as a way to assess my students' writing, which I was introduced to last summer at the UNC Charlotte Writing Project. It focuses students attention on their own process, encourages them to try new ideas and approaches, respects their diversity, and guides students in being better able to talk about their own thinking and learning. <br />
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Up until today, I've been having my students complete this reflective/metacognitive assignment by responding to <a href="http://fultons.edublogs.org/2011/03/31/april-1-writing-reflectionself-assessment/">these directions</a> on their own sheet of paper, which they then would turn in to me. <br />
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But this morning while I was preparing my class for the day, it occurred to me that Diigo's web highlighter and sticky note tools would allow students to carry out that same assignment without paper. In addition, it would also take students less time to complete, let others read the reflections they wrote, and make it easier for me to access and assess their work. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_T9-gKn49RYZV7X-pIvOQ6T127KCALNl5ivZbKFnuuctlDs37aCxaqHCL5NY6U_LzE28SG_Ebeno86i98xTUl-qOVed38w2Eza7A4HDVGg9o-ExhjjwCFbsMLe7ZiLl7iJKy1JznXYA/s1600/carols+web+annotations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="229" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_T9-gKn49RYZV7X-pIvOQ6T127KCALNl5ivZbKFnuuctlDs37aCxaqHCL5NY6U_LzE28SG_Ebeno86i98xTUl-qOVed38w2Eza7A4HDVGg9o-ExhjjwCFbsMLe7ZiLl7iJKy1JznXYA/s320/carols+web+annotations.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Student blog with Diigo highlights and sticky notes</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
If you are not familiar with Diigo, it is a free social bookmarking tool. With it, users can bookmark web pages to their online library from any computer, highlight text on web pages and include sticky notes with their own typed messages, and share these sites and annotations with others. Diigo also allows users to create groups, which I have done for my students, so that in addition to saving bookmarks to their own libraries, they can also save them to the group. <br />
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Since all of my students publish their writing on their individual blogs, they can use Diigo to bookmark their posts, highlight parts that demonstrate their thinking, revisions, and challenges, and include sticky notes on the page to include their written explanations and reflections. Click <a href="http://fultons.edublogs.org/2011/04/13/april-14th-published-writing-reflectionself-assessment/">here</a> to see the full assignment. <br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3h7GgKnz9W7SDXNUgb8uwtaprw9cCGlz5_-qa-ZJhQ7i6JEvXKQN3y4Hx_SHkqdZvWzXTLzb9iyMtAIcVWYqzrf4Zpfpa8NhYEYzUI8bePJhJ74yN6kzb4VUA7yaQQlia1A6tWU01UFQ/s1600/diigo+self+assessment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3h7GgKnz9W7SDXNUgb8uwtaprw9cCGlz5_-qa-ZJhQ7i6JEvXKQN3y4Hx_SHkqdZvWzXTLzb9iyMtAIcVWYqzrf4Zpfpa8NhYEYzUI8bePJhJ74yN6kzb4VUA7yaQQlia1A6tWU01UFQ/s400/diigo+self+assessment.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Student's highlights and sticky notes as seen in our class Diigo group library</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Students would also select the option that allowed the page and its annotations to be shared with our <a href="http://groups.diigo.com/group/fultons-ela">class Diigo group</a>, so when I or any other student visited our class Diigo library they could see each students' bookmarked blog post, and beneath that post, a display of the excerpts highlighted and the sticky note responses that had been recorded. </div>For grading, I only needed to visit our Diigo page and use <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1jnuSnddfC8jrVF9wa1WyaeMmsFuN8ILqSvtdJIT8ctg">this rubric</a> to assess my students' work. Alternatively, I could also visit the student's blog post, and so long as I had Diigo open on my computer, I could see the annotations on their post. If I wanted to respond to any part of my students' reflections, I could use Diigo to type in my comments and they would then show up in my students' libraries. Though I have not done so yet, I also see potential for students to respond to each other's assessments in the same way.<br />
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Now that I'm starting to rethink my uses of Diigo, I'm sure that some other new possible applications will come to me when as I start reading through these posts and pages of self assessments. Honestly, I am excited to do so, but outside my window the empty parking lot and setting sun are telling me that grading can wait. I'm sure my family would agree. <br />
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Hello Spring Break!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6