Keynote Presentation from the Discovery Educators Network Fall 2013 Fall Virtual Conference
Thanks to the many educators who joined in the conversation this past weekend as I presented “Mixing Sources, Amplifying Voices: Crafting Writing in an Information Age.” Here is the description, and the archived version of the keynote.
As the inputs continue to multiply, how can we help students find, evaluate, and synthesize information from a variety of sources? More importantly, how can we help them craft digital writing in effective ways, utilizing the information that they have found to develop multimedia texts? Bring your favorite device, because in this interactive keynote we will explore a variety of web-based tools and mobile applications to help students mix together a variety of sources and amplify their digital voices.
So, I have gathered a few resources that trace CCSS implementation in our state, and across the nation, including the current debate.
This is not meant to be exhaustive, but instead to be a set of resources that can inform our critical, careful conversations about what we, as English teachers, can do moving forward in an era of CCSS. Interestingly enough, not much of this conversation involves actual students, a point I will return to at the end of this post.
CCSS Origin(s)
Like all origin stories, the CCSS’s is a bit murky, depending on who you ask. The “official” story, as reported on the CCSS website (emphasis is mine) is that:
The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt.
and
The nation’s governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the initiative. Teachers, parents, school administrators and experts from across the country together with state leaders provided input into the development of the standards.
and
States across the country collaborated with teachers, researchers, and leading experts to design and develop the Common Core State Standards. Each state independently made the decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards, beginning in 2010. The federal government was NOT involved in the development of the standards. Local teachers, principals, and superintendents lead the implementation of the Common Core.
A critique of this official narrative is that, because of the timing of the Race to the Top competition and the actual date the standards were finished, most states signed on to the standards without really knowing what they were or would be. I could say quite a bit, but will refer you to NCTE’s “An Open Letter to NCTE Members about the Common Core State Standards” and the edited collection by Patrick Shannon, Closer Readings of the Common Core. These pretty much debunk the myth of the CCSS as an educator- and parent-led initiative. In short, this was NOT a teacher-led initiative, and David Coleman (among others) have had a heavy hand in the highly-corporatized effort.
Race to the Top and the States’ “Choice” to Sign on to CCSS
Under criterion (B)(1)(ii), Phase 1 applicants will earn points based on the extent to which they demonstrate commitment to and progress toward adopting a common set of K-12 standards by August 2, 2010. Phase 2 applicants will earn points based on whether they have adopted a common set of K-12 standards by August 2, 2010.
Fast forward three years, with the new SBAC and PARCC assessments on the horizon for 2014-15. Besides the glaring infrastructure problems brought on by the digital divide that will still make all this testing impossible, there is a renewed (or, is it just new?) controversy about the CCSS. Why now, you ask? Well, this piece in Slate, “Common What?” by Alexander Russo, does a pretty good job of bringing us right up to the moment about the debate surrounding the CCSS. In short, the reasons for hating the CCSS are quite different. For the right, according to Russo,
“… while it’s not a federal program, it certainly has strong federal support, enough to make it a controversial program that some Republican politicians have felt the need to back away from.”
For the left, he summarizes by stating that
“[l]iberal opponents describe Common Core as a crude mandate that’s going to push arts and science even further out of schools, limit the teaching of literature and creative writing in classrooms, and end up being used to rate schools and teachers unfairly.”
And, for those of us caught in the middle, it has led to some confusion, frustration, and anger. In Michigan, it appears (for the moment) that the state will allow education funding for CCSS initiatives. We have the Michigan Coalition for High Student Standards — including partners such as varied as Dow Chemical and Steelcase to the MEA and AFT — advocating for the CCSS and, in turn, the federal money and testing that comes with them. On the other side, we have local, grassroots groups like Save Michigan’s Public Schools and the broader coalition formed by Diane Ravitch, the Network for Public Education.
As of the time of this blog post (September 30, 2013), the latest news I can get from MLive reports that:
Despite an Oct. 1 deadline that would stop funding for the Common Core State Standards in Michigan, lawmakers in the Michigan Senate are not going to rush to approve a concurrent resolution approved Thursday by the state House of Representatives.
Interestingly enough, the House stripped out an “amendment which would have required state lawmakers to also take the same exams as students” because “the cost for test materials and scoring for the entire Michigan Legislature alone would have exceeded $3,300.” Really? I bet that we could pass the hat and come up with that much money so our legislators could have the same pleasure as our students.
One of the key features of the conventional wisdom, the dominant ideology, is that we no longer recognize it as such because we hear it so often. There’s no food for thought here; everyone just knows that our students are lousy, or that raising test scores would improve our economy, or that grit is good; there’s no need to defend these propositions.
I doubt that we will solve any of these problems in our conversation later this week, but I hope that we might continue to move forward with our efforts to help teachers and students in the small ways that we still can despite the overwhelming forces that are against us.
Last fall, I joined CMU’s High Impact Teaching Academy with the specific goal of rethinking the approach to teaching my methods course, ENG 315: “Writing in the Elementary and Middle Schools.” While I am unable to present my final project in person this week, I did want to share three components of my refined approach: a course concept map created in Prezi, a “visual syllabus” to replace my old, standard design, and a few of the activities that I used in class to get students more engaged in conversation about our subject matter.
Course Concept Map
As a tool to help frame my own thinking as well as to visually represent our goals and the path for our semester in ENG 315, I created this Prezi. During the first class session, I used this to complement our talk about the syllabus and the schedule of assignments. Then, during the next three weeks of class I returned to the Prezi, briefly, to reorient students to where we were at and what we were heading toward. After that, I only took class time to look at the Prezi intentionally twice more: once immediately after spring break and again with two weeks left in the course. With each tour of the Prezi, I also tried to connect to the big ideas that we were discussing in class at the time.
Survey Results – Prezi
While I need to wait until the end of the semester to read their written comments from SOS forms, the results from an anonymous survey that I gave last week show that my students’ reactions to having and using the Prezi were quite mixed. I am not entirely sure what this means for me as I continue to think about creating course concept maps in the future, but the fact that nearly 3/4 of them appreciated having the Prezi is a positive sign.
Visual Syllabus
Both because my old syllabus had become weighted and bulky with tons of text, and because I was really trying to really rethink some major elements of the course, I opted to create a visual syllabus over the holiday break and after meeting with Eron. As I streamlined assignments, readings, and procedures — including a new “collaborative unit plan” assignment — I shaped the visual syllabus to reflect the organization of the course and the ways in which the assignments related to one another.
Again, like the Prezi, results were mixed, but not nearly as much. Possibly because a syllabus is the defining document for a course, or perhaps because they really did appreciate the design, students all rated the syllabus as favorable. There are some minor tweaks that I would go back to fix, and again I will need to see their written SOS responses to get a better idea of what they really liked and what didn’t work so well.
Creating Engaging Discussions in Class
ENG 315 students work to create a visual representation of a major idea from the course.
Over the past few years, I have worked to create interactive, inclusive discussions. For a few semesters, I worked with a colleague to create what we called the “read/share” project where students would read a professional book, then lead a lesson from that book. This didn’t seem to elicit the types of interactions I had hoped for, so I shifted focus last year and asked a different group of students to prepare a discussion activity each week based on a particular article or chapter. Again, this didn’t seem to elicit the types of active reading and engagement I was hoping for. I knew that continuing with the traditional “call and response” format would only show me that a few students had read and were prepared to discuss course ideas in a substantive manner.
ENG 315 Concept Map
Thus, this semester I took a number of the ideas from the HITA workshops and tried them out — using playing cards to randomize groups, bringing chart paper and markers for brainstorming, allowing for adequate wait time, back channeling, and having students complete reading guides or discussion questions on Blackboard. I would also take these comments that were produced before class online and bring them directly into our class activities. For instance, I had students agree or disagree with a statement from another student’s online post. Also, in private, I asked some students who had posted something unique to please speak up in class, and most were willing to do so.
Survey Results – Discussion
While I am not sure that I mastered all of the techniques, and I recognize that I “lost” some time with lengthier discussions, I am sure that the positive responses to the survey are telling me that I am moving in the right direction. Classroom discussions, even for college seniors preparing to enter their student teaching, can still feel stifled. Yet, I think that I helped encourage a variety of voices to contribute to our dialogue throughout the semester.
Conclusions
These three main changes in my approach to teaching ENG 315 were relatively easy to incorporate and have led to equal, if not better results than what I have experienced in previous semesters. Participating in HITA has reminded me of effective and engaging practices that I knew but seemed to have forgotten, as well as providing me opportunity to learn a few new strategies as well.
As a teacher educator, I am constantly thinking about how best to engage pre-service teachers in meaningful activities that will actually help them better understand both content knowledge and the practice of teaching. In the coming year, as we expand the audience for ENG 315 to include all elementary education majors, I know that the work I have done this semester will contribute to my continued growth as a teacher educator and, more importantly, to my students’ growth as new teachers.
My thanks to Eron and the entire FaCIT staff for a wonderful professional development experience, as well as my students in the Spring 2013 section of ENG 315.
This week, I travel to San Antonio for the International Reading Association’s Annual Convention. This is my first trip to IRA, and I was fortunate enough to be invited by Julie Coiro to help facilitate the pre-conference institute entitled, “Using New Technologies to Engage Readers and Encourage Student Voices.” My portion of the institute will be to lead the opening keynote “Raising Digital Writers” and then to talk about using a wiki as an online space for hosting a digital writing workshop.
Of course, this institute is about literacy in the broadest sense, but since it is specifically focused on reading and new technologies, I want to target my session to meet those needs. In that sense, what does it mean to “read like a writer and write for a reader,” especially in a digital context? How do we help students become more engaged in the process of creating digital texts that are meant to be read, heard, viewed, and experienced through computers, smart phones, and tablets? What is it that we want our students to know and be able to do in order to show depth of understanding and strive for meaning when creating digital writing?
These are questions I continue to ponder with colleagues, as well as with my own children. So, as I think through the possibilities for how to frame my keynote, here are a few “lessons learned” over the past couple of weeks:
First, I have been a part of the NCTE task force that has charged with the task of creating a summary document about the effects of computerized scoring and writing assessment. As we have been compiling our ideas, I have been sharply reminded of the fact that the “next generation assessments” promised by PARCC and SBAC could still be evaluating students on very traditional measures of writing such as sentence length, spelling, and grammar. Don’t be fooled. Even though the tests will be administered on a computer, students will not be creating robust pieces of digital writing — with links, images, or other media — meant for other human readers. Sadly, I think that this is a case of formulaic writing moving from pencil and paper onto a computer screen.
Second, I just finished up some consulting work with the Columbus Area Writing Project, and I was reminded of the power of intention in all kinds of writing, including digital writing. Just because a student is producing something with a computer or smart phone — whether it be a word processed document, a text message, or a video clip — doesn’t necessarily mean that they are using creative ideas in an intentional manner. They could just be filling in the blanks on an assignment or, worse yet, composing a message and sending it out to the network without thinking much about it at all, especially in regard to who will read the message and how it will be read.
Third, I was a guest teacher in two sections of my CMU colleague’s creative writing classes. During the first class, as I presented some ideas about and examples of creative digital writing, I inadvertently set up creative/digital as a dichotomy to overcome, not a duality to embrace. In the 15 minute break, I was able to rethink the way that I introduced my presentation for the second class, and this read to a much more robust conversation that was focused on possibilities, not limitations. Given recent attention in the news to such trends as state legislatures requiring cursive writing and explicit grammar instruction, I need to be careful to make sure that I am not setting up digital writing as a dichotomy.
Finally, my own ENG 315 students have been finishing up their multigenre research projects. More than ever before, I find that they are producing their products on websites rather than turning in binders (specifically, Weebly was the clear winner with this semester’s students). As we think about the options that students have available to them for producing digital writing, as well as how we will consume those texts as readers, I am becoming more optimistic that the new generation of teachers will be comfortable in a print and digital world; with thoughtful coaching and practice, they will understand how digital texts are composed and, therefore, better able to discuss text features and comprehension strategies with their own students. Because teachers are seeing themselves, more and more, as digital writers, I hope that they are becoming more comfortable with the process of digital reading as well.
All this said, I still need to get my slides in order for this week, so I welcome any comments or questions on these ideas as I think about how to condense them into a coherent 45 minute presentation that will begin a day of exploring reading and technology. What else is going on in the world of digital reading? How are your ideas changing as more and more students bring devices to school or have access to them in their own lives? What would a group of teachers who are attending this session need to know about raising digital writers (and readers)?
Wordle of Initial Thinking from CAWP Professional Development Workshop
This weekend, I began working with teacher leaders from the Columbus Area Writing Project on the hybrid course we are calling “Teacher Leadership in Teaching Digital Writing.”
I’ve been fortunate enough to make many trips to Columbus in the last few years, and look forward to having this opportunity to work with these NWP colleagues as they prepare for their two-week Summer Institute as well as advanced institute for teacher leadership in digital writing.
We began Friday night by looking at one of Clay Shirky’s TED Talks, and in thinking about the implications for our classrooms and professional development work, specifically as it relates to the changing environments and expectations for writing in an era of the common core standards. This initial conversation generated a number of inquiry questions and ideas including thoughts about how we can value the principles of good writing instruction over technology tools as well as how we can invite our colleagues into these broader conversations about the changing nature of literacy.
We then went on to identify a number of our concerns through the “yeah but, yes and” activity used by many theater companies, and more recently as a training exercise for MBA students. We ended Friday evening by generating a list of potential technologies to explore together over the next few weeks, including Google Communities where we had already begun a conversation.
This morning we began by looking a the chapter I’ve been writing about our experiences in the Chippewa River Writing Project end how we have positioned ourselves as an “digital writing project,” embedding a variety of technologies and new literacies into our practices. While generally complementary, we were also able to generate a thoughtful discussion about how technology can have positive — and potentially negative — influences on teacher identity, and how sharing work publicly online can affect the ways in which teachers express themselves and choose to write.
The remainder of the day was devoted largely to a deeper exploration of the technologies that participants identified Friday night as being potentially valuable for our work together over the next few months. In particular, we delved deeper into the possibilities with Google+, Twitter, and Flipboard. Here are some of our notes:
Google+
Advantages
Easy integration with all Google services
Easy to add members
Drawbacks
Conversations get lost quickly from home page/lack of threading
No way to upload documents easily
Being in real time is a challenge in certain situations
Hangout
Possibilities for conversing with more than one person
Having a much larger group work, writing groups
Someone is in their classroom, in their school and they want some feedback from other people who are in other places
Documenting and saving the comments and responses
Moving beyond Skype to use as a way to collaborate across classrooms
Get together on early-release days with cross-school teams
Giving an oral presentation and receiving feedback from the chat room
Great for keeping up with your PLN, integrating Google Reader feeds
The three books that we are going to read are:
Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. First ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
Rheingold, Howard. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. The MIT Press, 2012.
Warschauer, Mark. Learning in the Cloud: How (and Why) to Transform Schools with Digital Media. Teachers College Press, 2011.
Overall, I feel like this initial plunge into digital writing and teacher leadership was a successful one. As we concluded the day today, they generated a number of additional ideas and inquiry questions:
What leads to and then feeds thriving digital writing communities for students and for teachers (and are those the same thing)?
How do we put everything together in a coherent, usable way?
How do I act as a learner and a leader at the same time? What is the balance of teaching and learning at the same time?
Where do I find the time to learn it and then be able to teach it? Giving myself permission to be less than expert in it.
If you are working with in-service or pre-service teachers, how do you address the tension between the teaching of writing and the learning of the tools?
The potential for balancing potential use with triviality — how do we sort out and sift through what is trivial and a waste of time as compared to what will lead to meaningfulness and depth?
Over the next few weeks, we will be meeting once a week via Hangout or Twitter chat to share our experiences, discuss readings, and think about plans for their site as they create future professional development opportunities. At some point in the near future, I am hoping that we will be able to make some of our work public, and this is certainly a rich experience for me as well as I think about future models for professional development and learning and hybrid or mostly online scenarios.
As NCTE President Sandy Hayes said at the very beginning of the convention, this entire weekend would feel like Christmas: so long in the making, with the magic lasting only a moment.
Still, what a moment it was, and continues to be, as the many conversations I had this weekend still resonate with me. Natalie Merchant opening the conference, for one, still echoes.
Identifying a key theme is always a difficult task, yet if I had to zero in on just one, it would be this: mentorship. The power of mentors in small moments — and across generations of teachers — continues to amaze, it keeps me connected to the profession of teaching and thinking about how best to empower students.
There are the mentors who guide me mostly through the books and articles that they write, and with whom I was able to share a few moments to describe my appreciation: Lucy Calkins, Katie Wood Ray, and Linda Christensen were three in particular that I hadn’t met before and I was able to spend a few moment with each. Others, like Barry Lane, Jim Burke, Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Richard Kent, and Jeff Wilhelm have invited me into this profession as a fellow author, friend, and colleague.
And, now, I am beginning to have more opportunities to interact with my contemporaries, all of whom mentor me in different ways. Fellow authors and English Educators like Rob Rozema, Allen Webb, Cathy Fleischer, Bill Tucker, Elaine Hunyadi, Lindsay Ellis, Sara Kajder, Jory Brass, Jim Fredricksen, Leah Zuidema, Janet Swenson, Carl Young, Sam Caughlin, Anne Ruggles Gere, David Kirkland and Ken Lindbloom have all provided me with opportunities to collaborate and learn from them. Kristen Turner and I were honored with a grant from CEE, and we continue our collaborations around digital writing and teacher education. Friends and colleagues who defy categorization because they touch so many parts of my professional life were all here, too: Jennifer Collison (and Jim,too!), Paul Oh, Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, April Niemela, Bud Hunt, and Kevin Cordi.
Yet, most importantly, I appreciate the opportunities that I have had to mentor others, especially through my work with the National Writing Project. Seven teachers from my site were on the program at the NCTE annual convention: Erin Busch-Grabmeyer, Jeremy Hyler, Beth Nelson, Penny Lew, Andy Schoenborn, Kathy Kurtze, and Amanda Smoker. More colleagues than I can count from broader NWP circles were on the program, too, and one of them, Dawn Reed, has now been invited to be a Co-Director of the Red Cedar Writing Project, a role I once proudly held and shared with colleagues like Mitch Nobis, Renee Webster, and Toby Kahn-Loftus. I met people who I first knew through twitter — like Meenoo Rami, Cindy Minnich, and Chad Sansing — and others who I will now know better through twitter. Also, I was fortunate enough to meet with a number of doctoral students, especially from Fordham and Liz Homan from U of M.
I have now been to a decade of consecutive NCTE conventions, as well a trip to Detroit for the 1996 convention. Over those ten years, I have been able to go from being a face in the crowd to, I hope, a face who welcomes others to the crowd. All of my sessions were fun, but in particular I enjoy the hour at the “tech to go” kiosk and my CEE round table discussion, interacting with just a small handful of colleagues over the course of an hour. These small moments where we have time to dig deep into a number of ideas that will, I hope, help us all improve teaching, learning, and assessment.
As I do each year, I head back to campus to work with pre-service teachers, fresh with ideas, knowing that all of these mentors and mentees, colleagues and friends will come with me. I try to describe the power of these professional networks to my students, but even in writing this post I know how futile a task this really is. Handshakes, hugs, and smiles are the best way to see what I mean, and these are way to hard to capture writing, or even in pictures, as these are fleeting moments.
The real mentoring happens during the other 360 days of the year, when we exchange emails and tweets, create new projects, write about the ones we are doing, and prepare to enter our classrooms again. And, I am sure that I have inadvertently left off many other names of colleagues with whom I met this weekend — as well as those who I didn’t even get to catch up with, like Kevin Hodgson and Antero Garcia — and for that I apologize.
I wish you all well as you step back into your classrooms and enjoy Thanksgiving with your families. I continue to be thankful for the mentoring you have provided me, and the mentoring you allow me to provide you.
As a way of gathering my wits and preparing to head to Las Vegas in a few weeks, I am listing the sessions that I am presenting in during these two gatherings. I do this not to brag (because really I need to learn how to say “no” just a bit more often), but more as a way to think through what I need to do for each session and to offer a quick sense of what will be happening in each (if you are interested in catching any one of them). So, without further adieu, here is my schedule.
Thursday, November 15th at NWP Annual Meeting
NWP 2012 Annual Meeting
A6: Digital Writing and the Common Core
Time: – 1:15pm – 3:00pm
Location: MGM Conference Center, 3rd Floor, 307
Digital writing is a prominent feature of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. How are sites leveraging this reality to provide professional development opportunities for their service area? Join Troy Hicks of the Chippewa River Writing Project and Michelle Rogge-Gannon of the Dakota Writing Project as they share experiences of local institutes that focused on responding to the Common Core’s call for digital writing.
Presenter(s):
Michelle Rogge Gannon, Dakota Writing Project
Troy Hicks, Chippewa River Writing Project
Friday, November 16th at NCTE Convention
C.34 – WRITING, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE COMMON CORE
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
Location: Grand Ballroom Room 119, Level One, MGM Grand
Description: National Writing Project Teacher Consultants demonstrate ways to invigorate the learner and teacher alike through innovative writing instruction by exploring different genres and technologies while using the Common Core State Standards as the foundation.
Participant(s):
Chair: Troy Hicks Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant –
Description: English teachers encounter commercial textbooks, curriculum packages, testing programs, and technologies that often limit their decision-making and student participation. Presenters will describe the benefits and constraints of for-profit educational materials, identifying ways to save money, address the learning needs of students, foster greater classroom freedom, and still reach high standards for learning.
Participant(s):
Speaker: Jory Brass Arizona State University, Tempe –
Speaker: Robert Rozema Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan –
Speaker: Allen Webb Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo – From Pearson to PlatoR, From K12 Inc. to Accelerated Reader TM: Profiting Students, Not Corporations
Respondent: Troy Hicks Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant –
I.02 – DREAMING, CONNECTING, AND IGNITING INTEREST: TRANSFORMING THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH THROUGH NEW LITERACIES, TECHNOLOGIES, AND PEDAGOGIES
Time: 1:15 PM – 2:30 PM
Location: Grand Ballroom Room 117, Level One, MGM Grand
Description: Commission members of the CEE Commission on New Literacies, Technologies, and Teacher Education will hold interactive roundtable presentations addressing how digital technologies can help foster and enhance connections and community in the teaching of English and English Teacher Education.
Participant(s):
Roundtable Leader: Troy Hicks Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant – The Digital Writing Workshop as a Component of Methods Courses
Tech-To-Go Kiosk: Capturing Student Work, Creating Digital Portfolios
As mobile devices become more and more a part of our teaching and learning, there are powerful tools that we can use to capture students’ work and reflections through image, audio, and video. Using mobile apps such as Evernote, VoiceThread, and Three Ring, we will explore ways to create digital portfolios that students can share with you, their families, and the world.
JK.01 – MIDDLE LEVEL MOSAIC WORKSHOP
It’s high energy-Vegas style-Come join in the fun as middle level teachers meet to dream-to connect-to ignite at this year’s mosaic! We have lively entertainment, dynamic speakers, spirited roundtable discussions, techno gadgets and fun demonstrations-and some special surprises from Vegas history in store for all!
Time: 2:45 PM – 5:30 PM
Location: Studio Ballroom B, at Entrance of Grand Garden Arena, MGM Grand
Participant(s):
Chair: Heidi Huckabee New Mexico Military Institute, Roswell –
Associate Chair: Michael J. Vokoun Corbett Preparatory School of ISD, Tampa, Florida –
Keynote Speaker: Troy Hicks Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant –
Keynote Speaker: Bud Hunt St. Vrain Valley School District, Longmont, Colorado –
Keynote Speaker: Sara Kajder Shadyside Academy Middle School, Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania –
Keynote Speaker: Barry Lane Discover Writing Press, Shoreham, Vermont –
Keynote Speaker: David Lubar author, Tor/Forge/Starscape/Tor Teen, New York, New York – The Drama of Engaged Reading
Keynote Speaker: Jeff Wilhelm Boise State University, Idaho – The Drama of Engaged Reading
Sunday, November 18th at NCTE Convention
L.04 – REPORTS FROM CYBERSPACE
Time: 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM
Location: Grand Ballroom Room 115, Level One, MGM Grand
Description: Here are three of our profession’s ‘cyberspace superheroes’ who are doing things in the classroom that haven’t even been invented yet! Find out what is possible and promising when the newest technologies-including wikis, podcasts, digital stories, and social networks-are used to develop the newest literacies.
Participant(s):
Chair: Jeffrey N. Golub consultant, Seattle, Washington –
Speaker: Troy Hicks Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant –
Speaker: Bud Hunt St. Vrain Valley School District, Longmont, Colorado –
Speaker: Sara Kajder Shadyside Academy Middle School, Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania –
As it always does, summer continues to slip by in a blurry mix of vacation days, professional development days, and some that are a little of both. Last week, we hosted our 2012 CRWP Open Institute, and the week before I partnered with another CMU professor, Tim Hall, to lead a three-day session connected with the Teaching American History Grant Year 4: America in Revolution and Conflict. Before the workshop becomes, well, history in my own memory, I wanted to recreate some of the planning that led up to the event, as well as my thinking over the three days as we co-facilitated the workshop.
As it always does, summer continues to slip by in a blurry mix of vacation days, professional development days, and some that are a little of both. Last week, we hosted our 2012 CRWP Open Institute, and the week before I partnered with another CMU professor, Tim Hall, to lead a three-day session connected with the Teaching American History Grant Year 4: America in Revolution and Conflict. Before the workshop becomes, well, history in my own memory, I wanted to recreate some of the planning that led up to the event, as well as my thinking over the three days as we co-facilitated the workshop.
Workshop Planning
When Tim and his ISD partner, Beckie Bush, contacted me about the possibility of co-facilitating the workshop, I was immediately interested given my obvious work with teaching writing in the broadest sense, as well as teaching writing in the disciplines. Together, we agreed that we would use two professional texts for the workshop, aimed at inspiring both historical thinking and a better understanding of argument writing.
Beckie and Tim asked me to bring a focus on argument writing, with the clear goal of integrating credible, web-based sources and, to the extent possible, digital writing with multimedia tools beyond slideware. When we first met, we immediately began constructing a working agenda via a wiki, and I knew that Zotero would be a key component of our teaching and learning. While somewhat fearful that the topic would be one that teachers would find mundane, Tim helped guide us through thinking about Truman’s decision to drop the bomb as a time-period appropriate dilemma that we could use to teach historical empathy and argumentative writing.
Thus, we decided on two main tasks for the teachers to complete over the three days by engaging in a digital writing workshop that would involve lots of research, collaboration, and development of both a written individual essay and a group multimedia presentation from one of three perspectives: Truman’s advisors who supported the bomb, those in his cabinet who were against it, and the scientific community. As Tim led the group through many exercises on historical thinking, DBQ (document-based questioning), and historical empathy, I took the lead on teaching the argument writing.
Day 1
During this day, my primary role was to begin a discussion about the similarities and differences between persuasion and argumentation. With resources from Smekens Education Solutions, and our crowdsourced Google Docs, we began thinking about the subtle differences that teachers will have to make as we move away from teaching “persuasion,” (with its strong reliance on rhetorical appeals and one-sided arguments) and “argument,” (which requires the writer to acknowledge both sides and use reason to support a claim).
Argumentation
Persuasion
Opinion
Facts and Statistics (Both Sides)
Support
Position
Stance
Evidence
Interpret
Refute
Debate
Validity
Agreement/Disagreement
Persuade
Conflict
Details
Validate
Information
Balanced
Attitude
Acknowledgement
Grapple
Issue
Problem
Logic
Reasoning
#@!%*&? (Cursing or strong language to get a point across)
Also, on this first day, we talked about how the essay (written from your personal perspective in 2012) would differ from the group multimedia project, meant to be delivered as a factual report to a (fictitious) Congressional inquiry in 1950, built only from evidence available at that time, most of which came from the Truman Library. This was quite interesting, as it forced us to take two different approaches:
Argumentative essay (reliant on logical reasoning and multiple forms of evidence from WWII-present)
Persuasive presentation (reliant on logic, but also emotional appeals of the era; most evidence was textual, with some images and film footage)
Media
Composed in Word or Google Docs, with use of Zotero
Composed with a multimedia tool such as Prezi or Capzles
Audience
Peers, teachers, general public (op-ed)
Peers and teachers, set in roles at a fictitious Congressional Hearing in 1950
Purpose
To create a coherent, sequenced argument for or against the dropping of the bomb based on its short and long-term consequences
To create a well-reasoned, yet impassioned case for one of three positions about dropping the bomb
Situation
Situated in the present, and with historical knowledge from dropping of the bomb, through Cold War, up to present
Situated in the past, without knowledge of historical effects beyond 1950.Using the media of today to make a presentation for that era.
Day 2
My notes here on day two are brief because, for the most part, it was a work day. Lots of trouble-shooting with Zotero as people got their accounts synced up with the web plugin and standalone, connected to our group library, and worked on their multimedia presentations. There were many, many quick conversations with teachers about the affordances and constraints of the technologies — as well as many frustrations — but by the end of the day most of them felt pretty good about the work we were doing. Also, I worked with them to do a “think aloud” of my first draft of my attempt at the individual essay (look at revision history for Jun 20, 1:42 PM). This brought up interesting conversations about the trap of writing though a lens of “presentism,” the use of “I” in writing for history class, and how to best use the They Say/I Say templates and transition words as a way to get started (note the highlights).
Day 3
Moving into the morning of day three, we talked about ways to effectively integrate peer response groups and did a “fishbowl” model with my essay. Again, this yielded some interesting results as this group of history teachers worked with me to think about what was valuable in terms of both historical thinking and the quality of writing.
We looked at an online rubric generator as a way to keep our conversation focused on assessment, and also discussed the “checklist” type of criteria (Five transitional words/phrases; Three “template” transitions from They Say/I Say) as compared to the parts of the essay that could be judged in a more evaluative sense:
State a clear claim and back it with appropriate evidence, from the WWII era through today
Develop three main talking points (diplomatic, social, military, political, economic), with two or three sub-points (specific example)
Identify and rebut at least two significant counter-arguments
In all of this, we talked about what counts as “evidence,” and many elements were listed including political cartoons, as this screen shot from my “final” essay shows. Also, we discussed the fact that we have to be open to sharing our rough draft thinking with students, even though (by nature) most teachers are perfectionists. One participant noted that if I, as an English professor, was willing to share my writing in this way and not just try to impress the crowd with an amazing essay on the first attempt, then they as middle and high school history teachers should be willing to do the same. I heartily agree.
Then, we moved into the last part of the workshop where groups presented their cases to the “Congressional Hearing.” We tried to complete a speaking and listening guide, as well as some work with Bernajean Porter’s Digitales Multimedia Evaluation Guides, but I have to say that we mostly just enjoyed the presentations. There were, of course, some creative dramatics involved, and here are a few of their results.
Much of what I have to say about this entire workshop can be summarized in the simple, yet powerful mantra from NWP in that teachers must be writers. When I asked them at the end how they felt about the process, they wouldn’t want to do the group work and the individual essay at the same time. Many felt overloaded, both with tasks and technology. So, there is some tweaking to do. But, some of their final thoughts we captured in conversation were useful:
What else would you, as social studies teachers, be looking for in the writing?
Background information about the topic: era, people, place (set the stage)
Historical thinking gurus: one of the advantages of this approach as a process of thinking is that it gives students a chance to apply what they have learned and then they are able to do something with it
Defining key terms/vocabulary
Key/relevant statistics/data
Citations: analyzing primary and secondary sources
Gathering data from their classmates/community
Cause and effect, sequential, compare and contrast
And, with that, I will put this particular PD experience in my own history, at least for now, until I have another opportunity to do a workshop on argumentative writing, when all of this will come in quite handy.
Unlike many conference experiences where I am “on” for most of the time, presenting or meeting, I was able to take a slightly slower pace at AERA 2012 this weekend in Vancouver. Although the long travel days and time zone differences were a little tough to contend with, the few focused hours that I spent at the conference itself were very valuable for me in thinking about my teaching, research, and service. With the upcoming NWP SEED grant coming due, there are many things I can take from this weekend to think about while writing.
A quick list of some highlights:
A panel of Kris Guitterez’s graduate students talk about the teaching of writing and service learning
Roy Pea and other distinguished educational technologists from around the world discuss current and future trends in ed tech
Both listening to and engaging with (through Today’s Meet) a panel of young scholars who are studying participatory democracy and social media
Numerous connections, conversations, and opportunities to think through some of my current ideas related to our next NWP grant, including a smart round-table conversation with the Writing and Literacies SIG
Presenting with my colleagues on adolescent literacy in the content areas, with my focus on English language arts
A little more detail on each of these sessions/ideas over the next few days as I reflect on them and offer some further analysis. For the moment, here is my own presentation on “Learning with Text in the English Language Arts.”
As a part of a panel discussion about engaging adolescent learners in both content area literacy learning as well as general reading and comprehension strategies, I began by describing a unit of study crLeated around Of Mice and Men. To read more, take a peek at this preview of our chapter in Google Books. This, of course, led me to present a critique of such models of language arts instruction as being to text-focused, and lacking a multidimensional approach that could lead to both greater comprehension of the text itself as well as a better understanding for students of who they are as readers, writers, and literate individuals in the world. While they are not much, here are some slides that share the gist of my talk:
For those who know me and my work — a few of whom attended the session, and I appreciate taking the time to do so! — I probably had a surprising dearth of technology-talk as part of my conversation. In writing the chapter, Sue and I wanted to steer clear of critiques where readers would say, “Well, that would be great if I had access to more technology…” Instead, we talked about best practices in the teaching of English language arts, bringing in some technology as it seemed appropriate, but not at the forefront. My goal, for the chapter and the presentation, was as Michelle Hagerman said, “pedagogically purposeful,” and I wanted people to walk away with an understanding of what could/should be different in this type of effective conversation.
That said, I had some thoughts rolling around in the back of my head from reading I had done on the way to Vancouver. Last week, I was finally able to get a copy of a book that has been much-talked about by many colleagues in the past few months: Mike Schmoker’s Focus. In this book, he argues for a simplified approach to language arts (eschewing, in many ways, the affordances of technology and other “fads” related to literacy teaching. In his own words, here is what Schmoker has to say, from page 26 of his book:
Screen Shot from Mike Schmoker's Focus
I’m trying to figure out exactly why I am completely in agreement with Schmoker on the surface, and yet deeply disagree upon giving his ideas further thought. Certainly, we do not want students to make skits or claymation without an adequate exploration of story telling, character development, and the like. Is he implying that we need to do more with argumentative and informational writing, to use the CCSS parlance? Perhaps it is his parenthetical identification of some teachers and scholars — (as some do) — as an offhand remark without further explanation that bugs me the most. I’ll need to think through this some more.
More reflections from AERA over the next few days…
As a part of my day at the “Write to Learn: New World, New Literacies” conference yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to lead a keynote, do a breakout session on using mobile devices for digital composition (see this Google Doc for many links), and then do a three-hour writing workshop with fellow teacher/author Penny Kittle. While the morning sessions went well, and were quite enjoyable, I wanted to reflect specifically on the afternoon session that Penny and I led together.
Originally, we had each been slotted to lead our own three-hour workshop, but with only six participants, we decided to combine efforts and lead teachers through the process of creating digital writing, in a workshop format. You can see our agenda (in the form of a Google Doc), and it was an engaging, organic afternoon of learning. We taught in a workshop approach, “to, with, and by.” We began by talking about the idea of creating digital writing, sharing a great example of a PSA from one of Penny’s students. We then read and annotated an example of a This I Believe essay. Penny read aloud, and I captured many thoughts about what could be used in the essay to turn into a digital video.
Annotated TIB Essay with Diigo
Images of the oboe, orchestra
“I was mediocore…”
Sound effects, classical music
Mediocore people never change the world: contrasting images with MLK, Ghandi, etc
Baby pictures of the author?
Find/download Mendelssohn’s Concerto
Find picture of young musician
“What kind of thoughts…” — text on screen?
Split screen of author/musicianLife with passion… what image do I want? Dawn?
Tinkerbell image as contrast — Disney pics?
Split screen? Fade through at end? Image of a baby?
That led to me then doing a “think aloud,” modeling how I would find images, music, and the like to include in a very much-shortened, rough draft of this essay as a digital video. Nothing fancy here, except that you can see how we talked, as a group, about the possibilities for the movie: using the scrapbook theme, having the text of her mother’s quote appear on screen, using the music in the background, ending with the image of a baby. It isn’t much, but it was interesting to see what we could all come up with in just about ten minutes of websearching and using iMovie. It is only a draft, not “done,” just “due,” so here is my attempt: Sample This I Believe Digital Video
The six participants in the workshop then worked on writing and finding media for their stories. I was able to watch Penny compose on-screen (she was using my laptop connected to the LCD), and it was really incredible to watch her voice pour out in the Google Doc. Really, go read her story about Donald Graves and Donald Murray.
The process reminded me of a few things: how the teachers appreciated the time to write, permission to play, and the guided practice, especially with technology. A few said that they felt confident enough to go into their classrooms and try digital writing. Soon. Others were less confident, yet happy that they had the opportunity to try digital writing in a safe space.
My thanks to Penny and all these teachers for the opportunity to work with you yesterday. I will remember this process that we went through together as I introduce digital storytelling to my pre-service teachers this spring.
