Suspense: Hitchcock for Readers, Writers, Creators

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At about time-mark 11:23,  this short interview with Alfred Hitchcock, "A Talk with Alfred Hitchcock," gives you clues to the director's greatest suspense scenes.  He discusses three techniques:

• montage - juxtaposition of images of various "sizes"  - little shots grouped impressionistically to create a cumulative effect (e.g. focus on body parts, focus on objects in a room, focus on one specific action) - illustrated with Psycho shower scene, but I also think of the gathering crows in The Birds (safer to show to students)
• orchestration - audience has partial knowledge of what to expect but does not know when or where it will happen - partial elements of the narrative are arranged sequentially to create shock - this is shifting point of view that film can make literal (illustrated with Psycho stairway murder, which uses multiple shot perspectives and angles)
• pure cinematics - the assembly of film elements (specifically shots) and how they can be changed to create a different idea in manipulation of the viewer's response (illustrated by two sequences featuring Hitchcock himself)

What is the Literacy/ELA Parallel?  As we strive to give students a language for creative analysis,  we can peak their curiosity by applying the vocabulary and skills of the masters.  So here is a quick think about Hitchcock's terms above as applied to YA suspense lit:

Montage - In good suspense, language and images create an impressionistic scene as well.  This is often in a flight scene, a scene of approaching evil, or a climactic moment.  Some specific techniques to look for are repetition (incremental), strings of repeated descriptors (overwriting, often), phrases where sentences often do, polysyndenton (images and phrases strung together with a repeated conjunction), asyndenton (images and phrases strung together without conjunctions),  and terse dialogue without benefit of dialogue tags.  The overall effect is to heighten threat and chill.  Here is an example of montage used by Poe in "The Black Cat":

No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! -- by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman -- a howl -- a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.

Orchestration - In part, this is the equivalent of foreshadowing in fiction.  The slow build of the expectation of an event is the result of knowledge introduced gradually, previous to an event.  The reader has a fully developed certainty - a sense of what I like to call vague dread - the is climaxed by the event itself.  Poe uses this technique brilliantly, staging his scenes with a terrific sense of pace and literary eye.  Here are three parts of this orchestration from "Three Skeleton Key":

No, these were ships’ rats, huge, wise creatures, born on the sea, sailing all over the world on ships, transferring to other, larger ships as they multiply. There is as much difference between the rats of the land and these maritime rats as between a fishing smack and an armored cruiser.

The rats of the sea were fierce, bold animals. Large, strong and intelligent, clannish and sea-wise, able to put the best of mariners of shame with their knowledge of the sea, their uncanny ability to foretell the weather.

And they are brave, the rats, and vengeful. If you so much as harm one, his sharp cry will bring hordes of his fellows to swarm over you, tear you, and not cease until your flesh has been stripped from your bones.

The ones on this ship, the rats of Holland, are the worst, superior to other rats of the sea as their brethren are to the land rats. ....  [and later]

Over her bridge, on her deck, in the rigging, on every visible spot, the ship was a writhing mass – a starving army coming toward us on a vessel gone mad!

Our island was a small spot in that immense stretch of sea. The ship could have grazed us, passed to port or starboard with its ravening cargo – but no, she came for us at full speed, as if she were leading the regatta at a race, and impaled herself on a sharp point of rock.

 ....  [and later]

Thousands of heads rose, felt the wind and we were scented, seen! To them, we were fresh meat, after possible weeks of starving. There came a scream, composed of innumerable screams, sharper than the howl of a saw attacking a bar of iron, and in the one motion, every rat leaped to attack the tower!

For the reader, the ending seems inevitable - it is just a matter of time.  On the other hand, the narrator seems to have survived to tell the story; so dreadful as his tale is, there is an escape.  The urgency of the prose, the frenetic sentencing, are the contributions of the writer's montage.  The gradual introduction of knowledge is his orchestration.  The setting is his cimematics.

Cinematics - In a novel or story, the author uses point of view, narration (word choice, sentence pace and length), and dialogue to create the equivalent of a cinematic effect.  By zooming in and zooming out, by panning, by alternating pace and voices, the author can control the build of suspense.  Here is a short example from "Three Skeleton Key":

There was nothing we could do but watch. A ship sailing with all sail spread, creaming the sea with her forefoot as she runs before the wind, is one of the most beautiful sights in the world – but this time I could feel the tears stinging in my eyes as I saw this fine ship headed for her doom.

All this time our glasses were riveted on her and we suddenly cried out together:

“The rats!”

Would the last sentence be as powerful if it were: "The fuzzy caterpillars!"  I think that difference encapsulates much of the concept of cinematics.  Authors make multiple decisions simply to generate effect. Choice of setting (all aspects), character types, borrowed plot lines...  These all come into play when the purpose is to directly affect the reader's response. 

Literary analysis can be fun when this is the lens.

Beginnings:  It is always valuable to cement literary concepts by having students (any age) employ them in analysis of very simple works, and great picture books are best for this. These books send chills down the spine of even adult readers.  Ask: How are montage, orchestration, and cinematics important in this simple book?  How is the monster defeated? Making short screencast analyses on iPhones or iPads is a great activity for this. Students may notice repetition as important to building suspense. This is a form of verbal montage and cinematics. Some suggestions: 

• Another Monster at the End of This Book - Stone (also and iPad app)
• The Barenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree - (Barenstains) 
• Chalk - Thomson
• The Monster at the End of This Book - Stone (also and iPad app)
• There's a Monster Under My Bed - Howe
• There's a Nightmare in My Closet - Mayer
• Woolves in the Walls - Gaiman
• Woolvs in the Sitee - Wild and Spudvilas
• read-aloud:  Grimm's and Anderson "Blackbeard," "Three Little Pigs," and "Three Billy Goats" and "Red Riding Hood"

Film:  One of the few times I recommend viewing before reading is to cement the concepts in this genre:

• If students are not getting the analysis concepts, I strongly recommend, strange as it seems, Bambi, Land Before Time, Sleeping Beauty (beginning), Walking With Dinosaurs (BBC Video), and the other nature series that make kids cringe
• Open Culture links to 22 Free Hitchcock Films to find online
• It's hard to top classics like Jaws, It, Snakes on a Plane (R), the Bourne movies, Witness, 2001, Aliens - most teachers and students will have titles to share.  Several scenes illustrating the concepts above should be shown.

Novels & Stories:  Most of these are not appropriate below grade 8, so teachers need to read them first. Remember to also ask your students for suggestions.  Many of today's big tween and YA genres are suspenseful in nature, but many of them do not do it very well.  Most zombie and alien novels are suspenseful as well.  This is a great chance for students to use analysis and evaluation skills, so pick the best.  Your students do NOT have read the entire book - remember, you are reading for author's techniques with proof from the text (quotes).   Ask: What techniques have change as characters, plots, narratives get more complex in novels and stories?  What is added by these changes?  What techniques are most effective?  Why?  What other elements (characters, setting, plot, etc) are necessary to create memorable suspense?

• Fakie - Tony Varrato
• Found (1st in new series) - Margaret Peterson Haddix
• Jasper Jones - Criag Silvey
• The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
• Miss Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
• The Shattering - Karen Healey
• Skeleton Man - Bruchac - a very good suspense novel for 5-7 grades
• Tantalize series - Cynthia Leitich Smith
• The Vanishing Game - Kate Kae Meyers 
• Stephen King: just about any one of his horror genre
• "The Most Dangerous Game" - Connell - read online or download audio
• "The Black Cat" or "The Tell-Tale Heart" - Poe - widely available online in text and audio
• "Three Skeleton Key" - Toudouze - download .pdf or read online - also free in radio drama version (quite good)
• "The Landlady" - Dahl (good audio version also available from Audible.com) - in The Best of Roald Dahl 
• "Night Drive" - Jenkins (aka Murray Leinster) - also available here in audio (the story actually begins about 1/3 of the way into the .mp3 file)
• "The Lottery" - Jackson - read it online

Follow-up:

• A later segment in the Hitchcock interview talks about what music adds to a suspenseful scene (again Psycho).  I have never played music while students read a suspenseful story, but it would be an interesting exercise to have them, after reading through a suspenseful piece, read it themselves with music they selected or (better yet) composed in the background.
• Students love to use available technologies to create their own suspense shorts.  I think it is important to set a gruesomeness limit so that the focus is on the techniques, not the blood.
• Ask:  What is the next step in building 21st Century suspense?  Visuals, music, and text have been widely explored. What other technologies or mixes will be used in the future? 

Identifying the Successful Online Student

A year ago, I completed (for a graduate program) an intensive review of the literature related to the characteristics of the successful online student, 3-12.  As a result of my research, I created questionnaire instruments that can be used to identify those students who should be successful in an online course and those who will probably not be successful, grades 3-8 and 9-12. 

I withdrew from the certification program (Arizona State University), so my instrument has never been tested.  I offer it to any school or district wanting to pilot it, with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.



In short, I found that a student is likely to be successful online in either an independent or a blended setting if (in order of importance):

• the student has a strong locus of control: internal v. external - in layman's terms, it means that the student is self-motivated and can speak up, but also that he/she will show up at the course and meet requirements (less important in a tightly blended environment) with little or no adult prompting
• the student has strong and independent time-management skills - somewhat less important in the blended or home-school environment, but still the most important skill identified by online students themselves
• [this is often overlooked] the student perceives that he/she has the support of parent and/or teacher in academic and other life challenges - I believe that this the most important predictor, but that is not fully supported by the data
• the student perceives that online interaction with a teacher is important - this is a biggie - online students have to be able interact with online teachers (OK, not true in poorly constructed courses and programs)
• the student perceives that online interaction with other students is important - but this does not mean that he/she has ever done it.  In fact, true collaboration is not that common in online classes
• the student already uses the Internet at least once a day for school-related work - what this is getting at is some facility with using applications - most online courses are tightly self-contained, but a basic icon-literacy is still necessary
• the student perceives that the online class/learning experience is valuable - this perception is itself a motivator
• the student perceives that he/she has the ability to meet the online class time commitment - notice that is NOT the same as goal-setting - the best courses set the goals for the student and allow for progress through failure (similar often to gaming), and for the most part goal-setting is more important for success in the traditional classroom than in the online classroom
• the student perceives that he/she has the ability to think analytically and solve problems strategically
• the student has a strong sense of self-efficacy with regard to using technology for collaboration and communication - it means that he/she is confident with regard to the "tech side" of online learning (this does NOT mean that he/she has experience, although in today's world smartphones probably contribute significantly to this efficacy after age 10)
• the student is aware of his/her learning style (tactile/kinesthetic, visual, auditory/verbal) - the learning style itself does not matter, but a student who knows how he/she best learns makes the best use of online education tools and options 
• the student's performance on standardized testing (NECAP, NWEA, PSAT, etc.) and GPA (high school only) - there is a correlation between testing performance and success in an online program (not a surprise), but low scores are generally mitigated by positive correlations in the other factors

There are also small correlations between the economic status of the family and with having a computer available at home to online success, but these were not fully supported by data at the time of my research. 

Because the instrument was never tested, benchmarks were not set by me.  So - community help is needed.

What's missing:

When I began the research, I had anticipated that the factors would reflect the same set of skills identified by Heather Wolpert-Gawron and tightly overlap, as she points out, with the list of 21st Century Skills (Collaboration, Independent Learning, Communication, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Understanding Bias, Leadership, Questioning, Persuasion, Goal Setting, Sharing the Air, Compromise, Summarizing).  This is, after all, the premise of the rise of online as a viable, even preferred, 21st Century classroom.

But in fact, mastery or even past performance of these skills does not seem to be nearly as important as perceived ability and support in learning. Moreover, the following are not indicators of success:

• writing skills - the best 3-12 programs will guide students in developing these skills - again, the can-do attitude is important, however; so
• goal-setting (see note above)
• collaboration skills - again, programs worth paying for develop these skills - students only need to perceive that the skills are valuable in order to be successful

In sum: 

Online success is not as simple as being a digital native.  Is not a given for any student cohort.  It is clearly very much predicated on believing that one can be a success in a digital classroom.  In sum, it is a choice made available by technology - a great choice for many students, but a poor choice for other students.  At this point in time, that is how it should be perceived.

The great advantage to online learning is that it provides a classroom that crosses or ignores the geographical and economic boundaries that so often bar potentially successful students from classroom success. 

One way to use this questionnaire is to give it "blind" to all students in a grade or program:

• It would be interesting to compare teacher/guidance preconceptions about student success with actual student scores. 
• It would be interesting to see what questions point to areas of the educational program that might be made more "online ready."  If, for example, a significant percentage of students do perceive time-management or problem-solving as strengths, the school has some work to do.

If you want my questionnaire, under the Creative Commons License terms (which means giving me credit if you use it or adapt it), contact me by e-mail.  I do expect those schools that pilot it to report their results - to me and to the global community.

The Role of Experienced ELA Teachers

The more things change the more they change. 
We need to stop pretending otherwise.  One thing that is changing slowly and steadily is the preparation and background of ELA teachers, at least in the public sector.  Certification requirements and the curricula of education programs focus on teaching, as they should, but education courses are not the same as subject rigor.  I know - I have taken 33 graduate education credits, post MLS and BA (literature) degrees.  Although one course had me reading YA novels, I read them only to experience them, not to study them.  The same was true of writing across the curriculum, of grammar and language, of edtech classes.  The focus was always on how to use the pedagogical content in the classroom, not on learning new subject content.  For that, I have been on my own for 40 years.  Thank goodness I learn best, and choose to learn best, on my own.  But I am afraid that I am a vanishing breed.  Alas, the current generation of new teachers seems to know a bit about what-to-do but not a lot about what-to-include or how-to-include-it.  Moreover, they do not seem to be especially inclined to teach themselves what they don't know. 

Wait - that doesn't make sense.  Here we are restructuring education so that the students of today can do what they do best (and supposedly want to do) - structure their own learning.  But it seems to me that we have a lost half-generation of teachers standing in the way of their success.

If you rely upon being given bread, you will not learn how to bake it, or even where to purchase it.  

Yesterday I read a plea from an in-service teacher who had to teach the research essay, but who had never written a research essay herself.  An extreme case, but OMG!  On a daily basis I read requests from novice teachers for lesson plans, activities, vocabulary lists, reading lists, grammar activities...  These are not extreme cases, they are normal. The requests range from HELP! to Hey, anyone have... I suspect that education professors send their students to EC Ning and other teacher-focused social sites just to do these searches, for there is a rash of new members with every new term. I suspect that many in-service teachers and certification candidates are seeking help with course assignments.  Many other posts are, however, from young teachers feeling pressure in the classroom. 

I understand that ELA teachers may not be prepared to teach the material they have been hired to teach.  Often, the curriculum has been designed by educators with significantly more content knowledge and with a much wider and deeper reading experience (albeit it may have been learned by teaching from a good anthology for 15 years).  I understand also that the social media generation is now beginning to teach.  Turning to ones Circle, Group, or Friends for help is second nature.  In my online graduate classes, this was required. It was wrongly labeled "collaboration."  The fact of the matter is that, unless the professor deeply followed discussions, for at least one member of each group the experience amounted to cheating.  It bothered me then, it bothers me now.  What we do repeatedly becomes habit. 

The requests for HELP from novice and in-service ELA teachers that bother me reflect a mindset consistent with searching for restaurant and purchase recommendations.  They begin with "I need" and they are consistent with easy. And too often it is easy - experienced teachers make it so.

The old role: The Experienced Teacher as Giver and Sage

I can tell the difference between the experienced, knowledgeable ELA teacher and the novice. The former writes posts offer up details of his or her own unit, and asks the community for comment, extension, or simple conversation.  The latter simply asks for materials on a plate. Not for advice, mind you, but for a complete unit or activity.

It is ironic, isn't it, that the less tech saavy are using the social media platform to collaborate, whereas the tech natives are using the platform to avoid using the platform.  Note to experienced teachers: It is a monster of our own making.

It distresses me that so many experienced, successful ELA teachers (I understand that these two qualifiers do not always go together, but only the successful have the confidence to hand out materials freely) hand over their materials eagerly.  Rarely is there a hard question asked in response to a give me query.  Rarely is there a challenge from an experienced voice.  Most of the time, experienced teachers simply share their materials, and text lists.  I do this too (at least with suggestions and text lists), but I try to also recommend that the novice teacher read the books, go to the library, and that suggestions be adapted for the students and class. I provide l-o-o-n-g lists so the novice has to investigate and do some critical decision-making.  Only once have I been thanked - I conclude that my responses require too much work (that may be why there are never Comments on my posts to this blog...).

A novice asking me for a unit will not have a success.  But she will get a unit from another experienced teacher.

It distresses me is that the outcome of these "successful" searches is the failure of the young teacher to learn - the methods, the grammar, the construction of essential questions, the literary terms, the structures of narrative and poetry - and the failure of the young teacher to deeply read and analyze the texts.  Nothing promotes educational failure more than making it easy.   I ask, how then will these teachers be able to guide students to do these same essential tasks and develop these same skills? 

Ultimately, it is the student in the classroom who loses out.  Loses doubly if funding is eventually guided by assessments based upon a rigorous CCSS, for which he will not be prepared. Loses triply if he becomes disaffected with a worksheet, programmed education and drops out of it.

It is one thing to ask a student to be a successful independent learner, it is another to know how to guide him in that process.  I am worried that today's novice teachers are not learning how to be guides, because they are not themselves being guided.  It is a lost half-generation.

The new role: The Experienced Teacher as Guide for Other Teachers

The experienced, successful ELA teacher must step up and and play a new role within the school and online learning community.  That role is to say NO to requests for answers.  That role is to say Here is a place to find information for answers.  That role is to say Here is a model, here is advice - construct and create your own lesson plan and design your own activities.  That role is to say Take a risk - if you fall down, I'll help you.

Isn't this what "teaching the individual student" is all about?  Experienced teachers must be the guides of novice teachers as they are of their students.  They must begin to guide and drive those novices to learn for themselves what to include in curriculum and how to approach it. Experienced teacher-guides must have high standards and they must insist upon rigor from the novices.

I understand that this may be a difficult role for the experienced ELA teacher, who may be most comfortable playing the role of the sage. It is a role that most have assumed would be played by the teachers at teachers' colleges.  But just as iPads and mobile devices must now become part of the ELAs teacher's toolkit, it is time that this new role within the school, the teacher's lounge and the online communities becomes a part of the experienced teacher's toolkit. 



We need to stop giving it away.  We need to begin to teach our young colleagues what we taught ourselves, so that they can do the job of teaching that they are called upon to do.

Aliens on Earth - Read About It

Forget giant comets, nuclear war, plague, battling angels, vampires, global warming, zombies.  No threat to Earth is better that a good alien invasion.  Like all good things, good invasion lit. is hard to find.  In a good alien invasion stories, protagonists and their sidekicks struggle (1) to survive  (2) to maintain their core values even though there is little reason to do so (3) to combat - to defeat - the aliens (of course).  In really good alien invasion literature, the alien protagonist, the narrator, a really human character, is also struggling.  And we care.

Which is why these novels and films are so good for middle and high school readers who want a break from dystopian and depressing realism (to which most of these alien titles can be profitably compared). All of my titles raise serious questions about humanness, making them surprisingly good for classroom discussion.  As an extra bonus, some of the titles are funny. 

Essential Questions: 

• Is it true, as maintained by author Gini Koch, that "alien characters tend to be no more or less interesting than the Earth-based heroes and villains, and in many cases, the aliens are just humans with one funky difference"?  What makes for a great alien character?
• In what ways are alien invasions or visits in fiction reflections on or metaphors for human history or human needs and desires?  (It is often necessary to place the serious novels and the films in the time they were written in order to address this question.)
• What are we afraid of when faced with the alien?  What do we expect?  How do we act?  Do we change?
• Analyze the relationships between the human(s) and the alien(s).

Here, then, is the list.  Suitable for MS unless labeled as MS.

Humorous (also allegorical and cautionary) - 

• Aliens Ate My Homework - Bruce Coville - 1st in a series - 730L - easy read for MS
• "The Eyes Have It" - Philip K. Dick - short story about over-reading and over reacting
• Fat Men From Space - Daniel Pinkwater - boy gets messages...  810L
  
• Martians, Go Home - Frederic Brown - come to stay, or were they always here? - MS
• *My Teacher Series - Bruce Coville - 740L (varies) - follows the trials of middle school students who discover that their teachers are aliens - on the light side for MS
• *Only You Can Save Mankind (1st in Johnny Maxwell Trilogy) - Terry Pratchett - not really funny because all of Pratchett has a dark side, but humorous in a Pratchett way - video aliens are real aliens - 600L - good read for reluctant readers
• Outlanders - Johji Manabe - manga - not really funny, but graphic SF, which I find humorous
• *The True Meaning of Smekday - Adam Rex - 740L - girl and alien on a post-invasion quest to find her mother must also save the planet from the next invasion - clever use of graphic illustration (limited) and voice (a composition by the girl) - students should have no trouble identifying allusions to Native American and other "conquests" and to the technologies, cultures, and places that make up the USA

Not Humorous (also allegorical and cautionary):

• The Alien Years - Robert Silverberg - fighting aliens, from a master of SF characterization and plotting - may stretch most MS
• Battlefield Earth - L. Ron Hubbard - classic SF - future humans finally fighting back - 780L
• Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke - 990L - classic SF invasion novel - MS (mature HS)
• *The Dark Side of Nowhere - Neal Shusterman - boy finds that he is really an alien - 850L
• *The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham - also a movie - carnivorous plant invasion of a blinded world (classic)
• Footfall - Larry Niven - from a SF master, unlikely invaders, but Niven is a master - MS
• The Forge of God - Greg Bear - two invading cultures clash - MS
• *The High Crusade - Poul Anderson - aliens in 14th century England - some humor - high reading MS
• *The Host - Stephanie Meyer - soul-stealing aliens - upper MS, who may recognize the author
• *Interstellar Pig - William Sleator - as with all Sleator, questions raised - this one deals with gaming as well as with aliens - 810L
• Invasion - Murray Leinster - MS - Kindle download - classic alternate-history-future tale - may be humorous to some, perhaps better as a cautionary tale
• *Invasion (1st in C.H.A.O.S. series) - Jon S. Lewis - everyday boy suddenly has to battle aliens -  HL760L
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also called The Body Snatchers) - Jack Finney - MS with guidance - classic that inspired all of those great B movies
• The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham - invasion during Cold War era is almost lost due to national mistrust - may be best in Audible dramatized version
• *Lilith's Brood - Octavia Butler - trilogy set in a future in which Earth is to be repopulated by alien race - nice because author and characters are people of color
• *The Man Who Fell to Earth - Walter Tevis - alien man, of course, who learns all about what it means to be Man - limited POV - MS
• A Matter for Men (The War Against the Chtorr series) - David Gerrold - MS - giant worms - more of an action-filled story than a thoughtful one
• *The Mount - Carol Emswiller  - MS - complex relationships in a post-invasion future where humans are the transport of aliens
• *Omega Child - G S Anderson - alien child befriends Earth children - lighter read for MS
• *Pod - Stephen Wallenfels - parallel and eventually interwoven stories of a boy and a girl trapped by unseen invaders in a house (he) and a hotel parking garage (she) - violence is often graphic, but psychological violence might be harder on some readers (my students loved it however) - the tight settings create excellent suspense and tension
• The Puppet Masters - Robert A. Heinlein - classic alien-takeover novel - MS
• *Shade's Children - Garth Nix - great MS alien fight-back adventure - only kids under 14 live in this world
• *Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein - 940L classic - Grok - MS
• *War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells - 1170L but certainly readable - great audio available, including the classic radio broadcast
• The White Mountains (The Tripods series) - John Christopher - 920L - long-legged invaders in Britain - excellent MS reading as characterization and language are strong
• *"To Serve Man" - classic Damon Knight story - adapted for ESL (.doc or Google Doc)

Film: (all classic films about alien arrivals) - these fall easily into categories: wistful, humorous, action drama, or dark drama.  Heads up:  at least 10 more new alien invasion movies are coming out! Ratings provided where available. 

• Aliens and Cowboys - PG-13 - action
• Batteries Not Included  - humorous - PG
• Battlefield Earth - PG-13 - from the novel - action
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind - wistful
• Cloverfield - PG-13 - neat use of hand-held camera technique - action drama
• Cocoon - PG-13 - wistful
• The Day the Earth Stood Still - there are a new and and older version - as usual, I like the older - action
• *The Day of the Triffids - at least two versions - older one is campier
• District 9 - R - aliens segregated in Africa - violence and racism - dark
• ET - wistful
• The Faculty - R - dark action (from a horror genre master)
• Independence Day - action
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers - three versions available - I like the 2nd one - action (newer one is darker)
• Maximum Overdrive - from a Stephen King story - more about what aliens cause than the aliens themselves - R - humorous action
• Men in Black - humor
• Monsters - R - aliens in Mexico City - dark
• Starman - PG - wistful
• "To Serve Man" - Knight and Sterling - Twilight Zone TV episode - view it here (Amazon Prime members only) - or download the radio drama - dark
• V - TV miniseries - dark action

Video Documentary - Many people do believe...  At any rate, these will give students something to think about.

• The Secret: Evidence We Are Not Alone
• Did Aliens Build the Pyramids?
• Hanger 18: The UFO Warehouse
• I Believe in UFO's

Just for fun, and because I think that how we make reading visualizations into pat graphics is also important, here are some apps and comics (apps have not kept up with comics):

• Cows v. Aliens - app
• Alien War - app
• Star Warfare:Alien Invasion - app
• Aliens on Earth - elementary school app!!  In case you want to start them early...
• Buck Rogers - classic comics available from ComiXology
• Formic Wars - Orson Scott Card - invasion comic series - available from ComiXology - graphic version of Ender series prequel (invasion of Earth) 

What if the human is the alien who comes to an alien culture...   This twist on the "first contact" theme is often more interesting than invasion stories.   It is an entirely different list, but a few of the better titles are listed below.  Ask: What do we learn from contact with aliens? (about humanness, about deeper values...)

• Novels
• *The Chanur Saga - C.J. Cherryh - aliens take on human boy stow-away - 900L (Pride of Chanur is first in this saga)
• Contact - Carl Sagan - MS - philosophical cold-war era novel - 1010L
• Ender series - Orson Scott Card - after the 1st book, novels deal with alienness and humanness with increasing depth and complexity - Formic Wars series deals with pre-Ender's Game invasions while post-Ender's Game titles are more about human contact with alien cultures
• *Have Spacesuit - Will Travel - Robert Heinlein - humorous adventure - 770L
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and sequels) - Douglas Adams - humorous adventure classic
• The Jupiter Project - Gregory Benford - youth seeking alien contact
• *The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness - first in a trilogy
• Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper - cute little aliens in this classic - currently free for the Kindle as part of a class SF story series (this is a long story)
• *Martian Chronicles - masterwork by Ray Bradbury - all 7-9 graders should read all or selected shorts 
• Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement - human visitors as viewed from alien POV
• *Nor Crystal Tears - Alan Dean Foster - told from alien POV - 1st contact with 2-legged creatures - followed by the Commonwealth series
• The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut - 980L - what does it mean to be human? - MS
• Sparrow - dark and adult - mature HS readers only (sex, religion) - MS
• Star Trek - those novels are still available for reluctant and action MS readers
• *The Taken Trilogy (Lost and Found: a Novel is 1st) - Alan Dean Foster - GT in MS or HS
• *Tunnel in the Sky - Robert Heinlein - teens stranded on alien plant - makes you wonder about the source of so many dystopian titles...
• Film & TV
•  Avatar (film)
• Star Trek - any classic voyage from the early TV series or Next Generation is great - recommended:  "The Trouble with Tribbles" for humor and "Arena" for drama 

The Aliens R Us v. Us - This is the heavy stuff that the lighter SF readings should lead up to. 

• Contemporary and historical study of "different" as "alien" will expand student reading of these novels.  You will not have to look beyond the cafeteria, but certainly the History department can help, or the newspapers. 
• And do not neglect to compare your SF alien novels to some realistic novels about what happens when an alien (someone different) enters a community.  The essential questions will be the same.  Here are a few titles to get you thinking:

• The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 920L - wanting to be white-perfect - MS (although my daughter read and loved it in 8th)
• The Body of Christopher Creed - Carol Plum-Ucci - death of the "odd" boy causes protagonist to reevaluate difference - 720L
• Elk's Run - Fialkov - graphic novel will please HS boys, especially in rural areas - the "alien" here is revealed slowly - powerful book HS only with care (lots of the F word, content violent)
• Feathers - Jacqueline Woodson - white boy joins all-black middle school class
• Firegirl - Tony Abbott - scared girl enters middle school class - 670L
• The Girl Who Fell From the Sky - Heidi Durrow - struggles of bi-racial girl in black community - MS
• Guests - Michael Dorris - children's book with a big punch
• Jasper Jones - Craig Silvey - Australian authors writes of the "outsider" boy in a small community, a community in darkness - HL590L, but not for below 7th - I love this book - Prinz Prize
• The Laramie Project - Moises Kaufman - murder of a gay young man causes town to reexamine difference - play form - MS
• Little Bee - Chris Cleave - Nigerian refuge girl in Britain - MS
• Native Son - Richard Wright - 700L - story of young black man in mid-century Chicago - MS
• Open City: A Novel - Teju Cole - stream-of-consciousness - Nigerian immigrant's insights into life, contemporary culture...  2012 National Book Critics' Award finalist - MS
• Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler - she may be an alien, or something else - historical US setting - MS
• Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli - free spirit enters high school - 590L

As always, suggestions and comments are sought.

Only 1 iPad in the Classroom?

[for additional ELA/Reading specific apps and ideas see Reading on the iPad]

Is only one iPad in a classroom worth it? This question keeps reappearing on the EC Ning and in other blog spaces.

The answer is easy: YES, especially if the teacher has access to a Mac desktop or (preferably) laptop and a wifi network in the classroom.  It is an even larger YES if the Mac device has the most current operating system. Having a computer to which the iPad can sync is not absolutely necessary, but it is a Best Idea.  If you are not feeling confident, get your IT person or another teacher to help you out with setup.  I am focused here on apps to install for MS and HS - and then what to do with them.  Here is a recent post from an elementary teacher called "Teaching in the one-iPad Classroom" that will help k-5 teachers.

If more iPads are in the future, you might want to check out iPad App Reviews and iPad 3C's: Some Planning Questions.  [new] You also should take the time to visit Google Apps for the iPad - ways to use these valuable apps in the mobile environment.  You might want to require it of your students.  Click on the tabs to access the info.

1. Setup and Projection
• You will definitely need to set up a unique Apple ID (iTunes acct.) with a password that is kept secret from the students.  You can do this on the iPad itself.  If your first downloaded app is free, you do not need to attach a credit card to the account.  I highly recommend that you immediately download Dropbox (read about it below and in this post).
• AirDisplay is one solution for using the iPad with your laptop (a Mac works best, but read about it).  This app mirrors your laptop screen on your iPad, so you can use a stylus or finger to control and annotate apps - give the iPad to a visually impaired student who can not see projection - or just use it without projection for a small-group focus session - this does not project the iPad screen/app onto the laptop.   
• [update: Using Airplay, Reflection is a new Mac app that vastly simplifies this process, working on the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.  It is worth the $15 download!  If you doubt me, download the 10 minute trial - that's all you will need.  Review.  How-to.]
• Use your iPad as a document camera (requires a projector) - display print, for example - great for all-class review of student responses/annotations, etc.
• YouTube video showing how to connect to an LCD projector (using Favi Entertainment's inexpensive projector, in this case) - will work for other projectors as well - with only 1 iPad, you will not use it for app instruction/directions, but you should use it to project student work.  Of course, you have the option of moving student work to a laptop or desktop connected to a projector (see various options for this in the lists below).
• Ask for an HDTV and Apple TV - many iPad apps will project using Airplay to mirror the iPad screen (try it out before class!). No Apple TV is required if you purchase Reflection (see update above).
• [update: see The Big Problem With iPads in the Classroom for suggestions about network connection and file backup.]  I have provided some other thoughts about using WebDav and DropBox. 
• [update: On the classroom/teacher computer:  make sure to bookmark ScreenLeap - this web-based Java app will make it almost instantaneous for you to share the PC screen with the classroom iPad (also student smartphones)
2. Finding Apps
• I have provided a list of review sites and the best lists on my iPad Apps Reviews page
• AppsGoneFree - daily listing of apps temporarily available free - potentially, a huge savings
• Be sure to review the apps in Blooms Taxonomy of Apps - it will give you additional ideas for using the apps. Below are my current favorites.
3. Apps for Communication and Sharing - whether you have one laptop or desktop in the classroom or students with iPhones (smartphones) or neither (in which case you and students rely on the computer lab, library, or out-of-school machines),  the most important capability of an iPad is sharing. 
•  iMessage can be used by students to input to your iPhone.  First, you will need to set up both devices (IOS 5 only) to find each other.  Settings -> Messages.  Here is nice little tutorial.  By passing the iPad around the classroom, you can read - and project - multiple responses to a single question, or gather multiple questions to be answered
• Evernote - important sharing tool, especially if the classroom has a desktop computer (or laptop) - there should be a classroom account that is controlled from that desktop - many apps upload to Evernote, facilitating sharing (Skitch, Penultimate)
• Dropbox is essential - this free app is for sharing files, images, even video over the wifi network - you will want it on laptops, desktops, smartphones - create one classroom account on a teacher machine, with folders for every student.  Students will then be able to upload into it. Here is my post on it and connected apps: Drop By
• OR you can use CX, a free app that works like Dropbox on fire, has more web-based storage (10.3 GB v. 2 GB), and makes it very easy to create classroom groups. Special features to use in education: Group discussion board! Multiple file upload. Free for all platforms (Android and Blackberry on the way).
• iFiles for storing images, files, URL's, voice recordings (can be made within the app) - then sharing those files or folders across the wifi network directly - access web page within iFiles and transfer it to the app for reading offline, sharing, etc. - see this great use of iFiles from Google Apps for the iPad
• Printopia - print directly to a DropBox, Evernote, or designated folder on a Mac host computer that is running the Printopia application set up correctly in Settings - warning - $19.99!  There is a free limited 1-week demo - it works like a charm 
• Twitter or Tweet (my choice) for posting and following Tweets (there are many more apps, of course)
• Posterous - a single or multiple blogs can be created, accessed, and contributed too, allowing for multiple levels of writing, sharing, communicating, creating - images as well as text can be included in posts OR the more powerful Blogsy.  The latter does not yet sync with other apps, but it can fetch Posterous drafts and send media rich blog posts as email.  Either app can be used to automatically post to a class blog, making it a great tool for back-flipping lessons, group commenting on text, or in-class idea sharing.  
• zapd - use on-board camera and text to create a quick web page or blog - as many as you want to make with a class account, or individual accounts for students over 12 - web-storage and totally free (this is an iPhone app) 
• Penultimate - note-taking app that exports to both Dropbox and Evernote is perfect for an in-class archive or for a group archive 
• Syncspace (free),  Upad  ($4.99), or AirSketch (limited free or multi-featured for $9.99) for creating multi-media (draw, image import, annotate, paste) notes (documents) that can then be shared via a cloud service, Dropbox, over wifi (for simultaneous co-editing), and many more options.  
• Skitch - annotate photos, screen shots, images, text, web pages, original drawing - share to Evernote, Twitter, or email - save to Photo library - I love the toolkit, the crop feature, and the export options - use this in the classroom to back-flip and evaluate activities:  trips, labs, hands-on learning, dramatics, image study - use with a blogging, journaling, or digital storytelling app - students can upload Skitch images and add to annotations - Text? the text tool will paste any copied text (from Notes, web page, Pages, etc.) and of course web based text can be instantly annotated with the Web tool - this is a terrific classroom tool! 
• Sketchshare allows you to simultaneously sketch, annotate, brainstorm on 4 iPads - because this app uses the Game Center (not wifi) for sharing, the other iPads can be anywhere in the world - exports completed images to Photos for further sharing 
• FaceTime and Skype are free apps - if you have wifi in the classroom, your kids can converse with anyone else during the class time (yes, you can connect the iPad to a projector if you have the cables - see top of this post) - try authors, researchers, or community experts 
• Voicethread mobile app - can now do just about everything that the online Voicethread can do - powerful literacy application! - you will need to set up a class account that students can access
• QuickMark - my favorite app for creating and reading QR codes - another frequently recommended one is i-nigma
• SoundCloud - voice recording or sound recording (birds, trains, waves, rain...) - storage online (limited free or fee-based) - combines directly with the web app Thinglink to create interactive, sound-supported images - social sharing of sounds facilitated - annotation of sound recordings! opens up great opportunties for the classroom
• TinyVox - audio notes - multiple export and sharing options or Audioboo - free app that records up to 3 minutes of voice and uploads it to a discrete URL in an online space (acct. required - can be set up before student use) - a great way to create book talks, instructions, oral responses, fluency reading checks - Audioboo URL's can be used to create QR codes for posters, websites, assignments, etc.  (see QuickMark for more on QR codes)
• Wifi Photo - to access photos in iPad camera roll from any laptop or desktop on the network - great way for a teacher to gather student projects (eg. ComicLife, 1-page writing response, or any other project that can be captured in a screenshot)
• Stickybits - almost unreal that this exists - use the app to scan a barcode on a product, like in a book or on a sweet sold in the cafeteria - then add your own text to that barcode - unfortunately, not yet available in the US - write them! 
• Reminders or the more powerful Wunderlist should be used to create calendars for class due dates - color coding works well
4. Apps for Literacy (Researching, Reading, Writing, Viewing, Listening, Creative Thinking, Journaling) - I clump these together because in I don't believe that literacy is separate skills in this mobile, digital environment
• READ - Kindle books (download from Amazon or through a desktop/laptop - many free and inexpensive classic texts also),  iBooks (public domain), interactive book apps such as The Artifacts and numerous titles for elementary students, which are great vocabulary builders and great for developing visual literacy as well as great reads, Comics and graphic novels (Comics app) - MegaReader 2.5 indexes and downloads free texts from sources such as Gutenberg 
  
• 1001 Books to Read Before You Die - this brand new app is the IOS version of the 900+ page book - not only a list, but critical essays and more - great tool for HS and ambitious MS students (not to mention educators)
• Mastery Connect's CommonCore or EZ Education Tool's EZ Language Core - the ELA Common Core Standards at your finger tips - I prefer the EZ tool
• Tools 4 Students - 25 organizer templates for writing and reading notes - basic organizers that can be used individually (reading support, independent investigation, teacher demo or flipping) or in a group or projected setting - includes KWL/W, word concept analysis, summarize - probably more useful in MS and upper elementary - share only via email, or take screenshot and share that (DropBox, etc.)
• Dragon Dictation - a must-have app - text-to-print - use for fluency, for reluctant writers, for visually impaired - link is to a tutorial
• iDesk Lite (free) allows students to create up to 4 maps or graphic organizers - the purchased version ($6.99) has unlimited storage - my link is to a tutorial - email, save as image
• Literary Analysis Guide - a reference for all of those terms and analysis language
• Grammar Up HD - at $4.99 it may seem pricey, but this is a great way to individualize grammar instruction - quizzes, etc. for the most useful (mostly) range of skills that need developing
• Dictionary.com is the mobile version of the web-based app - huge word bank, word origins, more - my link is to a tutorial
• Singit! Your Musinc With Lyrics - instantly get the lyrics of songs - great resource for poetry study, as many teachers have discovered
• News 360 is a news aggregator - this would allow a class or group to follow a specific news story
• Newsstand displays full magazines and newspapers to which you subscribe - get at least one good subscription with articles you can use in class 
• Video Time Machine - simply provides historical facts in many subject categories for over 200 years of history
• Vintage Radio - one-stop shopping for old radio shows, great for developing listening skills, teaching about suspense, mystery, humor, narrative flow
• TED - search and view TED talks
• Qwiki - gathers information into a narrated (with a better machine voice than most) media presentation - great for quick look-ups of topics related to reading
• iBook - essential ePub reader - readers can annotate text (except for .pdf files, for that you need an app like Notability or GoodReader)
  
• Comics - download inexpensive comics (classics, contemporary) and graphic novels from ComiXology - use to supplement reading (thematic, graphic versions, etc.)  
• Read Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet?  Or perhaps you have students ready to read one of the plays independently? Purchase the Shakespeare in Bits app from MindConnex.  At $14.99, these seem expensive, but the range of teaching supports are amazing.
• Zite allows you to set of a classroom "magazine article feed reader" based upon student interests - for the elementary classroom, Timbuktu is the iPad magazine I recommend
• EasyBib - mobile version of the online tool creates citations by scanning the ISBN bar code of print resources - not as good as a mobile version of the online citation tool should be, but an option
• GoodReader - view and annotate (typed text or by hand or by drawing) .pdf files, connect to other Macs and devices on a wifi network - will work with Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers (share them via. Dropbox)
• Pages - purchase this as the writing platform, especially if you are in a Mac school - also an important tool for viewing downloaded or emailed documents (public domain texts, student work, lyrics, poems, etc.) - will open most Word documents - and publishes to the ePub format (so students can create and easily share texts to iBook
• GoDocs - access, share, upload and edit your Google Docs files - editing only when wifi connected and you can not create docs in the app (you can download them to read offline and create in Pages, Numbers, etc. to upload when online)
• myMemoir is the app I prefer for jounaling - keep an on-going record of each class (in separate journals) or of individual/group projects - journals can be published in the ePub format or as text or .pdf document files - photos (images from Photos file) and videos can be attached to entries, making this a great tool for building a class portfolio 
• Taposé is a new journaling tool, more fully loaded - it features side-by-side drag and drop object entry (it's about time this feature of the environment has appeared in a good app) - at $2.99 you might pass until you have multiple iPads in the class, or you can purchase this and use it to frame group projects
• Penultimate - note-taking app that exports to both Dropbox and Evernote is perfect for an in-class archive or for a group archive - can be used with a stylus - drawings as well as writing make it a very different tool than myMemoir 
• Keynote - purchase this for your presentation tool - will open PowerPoint presentations
• Storyline for Schools (free)  - in elementary, great for story writing - in MS and HS, perfect for a "silent conversation" about text or an essential question - all levels, great linear "concept mapping" of vocabulary
• Posterous - a single or multiple blogs can be created, accessed, and contributed too, allowing for multiple levels of writing, sharing, communicating, creating - images as well as text can be included in posts
• Audioboo (see above) or TinyVox - audio notes - multiple export and sharing options
• i-Prompt Pro turns your iPad into a teleprompter - use for fluency checks, for recording presentation narration, with Photobooth for videocasts...  - purchase optional wireless controller for smoother projects and/or an external mic to cut out background sounds
• Onlive Desktop - a free app, with online file storage, that provides Windows users with the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents on the iPad - not needed for Apple classrooms, but might be useful for many students (and teachers) who have PC's elsewhere
• Skitch - annotate photos, screen shots, images, text, web pages, original drawing - share to Evernote, Twitter, or email - save to Photo library - I love the toolkit, the crop feature, and the export options - use this in the classroom to back-flip and evaluate activities:  trips, labs, hands-on learning, dramatics, image study - use with a blogging, journaling, or digital storytelling app - students can upload Skitch images and add to annotations - Text? the text tool will paste any copied text (from Notes, web page, Pages, etc.) and of course web based text can be instantly annotated with the Web tool - this is a terrific classroom tool!
• Webnotes - shows a web page and a note pad side-by-side 
• Side By Side - view and interact with (annotate) multiple screens simultaneously - web, document (opens a wide range of file formats), note-taking, chatting...   free version is ad-supported - share via DropBox
• Screencasting Apps for the iPad - lists entry level apps for the flipped and back-flipped classroom - use for storytelling, group-writes, descriptive challenges (like you might use VoiceThread, which also has a mobile version) - Explain Everything should also be on the list - ShowMe has recently made a significant upgrade, making it one of the better screencasting apps - use SonicPics for narrated slide shows (you control the timing - an important feature)
• Doodlecast Pro - more than simply a screencasting app - this allows for editing of the narration, making it wonderful for teacher or student "analyze" videos - Doodlecast Kids  is more like ShowMe
• Voicethread for: audio and text commenting and annotation on a text, image, question - uploading student work (poems, paragraphs, images) to a thread for peer comment or grading, much more!
• InAWorld...Drama add snips from a professional voice artist to your own photos to create a movie trailer - but students can easily use it for book trailers and original stories as well - share via web gallery, email, or Twitter or YouTube. 
• Words With Friends (older kids) or Nerdy Birds Social HD (all ages) to build vocabulary and spelling skills - and for fun!  Play socially or by oneself.
• 7 Little Words - not entirely like any other app - word play for the sake of it - set up informal competitions
• iCardSort Lite - virtual index cards or post-it notes has multiple uses in classroom: vocab, sorting, classifying, describing...  my link is to a great tutorial
• Words Frequently Confused or Commonly Confused Words to support vocabulary study
• Instapaper - capture web text for reading offline - or use iFiles or the new Readability app (tied to a web-based app for your laptop or desktop)
• FlashCards is the mobile version of Quizlet - access quizzes, make quizzes, print quiz questions, flashcards, answers
• Robozzle - mobile version of online programming (as in computer code) "teach by doing" site - and yes, programming skills do transfer to both reading and writing - it is also a collaborative environment
• SurveyBoy - if you include field surveys in project or inquiry learning, this is the tool you want to get
• inDecision - if you include group projects in your classroom, consider this tool to help groups arrive at final solutions or to narrow thinking about topic, problem, etc.  An optional tool (just replaces paper for the task)
  
5.  Apps Specifically for Creating
• Apps for time-lapse video, such as claymation or animated storytelling, are reviewed in this article: Time Lapse Photography Apps
• with Animoto mobile, student groups can shoot pics and turn them into a polished, free 30 sec. video - advertisements, book trailers, character interviews, propaganda shorts... or use Magisto - free app will combine iPad video clips (or imported clips) into a short movie - contains a sound bank as well
• zapd - use on-board camera and text to create a quick visual story or visual record of a literary response event - as many as you want to make with a class account, or individual accounts for students over 12 - web-storage and totally free
• Garageband - not essential, but recommended - avoid copyright issues by having students create their own music!
• PhotoBooth (installed as part of the IOS) 
• iPhotoAlbum - organize your camera roll / photos into albums - great if you have multiple groups working on image-heavy projects
• PS Express - free photo editing - mobile version of PhotoShop Express - easy to use and works very well - essential for cropping screenshots
• Prezi Viewer - use the iPad to view and now edit Prezis made using the web tool
• Comic Life - like the desktop app, use this tool to create comic books from stored images and student text - link is to an excellent tutorial
• Mindo - webbing, brainstorming - email, send to Dropbox, send directly to another device on the wifi (Mac is especially easy) if the device has the Mindo app installed
• TinyVox - audio notes - multiple export and sharing options
• MagBooth is a little app that takes an image and makes it a magazine cover - add "article titles" to the cover, date, etc.  - a splurge, but may be just the thing needed to differentiate a project 
• Deezine (used with Deezine Reader) create an entire digital magazine-like publication - a project alternative
• Free Music Download Pro - source of free music for student projects
• Audioboo (see above) 
• Stickybits (see above) - not available yet in the US
• Doodlecast Pro - more than simply a screencast app - this allows for editing of the narration, making it wonderful for teacher or student "analyze" videos
• iStopMotion, especially when used with iStopCamera, makes it easy for students to create stop motion videos.  Giffer is another app to do this same thing.
• GifBoom or Giffer (also for iPhone) - easily create short animated gifs, which can be 20-frame animations from photos, or can be edited from a previously shot video, or can be an instruction set (diagramming a sentence, or marking a rhyme scheme, for example) - useful for student projects, for flipping a short lesson, for fun - share via email, texting, or Dropbox
• Phonto - very simple app adds text to a photograph or screenshot - excellent for focused practice with literary terms, visual literacy analysis, textual element analysis 
• Paper by FiftyThree - a lot of features in a free paint app - I am not sure that iPad illustration will catch on, but it is good to expose kids to it - several stylus options in the classroom would be a nice addition

• Other - Teacher Focused
• StickPick - this is a great way to make sure that every student speaks in class - and gets the best type of question - a virtual Popsicle stick jar
• Tap Forms Database - you will need to practice, but this can be used for short formative assessments, for lit circle and fluency records (saves audio), or even for CCSS progress recording - share databases with other teachers

OK - I have apps, now what can I do with them?

Here is a brain-storming list I created after using the iPad 2 in my classroom and at home for a year:

• Reminders or the more powerful Wunderlist should be used to create calendars for class due dates - color coding works well
• Students with iPhones or smartphones can input images to the iPad for projects or sharing via email or DropBox (free app for mobile devices and non-mobile devices, allowing for quick sharing)
• Use Skitch to have a student or a group annotate just about anything digital (web pages, images, text files, drawings, screenshots...), and the device can be passed around so that many can input - upload annotations to Evernote, email, Tweet, download to photo library
• Run a class blog using Posterous, Blogsy or other iPad blog app - use for archiving content, class decisions, rubrics, just about anything - responsibility can be passed around
• Use zapd to archive each class (a student can do this), to archive student work, to create student projects
• Create a class or group (reading circle, etc.) audio blog using DropVox - use QR codes to quickly access individual posts
• Audioboo URL's can be used to create QR codes for posters, websites, assignments, etc.
• Capture a webpage for research, for student reading, for discussion using iFiles (from within the app itself)
  
• keyboarding practice (there are apps for that)
• Tweeting and following twitter streams (apps for that - all free)
• Assign TED talks for independent viewing 
• Write collaborative eBooks (in the ePub format) - read about how here and here
• Create a Home icon for sites like Open Culture or other curricular integration media sites
• Have kids create an audio-visual screencast of the key ideas at the end of each class - these are posted to freely hosted web spaces - free apps for that can be found at Screencasting Apps for the iPad
• Appoint a class "researcher" for the week - use Literary Analysis Guide, Dictionary, Safari, QWiki, etc. to answer questions that come up during the class period
• You can use the same apps for flipping many lessons too - kids needing more practice or who missed the class can quickly catch up by viewing these pre-lessons on important skills and concepts
• Use Webnotes to annotate a web-based text (article, poem, lyric, image, online text, diagram, infographic...) - have students respond to question then pass it on, ask questions, have a conversation
• Maps! Find out what your texts are happening - quickly - the Maps app is pre-installed and Google Earth is a free download
• Quick research (Safari is on board) - use WebNotes to annotate a website
• Use ComicLife to create 1-page comments with figurative language themes (metaphor, figure of speech, hyperbole, simile), vocabulary, alternate endings, digital hot seats...
• iDesk Lite to create thinking maps, vocabulary study (connotations, inferences - use with Commonly Confused Words or text-based vocabulary lists)
• Quick looks at Video Time Machine - find video from any year back to 1860 - great tool for historical or historically based fiction (ads, games, sports, news, TV, music, movies) - provide historical background for novels
• Create your own discussion assessment tool, allowing you to enter evals and notes and pics as they happen (wish someone would develop that app, but there isn't yet) - use Mastery Connect's CommonCore or EZ Education Tool's EZ Language Core to quickly copy/paste standards
• Zite (free) - create your own daily magazine that meets the interests of a student, a class, or the whole class, or just a topic you are interested in together
• Use Side By Side as a research tool and to develop critical reading skills - bias, point of view...
• Music - iTunes to organize, play and Garageband to create
• Use iCardSort Lite to study affixes, to study character traits, to compare/contrast anything, to create plot lines, to brainstorm group ideas for projects, to create concept definition maps...
• Prewrite and plan projects with Mindo
• Have students capture text to Instapaper for sharing, for annotating in GoodReader, for printing
• Write lessons, vocabulary lists, assignments, just about any text in Textforce and export directly to Dropbox for sharing to all student devices
• Use Taposé to organize a reading group's responses
• Eyewitness - top news photos can be used to spur discussion and provide visual writing prompts
• iPad time can be a reward (not my thing, but it works for some teachers)
• Add comments to a VoiceThread or create a new one using the mobile app (not ed.voicethread.com, just regular public voicethread)
• Communicate with an absent student synchronously or asynchronously
• Use TinyVox for voice annotation, for fluency checks, for recording voiceover text...
• Take the iPad on field trips - archive with images and voice memos, blog, create website (find apps for this above)
• Use Stickybits to have students attach 25 word stories to the bar codes of actual products, or reviews to library books (not yet available in the USA)
• Make book/story trailers or original video shorts (suspense, mystery, romance, humor would be good topics) using InAWorld...Drama
• Broadcast HW, announcements, texts to all students via email: send messages to all students using email 
• Make quizzes and vocab lists / flashcards in FlashCards
• Use QR codes (made in QuickMark) on assignments, posters, announcements, web pages - send students to URL's, to short poems, to specific questions or answers...  They will need a mobile device, like a smartphone, with a QR reader
• MagBooth can be used in place of a character map, false Facebook character page, etc. to demonstrate understanding - or have a group use Deezine cooperatively to create a magazine (for example, to demonstrate understanding of a complexly plotted novel)
• iStopMotion or Giffer can be used to create stop motion animations in response to a thematic challenge (sorrow, love, failure, etc.),  to tell a story, to create a visual genre narrative (suspense, historical fiction, SF, etc.)
• Use Phonto to quickly label trip photos, to create vocabulary pictures, to make "mini-motivation" posters 
• Use Sketchshare to hold brainstorming, analysis, creating conferences with another student in another school - or with an author...
• Did I mention reading?  

Colum McCann on Fiction, Writing, and Stories

If you have not found YouTube's new IntelligentChannel (INT.), visit it now.

My focus is the 1st program, an interview with Colum McCann entitled "The Paul Holdengraber Show with Colum McCann: On the Radical Act of Storytelling."

The video:



Great quotes to spur discussion:

 About the value of story: "Stories are the ultimate democracy."

About the writer's craft: "The little anonymous corner is sometimes the best place for a story to come from."  (this quote would be nice paired with Seth Worley's short video Plot Device)

About the importance of the reader: "There is no creative writing without a creative reader.  The reader has to go in and her or she makes the book, and can make as little of it as they want or as much of it as they want."

About the relationship of the writer and the reader: "I want to paint a photograph for my reader and then her or  him to step into that photograph and move it along for themselves, and that's what you do with language...and then they go on their own journey; it's not mine anymore.  And readers can be infinitely wiser than the writer is."

About writing: "I always fail; we always fall short of the expectations that we want for the work to be. And that for me is a good thing."

About turning events into fiction (paraphrased):  The stories of today need to be told over, and over, and over again so that no one storyteller owns the truth.  There should be no one "official story" of history - writers have a duty to go into history and find the little anonymous corners that will tell the story.

And did you know that Frederick Douglass spent a year in starving Ireland on the speaker circuit while, at 27, he was still a slave? "Trying to make sense of what it means to be other, and yet look after your own people at the same time." 

McCann specifically addresses Let The Great World Spin and its allegorical connections to 9/11, the Iraq War, and other current events.

Subscribe to this new Channel and, if you teach McCann or read him, listen to this interview.  

The Literacy of Failure: Failing and Failing Forward

Source: CC Search

Failure is the new buzz word for the classroom.  Just today I read that good classroom apps for the  iPad embrace failure: "this culture of learning from adversity" (Jenny Magiera).  Interestingly, while professing to discuss failure, Magiera is really talking about adversity and success through personalization and differentiation.

Failure and adversity are not the same thing.  Adversity means difficulties or misfortune.  The word carries the connotation that a successful struggle is waged against these difficulties or misfortunes. Adversity is a temporary down.  Ironically, in YA literature, a protagonist's adversity is often caused by adult failures: divorce, neglect, abuse, abandonment, confusion, ineptitude...

Failure, on the other hand, means lack of success.  Implied in failure as descriptor is action -  something is tried that does not work. Failure is a real down.  Educators are easy on adversity, if slow to embrace it, but they shy away from failure. 

This is what the career-focused message of talking heads is all about.  It's time to get tougher in the classroom, so that failure is a very real, even probable, option.  Learning how to face it, get up and begin again, or change direction and focus so that success is a different option, are what is missing from today's classrooms.  But not missing from life.

The above two Rules from Dumbing Down Our Kids by Charles Sykes say it well.  Unfortunately,  not even iPad apps are created in the spirit of failure - sorry, teachers who think new apps are a panacea for the "have it too easy" generations.  As Magiera has learned, they are useful for working through how a failure happened, but so is f2f conversation.

How then, do students learn how to fail forward - learn how to learn from failure?

The ELA teacher can help. Experienced teachers know that failure is embedded in the writing process, and that talking though writing failures is essential to improvement.

Students should not only write, but also read, about failure.  Models for failure in YA novels are few and far between, but they can be found.  Adversity, on the other hand, is all over the place - it is perhaps the soul of fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction.  If reading about adversity were enough, we would not be pounded over the head with the message that "failure is the [missing] key to success."  To learn about failure, students need to (1) experience it and (2) read engaging texts about it. 

What are the key identifiers of a good literary failure?  After reading through both business and educational discussions of the topic, I identify these traits that we should look for in failure-based texts:

• A character exhibits a growth in character through the failure - no growth, no rising above failure (some characters wallow in it) and no avoiding it later on
• A character who bounces back from failure displays "zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity" while doing so (source: NYTimes) - to which I would add adaptability.  My criticism of this list of traits is that is not enough to differentiate failure from overcoming adversity. 
• Failure is a result of intentional (not accidental) risk-taking
• Failure is scary - characters fear the consequences of failure
• Failure results when the challenge is hard or when it requires a significant change in behavior or expectation
• Failure is a result of a character's own shortcomings
• There is no shelter from a good failure - no safety net - or it won't happen (e.g.  the character is on his/her own)
• Bouncing back from failure requires seeking and listening to good feedback, and then doing something different. There is quite a science growing around the idea of failing forward, which Bob Sutton in the Harvard Business Review (blog) describes as "The basic idea is, as soon as feasible after some action occurs, a facilitator and/or teacher should have a conversation with the key participants about what went right, what went wrong, and what could be done better next time."
• Often, bouncing back is not possible - a character must bounce sideways
• Examining what failed in a successful experience leads to learning
• Failure is painful
• For a character, failure can be final - which is to say, it may lead to death (this is also true of a business or a business product) or to an entire change in life's direction (not necessarily a bad thing)

Compare this list to the top 20 lists of YA literature. Few contemporary protagonists, be they normal or extraordinary young people, fail. Those who do fail, and survive failure, do not generally pause to reflect, gather feedback, and metacognate on what went well.  I suggest that most novels read in ELA classrooms are anti-failure models.  Like a classroom or school in which "everyone succeeds" - in which all efforts are roundly praised - contemporary protagonists, even those in darkly dystopian or realistic tales, do not suffer as a result of their own shortcomings.

No wonder we find that teens avoid situations that challenge their shortcomings, that C is the new F, that teachers are not challenging students with problems that can be failed.  Such as novels that are at the top of the Lexile range or essays that ask students to apply difficult ideas to a text.

Below I am providing some Resources for reading failure-based text.  It is interesting to me that most of these resources are at the HS level.  This suggests to me that the adult world of authors also does not believe that children can deal with the idea of failure.  Hmm.

What we need to do is to embed conversation about failure in our classrooms, to open the pipe, so to speak.  All of the resources below can spearhead that discussion.  This conversation is also, of course, an exercise in critical thinking.

Chidren's Books - It is interesting that there are endless lists of children's books about dealing with divorce, disease, disability, death, moving, potty training, and dentistry.  But very few about failure. 

• Ish (Reynolds) - about not being perfect
• The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes (Pett and Rubenstein) - an elementary school girl who (learning to fail)
• The Berenstain Bears - Poppa is often guilty of failure, as are Brother and Sister - a good place to start might be The Berenstain Bears Picnic
• Peanuts - Charlie Brown

Fiction, Drama - None of these is appropriate for elementary school.  Isn't it curious how few pieces I have identified?  Suggestions welcome.

• Only You Can Save Mankind (Pratchett) - video game turns out to be real and failure to not win has a consequence (600L)
• One-Eyed Cat (Fox) - boy shoots cat (1000L)
• The Stone-Faced Boy (Fox) - failure to deal, but also failure to communicate
• Wintergirls (Anderson) - eating disorders - one friend fails, the other succeeds (730L)
• Jellicoe Road - (Marchetta) - consequences of a failure through two generations - fear of failure (820L)
• Rash (Hautman) - failing forward in a future world (730L)
• Ender's Game (Scott Card) - in which failure must be redirected (780L)
• Romeo and Juliette - the failures of support systems  (can be read as early as 7th with some editing)
• Monster (Myers) - is the failure the boy or the system?
• Scorpions (Myers) - boy's experiment with gang life (610L)
• Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) - future citizen faces his failure to resist (890L)
• Othello - failure of trust
• The Death of a Salesman - the failures of a salesman and father
• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy) - persistent gloom of failure as only Hardy can do it (1090L)
• Catcher in the Rye - read as a failure story, is this going to be a failing forward or just the blame game?  (790L)
• The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (le Carre) - great spy stuff anti-hero - also a new movie 
• The Secret Agent (Conrad) - an earlier classic spy failure (1030L)
• Seize the Day (Bellow) - down and out adult
• Billy Liar (Waterhouse) - Yorkshire youth - 1959 - also a good film
• Jasper Jones (Silvey) - Australian youth - Vietnam War Era - Prinz Prize and one of my current favorites for YA

Non-fiction - you might find the contrast of the articles and the first text to be ironic.  The irony becomes less when we realize that characters who are alone - who have no one with whom to talk - fail with more finality. 

• Into the Wild (Krakauer) - students will question the "failure" here - also a DVD (I have not seen it)
• "Why Failure is the Most Important Factor in Success"
• "Why Failure is the Absolutely Best Thing That Can Happen To You"
• Silent Spring (Carson) - the failure of environmental policy - a classic call-to-action text - selections can be used in MS
• 25 Worst Business Failures in History - great intros to research projects
• "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination" - J.K. Rowling's commencement address - Harvard - video and text
• World's biggest failures (commercial and technological) - forum question and a fascinating list in response - should spur a lot of discussion and some historical connections (how about Spain's conquest of the New World?  the marches on Moscow? etc.)

Film and Media

• Race to Nowhere - high-powered adolescent girl suicide
• Fail-Safe (1964) - a classical look at military failure
• Waiting for Superman - the failure of the educational system
• Billy Liar (1963)
• It's a Wonderful Life
• The Apprentice: The Complete First Season - DVD - no one pounces on failure better than Donald Trump 
• Iron Chef - TV and DVD of series
• Survivor - play any episode and focus on the last few minutes: how is failure dealt with?  Is this a growing experience
• The Amazing Race - play any episode and focus on how teams make adjustments
• video games or game apps - any shoot 'em game, it seems - "Given that every game eventually ends in failure, there's a surprising amount of variety here" (review of Ziggurat app)