mixed media

Here's the final glog.

aaaaaargh!

This is my VoiceThread effort at finishing this...Why is there not just one program which will allow me to link specific images directly to articles and/or resources while simultaneously mixing in music in a less lame-sounding way???

H1N1 and me, a final project story

Although I love an eight hour drive on I-94 as much as any other midwestern gal, I have to say that I was looking forward to a little voice recording upon my arrival in Chicago. Lo and behold, my parents had/have the dreaded lurghy...which is why I present you with 2 projects, neither of which are complete.

First, a VoiceThread that I began making as a tribute to the flim-flam family that just pulled out of my room. The funny part of this 'Thread (Yeah, that's right, I'm making up slang now, too.), is the amount of research that went into it. I linked every image, save one, to an article or a video that everyone should read/watch with a warm cup of tea. Second, a really rough family glog that I may just have to record my kids for, if grandma and grandpa don't buck up soon.

The Bloggy Awards

Despite the fact that we're here, at the Bloggies, I have to confess that blogging has - for me - been less red carpet and more yellow brick road. Now, on to the accolades.

People's Choice Awards
(I know we were supposed to choose just one person to recognize, but I couldn't. Ah, irrepressible socialist tendencies...)

1. --- Voice
I always check in on Kelsey's blog, specifically because I enjoy her voice. I am quite impressed with the way that she manages to weave mildly saucy opinion with textual reference, while remaining on topic throughout. Here's a great example of this.

2. --- Multimedia Multimodal component
Really, who wasn't impressed with Debi's Voicethread? It made me feel bold enough to say coxswain in polite conversation. (Not to mention the fact that Debi has a subliminal smiley face in the upper right-hand corner of her blog...)

3. --- Thoughtfulness
I am not sure that JoAnn could be more thoughtful. I read her blogs (with snack and bathroom breaks *wink*), and am always impressed with how meticulously she has unpacked her own thought processes. Here's a great example of the Blatchley thought train.

...and on the personal end of things...

1. --- Professionalism
So, um, here's the thing: My writing just isn't very professional. Engaging? I hope so. Interesting? Sometimes. Professional? Nope. If I had to choose, I guess I'd go with the entry that has the least sass and personal allegory...four demerits for me.

2. --- Creativity
I've long fancied myself the double-secret creative type. As I looked through the blogs I've posted for this class, I was most proud of this entry. Specifically, I was (easily) impressed with the moebius strip/internet analogy.


3. --- Design
Design wasn't something that I gave much thought too. The stylistic constraints of a neophyte blogger are, well, constraining. That said, Sneaky Cora, was the sea-level pinnacle of my design abilities...and only because I'm so enamored with dendroica cerulea's photo.

CPR

cartoon courtesy of jonny goldstein

During my freshman year of college, while enduring an uninspiring trimester of Comparative Political Regimes, collaborative writing was my lifeline. My professor, one year from retirement and not aiming to impress anyone, spoke in a numbing mono-drone, often derailing his own train of thought.

Despite the fact that I was an admitted nerd, I took to sitting with other disappointed frosh in the third row from the back of the lecture hall. A bold group, we third-row-from-the-back types, took to creating two-line stories. In case you're unfamiliar, here's how they work: The first person writes two lines, folds the paper so that only the last line is visible, and then passes the paper along to the next person, whooooo...writes two lines, folds the paper so that only the last line is visible, and then passes the paper along to the next person...ad infinitum...or at least until the paper and desire have been exhausted. Suffice to say that many a giggle was suppressed, and we all opted for the final essay in place of the multiple choice test.

The whole process was a mild analog to the Mad Lib...which is another of my favorite forms of collaborative writing, especially with primary students.

When I reflect on the collaborative digital compositions that my students have created, I realize that we haven't ventured much beyond the threshold of Kidspiration. Granted, we are second graders, but after poking around the internet, I realize that we could be doing (and will do!) a whole lot more. (In fact, I see no reason not to digitize the two-liner and let the kids have a great time with it.)

Am I ready to jump into second grade wikis full tilt? There's a question. I have never been very fond of pbwiki, but perhaps I could give it another look. This would be a great opportunity to reinforce the idea that social etiquette (and collaborative social goals, for that matter) are as important in cyberspace as they are in the physical world.

As a second grade teaching team, we now do a lot of collaborative writing, thanks in large part to the dynamic Google doc. As members of this class, I would also consider the blogging we do - complete with links to other blogs, documents, and sites - to be collaborative digital writing, if conceptualized more obliquely....aaand, wait, now that I'm all fired up, isn't a multimedia digital project which remixes images, sounds, and words the pinnacle of collaborative (if not exactly contemporaneous) writing? Okay, I'm getting down from my tiny soapbox now.


P.S. I also came across this posting about the "10 Best Practices for Using Wikis in Education", and had to include it because 1) It's useful....and 2) It's written by yet another tech savvy Schroeder.

Dessa, Eligh, and The Grouch

Dessa is one of my favorite oral storytellers...underrated writer, overrated rapper.
The Grouch and Eligh aren't too bad either...who else can write quality conscious hip-hop about global warming?

Using Schema To Make Inferences

Check out this SlideShare Presentation created by Emily Kissner:

Using Schema To Make Inferences

View more presentations from Emily Kissner.

I thought twice.

Allen Ginsberg says, "First thought, best thought," but I'm not sure...
I kind of prefer the second one.

I. Digital Storytelling as a means of activating multiple schema.

Static words on a page are made more dynamic by the faculties of those who read them. Here's my (mildly empirical) evidence:

What do we do before we read each week's selection from the Houghton anthology? We activate schema. We prime the pump. We bring the texts to life.

Multimodal digital stories -- those that actively engage us visually with text and images while also stimulating us aurally with verbal text and music -- are so captivating because they involve us more completely.

Think about how wonderful it is to hear an author read aloud from their own work.
Right.
Now, consider the prvilege of hearing the author's voice while also seeing the images that inspired their words.
Profound.
(...if you ask me, which most people cleverly decide not to...)

II. Digital Storytelling as a modern analog to the Oral Tradition

Kofi and Harry may not back me completely on this one, but I mentally categorize multimodal digital storytelling (mds) as a modern analog to the the oral tradition. Oral storytelling, like mds, is incredibly personal. In both cases, the storyteller invites his or her audience deeply into a thought or experience. (I'm thinking, again, of the small difference between reading a text and hearing the author read it aloud...the same words, but a wholly different experience.)

Additionally, the experience of telling a story digitally is more akin to telling it orally, than to formally (or informally) writing it. Aside from the code-switching many do on an environmental basis, students' voices tend to ring true in conversation. In static writing, however, their voices can easily become lost. This is less the case when they are asked to explain themselves multimodally. It is more difficult to hide behind words when there are also images and sound involved.

What have we sewn?

photo courtesy of trekkyandy

Were you with me on that one? We've been studying homophones, and I'm suffering from acute appundicitis...so I had to, ahem, follow the thread (as it were).

Glad that's over?
Me too.

I think that, beneath the sarcasm and penchant for blaspheming against good Mr. Beach, I'm a pretty shy and private person. For this reason, I felt that the personal Voicethread laid me bare. Did this stop me from reading sad homemade poems and slapping up pictures of my daughter? Nooo, but I was pretty uncomfortable throughout the process. (Lucky for me, I've only got two followers...)

As I weeded through our infinite cyberstacks of photos, a few things occurred to me: 1) What good are all these unprinted images if I only look at them on random Tuesday nights?, 2) It's probably incredibly beneficial to go into a project like this with either an exact image or text idea, if not both (sooooo many slideshows...), and 3) That Candance is wicked slick. Now that I have a firm grasp of all of my available images, I am in a constant state of mentally storyboarding my final project.

Both of my Voicethreads were solidly text driven. Perhaps this was a byproduct of the dizzying array of images I have available. It was simply easier for me to concentrate on the writing. As a teacher using Voicethread in the classroom, I will likely have students' first experiences involve choosing or creating images to accompany their writing. As a class, we are chipping away at our own Where I'm From poems (from which I envision a tapestry of culminating threads). With these poems, in particular, I think the visual nature of the software will reinforce students' understanding of the dynamic nature of writing.

Paternal Voicethread

What better way to follow a lovestruck Voicethread, than to smack people down with depression. If four pictures of cherubic glory and an unfinished poem by Neruda didn't sit well with you, you might want to check out my second effort.

First Voicethread, con queso...

Sometimes, the mind reaches...aaaaall the way back to high school angst, and manages to twist old anthems into new cheese. Here is my voicethread.

Sneaky Cora

lurking frog courtesy of dendroica cerulea

It's in me. I have the sickness...some sort of LOST-type illness, but (hopefully) less communicable. No, I'm not referring to InfluenzaA-H1N1-SwineFlu. Noooo, I mean the icky lurksabout illness that I cannot seem to shake.

Honestly, I trust my Ningmates absolutely, but cyber-social anxiety disorder is hard to shake. I can honestly say that I read every forum (up until 5 minutes ago), every article that someone mentioned, and even peoples' posts on each others' pages. However, when it came time to engage in a meaningful, no...um...confrontational way, well...I just couldn't. I wish I were as bold as Zax Outback and Ursula Trustworthy who went toe-to-toe in the equal access forum. (Zach and Kelsey (Is that you?), you're my solid-spined heroes.)

Instead, I cordially added to discussions, and ended each post with "Cheers", which is *sadly* something I learned from my endless hours transcribing microtapes for Bill Drayton, neo-luddite founder of Ashoka. (Hah! If he could see me now!)

Sooooo, if I had it all to do over again (insert dreamy montage here), I'd channel my inner biznatch and go for broke. I'd repeat the forum perusal, and read all of the articles (People found some really interesting stuff!), except this time I'd be more of a factor in the discussions.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda....didna.

Do you role your own?

photo courtesy of avlxyz

I scoured my brain and then, convinced that I must have missed evidence of creative role play in my classroom, I scoured last year's plan book...

no dice.

Um...does Reader's Theater count? What about cooperative group work with specifically-designated roles that adheres to the tenets of PIGS face?

No?
Didn't think so.

Right.

I do, however, understand the depth of learning that occurs when we dynamically contextualize experiences in the first person, as opposed to statically judging and observing them in the third. The trouble is, I am still at a loss as to how I can use online role play fluidly with my second graders. I'm wide open for suggestions, if anyone's in a mentally-gifty mood.

Shaq and Awe

Anxious about your digital future?
Come on over and visit Dr. Shaq.

cyber shout-out

I heart Leelou!

retro-envy

photo courtesy of hellabella

I wonder if my teachers ever felt even slightly liable for the material that I might have encountered while researching this or that.

No I don't.

I don't wonder.

I am sure that they didn't give a second thought to it. What trouble could I have gotten myself into under the matron's watchful eye at the Walker Branch of the Chicago Public Library? (Let me tell you, in a building where you weren't allowed to urinate without whispered verbal permission and a key duct-taped to a giant wooden spoon, not much.)

Now, though, even primary students are armed with the Big 6 and strapped to their tiny gills with permissions, Acceptable Use Policies, and pixel-specific lists of where they may (digitally) tread. The internet, with its moebius strip feel and dizzying disco ball allure, can be a dangerous place for tiny researchers. So, what is an early primary teacher to do?

I like to think of students' initial internet research experiences as being great examples of teacher-monitored scaffolding, except not necessarily the kind of scaffolding that bridges students' learning. Nooooo, this is more like the scaffolding that forms a protective cage around our students' fragile sensibilities. (Think Washington Monument, circa 1999.) Utilizing specifically-designed tools such as webquests, we can be fairly certain (We all have our wanderers, don't we?) that students will gather the necessary information without accidentally encountering fraudulent and/or illicit images or ideas. Short of the webquest, we have all probably hyperlinked sites in a Word document or two, and then universally saved them for students to access in their search.

As with anything else we teach, aiding our young charges in the pursuit of useful and appropriate information is all about repeated modeling and practice, practice, practice.

color me green

Not only do I lack any measurable previous blogging experience, but (aside from hastily-scrawled threats written to poor interstate drivers and held up to my window at 70 mph) I've never really made a big effort to communicate with those outside my realm of ken.

That said, I can appreciate a good blog as much as the next shadowy lurker. Dooce has doubled me over with middle-school-quality-just-north-of-bladder-threatening laughter more than once. It speaks directly to both the hilarity and the room temperature fire of parenthood. It is authored by Heather Armstrong, a former web-designer who lost her job, ostensibly, because of her penchant for unabashed blogging. Now, having parlayed her wry wit into many an advertising deal, and having been named by Forbes as one of 2009's "Most Influential Women in the Media"...let's just say that it's all (net)working out for her.

When I'm feeling righteously indignant, which is more often than I'd like to admit, I head for Tim Wise's blog. A white anti-racist leader, Wise has cornered the market on, well, online white anti-racist leadership. "This is Your Nation on White Privilege" had me nodding at my monitor as if I were a bobble head. Aside from having an appreciable following, Wise has also published several books. Although he does not sell advertising on his site, and likely inspires the ire of more than a few, I would contend that Wise's blogged thoughts and essays have contributed greatly to the proliferation of his books and leadership engagements...thus facilitating his ability to march on.

Teaching Digital Writing to Wee Folks

I have to say, my second graders and I have been tearing it up in our NUA writing notebooks. It's only the second week of school, and we've already established "Heart Lists" and written two separate entries. We have shared and talked about our writing community. Suffice to say, we're into it.

Soooo, when do I take Lucy Calkins digital? I mean, why shouldn't we be cyberscribing our "small moments"? I've looked at articles and suggestions such as "Ideas for Teaching Digital Writing", but am not convinced that the ideas would benefit -or even be plausible with - my students.

So, here's a devil's advocate question: Why do we not use junior social networking sites with our kids? When I teach my students (or Molly teaches my students...) to use think.com, non-academic social communication is verboten. I understand this. I mean, we are in school...but I know how much I (and 257 of my closest friends) enjoy Facebook. It's is the first thing I check when I've got a free digital moment. It's what has lured my parents into the realm of public digital communication (read: 2 steps beyond e-mail, take a left at privacy...). Aside from the headache and big-brother aspect of monitoring their communique, why do we disallow this experience for our students? After all, this would be a great opportunity to really practice the netiquette and web safety skills that might later prevent cyberstalking and predation.

I'm just saying...

Digitize Me

One of the most satisfying parts of digital writing (cyberscript, if you will), for me is the immediate and public audience. Honestly, during the 2008 presidential election, I posted comments on cnn.com twice daily. It was intoxicating to have my righteously indignant rants telegraphed instantly to the public realm. Sometimes, I almost dared people to disagree with me. For someone raised to believe wholeheartedly in the intersection of rhetoric and power, heady does not capture my feelings. (Perhaps this is why I find myself drawn to Tim Wise's blog...)

As an educator (and primary teacher at that!) I would love to harness this euphoria for my young students. Children of seven and eight years old, whose entire lives must seem prescribed by outside forces, would certainly revel in the opportunity for acceptable (yet overt) dissent. Perhaps the digital world is the one most likely to remind young students that they need not become sheeple, or cogs. Simultaneously though, I am terrified of all the real terrors that might befall my students in the surreal world of cyberspace. (How can I free them while safely constraining them?) In the classroom, I have used vehicles like think.com, while quietly telling my kids about outside sites such as sparktop.org. Perhaps this is because I want students to learn the utilities of web 2.0, while also grasping the opportunities.

Simply put, I would love to develop and utilize concrete web 2.0 goals and standards with and for my students.