This morning, I am pleased to be a part of Littleton Public Schools’ Adolescent Literacy Institute, and I am able to participate in Harvey “Smokey” Daniels’ keynote, “Best Practice Across the Curriculum.” Here are some notes from his session:

• Goals for today
  • Define “Best Practice”
  • Consider the missing link: student collaboration
  • Watch video of kids working together
  • Introduction to Inquiry Circles
• Books: Best Practice, Content Area Writing, Subjects Matter
• 91& of the time, 6th graders spend their time listening to teachers talk of doing commercially prepared seatwork (Pianta et al, 2007)
• What’s missing?
  • Engagement
  • Curiosity
  • Content
  • Thinking
• Best practice
  • In 1993 when we worked on the first edition of this book, we were thinking about how other professionals look at the “state of the art” in their field and consider what is “best practice.”
  • Sadly, it is now showing up in “best practice” workbooks
  • So, what is “best practice?”
  • Coverage vs. Inquiry
    • Cover the curriculum (a “curriculum of mentioning”) vs. slowing down and going deeper, screened content
    • Atheoretical vs. driven by learning theory (whatever you subscribe to, all theories agree that students must act upon information in order to make it their own)
    • Assigning reading and writing vs. modeling reading and writing
    • No strategy instruction vs. explicit strategy instruction
    • Backloading instruction vs. frontloading instruction (Jeff Wilhelm)
    • Little or no support during reading and writing vs. time, activities and tools that support students (before, during, and after)
    • Textbook-based vs. variety of texts
    • Teacher chosen topics and assignments vs. student choice and responsibility
    • Solitary vs. social
  • See Consortium on Chicago Schools Research
    • Students in interactive classrooms had nearly 1/3 more gain in achievement than non-interactive classrooms
  • Small group work
    • Groups of four seems to be the magic number for group work
    • Small groups are lifelike
    • In small groups, we are smarter
    • Small groups generate energy for challenging work
    • Small groups make the most of diversity
    • Small groups bring “best practice” teaching to life
    • Small groups help us differentiate instruction
    • Employers increasingly require small group skills
    • Linda Darling-Hammond’s book on Powerful Learning
    • Social skills predict earnings better than test scores
  • Common Core Standards
    • “Engage productively and respectfully with others”
  • How do we get predictable and positive outcomes from students?
    • Make personal connections
    • Get them to know each other
    • Mix up the groups periodically
    • Know who can, and can not, work together
    • Teaching them to ask follow-up questions
  • Modeling an open inquiry
    • Studying the future

• Points to consider when thinking about collaboration with Google Docs
  • We spend our weekend grading student papers while they are out — how can we invite them to collaborate?
  • Students often get information from only one source — how do we help them find more?
  • Solitary vs. social — how do we effectively structure group tasks to involve everyone?
  • Asking follow-up questions — how do we teach students to really interact with one another and ask pertinent, empathetic follow-up questions?

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Another semester has zoomed past and, before these thoughts escape me, and I begin a series of summer workshops and our CRWP summer institute, I am going to try to capture a few of the lessons learned in relation to digital writing and digital teaching. Good lessons seem to come in threes, so here goes:

1. Digital storytelling takes time, and a story to tell (larger lesson: any digital writing takes time, and a distinct audience, purpose, and sensibility to craft and design)

I enjoy digital storytelling, both as a digital writer and as a teacher. I appreciate the ways in which a combination of images, sounds, music, and video — coupled with one’s own voice — can create a multimedia work that is truly more than the sum of its parts. Moreover, I continue to be intrigued by new understandings related to fair use of digital media, and the implications that this has for creating digital stories. So, when I introduce digital storytelling to any group, especially my pre-service teachers, I get excited about the possibilities of what can come.

That said, I also get worried, because sometimes what comes when their stories finally premier are not really digital stories in the sense that they have crafted a narrative and supported it with multimedia. Instead, they are slideshows set to music. While one could argue that I am being snooty in this distinction, I don’t think that I am. Let me elaborate a bit.

If we want writers to compose stories, then we have to expect them to begin with the story. I am not sure where I went wrong with this over the past semester, but as I watched the numerous digital stories that my students produced for their final portfolio, I was amazed by the fact that so few included their own voice (literally, by recording it) even after they asked me if they needed to do that. Also, even after we looked at a few digital stories and talked about the ways the authors used transitions and effects, as well as supporting their tale with music rather than letting the music tell it, I still saw many, many slideshows with music.

So, I am not sure what else to say about this right now except to say that I need to reiterate the idea that digital stories need to, well, tell a story. In your voice. With your voice. More to think about with that in the summer institute.

2. Wikis are the most functional space for digital writing to live

After talking with my friend Steve before the semester about how and why to keep using wikis (after almost making an ill-fated decision to switch to Ning), I am more pleased than ever that I use a wiki for the hub of activity in both ENG 315 and in CRWP.

This semester, I asked my ENG 315 students to post almost all their work to the wiki, as well as to respond to the work of their peers. This really extended the conversations that we were having in class and made having a writer’s profile that much more important because they could link all their work back to it to form a makeshift portfolio. As many of them have continued with their work over the semester, the wiki grew and grew. Now, most have very robust writing profiles that also include their multigenre projects.

I like the idea of calling these writers profiles, as that implies something that will continue to grow and change over time whereas, somehow, “portfolio” seems to be more fixed. Given the ways in which the profiles worked this spring, I hope to use the same strategy in CRWP this summer, the WRITE NOW grant workshop in August, and in my ENG 618 research methods class in the fall.

3. Something is changing in the conversations about literacy and technology

I am really not sure when and how this happened, but Sara and I were talking about the fact that, in the past year or two, the ways in which people talk about technology and education seems to have changed. Even as recently as the workshops I was doing for PROJECT WRITE in 2007-8, it seemed as though participants kept asking “why?” when a new technology was introduced to them (and these were people that volunteered to be a part of the grant). That said, it really seems to me that in the past two years, the question has shifted from “why?” to “how?”

In other words, there really isn’t a lot of time spent on arguing for technology use in education anymore, at least not when I go to a school or conference. Maybe it is because many people have laptops and internet-ready mobile phones. Maybe it is because of a backlash to NCLB. Maybe it is because of the many curriculum documents and reports about 21st century literacies. Probably some combination of all of this, plus a shift in the skills and attitudes that children now bring to school.

All the same, I have begun to find it refreshing that I can start the conversation with a group of pre-service or in-service teachers now and not have to justify technology use so much as I need to talk about the literacy practices enabled by technology. I get my first chance of the summer to have that talk tomorrow with teachers in Littleton, CO, as they work to integrate laptops into their writing courses.

So, considering my approach to digital storytelling, the use of wikis, and the ways in which we talk about technology will continue to be on my mind this summer. I look forward to the continued learning as I participate in the many upcoming PD events I have scheduled for the summer and hope to share more of my thinking here.

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A smorgasbord of sessions from SITE 2010 with the notes I was able to catch from each (some more than others)… enjoy!

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Notes from “Pre-Service English Teachers and Web 2.0: Teaching and Learning Literacy with Digital Applications”

Luke Rodesiler and Lauren Tripp, University of Florida

• Helping pre-service teachers re-imagine what it means to be literate
  • Tools including VoiceThread, PBWorks, and Xtranormal
  • Theoretical framework including social constructionism, interactional elements of effective literacy instruction and how texts are constructed
• Primary research questions:
  • What understandings of technology do prospective English teachers receal when they are describing their technology use in public school classrooms?
  • How do prospective English teachers understandings of technology change as they become familiar with Web 2.0 applications?
  • How do prospective English teachers understand the role of Web 2.0 applications in teaching?
• Data sources:
  • Surveys with open and closed ended questions to gain understandings of their technology use in the classroom
  • Classroom observations of student teachers in context
  • Artifacts of student work, including assignments and reflections
  • Focus group interviews at the end of the semester
• Data analysis
  • Quantitative analysis of survey data
  • Qualitative analysis of classroom observations, student work, and focus group interviews
• Findings
  • Student teachers were using technology in narrowly conceived ways
    • Accessing web content to search for and/or enhance lessons
    • Using Power Point to present information
    • “When I was in my internship, YouTube and Google was all I thought of using…”
  • Understanding how Web 2.0 technologies could foster collaboration and support teaching and learning where enhanced
    • Recognized collaborative tools
    • Their own facility with technology
    • Own discourse about teaching
    • Future organization and distribution of student work
  • Collaborative effort — how this experience could work as a method for professional learning
  • Made connections between the affordances of Web 2.0 applications and literacy practices valued in English language arts
    • Potential for student collaboration, revision of student writing, engaging students
• Conclusions
  • Many students were unaware, yet were nudged toward more nuanced views of technology, texts, and literacy practices
  • We saw a shift in perception from “web-for-consumption” to “web-for-production” (using wikis, for instance)
• Concerns
  • Lack of computer and internet access in schools
  • Expanding definitions of literacy
  • Personal use of technologies vs. professional use
• Further questions
  • How can we support pre-service teachers in recognizing the availability of the tools
  • How can we expand their notions of literacy outside of technology
  • How can we help them build their personal learning network

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This morning, I was fortunate enough to be invited “home” to present my session, “Creating Your Digital Writing Workshop” at Red Cedar Writing Project’s WIDE PATHS II. Beyond the wonderful feeling of being “home” with about 30 colleagues from RCWP and sharing my book with them, I continue to be inspired by the amazing work that teachers do in their classrooms and schools, despite the continued barrage of criticisms that come both directly from politicians and the media as well as indirectly from the ways that our society and government structure ”educational reforms” such as Race to the Top. For more on what these “reforms” mean for organizations such as the NWP, check out Sara’s recent post on IdeaPlay.

At any rate, there were many good parts of the day, and ideas from the conversations in the opening session were captured by Dawn on the presentation page. There were a number of issues that came forward, and the conversation was rich since, as a group, we were talking as knowledgeable peers, many already engaged in digital writing practices. Most notably, we thought about a number of issues related to the actual composition of digital texts, moving beyond the logistical questions that often come up (as important as they are) and into conversations about how and why students compose digital texts. Maggie captured one idea (and I am paraphrasing) in the idea that digital media allow us to create texts that are “long enough to accomplish goal, but also short enough to keep interest.”

Then, throughout the day, there were three strands: social networking, collaborative writing, and visual studies. Overall, I feel like the day was filled with timely, relevant, and useful information, right out of the NWP tradition of “teachers teaching teachers.” We worked together, learned some new ideas, got reminded of some ideas I had forgotten (like using Diigo), and, while I couldn’t attend everything, here are some notes from the other wonderful sessions throughout the day.

Social Networking (Andrea Zellner)

• Four components of participation in social networks
  • Digital Citizenship
  • Digital Footprint
  • Personal Learning
  • Impact on Writing
• Thoughts from the discussion, after creating our own personal network maps on paper
  • What does it mean to “know” someone? Be connected to someone?
  • How and when do we connect to someone? To a group? Knowing that we have access to the network at our fingertips, when and how can we leverage it?
  • Thinking about how they are invited to join social networks (Pixie Hallow, Webkinz, Facebook, Second Life) and the commercial/consumer interests that some of these networks have? What about the critical literacy practices that students need to have to understand how they are positioned within and across these networks?
  • Do we create networks that are “echo chambers” where we only listen to others in our own network that do not allow or invite us to think about alternative or opposing ideas?
  • Are we co-opting the purposes of social networks? What are we trying to teach them so that they can be digital citizens? But, are we replicating traditional, teacher-centered practices that would be the same in Blackboard, or are we taking advantage of the aspects of social networks?
  • Resources:
    • Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Around (Download the book as a free PDF)
    • Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody
    • Visible Tweets

Troy's Social Network Map

Collaborative Writing (Aram Kabodian, Heather Lewis, and LaToya Faulk)

• Heather introduced Etherpad as a tool for collaborative response to an article, then used VoiceThread as another tool for response, too. In using the two types of tools, we were thinking about the ways that text and voice comments can contribute to our own understanding of other texts, including an online article and responding to a video.
  • This got me to thinking more about VoiceThread and how to have students use that as a tool for conferring. I think that the idea of having students comment one another’s work while still “in process” is powerful. Not sure how to embed the comment at the exact moment of the video that it would be pertinent, however. A tool like Viddler’s commenting feature would work more effectively for that, I think.
  • Lots of time for playing with the tools. Thinking about collaborating across time and space with Skype, Google Docs, VoiceThread, Diigo, and other tools. What is also interesting to me is to think more carefully about the nature of the collaboration…
    • What are the affordances and constraints of the tools?
    • What is the task that we are asking students to complete? How does that enable collaboration, or does it simply require cooperation?
    • Are you asking students to create single-authored, multi-authored, or co-authored products? How does changing the role of the writer change the technology that you are able to use?

Visual Studies (Dawn Reed with Jen Garmon and Reggie Manville)

• Dawn – Showing a number of examples of images as a way to think about critical literacy, especially with images used in media and popular culture texts, for instance:
  • The ready.gov website and parodies of it
  • Forest Gump, and the ability to visually recreate history
  • Kent State image with fence post removed
  • Asking students to define “literacy” and how they experience misinformation and critically evaluate information and images. Thinking about “photographic truth” and the implications of how images are constructed in an age of easy photo manipulation.
• Reggie – Thinking about how to fit visual literacy into the already crammed English curriculum with digital storytelling
  • Moving from statements of belief (ala “This I Believe”) to statements of change created as a digital movie. Combining elements of argumentative writing with visuals.
  • Then moving from this digital video project into understanding how to create a traditional text for the ACT. In this example of women’s body image, this includes ways that the student could use the same arguments and refutations used in the movie project and translating them into traditional essay structures (building context, argument, counterargument, rebuttal, etc).
  • Complexity of assessing these texts with a rubric that was already in place. Looking at three examples — one on body image, one on global warming, one on the “open beverage” rule. But, are there some qualitative differences in these works? I think so, and I am wondering how we can help students see that there are some standards of quality in the production of digital texts. One option would be to have a “viewing” day in the class, and then inviting them to revise based on what they saw in other videos as well as feedback on their own.

Final Reflections on the Day

We were going to have a large group discussion to report out on the day, but ran out of time. My final thoughts are that Andrea and the entire RCWP team organized a wonderfully thoughtful day of exploration into these three strands: social networking, collaborative writing, and visual studies. As we continue to think about the future of what it means to be a writer and a teacher of writing in a digital age, the conversations that began today can continue to guide our work into the future. I look forward to this team sharing their insights at the NWPM retreat this summer!

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Notes from “Integrating New Literacies into Classroom Practice and the Resulting Impact on Site Leadership”

NWP 2009 Annual Meeting

This session invited four teacher consultants/tech liaisons to discuss their personal experiences with technology and the ways in which these
experiences led to changes in their site’s work. Knowing two of these teachers through my work with NWP’s 2007 Tech Matters Institute, and
one as my wife and tech liaison for our site, I found the stories shared here very powerful. Each one of them talked about a key
technology and professional development experience that launched them into new work, both in their classroom and at their site.

• Shasta Looper, Upstate Writing Project
  • Used Voice Thread in her summer institute in 2008, then incorporated it into her classroom through the use of a persuasive writing assignment
• Paige Cole, Red Clay Writing Project
  • Experience at Tech Matters in 2007 which led to creation of tech team, the “Army of Dorkness”
  • Advanced institutes came from Tech Matters mini-grant
  • Learned iMovie and other technologies in support of classroom and site work
• Joe Conroy, NWP at Rutgers
  • Looking at the history of the writing project’s website over time; Joe’s history as webmaster
  • Use of Yahoo groups; began there many years ago and it has worked for us
  • But, the website didn’t filter into the site’s work — then attended Tech Matters in 2007
  • How can I use Web 2.0 in the classroom without having access to Web 2.0?
    • Podcasts were still accessible, use of NPR’s This I Believe and Audacity via Portable Apps
  • Shared work at site’s mid-winter writing conference through a technology strand and “Tech Thursday” workshop series
    • Topics for future Tech Thursdays
      • Bulletin boards for Socratic Seminars
      • Podcasting
      • Ignite
      • Voice Thread
      • Wikis
      • Blogging
  • The site has integrated technology into the core of “what we do.”
• Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, Upper Peninsula Writing Project and Chippewa River Writing Project
  • 14-year veteran special education teacher, TL for UPWP
  • Story about involvement in summer institute by organizing pictures in 2005 SI
    • Growth is not linear; there are all sorts of influences that impact your growth in technology use over time (created concept
      map/timeline with VUE and shared in Skim)
  • Site development at local level and through participation in the national network
    • Summer institute to annual meeting to advanced institutes next summer
    • Also incorporated outside funding from state professional organization grants to fund tech team, many of them TCs, in one school
  • Key Themes
    • Accessibility — trying new technologies and being willing to change; the issues are difficult for all of us in our own classrooms
    • Continuity — meeting regularly and sharing ideas and questions about tech use
    • Site Development — developing technology work at your site is a messy process
      • We are in a time where there is more questions than there are answers
      • You have to have patience and flexibility when you are in the tech world and with site development

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The Social Media Portfolio: Using Technology to Promote Meta-cognitive Skill Development

At NWP’s Digital Is

Rafi Santo, Amana Kaskazi, and Shonell Richmond

• Global Kids
  • 20 Years in existence and focusing on significant global issues
  • Issues: Local to global and global to local understanding
  • Leadership: Skills necessary to affect change
  • Technology: How does new media contribute to our mission of global citizenship; our mission to empower youth voice aligned well with the use of technology
  • Youth: We work with youth in a variety of contexts, both locally and from a distance through technologies and in virtual worlds
  • Afterschool: Need to overcome the stereotypes of afterschool technology programs that create “super geeks”; our students are not geeks, necessarily, but there is something much broader about how to use technology in these contexts
• Media Masters
  • Goals for addressing the challenges to media literacy
    • Giving students the means and skills to produce media who otherwise might not be able
    • Discussing ethical issues surrounding digital media production and participation
    • Promote active student reflection on skill development
  • Creating a “digital transcript“creating a portfolio with Voice Thread
    • Examining media use (music, web, etc)
    • Visualization, negotiation, and other key themes
    • Recognize the skill, utilize the skill, and enact the skill (Do it, recognize it, talk about it)
  • Discussion
    • Specific example of Harry Potter reading to discuss copyright, appropriation, and “whole life learning”
    • What can the assessment tell us — about students’ change in media literacy skills, attitudes, and abilities?
    • How can an assessment like this work in school contexts (very qualitative, not quantitative)?
    • How can we connect this to other academic skills?
    • Student preparation for portfolios — having earned the badges, it was easier to identify the project that connected to the skill, but then we had to add a reflection to it, and that was more difficult
    • Extending the assessments into different contexts; using this portfolio with meta-cognitive elements for other purposes, such as college admissions
    • Helping make explicit for young people the ways in which we are asking them to think
    • Power of ownership and the ability to hear someone’s voice, as well as the commitment behind the voice
    • How does having a framework help make the portfolio more powerful?
    • Using writing to teach critical thinking in different content areas

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As we prepare to head to the NWP Annual Meeting and NCTE Convention in just about a week, I am also plugging away at our Chippewa River Writing Project Continued Funding Application. I have come to one of the most compelling parts of the report, at least for me… the point where we reflect on the summer institute and think about what that means for our site. So, here is where I am at right now and, in the spirit of collaboration, I look for any insights that you might be able to offer me here as I try to articulate my vision of our “digital writing project.”

Thanks in advance for your feedback and I look forward to seeing many of you in Philly next week!
—
From the CRWP CFA — Troy’s Reflections on the Summer Institute:

Our summer institute, from its inception, focused on a clear integration of literacy and technology. In seeing ourselves as a “digital writing project,” we began our work with the intent that a “web 2.0” ethos of collaboration, creativity, and commitment would infuse our work. As we reflect on our experience as leaders in this first summer institute, and review the comments of TCs, we see that these elements were present. In terms of collaboration, we relied heavily on the wiki and Google Docs as spaces to share all of our work, from our initial writer’s profile to our responses to teaching demos to our own personal writing. Teachers began the institute with the expectation that they would, indeed, become part of a collaborative and connected group, largely enabled by the technologies that we chose.

In terms of creativity, we invited participants to engage in literacy and technology not just from a functional perspective (although, getting the technology to simply function was sometimes a problem!), but from critical and rhetorical perspectives as well. Our use of digital storytelling, for instance, highlights this perspective. While inviting participants to create their own digital stories, we also analyzed the stories that others had created to get a sense of what worked, what made the digital stories more than simply a collection of images set to a narration. By constantly moving back and forth from the technical to the critical and rhetorical aspects of composition – both analog and digital – we feel that participants were better able to articulate what was creative about their work, as well as why that approach worked.

Finally, we look at the commitment or level of engagement from participants. While we are happy to report that participants in our summer institute, like participants at countless other institutes, reported that their summer experience was, to use an oft-quoted phrase, “life changing,” we were also surprised to see the level at which they believed the digital aspects of our work influenced them. For instance, one participant may sum it up best by responding to the “most important thing” question from the final SI survey conducted by Inverness: 

The most important “thing” I gained is confidence with some interactive technology to implement in my classroom. I think implementation of the Wiki will benefit my students. Their mindset is that school work isn’t “real” work, and I’d like to change their mindset. Use of the Wiki will assist, I believe.

Simply stated, we “wikified” our teachers’ beliefs about what it means to be a writer and teacher of writing. Like Wikipedia, where many contributors create a collective whole that is, indeed, much more than the sum of its parts, we feel that our summer institute, with its focus on “collaboration, creativity, and commitment” allowed participants to see writing, and digital writing, in an entirely different perspective. We hope, like all NWP sites do, that this new vision will help inform the ways that they teach writing in their classrooms, especially in the ways that they integrate technology.

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