Literacy Journal

The Role of Experienced ELA Teachers

2012-02-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

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 relationship of 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
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 references 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
*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.

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
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
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
The Laramie Project - Moises Kaufman - murder of a gay young man causes town to reexamine difference - play form
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
Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli - free spirit enters high school - 590L
Sarah Canary - Karen Joy Fowler - she may be an alien, or something else - historical US setting - MS

As always, suggestions and comments are sought.

Only 1 iPad in the Classroom?

2012-02-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

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.

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
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 using Favi Entertainment's inexpensive projector - 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 that work to a laptop or desktop connected to a projector (see various options for this in the lists below).

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. Below are my current favorites.

Apps for Communication and 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 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. They will then be able to upload into it. Here is my post on it and connected apps: Drop By
Printopia - print directly to a DropBox, Evernote, or designated folder on a host Mac host computer that is running the Printopia application and set up correctly in Settings - warning - $19.99! There is a free limited 1-week demo - it works like a charm
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).
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 slightly more powerful Blogsy. The latter does not yet sync with other apps. 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.
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)
Syncspace (free) or Upad ($4.99) 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.
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 - see this great use of iFiles from Google Apps for the iPad
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!
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) - authors, research or community experts
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
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
TinyVox - audio notes - multiple export and sharing options
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.

Apps for Literacy (Reading, Writing, Viewing, Listening)

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
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 tool, 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
Pages - purchase this as the writing platform, especially if you are in an app school - also an important tool for viewing downloaded or emailed documents (public domain texts, student work, lyrics, poems, etc.) - will open most Word documents
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
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.)
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
Zite allows you to set of a classroom "magazine article feed reader" based upon student interests
Webnotes - shows a web page and a note pad side-by-side
Audioboo (see above)
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
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
Comics - download inexpensive comics (classics, contemporary) and graphic novels from ComiXology - use to supplement reading (thematic, graphic versions, etc.)
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!
Screencasting Apps for the iPad - 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 that list - ShowMe has recently made a significant upgrade, making it one of the better screencasting apps.
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!
Dictionary.com is the mobile version of the web-based app - huge word bank, word origins, more - link is to a tutorial
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.
iCardSort Lite - virtual index cards or post-it notes has multiple uses in classroom: vocab, sorting, classifying, describing... Link is to a great tutorial
Singit! Your Musinc With Lyrics - instantly get the lyrics of songs - great resource for poetry study, as many teachers have discovered
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.
iDesk Lite (free) allows students to create up to 4 maps or graphic organizers - the purchased version ($6.99) has unlimited storage - link is to a tutorial - email, save as image
Words Frequently Confused or Commonly Confused Words to support vocabulary study
Dragon Dictation - a must-have app - text-to-print - use for fluency, for reluctant writers, for visually impaired - link is to a tutorial
READ - Kindle books (download from Amazon or through a desktop/laptop), iBooks (public domain), free Kindle books from Amazon - lot of good ones, plus free samples of many current titles, interactive book apps - I love the ones I purchased for middle school - great vocabulary builders, great visual literacy - MegaReader 2.5 indexes and downloads free texts from sources such as Gutenberg
GoodReader - imports, shares, exports .pdf files - annotates them
Instapaper - capture web text for reading online
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
TinyVox - audio notes - multiple export and sharing options
FlashCards is the mobile version of Quizlet - access quizzes, make quizzes, print quiz questions, flashcards, answers

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...
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)
PS Express - free photo editing - mobile version of PhotoShop Express - easy to use and works
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
Magisto - free app will combine iPad video clips (or imported clips) into a short movie - contains a sound bank as well
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
Free Music Download Pro - source of free music for student projects
Audioboo (see above)
Stickybits (see above)

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
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
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
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
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)
Communicating with 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
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
Did I mention reading?

Colum McCann on Fiction, Writing, and Stories

2012-02-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-02T12:44:00.000-08:00

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.

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

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

Short Free Video: Wouldn't it be a Better Assessment if We Used Video?

2012-01-18T14:44:00.000-08:00

Golem

What if instead of responding to an out-of-context quotation, students were asked to use as a Critical Lens a short movie or video? For example, watch The Monk and the Fish. Then ask: What is that video all about? The student's own answer to that question would become the Critical Lens for the essay.

Short videos and films, like short stories and poems, condense the message. Higher order thinking is required to determine and concisely state the theme or message. There may be several choices, all correct. Relating this to literary text(s) and to life would be much more interesting to the student => engagement in the assessment => perhaps more accurate results.

Here is a short list of short films that would work for this purpose. Sorry - you need to look at them to decide their connections to your texts. Preview them in the classroom or testing room so you can determine if you can access them on your network.

In the future? Open access films will be part of ELA standardized testing. You heard it 1st here. But since the future is not yet here, these films, and others like them, add a new dimension to literature discussions. Find more by search YouTube and other sources (YouTube is not the only source) for award-winning animation shorts. One excellent source is the Canadian Film Board (CFB), which contains animations of many folktales.

The Monk and the Fish
Drux Flux
The Dot and the Line
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Hansel and Gretel - this the one I like - there are many others
Golem
An Artist
The Cat Came Back
Plot Device
Science, Your Time Is Up - ask: What did you see? will need multiple showing
Frank the Wrabbit
Every Child
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
Freedom River
Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life
Yowie and the Magpie
Alma
The Giving Tree (avoid this in general - great for an modeling activity)
The Legend of Bluesman Albert Johnson Animated - MS
Walking - I like this because there are NO words
Starless Night
Oxygen - humorous science tie-in
Bunny Animation
Bully
The Red Button
Invasions
Replay
Even Pigeons Go to Heaven (subtitled)
Artificial Paradise, Inc
The Last Knit
Bad Eggs
Bird on a Wire
Human Nature
Flyboy

Comment: This is a wonderful use of the individualization that iPads and tablets and smartphones should bring to education. Not only learning, but also measurement of learning can be put into student hands.

I am indebted to Open Culture and to Design Your Way for providing films that gave me this idea. Please suggest other movie shorts through Comment or email.

Quotations for The Critical Lens Essay

2012-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

The Critical Lens is an essay form central to the New York Regents and other standardized tests of writing skill. At its simplest, this is a 4-paragraph form, making it a sweet little exercise for students. Essential to the essay concept is a quotation that can be applied to texts read by students and, should the teacher wish to extend the basic prompt, to media texts (movies, TV, art) - even to the student's life experiences.

a basic guide to the form can be found here,
a different and more complex form here (with literary terms explained),
and here is a handy heads-up about content.

After looking through the guides, released items, and sample essays, I find the quotations used for Critical Lens essay questions to be generally uninspiring. So I have gathered an array of my own. You will see a randomly displayed quotation in the box below. Use this quotation to think critically about two texts, or a text and a media text, or your own life. In doing so, agree or disagree with the assertion made in the quotation. Refresh the page to see a different quote. The quotations can be found at wikiquote.

Please make suggestions for other quotations to use on this page. You can do this by email. Sharing these quotations with students is, of course, a nice idea.

Underground - Reading into the Subterranean Metaphor

2012-01-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

source

There was time in my young adulthood when underground definitely meant nonconformist; challenging society; outside the mainstream, in hiding. There was the Underground Railroad, the Weather Underground, the Urban Underground, the underground of poetry, music, and art. It still means this. There are, for example, many sites where underground eBooks can be downloaded and there are real dark coffee houses where underground artists can found.

It also means hidden but worthy of exposure. The urban underground holds the clues to restaurants, bargains, and the best of hip life. Underground guides tell the real truth about Google, universities, interviewing, travel destinations, standardized tests, and just about everything else - well over 1,000 titles are listed by Amazon alone.

And underground is still and always has been a place. The nature of this place is the focus of my interest today. Essential Questions: What are the persistent elements of The Underground in k-12 texts and media? Why are we attracted to this metaphor? How and why do we get Underground?

Picture Books and Early Childhood - It is difficult to find underground spaces in picture books - they are too scary. The nearest thing is the abundant otherplaces that are found. These range from the very close and real (under the bed, in the closet or attic) to the fanciful (faraway islands, imaginary lands). To a child, all is imagination - so otherplace and realplace are allowed to intersect. Readers of the MS and YA books on this list will find the same, or similar, places. Older students should discuss this. In general, it is enough to point out to younger students the other places and what they do/do not contain, to discuss the emotions connected to them (inference exercise, often), and to discuss how the protagonist responds to the experience of being or confronting in the other place. The realization of the reader is often personal because of this connection. Older students will remember these connections.

Babar and Zephir - Jean De Brunhoff
Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen - Maurice Sendak
The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree - Stan and Jan Berenstain
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs - Sam McBratney
There's a Monster Under My Bed - James Howe
There's a Nightmare in My Closet - Mercer Mayer
Chris Van Allsburg - The Garden of Abdul Gagazi, Jumanji, The Polar Express, Zathura
fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, Bluebird (might be too scary), Jack and the Beanstalk
Rainbow Fish and the Sea Monster's Cave - Marcus Pfister - early reader, read aloud
The Minipins - Roald Dahl - forest - early reader, read aloud
The Secret Shortcut - Mark Teague - jungle - early reader, read aloud
Very Last First Time - Jan Andrews - bottom of the sea - early reader, read aloud
Alistair Underwater - Marilyn Sadler - a very deep pond - early reader, read aloud
James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl - inside a giant peach - read aloud and on-your-own after grade 3 or so

As is true of zombie texts and metafiction texts, the critical teacher will find that there is a spiraling change in the meanings and interpretations of the metaphor as the texts become more advanced and complex. Student readers above the elementary level should definitely read up and across the spiral. That is to say, all readers should read and process at least one text from the lower reading level(s) and examine at least one form each of media and informational text at each of the level(s) (sometimes not possible for film).

Upper Elementary - Middle - At this level, underground begins to have metaphorical significance; setting often becomes itself an antagonist. Look for mazes, dark happenings, confusion, threat - all of which are associated with a world that the protagonist must "work through" and ultimately "rise above."

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - a must read
Tunnels (series) - Roderick Gordon - SF, with classical allusions - patience is necessary with Book 1's beginning, but after that the subterranean fantasy fun begins
Journey to the Center of the Earth - H. G. Wells
The Dark Portal (series) - Robin Jarvis - mice, rats, cats, good and evil
The City of Ember (series) - Jeanne DuPrau - the 1st book is especially significant for this metaphor, as the child protagonists escape an underground world
Slake's Limbo - Felice Holman - orphaned run-away lives underground in NYC - metaphorical and lyrical, so it challenges today's MS readers, which is unfortunate
"Orpheus" and "Theseus and the Minotaur" - the myths are available in many forms - must reads
The Shadow Thieves (Cronus Chronicles) - Anne Ursu - like Percy Jackson, the protagonists travel into the mythic underground - this book is the better by far
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Kit's Wilderness - David Almond
The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins - Middle to YA - series of 5 fantasies about a boy hero named Gregor, a world under NYC, and dark happenings
also underground elements in: The Lord of the Rings, The Time Machine, Shipbreaker, Mockingjay, Maze Runner

YA - although YA readers can read and enjoy the above books, the titles below move into the dark underground of the soul and the mazes of fear and awareness that almost-adults can and should be confronting.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky - freely download one ebook translation here - another from Project Gutenberg - Schmoop's guide is useful for HS students reading this challenging text
Plato's allegory of The Cave
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison - metaphorically and also literally underground, this black narrator reflects on his life and how he chooses to live it - Schmoop's Guide
This Side of Brightness - Colum McCann - subway society in NYC
The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe - Japanese surreal
Inferno - Dante - painted images of this descent into Hell are also great text
The Underground Man - Mick Jackson
Subterranean - James Rollins - not deep literature, but a good modern read of the SF adventure variety
King Rat - China Mieville - wonderful fantasy, but only for persistent readers
Level 7 - Mordecai Roshwald - dystopian
The Descent - Jeff Long - cave
In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje - literal tunnel-digger, metaphorical plunge - overlaps with characters in The English Patient
"The Defenders" - Philip K. Dick - free for Kindle - post-apocalypse

Film and other Media - Viewer/readers should ask: What is the purpose of the underground in this film? How does it serve as allegory for or parallel to our world? How does Underground in film compare to Underground in fiction and fact? I have put the films in order of age-appropriateness, but teachers need to preview them before using.

Finding Nemo - corny, maybe, but the underground cave scenes are worth study
Journey to the Center of the Earth - multiple versions are available
The Time Machine - Morlock sequences
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - have to love those caverns
Metropolis - YA (boring to MS kids), but MS students should be able to get the message from selected clips
Tremors - pure SF - giant worms in the desert - PG 13
The Matrix - focus upon those scenes of the alternative underground society
Voices in the Tunnels: In Search of the Mole People - YA
Dark Days - YA
Saving Grace - the new Canadian film - YA
The Descent - cave (not the same as the novel) - YA

Informational text - for elementary students, there are lots of good informational skinny books about building subways and exploring caves. I recommend a trip to the library. These titles are selected to support the MS and YA fiction titles.

Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York's Urban Underground - Gregory J. Snyder
The City Beneath Us: Building the New York Subway - New York Transit Museum - wonderful photographs
The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City - Jennifer Toth
"The Vertical Topography of the Science Fiction Film" - a serious and scholarly look at various underground spaces
"West Side Improvements"- a graphical iJournalism piece found in Synchopated: an Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-essays
Hollow Earth: A Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands... - David Standish

Gaming

Tunnels and Trolls - a multi-player or solo-player role-play and problem-solving game similar to Dungeons and Dragons - all of the rule books and encounter/master guides can be freely downloaded at the site
Steamscope HD - the ultimate tunnel experience - only for iPad 2

The Monsters & Marvels of Metafiction

2012-01-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Down the Mysterly River, and after reading it, I read reviews. All reviews crowed about the voice, premise, character development, dialogue, and settings, and I join this chorus. But almost all reviewers expressed disappointment with the ending, including a reviewer Cory Doctorow (so you know it is a noticed YA title...). I disagree. I loved the ending.

I suspect that the reviewers (you can find them with a Google) did not understand that this is not just a fantasy; it is metafiction fantasy. The ending is entirely appropriate to the genre.

According to Pastoral Metafictional Action by John Ottinger III, "metafiction [is]— aware of itself yet also enjoyable as a simple quest fantasy." In otherwords, metafiction writers work on two levels: they write in their genre, and they and/or their characters are aware of their roles within the play of the genre at the same time. I add another dimension that I like and enjoy to this definition: Metafiction authors comment on some aspect the world in which they live, and this comment is often a strong statement. As metafiction texts (fiction, movies, images) move up the scale in difficulty/grade level, these comments become more and more critical. For example, a theme of a the children's book Chalk might be "Watch out! The story you make is REAL!" An adult metafictional title might have the theme "Watch out! The story you make can also make you."

Watch this fabulous introduction to metafiction in children's books, Metafiction for Children: A User's Guide, from Phlip Nel. Metafiction is NOT, Nel says, a form of postmodernism. It is its own genre. He defines it as a book that reflects on what it means to be a book, or that has pictures that reflect on the nature of pictures - it is a book that self-consciously plays with its form. His definition thus embraces pop-up books, interactive books, many classic picture books, very old, slightly old, and contemporary pieces.

Children's books, of course, are not the only - or the main - platform for metafiction. The literary discussion/explanation online is fairly dense, but it amounts to this: metafiction is fiction that looks back upon itself, or that it out at itself from a fictional inside space. Periodically, and certainly in the endgame, the author/character connection is revealed to the reader and that character steps out of the story. It is this intellectual fun-side that make metafiction especially appropriate to the classroom. Students must engage in analysis and discussion, they must explore roots and connections, in order to fully grapple with the text.

These are not easy texts, precisely because the adult/creator voice and sensibility are omnipresent. The vocabulary and syntax can be challenging. To the student who does not enjoy fantasy, the narrative voice in a fantasy metafiction can be cloying. There is, however, a metafictional text and movie accessible to every reader k-12. Not all metafiction is fantasy; horror, mystery, historical and psycho-fiction also often fall into this genre. It is useful, however, for children to have a background in the most well-read fairy tales and fantasy before they dive into metafiction. Readers of the more adult titles will benefit from having read widely in fiction.

The best interactive books written especially for the iPad or Android tend to be metaphysical in nature. Some even transform a classical book or rhyme, like Pat the Bunny and Itsy Bitsy Spider, into a metaphysical experience. After all, choice is a metacognitive act, and when that choice has been limited to elements of a text by the writer of that text... The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore would be a good place to start the app experience. For the most part, apps are not fully there yet, but those that truly take advantage of the interactive experience will push the metafiction genre forward.

I have listed below my suggestions. Add to these the titles highlighted by Philip Nel and those listed in his companion web post (see below).

Resources

Philip Nel has a blog post, Nine Kinds of Pie - More Metafiction for Children, that lists all of the titles highlighted in the video AND many of the titles not mentioned but displayed behind him. He also includes a list of graphic novels. If you read the Comments, the list goes on.

Below are the titles that I especially like. Wikipedia has quite an extensive list, which I have drawn from, and there is some overlap with Nel. An interesting aspect of metafiction is how personal the reader's response is. It is possible, in fact, to debate the metafictionalism of any one of these titles.

Picture books - a large list is also on Nel's site - my list includes highly recommended apps

Chalk (Bill Thomson)
It's a Book (Lane Smith)
A Coyote Columbus Story (Thomas King and William Kent Monkman)
There's a Monster at the End of This Book (Jon Stone) - also Another Monster at the End of This Book - also the iPad apps of the same name
Flotsam (David Wiesner)
There's a Hair in My Dirt; A Worm's Story (Gary Larson) - perhaps best for the MS lovers of Far Side
Press Here (Herve Tullet)
The Incredible Book-eating Boy (Oliver Jeffers)
The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore - app
The Artifacts - app - MS and up
Roxie's Doors - app
Don't Let the Pigeon Run this App - app

Fiction - MS = probably not for middle school but you can guide this - in approximate order of age-interest, but any of these is appropriate for YA level study. I have not includes Lexiles because they are often misleading with this genre, due to the importance of narrative voice and stylistic elements. Metafiction is wonderful for attacking those persnickity POV, narrator, narrative voice standards too, so test-prep can be done at any level of reading.

Walter: the Story of a Rat (Barbara Wersba) - high-reading elementary
Down the Mysterly River (Bill Willingham) - high-reading elementary
A Whole Nother Story (Dr. Cuthbert Soup) - high-reading elementary
Archy and Mehetable (Don Marquis) - high-reading elementary
The Name of This Book is Secret (Pseudonymous Bosch) - high-reading elementary
A Series of Unfortunate Events (series by Lemony Snicket)
A Tale Dark and Grimm (Adam Gidwitz)
The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle) - film also
The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
Inkheart Trilogy (Cornelia Funke)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Salman Rushdie)
The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Jonathan Stroud)
Fablehaven series (Brandon Mull)
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchett) - another of my personal favorites
Unwritten (Mike Carey) - graphic novel series follows Tommy Taylor through time and space, a hero of a book written by his own father...
Not Everything Brainless is Dead (Joshua Price) - new series of mock-horror - exclusive on the Kindle
The True Meaning of Smekday (Adam Rex)
Before I Fall (Lauren Oliver) - late middle
Once (Morris Gleitzman) - Holocaust
My Name is Mina (David Almond)
Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder) - often a GT book in MS
Cosmicomics (Italo Calvino) - often used as GT text in grade 8
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglass Adams) - often a GT book in MS
"The Tunnel Under the World" (Frederick Pohl) - short story available for Kindle
The Plague Dogs (Richard Adams) - MS
House of Leaves (Mark Danielewski) - MS
Thursday Next Novels (series by Jasper Fforde) - MS - also his Nursery Crime series
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers) - MS
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino) - MS
Grendel (John Gardner) - one of my personal favorites - MS
Atonement (Ian McEwen) - MS
The Toyminator (Robert Rankin) - MS
In the Night Room (Peter Straub) - MS
Riverworld: To Your Scattered Bodies Go and The Fabulous Riverboat (Philip Jose Farmer) - MS - another personal favorite
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut) - MS
Fables (Bill Willingham) - graphic novel/comics - wide-ranging series - MS
The French Lieutenant's Woman (Jonathan Fowles) - MS
The USA Trilogy (John DosPassos) - classic experimentation with form creates metafiction - MS

Arts tie-in (visual, film)

M.C. Escher
Found Art - there are great materials online for a student creative unit (I did it) - begin with Wikipedia, links to local museums and visits to local installations
Hugo
The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Neverending Story
Shrek movies
The Last Unicorn
The Matrix films - great to use and reference, if your students have a background already
The Truman Show
Hamlet & A Midsummer Night's Dream (many film productions of both)

Poetry & Drama - it can be argued that all drama and most poetry is metafictional in nature, but here are some titles that are more directly so (drama within drama, drama about life as fiction, poetry about poetry, etc.)

Mirror, Mirror; a Book of Reversible Verse (Marilyn Singer) - concrete metapoetry
Hailstones and Halibut Bones (Mary O'Neill) - poetry of color about color with color
Robert Frost - most of his well-known poems - I like his "Design" read with "Design" (Billy Collins)
"Ars Poetica" - links to poems on poetry from Poets.org
Ted Nellen has a personal list of Poems on Poems - I like this list for its contemporary bent and its range of poets
Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) - MS
Deathtrap (Ira Levin) - MS
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare) - can be read in MS (editing recommended)
The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder) - MS
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard) - MS
Hamlet (Shakespeare) - MS

Informational Text

Zen in the Art of Writing (Ray Bradbury)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Stephen King)
Characters & Viewpoint (Orson Scott Card) - available for Kindle
"Writers on Writing: Carl Hiaasen" - find more essays in this NYTimes series
"Why We Make Art" (short personal statements by artists in various media)
Augmented Planet (blog) - short pieces on augmented reality (AR) apps, shows, creative ideas - I like the angels at Victoria station - this is a growing use of technology that will appeal to kids in a metafictional way

Activities - If you have to ask, you don't understand the genre. But students might: imitate & update, create, self-question

The Literacy of Critical Evaluation: Why Rating is Not Good Enough

2012-01-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

Essential Question: How Do We Teach Critical Evaluation in ELA?

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Realization phase: I realized today that the average book rating on Amazon is over 4 stars. I am fairly sure that the average app rating in iTunes is also over 4 stars. Zappo boots have an average overall rating of over 4 stars as well. How can these ratings possibly be useful? Yet they are embedded in today's concept of "smart shopping."

The concept of an overall rating is dangerous. Consumers - of products or information - who rely upon the "star reports" are not thinking critically or evaluatively, as they believe they are doing. They are thinking quantitatively and shallowly. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous nature of crowd-sourced rating systems today means that our students are participating in, and taking advice from, a thinking habit that is dumbing down their own ability to think and evaluate critically.

Insight phase: Critical thinking habits can be and need to be addressed in the classroom, or we run the risk of raising a group of satisfied sloppy thinkers. [And those thinkers will, in some states, be rating teachers. In all states, they will be voting.]

Parenting groups are actively promoting the teaching of critical thinking. For example, the issue is confronted directly in recent articles:

Aside from psychology professors, parents are the most prevalent online writers about this topic. They want their children to be "brainy" and successful. They are not seeing that schools will do the job.

And they are right to be concerned. Although critical thinking is identified as a key 21st century learning target, and it is probably going to be embedded in new standards-based assessments, it is clearly difficult to pin-point how to develop it, much less to get good advice from experienced educators. There is even sigificant disagreement about whether or not critical thinking can and should be addressed before the middle level years (clearly, the parent-educators have no such qualms - and I agree with that). So what is the target for developing critical evaluation as a habit of mind?

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Learning phase: My learning journey today in this area leads me to identify these elements of critical thinking:

Writing - Persuasive/Arugmentative especially
Questioning - questions asked before intereacting with text/media; questions asked during and after
Debating
Connection to authentic experience (life)
Creativity
Investigation or research
Systematic truth-seeking
Fair-mindedness (consideration of the opinions and insights of others, consideration for point of view)

In the ELA classroom, these elements need to be applied to literacy tasks, specifically reading text (including visual and media text) and writing about this text. These are habits of mind, not skills.

As spelled out in Paul and Elder's The International Critical Thinking Reading & Writing Test (.pdf sample pages from The Critical Thinking Community), close reading and substantive writing require skills that enable students to take ownership of the ideas in a text. These skills are:

Clarify purposes: an author’s purpose(s) (when we read), and our own purpose(s) (when we write).
Formulate clear questions: those that an author is asking (as we read) and those we are pursuing (as we write).
Distinguish accurate and relevant information from inaccurate and irrelevant information: in texts that we read and in preparation for our own writing.
Reach logical inferences or conclusions: based on what we read, and in preparation for writing.
Identify significant and deep concepts: those of an author and those we want to guide our thinking while we write.
Distinguish justifiable from unjustifiable assumptions: that an author is using, or that we are using in our own thinking as we write.
Trace logical implications: those of an author’s thinking, and those that may follow from our written work.
Identify and think within multiple viewpoints: those that an author presents (or fails to present when relevant) and those relevant to the issues in our written work (and that we need to include).

Critical evaluation (phase) is the end product of the application of these elements. The materials available at The Critical Thinking Community site (all for sale, some freely available) will provide the district or school with clear guides to improving student critical thinking. If this is not an option, I recommend that all ELA teachers in the US should study the sample Critical Reading/Writing "text" - with anchor answers - for The Declaration of Independence (it is contained in the .pdf file). This would be a great professional development or PLC activity.

Also of great use to ELA teachers are the following tools provided on The Critical Thinking Community site:

an overview of The Elements of Thought - an expansion of the pie above,
35 Dimensions of Critical Thought,
remodeled lessons, which can be accessed through the navigation bar at the 35 Dimensions page (lessons reference the strategies) - I especially liked the remodeled Journal and Argumentative Writing lessons in the Junior High School section.

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Simplification: All of this might be to complex for some teachers, however. For these, a focus on Bloom's Taxonomy Revised (.pdf) is in order. The top two tiers apply directly to critical evaluation:

Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.

The above explanation is from Mary Forehand - Bloom's Taxonomy. Notice that producing is only one element of creating. ELA teachers should not focus overly on creative projects or products - this emphasis is a flaw in most information about the Creating element. Yes, it is the most fun part for students - the whole benefit of critical thinking is lost if the evaluative step is not embedded in the creative step.

For example, if the Essential Question for an ELA unit is the one I posed in my last post, Why are zombies compelling? students might create a zombie movie as a culminating project. Does this demonstrate critical understanding of the genre or the question? Nope. On the other hand, a video interview with the director, cast, and screenwriter of that imagined movie would be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of the question.

The key, therefore, is twofold (no surprises here, but reminders are in order):

The texts must be worthy of critical evaluation - complex, challenging, accessible on multiple levels, question-raising
The student tasks must (post-Analysis) address the Evaluating and Creating tiers of Blooms. Paul and Elder strongly support the argument that the best of these tasks are also social in nature. In other words, the culminating topic or assignment must be evaluative in nature.

Conclusion: Which brings us back to ratings. Critical shoppers ignore the overall rating and go directly to the reviews, which they read critically (Is there an agenda here? Does the review address the product? Does it provide me with real information? etc.). Or goal is for students to always do the same.

Practical applications:

Taking a page from my Zombies unit, students could critically evaluate one of the texts by Brooks, a children's book, and one of the web texts - does it get better than that?
Detailed rubrics can provide students with some language for critical evaluation. Use them often and honestly, and insist that students read the evaluation text! Unfortunately, they are not readily available.
It would be interesting to design a year-long critical evaluation focus with the thematic frame of Ratings Defended. How would this be done? Students would have to not only rate texts, responses to text (each other), models, etc. - they would be required to defend and explain each rating. I can't think of a better use of:

journaling
wiki or blog book reviews
classroom debates
essays - even the 5-paragraph essay can be reframed in this model - this idea is explored in remodeled lessons at The Critical Thinking Community . I have written about it also in this post on iSearch essays. (also called iLearn)

I think this would eventually improve the whole value of social rating. And I personally would begin as early as pre-K, where "thumbs up" is still a valid rating system.

Resources to read and intrigue you:

Critical Thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? (Daniel Willingham) (.pdf download)
Try this new widget - it is supposed to provide a critical thinking question every day (as well as to model the best forms of questioning):

Zombies + Literacy

2012-01-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

Essential Questions:

Why are zombies compelling?
Can ELA teachers afford to ignore a national trend?

Zombies Vs. Literacy? Yes, the app exists - an early reading iPhone app for kids as young as 1 year. Read about it at the App Store. I bought it - not very good, but a sound introduction to the alphabet (letters and sounds), phonic blends (and therefore rhyme), and sight words. BabyBinks is a developer that I have recommended, by the way. What do they know that I am just discovering? Zombies are the go-to thing!

Just for fun, search Amazon Children's Books for "zombies" and sort by date. There are 368 hits, about 2/3 of them dated after 2010. In the Books search, there are over 9,000 hits and 2011 does not appear until p.9.

The Rationale: Zombies have even invaded PowerPoint. To the right is a screenshot from a post by Bill Ferriter - The Tempered Radical - Five Tips for Creating Powerpoint Slides... I like his ideas, and I follow this blog. But I was temporarily stunned by the argument made for the power of the zombie image, which to me is repulsive:

"Let's be honest: Audiences in today's hyper-connected, always on world have seriously fractured attention spans, y'all."

The zombie image is a grabber - whether visually presented or stereotypically drawn in words, (bleeding, blood-thirsy, brain-eating, sexless, distorted, cannibalistic, dulled to intelligent thought) it is nightmarish but mesmerizing.

So we have preK at one end of the zombie spectrum and adults (teachers) at the other. It seems that we like to like zombies. We like the idea of confronting the living dead.

It turns out that this may be scientifically accurate. Read Christina Robertson's Why Do We Like to be 'Scared to Death' and Science Daily's Why Do People Like Horror Movies? for intelligent, if short (good for the classroom), discussions of the questions.

On the other hand, I am distressed by this summative statement from Robertson's post: "There are many ways we may choose “non-being” in our lives – by not being aware of what we think and what we are choosing, by making inauthentic decisions, by not determining our values, by following the values of others, the list is endless. Actions leading to non-being lack authenticity and responsibility." Psychologically, non-being is an attractive choice. This sounds very much like the YA worldview. One way that teachers can confront distress is to teach it - then the students help with the therapy. We do, after all, read about a lot of distressing topics: bullying, dysfunctional families, the end of life as we know it, abuse, self-abuse, gangs, desertion, war, murder - to name a few. Why not zombies?

So my question is this: Why are zombies an appealing choice? Is it:

because students can brainlessly interact with them (read about them, play with them, view them, laugh at them) while still feeling alive (afraid, powerful, superior, surprised, funny), or
because students instinctively identify with the concept of "non-being" and its correlatives: freedom to behave outside of the accepted moral code, and to do so without the hindrance of conscience or fear of death or physical pain, or
because we can not help but grapple with the questions: What does it mean to be HUMAN? or
because zombies are ugly, gawky, socially awkward, easily targeted, and - basically - victims?
because zombies reflect cultural fears, appearing during those historical periods that we feel most out of control and fearful, or
because of something else that students themselves can explain and define?

#2 - #6 are interesting answers for the classroom, raising zombie literacy into the realm of honest study. Conveniently, #1 is also true, making that study attractive to kids. So I think they deserve a unit, or at least a lit circle, of their own.

The Resources: What materials are available to the literacy teacher using zombies to frame a unit? I am assuming that this study would begin in the late middle grades, although that may be a false assumption, given the growing number of apps and visual texts with zombie content. I personally would set the bar at 8th grade, but you have to know your class.

Fiction

The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Ryan - ) - I did not read the remaining books in the series, having found this book very uneven, but many YA girls love it - interesting
The Undead: Zombie Anthology (stories, ed. by Snell) - many of the contemporary zombie novelists are represented - great for comparative study (plots, themes, symbols, characterization)
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (stories ed. Penzler) - a collection of classic stories, some of which are the backbone of the genre
Book of the Dead (stories ed. Skipp) - also a Book of the Dead 2 - recommended as the best 20th century collections
Zombie Mommy (M.T. Anderson) - Pals in Peril series - for the 3rd - 5th crowd, by the award winning author of Feed, Octavian Nothing and other great books
Not Everything Brainless is Dead (Joshua Price) - 1st book in new series, exclusively for Kindle - MS will like it best
Day by Day Armageddon (Bourne) - journal format, making a neat twin for Brooks' World War Z and I Am Legend (film)
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars (Brooks) - chillingly matter-of-fact narration with a hint of 19th century voice - an upcoming classic in the genre
The Terminal Experiment (Sawyer) - Nebula winning SF deals with electronic zombies
Boneshaker (Priest) - steampunk meets zombies
Never Slow Dance with a Zombie (Van Lowe) - chicklit meets zombies
You Are So Undead to Me (Jay) - young YA, easier - cheerleader zombie slayer
Night of the Living Dead (Andrews) - novelization of the classic film
I Am Legend (Matheson) - re-release of 1954 novel set in 1976 - also film and graphic novel - also a Kindle ebook summary and study guide
The Jumbee (Keyes) - zombie theme add suspense to this young-girl-fall-for-mysterious-guy-on-tropical-island tale
Cell (King) - nice for today's kids
Eaters of the Dead (Crichton) - classic - he does not specify zombies, but it is close - this is a great read

Children's Books - many of the newer titles use the zombie theme to "spoof" classic titles - some of these will be warm reminders of childhood - these provide great ideas for student authentic projects

Pat the Zombie, a Cruel Adult Spoof (Ximm) - don't go here as a parent or kid, but as a teacher I would show the book 7+
That's Not Your Mommy Anymore: a Zombie Tale (Mogk) - may be the hottest new title
Zachary Zombie and the Lost Boy, a Story for Demented Children (John H. Carroll) - free for Kindle and part of a series currently numbering 7 - clever!
Diary of a Zombie Kid GN (Perry) - yes, it's illustrated
Goosebumps Hall of Horrors #4 - Why I Quit Zombie School (R.L. Stine)
Zombie Tag (Moskowitz)
Zombie in Love (DiPucchio) - picture book, early reader
Ten Little Zombies - a Love Story (Rash) - you know the rhyme - zombified
Z is for Zombie (Kutner) - not your everyday alphabet book
Baby Bubba Wants a New Mommy (Crenshaw and Ballard) - read this one online
Nobody Wants to Play With Zombie Jesus (Preble) - Kindle eBook for $.99 - yes, it is offensive

Graphic Novels and Comics - The visual art in these can be compared to the impact of word descriptions in the above - find any humor here? why not?

The Walking Dead (Kirkman), Dead Rising - for the shoot-em game players - series - sold (read online or download for iPad) at ComiXology - not for MS
Shaun of the Dead (IDW Publishing) - comic book - 4 issues
Night of the Living Dead TP (Russo) - prequel to the film! new characters and plot additions - there is also a Vol. 2, which introduces some contemporary plot elements
Richard Matheson's I am Legend (graphic novel) (Niles) - from the novel and film
The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks (Brooks) - pair with World War Z - premise is that throughout history the zombies have been active
Zombies (Cole et.al) - gathering of great zombie comics - 2012 release
Remains - zombie attack comic/graphic novel - sold (read online or download for iPad) at ComiXology
They Do Not Die! (Brown) - undead at 18 in rural Alabama - girl teen protagonist
Infestation series (IDW) - zombie events affect the worlds of comic classics Ghostbusters, GI Joe, Star Trek, and others in this cross-over digital comic series sold (read online or download for iPad) at ComiXology
Many more titles can be found by searching ComiXology for "zombies"

Poetry

Little Book of Zombie Poems (Beckett) - download .pdf file - these will appeal to struggling poets
Aim for the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry (ed. Peterson)
Magnetic Poetry Kit: Zombie (Amazon) - how cool is that for the creative classroom!
Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your...Brains (Mecum) - real cheap used from Amazon - these will appeal to YA, but also are quite imagistic:

Biting into heads

is much harder than it looks.

The skull is feisty.

Drama & Scripts- not recommending these for quality, but I have skimmed them all - offered as models and for reading in class, but students can also comment on the scripts at Simply Scripts

Zombie Wedding - purchase and download e-script
Zombie Playground - .pdf download
Alone - .pdf download
Apocalyptic - .pdf download - alien zombie invasion
Axing the Zombie - .pdf download - comedy short
Dead and Gone - .pdf download - classic survive after deadly virus short
Dispatch - .pdf download - short 9-1-1 thriller
28 Days Till the Return of the Night of the Evil Dead Residents - read online

Film, TV, media - also check out wikipedia's list of Zombie films

Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968 - DVD) - classic film that kicked off my own study - my middle schooler's just barely made it through this one
Carnival of Souls - see a trailer here
The Living Skeleton
Shaun of the Dead (DVD) - Rated R - but out-cuts would be excellent
I am Legend (2007 - PG 13 - DVD) - based on I am Legend novel - zombies are more like vampires here
Omega Man (1971 - PG - 1971) - based on I am Legend novel - quasi-zombie-vampires here
The Last Man on Earth (1964 - DVD) - based on I am Legend novel - unrated
The Walking Dead (TV series on DVD)
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Ormsby, 1972 - DVD - PG) - somewhat humorous
The Ghost Breakers (1940 - DVD) - Bob Hope comedy! or Scared Stiff (1953) - Martin & Lewis remake
Michael Jackson's Thriller (YouTube)
We're Alive - the Zombie Podcast - best downloaded - episodes listed here - reviewed here
Super 8 (2011 - DVD) - kids set out to make a zombie film, but run into something else entirely

Creative non-Fiction - Informational text - Humor

So Now You're a Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead (Austin) - basically a survival guide, but also background info on zombies - humorous
Zombies (Graphic Dark Side) (Shone) - graphic format "investigation" of zombies
The Zombie Survival Guide (Brooks) - tongue in cheek and also great reading - challenge your guys get the sarcasm and humor
Zombie Types - web page guide - nice model for a similar student compilation
A History of Zombies in America - this one is straight - use it for background - readable as is
Fact or Fiction? (information literacy - main idea - compare/contrast) - these are just some suggestions:

Social Networking - Collaboration

Lost Zombies - building a collective library of images and stories - student project? - you decide
Zombie Research Society - you decide - check out the blog
Z-Composition - students can submit poetry, art, flash fiction and other fiction to this new e-zine
Zombie Nation - another place for submissions: haiku, short video, comics, more - great ideas for projects
Kill the Zombies - submit reviews and comments after playing
Simply Scripts - students can read zombie screen play scripts, comment on them, and submit their own

Simulation/Games/Apps

Zombie Life - free app in the Sims tradition (problem-solving), but to advance you need to purchase gems and gold ($.99 and up) - "fantasy violence" but also problem-solving
Zombie Lane - free app and also a web app - competitive social game-play, so this has a creative-thinking element - to advance you need to purchase cash ($.99 and up) - "fantasy violence"
Zombies vs Ninja - free app - player takes on role of ninja killing zombies, so this is a point of view exercise too - to advance you need to purchase weapons ($.99 and up) - "fantasy violence"
Zombie Wonderland and Zombie Wonderland 2 - inventive fun destroying and mopping up zombies - app
Farm Destroy: Alien Zombie Attack - free strategy 3D game app - destroy a farm full of zombie animals - no in-app purchases necessary
My Pet Zombie - free app - like NeoPets, these zombies can be dressed, designed, fed, etc. - for the elementary school crowd (no reading necessary) - lots of cool stuff to buy for them
Resident Evil - game series features zombies - also turned into an easily read novel series, by the way (Perry)
Kill the Zombies - on-line game play - many options
The Endless Zombie Rampage - social gaming - "enjoy the carnage"
Play Zombie Games - I like the very simple Bounzy game, which uses simply physics to eliminate zombies - the Angry Birds of zombies

Activities - Aside from those suggested by the games, apps, children's books, and media above, you might involve students in:

A Zombie 5K fund-raising run - Not kidding! - to support a health-related cause - read about the real runs
A comparative read of a different apocalypse novel (or film viewing) - there are tons: vampires, ice age, comet crashes, moon going off course, alien invasion, plague, unknown mysterious events causing the death of all adults, pollution, war - easy to find a read for every student
a spoof - a spoof of a spoof is always good fun

So there you are - Zombies + Literacy = Engagement. It's a no-brainer : ).

iPad 3C's - Some Planning Questions

2012-01-04T10:49:00.000-08:00

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iPads are being discovered by public and private schools, k-12. Like many things digital, however, insufficient thought has often gone into their implementation. If they are used to differentiate by offering an audio supported reading platform, they are being wasted. If they are used mainly for note-taking, they are being wasted. If they are used mainly to replace textbooks, they are being wasted. If they are used mainly to offer individualized media or voting or input experiences, they are being wasted. If they have been purchased to enhance student engagement, they are being wasted. If they have been purchased only to improve the "tech image" of a school as quickly as possible, they will be wasted.

Each of these functions can be accomplished by a less expensive mobile device, such as the smartphones that as many as 80% of middle and high schools students may already have or the Kindle Fire.

1:1 devices have been around for a long time, educationally speaking. My first laptop class has graduated college and gone on to grad school, work, and children. What was true then is true now - the following are essential to a successful program:

Planning,
Professional Development,
Professional Ownership of the Tool,
Support

Without all four of these, learning will not be significantly impacted by the distribution of devices to students. There are excellent guides for implementation of 1:1 programs online and in journal articles, and excellent consultants, including the good people at Apple. It is the Planning step that most concerns me, as it is the most neglected and the most under-consulted. Schools need to ask the right questions and not just blindly fund a classroom, school building, program, or district with iPads. What a waste, especially in a time that parents and children and teachers can not afford to waste a dollar.

The best Planning questions are founded in the 3C's of iPad programs:

Collaboration (which includes Communication in all of its aspects: text, visual, audio, multi-media)
Creation
Critical-thinking

It is these capabilities that make the iPad rise above other technologies available today for student use. Planning for the 3C's goes far beyond program financing and network/device protection and security (although these are also essential Planning points). Guaranteeing the 3C's guarantees that value is added to the school's educational program.

What are the questions that need to be answered?

Collaboration:

To what extent will collaboration be an essential use of the iPad in school?
What restrictions will be in place upon implementation?
What permissions and guidelines (parental, student) need to be created and secured before implementation?
What IT supports and technologies must be in place to make collaboration seamless within the building?
What specific learning outcomes and units will benefit from the use of the iPad for collaboration?
What apps will be used primarily for collaboration?
What apps will be used primarily for communication of content?
What will the flow of collaboration look like in representative classrooms?
What will be the process for teachers to share flipped and back-flipped content?
What policies will be in place with regard to the use of other mobile devices that can enhance iPad collaborative functionality?
What existing technologies will support a collaborative use of the iPad?
What new technologies need to be purchased to enhance use the iPad for collaboration?
By what method(s) will the school measure the value-added by the iPad to student and teacher collaboration?

Creation:

To what extent will creativity be an essential use of the iPad in school?
What policies are in place to prevent violation of copyright and intellectual property rights?
What specific learning outcomes and units will benefit from the use of the iPad for creativity?
What apps will best support the production and publication of creative content?
What existing technologies will support iPad creativity?
What new technologies need to be purchased to support iPad creativity?
By what method(s) will the school measure the value-added by the iPad to student and teacher creativity?

Critical-thinking:

To what extent will critical-thinking be an essential use of the iPad in school?
What specific learning outcomes and units will benefit from the use of the iPad to support critical-thinking?
What apps will be used primarily to develop and enhance critical-thinking opportunities?
By what method(s) will the school measure the value-added by the iPad to student and teacher critical-thinking?

Embedded in the answers to these questions is a review of curriculum and teaching methodologies. Many, if not most, districts and schools undertaking a 1:1 iPad or mobile program do NOT invest time in this review. From my point of view, this leads to loss on the investment. It is not sufficient to provide teachers and administrators with iPads well in advance of "roll-out." The questions above need to be addressed explicitly, fully, and often during this advance period.

Some resources: (I am not necessarily recommending these apps)

Learning in Hand: Classroom iPod touches and iPad's: Dos and Don'ts
Bloom's Taxonomy With Apps
bloomsapps
iPad App Reviews
Blooms Digital Taxonomy - for desktops and laptops, but many of these web-based tools now have mobile apps (for viewing or creating)

Brain-Based Literacy

2011-12-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

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Wendi Pillars writes in Education Week about "Teachers as Brain Changers." The four pillars of brain change, according to her article, are Relevance, Pattern, Pleasure, and Thinking Critically (for and by oneself). I am curious as to why Creating is not on this list, but I am not an interpreter of neuroscience.

I think about the role each of these plays in the development of literacy, and I sense that most ELA teachers today are embedding all four of them in instruction. However, I think many teachers need to be reminded that these elements need to be in balance.

On Pleasure: As I read through ELA forums, nings, tweets, blogs, and discussions, I am dismayed to find that Pleasure seems to be rising to the top of the list - narrowly defined by the same definition implied by Pillars: "I'm finding more ways to bring laughter and pleasure into my classroom and creating playful ways to explore and learn."

I don't believe into the notion that playful exploration is the brain-feeding pleasure essential to learning. Instead, I believe in the pleasure that comes from connecting directly to a text at the exact time you are ripe for connection. This is the pleasure described by author Nicholar Carr in his NY Times opinion piece "My First Page-Turner" and by Lisa Rowe Fraustino in her piece, "Here's to Pipi Longstocking." I believe in the pleasure of understanding. This is the pleasure discussed by The Tempered Radical in "Writing Student Friendly Learning Goals." I believe in the pleasure that comes after the hard work necessary to meet a writing or reading goal. This is the pleasure that I discussed in my post about motivation. I believe in the pleasure that comes from finding joy in someone else's text, a pleasure that puts those words into a permanent chink in the brain (and often, the heart). All authors have written about this pleasure, and I remind you that our students are all authors. Last, I believe in the pleasure found in "ah hah!" moments - those moments when patterns are discovered or invented or settle into place like puzzle pieces or leap fully formed into the brain - and the discovery leads to new questions and new patterns. This pleasure is found throughout science, mathematics, and engineering memoirs and histories. It is what inspired me to write my Circus post.

These are what I call Hard Pleasures. They are the Pleasures - not contrived games, "fun projects," digital machinations, celebratory events, hands-on and out-of-the-seat experiences - that connect to the learning of literacy. I am not a Scrooge. I would not and never did forswear any of the easy pleasures just listed. As a 1:1 teacher, I did these and more. There is no doubt that they make the classroom a happier place, like allowing everyone to sit with only whom he chooses, never giving HW, putting on a 10 minute performance to begin every class, and - hey - if students don't like to write they don't have to. But that is the necessary performance of education, not the stuff of it. As Seymour Papert was fond of reminding us, learning is hard fun.

Frankly, it pains me to find teachers asking other teachers for pleasurable activities at the middle and high school levels. It is not that they ask, it is that I sense they are asking without a sound goal or identified reason. If you know your students, if you know their needs and interests, and if you like them, creating easy pleasures is almost automatic. And the fact of the matter is that teachers can not create hard pleasures for their students. They can only structure opportunities for them to be found.

This is where the other three elements of brain-based literacy come into play, for they are the elements that open the door for hard pleasure to be found. Literacy instruction would go a lot further if ELA teachers went back to the drawing board and - UBD-style and Pink-style and game-theory-style - embedded Relevance, Pattern, Hard Pleasure, and Thinking Critically not into every unit, but into every class period. Take out those old lesson plans and redraw them. Put a checklist on your wall. Did you hit every brain-growth point this period?

On Relevance: Under-applied and over-applied. Related to but not the same as Differentiation. Generally over-rated. Yes, lessons need to be relevant to the students in the class. That is one way their brains listen to the message. But every brain is different. A class of 22 will have at least 5 different relevance benchmarks, often more. And the brain can be stretched through connection of new-to-known, meaning that relevance may not occur to a student until after texts and concepts have been explored.

Relevance is not the same as "teaching only what they are interested in" or "not teaching what they don't know something about already." For most k-12 students, Easy Relevance is like sitting down with a beloved relative every few weeks. When content sits at the comfort level, relevance comes easy. That is what pleasure reading in all of its forms is about. But it is Hard Relevance that interests me. This is tall mountains and bad dreams. It's tough choices and unfamiliar territory. It's the relevance necessary for the student to advance in skill and understanding. That is a hard truth that many teachers and writers avoid. Sorry - it is true. Relevance does not come easy.

For one thing, it is necessary if Patterns are to be found. Something as simple as an author study in elementary school will show students that prolific authors use patterns in language, illustration, subject matter, theme. Other patterns can be found by locating folk tale story patterns and then applying these to horror fiction, tracing patterns in fantasy or magical fiction, or tracing memoir patterns across several generations of writers. Patterns of journey-writing can be traced from the Romans to Lewis and Clark to Kerouac to today's wanderers and explorers.

This is hard work. Pulling opportunities together takes a teacher of imagination and wide reading - or one with the support of a community of wide readers. Asking for this type of input is an excellent use of an ELA network.

Last, experienced teachers know that every class is different. What worked last year will probably not work this year. A teacher can not be successful with someone else's success. Adapt, adapt, adapt.

And that covers Thinking Critically. Teachers have to believe that their literacy and their successes are also brain-based. If not the teacher, then how the students?

Selling a STEM connection: My Wish List for January

2011-12-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

source

My wish list is short. It's also simple. It has very little to do with ELA, but a lot to do with the intellectual basis of Literacy.

I want to be able to design and print wonderful small things in 3D. I got the idea from a friend of mine, Nick Stoneman, who as Head of Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Minnesota has created a creative STEM center which offers these tools. Way out of my league, I thought. And then I read this article about a small school in San Antonia where it is also happening.

Turns out that with a leg up from Santa, I could make it happen in my study, or I could gift it to one of my favorite schools. This is what I would need:

SketchUp for the MacBook - got it! Free of course, and also available for other platforms. Design 3D models - simple to complex.
SketchUp practice and training - There is a great set of Google-made YouTube videos available, or a different (previous) set at Google. I walked through the first three of each and think looking at several tutorials - several times - is going to be necessary for me. I am a 2-dimensional visualizer (which is why I was finally stumped as a math major in the pre-computer age).
ReplicatorG - also for Mac - this is an open source program that turns a SketchUp 3D creation into code that the 3D printer can read. It sounded scary to me, but when I read through the basic how-to, I realized that it was not a matter of coding, simply of purchasing a compatible 3D printer. Read on.
Thing-O-Matic 3D Kit from MakerBot - You have to love the name! But also the mission: To make cool thinking tools available cheaply (so young thinkers can access them) - which is the same mission as SketchUp and ReplicatorG.

Sounds easy! I think it will be, once I am able to construct the Thing-O-Matic from what is reported to be 2000 pieces. That is one Literacy connection. ELA teachers serious about literacy need to harp on reading, following, and writing/communicating concise, precise directions. This was true before the CCSS and is even more true now. I personally like the low-tech "draw it - describe it" pair activity, but constructing a MakeBot 3D printer in your classroom would certainly be an eye-opener!

The second Literacy connection comes at either end of the project. I need an idea. I need to articulate that idea. I need to research that idea. I need to justify the expenditure of time and money on that idea. And, when my renderings are done - I need to sell my product. These are authentic Literacy tasks. Not necessarily ELA tasks, but certainly connected. Consider the following:

Katniss needs to sell her ideas to her fellow Mockingjay rebel. Same is true of just about every literary hero, except for those like Shane, Beawolf, and Lisbeth Salander, who keep their ideas close to the chest.
A trial (legal or personal) in fiction is a sales job: Mockingbird, Inherit the Wind, Little Bee, The Crucible, Don Quixote, Lord of the Rings - not to mention great persuasive speeches
Directions are puzzles - they figure into great and very good literature too: I am the Messenger, Alice, Wizard of Oz, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, Whirligig, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, Journals of Lewis and Clark - and keep on going

Kids love these challenges. Why make a board game when you can make a game piece?

Classroom fantasy:

chess set with characters in novels as pieces (sold to benefit school community)
board game with characters and objects in texts as pieces (sold to benefit school community)
3D plot diagrams or timelines, showing interweaving narrations (student designs) - given to library
models for school sculptures - contest
3D grammar - sentence patterns and construction
3D Wordle-like sculptures of a text

It seems to me that every classroom should have a Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer. Or at least the ability to imagine one.

Review - The Artifacts : an iPad storybook app

2011-12-16T07:03:00.000-08:00

Slap Happy Larry has released The Artifacts, a interactive story book app ($1.99) designed with iPad toting middle schoolers in mind. Or it is an interactive children's book for iPad grabbing curious kids as young as 3 or 4. It works well both ways.

I celebrate this effort from Lynley Stace (illustration and story) and Dan Hare (code) for many reasons. First, the concept of a book written entirely for the iPad environment is exciting. In this particular case, animations are of course clever and generally hidden - meant to be discovered by the reader - but most iPad children's books contain this feature. What is new is the depth and number of animations hidden on a single page. In some ways, this book reminds me of visual logo projects I directed a decade ago. The better students used every possible pixel to hide a triggered effect, at times having event trigger event, at times having a click or random timing do the same, and included layer upon layer of events. All senses are essential to the story of this boy who has only his own imagination and mind for company. He uses both differently on every page. This switching up is a large part of the fun of The Artifacts. Better yet, it makes for the perfect classroom text: it self-teaches.

Second, there is learning to be done here. On pages 9 (my new room) and 18 (brushing my choppers), tapping produces an endless stream of wonderful words that must be read. Patterns can be discerned by the patient readers. Page 15 (inside my head) produces a fireworks of dates and random facts that are the stuff of middle school.

Third, there is something comfortably and familiarly Harry Potterish about The Artifacts. Even the music seems to echo the opening theme of the Potter movies. The texts would be great twins. Comparing the characters, the plots, and the visual effects would be a terrific and engaging exercise for middle school. It is about time for Harry to surface again in the classroom library. There are allusions also to The Little Prince, to fairy tales, to great sea tales, and to the stuff of horror and magic. There is much here for a wide-ranging reader to muse about.

Last, a small point. The "credits" that end this little text contain a long list of sound clips from open sources. That is a model for student creators.

Which is just right, as The Artifacts is a celebration of the power of individual thought and imagination. It is at the top of Bloom's triangle. I highly recommend it for middle school iPads.

Read about The Artifacts

Appmodo announcement
iHeartThisApp promotion

iPad - Pages - Google Docs - WebDAV

2011-12-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

iPad upload screen

WebDAV is the key to sharing Pages documents from iPad (or other mobile device) to a Google Docs account.

TechLearning has posted this perfect little video tutorial. I followed the directions and it worked like a charm. The only slight correction I have is that my iPad 2 Pages also uses the wrench icon - not the icon indicated in the tutorial. Pages remembered the awkward URL, even after it was fully shut down, so I will not have to enter it again unless I decide to sign out of the Google Docs account I selected.

Students will now be able to upload their work for collaboration, peer or teacher editing (in the Word format native to Google Docs), for back-up, or for submission of a final document in the .pdf or Pages formats.

What is WebDav anyway? When you initiate the upload process, you will see a link to Learn more about WebDAV. Following the link to an Apple Support page, you can read about it. In a nutshell, WebDAV is the protocol used by Google and other file sharing servers. It is highly likely that 1:1 Apple schools already have a WebDAV server. In this case, it would make more sense (to me) to use that server for file submission and sharing than to use a Google Docs account. In-house is always preferable.

Does it go the other way - can you download from Google Docs or other WebDAV server to your iPad or iPhone? Yes. The Apple support file above provides directions. Look at the picture below - a screen shot from within Pages. That shows you how. You will need that server address again, as you need to log into the server where your files are shown. Pretty straightforward.

Download interface - Pages home screen

The Circus: Reading Across Time - The Circus

2011-12-11T15:11:00.001-08:00

CC Search - image source

In 10th grade I refused to read the last 3/4 of Gone With the Wind. Had this novel not been followed immediately by Moby Dick, I would have foresworn much of American Literature entirely. Luckily, I moved on to a course called Humanities, which trapped me forever in the connections between literature, the arts, and history (it was taught by a team of three brilliant teachers - a unique experience in 1964).

Come round to ELA under the new Common Core. One way to read the standards is that texts for units of study need to be intertwined by theme but diverse by media. Makes sense, if the goal is to develop critical evaluation and comparison skills.

I am talking to HS teachers here, but also keeping in mind the two 8th grade girl-readers who sparked my interest in this topic. The Topic is The Circus, specifically the American circus.

I grew up in the Midwest, but did not see a circus until we moved to NJ. I did not see a sideshow until "Alive, alive, alive" beckoned me at the Topsham Fair (Topsham, Maine) 30 years later. Nonetheless, I purchased circus posters to plaster my walls in college. The Big Apple Circus and the Cirque du Soleil are favorite memories. For years I could sing every song from Carousel and Carnival. There is definitely something about the circus.

That something was piqued by a student asking me to read a new novel called The Night Circus. I reviewed it quickly, then told her that I would read with her if she would read Bradbury. That was the beginning.

Exploring interconnected texts in order to pique my two young readers, I have discovered a unit. It is on the strange side. Definitely sexy, horrific, grotesque, hormonal, brutal, and confusing. Just right, I judge, for today's kids. Perfect to put under the Humanities flag and use to address the CCSS.

Essential Questions

Historical: How does the development of the circus as entertainment mirror changes in a culture? (focus on the American circus timeline)
Literature & Media: How does the circus serve as metaphor(s) for the human condition? How does this metaphor play out in different media?
Personal: What is the allure of the circus? What serves as the circus in your life? How do you interact with it?

Core Fiction

The Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney (1935)

Review - SF Site (2002)
Review - Strange Horizons (2003)
Review - SFF World (2011)

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury (1962) - also available as a graphic novel

Review - Book Reporter (2011)
Review - Strange Horizons (2006)
Review - SF Site (1998)

Le Cirque de Magie - Marsha A. Moore (2011) - short story - Amazon $.99 download for Kindle

mini-review - POD People
mini-reviews - Amazon

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2011) -

Review - New York Times
Review - The Guardian
Review - Paste Magazine - with comparisons to Harry Potter

Core children's fiction:

Circus Ship - Chris Van Dusen - picture book (2009)
If I Ran the Circus - Dr. Seuss - picture book (1956)
Lowly Worm Joins the Circus - Richard Scarry (1998)
Mr. Galliano's Circus (1938) OR The Circus of Adventure (1952) - Enid Blyton
Cirque du Freak: a living nightmare (#1 in series) - Darren Shan

Core informational text:

"Step Right Up" - History Magazine
"Night at the Circus" - Cirque du Soleil - The New Yorker
"Circus Stories" - Circus Unlimited - interviews, etc. with performers
Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo: Sideshow Freaks, Jabbers and Blade Box Queens - A.W. Stencell (2010)
The Circus Book - Jando and Daniel (2010)

Core films and media: (all but the first two available from Amazon.com)

American Memory - The First Circus (1921) - you want Part 2, MPEG format - online
Circus Dreams - purchase at site - true story of teen circus
The Greatest Show on Earth - DVD (1956)
Carnival - Original cast recording - CD (1961)
The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao - DVD (1963)
Circus of Fear - DVD (1967)
Dr Who - Carnival of Monsters - DVD of TV series (1975)
The Funhouse - DVD (1981 - horror)
Something Wicked This Way Comes - DVD (1983)
Carnivale - the complete first season - DVD (2003) - from TV series
Cirque du Freak: the vampire's assistant - DVD (2009)

Core visuals:

Library of Congress - Prints and Photographs Online (search "circus posters")
American Circus Posters - Dover - from Amazon

Core poetry:

ee cummings
Damn everything but the circus!
. . . damn everything that is grim, dull,
motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
damn everything that won't get into the
circle, that won't enjoy, that won't throw
its heart into the tension, surprise, fear
and delight of the circus, the round
world, the full existence . . .
http://www.everything2.com/title/Damn+everything+but+the+circus%2521

ee cummings
Buffalo Bill's
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/cummings.bill.html

Vine McCasland

Circus
http://www.bartleby.com/273/89.html

Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel
The Merry-Go-Round

http://www.bartleby.com/246/476.html

Research ideas:

Circus Maximus and Roman circus (amphitheaters)
Wild West Shows
Great American circuses and circus acts
Treatment of sideshow and circus actors (human and animal)
Clowns - fearful or funny?
Depression-era circus in America (mid-West)
Horror as a post a WWII genre
Carousel and Carnival - circus in the musical theater
Concept: media circus, merry-go-round

Related short stories:

Bradbury: "Hail and Farewell" and "The Playground" (Kindle download)

Student projects: There are so many options, in all media formats, creative and analytical, that I would let the students come up with something independently. Responses will probably be influenced by personal discoveries of circus metaphor (longing, love, fear, death, entrapment, control, evil, laughter, etc.) Essays addressing the essential questions, of course, would be appropriate.

Blogsy + Posterous = LJ Cog

2011-12-11T07:52:00.001-08:00

CC Safe Search source

LJ Cog is my new public Posterous space. I will be using my iPad to post short thoughts, often on web text and tweets. The first post is about the app called Blogsy as a tool for classroom use.

This might be one solution to submitting files in an iPad classroom. Posterous on its own as an app is probably not a great idea for the elementary and middle school classroom, as most spaces are public. On the other hand, students should have the app in order to read the private spaces created by classmates - and hopefully by the teacher. It is relatively easy to post from the iPad using Posterous alone - images are easily uploaded

This is the typical 1:1 conundrum, isn't it? A good IT person in-house is becoming more and more necessary to guarantee that cost-saving mobile tools are used effectively.

Flipping, Back-Flipping, and the Practically Flipped Classroom

2011-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

The flipped classroom is an interesting concept, if not a new idea. It is getting a lot of press this year. YouTube, ASCD, Mozilla, Facebook are jumping on the bandwagon, not to mention a large number of public school principals and independent edtech bloggers. What is the draw?

The Plot Diagram

The Flipped Lesson
A Few Practical Concerns
Flipping is a State of Mind
Is Reading a Flipped Activity?
My How-To's for ELA
If You Try It
The Back-Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Lesson

uses technology
use Web 2.0 tools
takes the teacher off of the stage in the classroom
makes it possible for scheduled class time to be used for discussion, writing, reading, practice, exploration and extension - encouraging collaboration and deeper thinking
allows the student to independently plug away at understanding new content and concepts, to get necessary repetition, even to do independent research into concepts and content
replaces expensive textbooks
makes use of free social networking channels and independently posted lessons for education
encourages students to question content and construct their own understanding independently from the teacher - and this can be an out-of-school collaboration

Who can find fault in that picture? Students win, teachers win, social networking providers win (if they are not winning today, they will be tomorrow...)

Nonetheless, there are A Few Practical Concerns for the classroom.

science lesson

Not all students have outside-of-school access to the technology needed to access flipped content, unless that content is also provided on paper or in a text.
Not all parents give students permission to access social networking sites or to post Comments (or other material) online.
Not all schools unblock social networking sites, where flipped content is often posted, or support open in-school solutions; at-home or out-of-school is often the only alternative for viewing and sometimes also for creating (e.g. YouTube and even email).
13 is a legally problematic age for creating and using online accounts.
Not all teachers have the time, skill, or inclination to develop flipped content. Requiring that this method be used can lead to "canned" lessons, dictated curricula, misinstruction, mismatches between HW and classwork, and materials that, in fact, turn kids away from concepts and content. Here, for example, is a terrible flipped lesson on The Plot Diagram. It is used by YouTube as one of the 10 Ways to Use YouTube in the Classroom. The content is minimal, even partially incorrect. The delivery is sloppy. It took 1:30 to make. There are better videos of the same content (including this video that points to an online tool that is way better than paper and pencil), but YouTube is holding this one up as a standard. A big problem with flipped is that it is often a quick fix, a first-hit solution. If YouTube bought into this aspect of digital content, teachers will too (alas).
Not all teachers have the skills or desire to change what is happening in the classroom. Flipping is a real PD challenge. I am concerned that flipped content will be "dumbed down" and will stay there if the teacher is not well equipped to guide or manage a laboratory of learning. It seems, from a current study, that we may already be dumbing down in public schools, without flipping anything. We don't need to add on another layer of less.
Much flipped content will not be up to new, higher, literacy standards. Check out this example of a science lesson, also promoted by YouTube. The title of the lesson is grammatically incorrect (Effect, not Affect) and the oral presentation is rife with errors in spoken English. These errors can be glossed over when the same lesson is delivered in class. However, the likelihood of more than one class set of students viewing this video, or of a given student viewing it multiple times, is huge. How many students will learn that Affect is a noun meaning "outcome"? There are much better examples of this content available on YouTube - why pick this one? This is again the first-hit phenomenon. It strikes teachers as well as students.
Not all courses or classes will benefit from flipped instruction. This is true, for the most part, of ELA classes past the grade of 7 (and often before this), which are already largely discussion-based. It is also true of higher-level high school classes in history, philosophy, and ethics. TED speeches and RSA Videos aside, there is not a lot of highly cognitive, complex text on the web that can be understood independently. Teachers who want to record a year full of lectures can build a collection for the next year - but how many are doing this? See my comments on the Back-Flipped Classroom below.
Flipped content is asynchronous - questions can not be answered and reflections can not be discussed as the student is accessing the content (unless this is digitally enabled by a teacher who is at home...).
Students who "do not do HW" lose out doubly - they miss the digital content, and they miss the benefits of discussion/activities the next day. Accommodating these students takes even more time and effort on the part of the teacher.
Passive content delivery is still that - passive content delivery. Making it digital does not change the paradigm of delivery. Is this interactive story book interactive? Imagine a 7th grader listening to a short story read by his teacher. Just because content is delivered digitally does not mean that it is either effective or engaging.
Flipped content is not differentiated! Repeatedly reading/listening to text that a student can not read in the first place is a waste of student time. Creating multiple versions of a digital lesson is double-time work for the teacher. Creating only a simplified delivery of content does not meet the needs of the most able and informed students. It's a hard and interesting decision for an ELA teacher.
Copyright infringement is rife. Again look at the "interactive story book" (also featured by YouTube). Fair Use? If you use an image and post to the public web, it must be cited!

David Truss adds other insights to the discussion. Please read his post.

The reality is that principals all over the country are telling teachers to create flipped lessons without understanding that digital content/concept delivery is just one aspect of a truly flipped experience. Read here Jackie Gerstein's explanation of all aspects of the transformation afforded by this model. Although Gerstein leaves out the Why element, a strong case for which is made by Truss, she does make it clear that asynchronous access to content (The What) is desirable and perhaps essential to learning.

Flipping is a State of Mind

Before jumping into digital thinking, teachers need to take stock of how many non-digital materials are already available for flipping into digital HW. Flipping is, in fact, great practice in creating Essential Question and Universal Design HW activities. If it is important - flip it. Teachers who have and use a good text are already paper-flipping. By taking drill and extension off of the HW plate and adding a reflective dessert, such as writing about content or creating original examples, an old-fashioned assignment can be reborn.

But wait - that is not what flipping is about! Students should be engaged and entertained by the flipped content - they should not have to DO anything until the next day, when the teacher leads them through other engaging activities...

Is Reading a Flipped Activity?

No, sorry. Reading outside of class is important and essential, but that is not the concept here. Add sound and image to the act of reading, and you are beginning to FLIP the student's attention. Think: Reading v. Teaching HOW to Read. If the ELA teacher were to create a vodcast of poem annotation or passage explication - that would be flipping. Then the students could do the practice with analysis in the classroom and the teacher would guide the practice. Actually, I get that - it's powerful.

My How-to's

I tried it out, exploring several tools and methods.

I made a demo flipped poetry lesson on my iPad using an app called ShowMe. It took me about 30 minutes to focus on ShowMe as the best app, to practice, to design the page layout (including screen shots taken on my laptop and shared with the iPad via DropBox), and do the first short recording. I shared it via a private ShowMe webspace and was emailed a unique URL. Pretty cool. I am not sharing it here because I made a spelling mistake, and if you listened the audio, you might notice an information error. That would not be an OK flipped lesson, even though I might make the same, or more egregious, errors in a "live" classroom delivery of the same content.
I used Keynote on my laptop to create a flipped lesson call Reading Infographics (view it in a previous post). This took longer to create, but I envision it as a full week's study and assigned viewing. Keynote exports directly to YouTube, so I uploading to a shared space was instant. I could also have exported to QT and shared that on the school's wiki server or on my school webpage. One huge advantage to YouTube is the Annotate feature, which will allow interested students to respond directly to the questions and challenges embedded in the video.

A positive result of this process is this: I took the time to think deeply about both the content being delivered and about the purpose of a mini-lesson. I re-informed myself about small details. I sought out some expert commentary on the poem. I thought like a student. As a result, I became a better teacher of Poetry 101: Introduction to Form and a better reader of Infographics.

I think this method will work in ELA for text analysis skills lessons, reading skills lessons, vocabulary skills lessons, grammar/usage lessons - you get the point. There is certainly a place for Flipping in the ELA classroom, k-12 - anywhere there is an essential question to be asked.

Other interesting options for creation and publication are Prezi (with voice-overs), the iPad apps ScreenChomp and ReplayNote, vodcasts (from a phone) using a tool like Postereous or DropVox, mobile NoteShare (students would need this to view notebooks shared by a teacher and uploaded to a NoteShare server - a wonderful solution for education), and/or an ed.Voicethread thread. I have used every one of them for flipped instruction and back-flipping (see below). The Tempered Radical offers a set of instructions for recording yourself directly into YouTube, but I find these video lectures to be "passive" in nature.

You will need:

an essential question to be answered by the lesson (or unit of lessons)
a chunked (step-by-step) script - 3 minutes is an optimal lesson. Longer than that and you lose your students and create files that take too long to save and reload. My long Infographics video is clearly divided into many content - practice - challenge segments that are meant to be assigned separately, and YouTube provides a quickload solution (the upload from Keynote is also very fast, as the file is compressed).
illustrations and images - I found that pre-saving many more than I needed was a good idea. Screenshots are useful images, especially if you are using ShowMe.
an account for uploading - YouTube, YouTube Teacher's Channel, a wiki, a blog, etc. You can even use DropBox for distribution directly to student laptops or mobile devices. ShowMe has its own free cloud storage.
to experiment with tools available to you. Tools must:

save to webspace or server for viewing by students,
record good quality audio of your voice (if you want to use voice - I decided not to in the Keynote because it is a video meant to be interrupted),
allow for some variety in image, color, font, design - perferably all four.

to practice with the tools and app - it costs nothing for you to create a "throw-away" project, especially if you are only sharing through a private space (which I recommend)
to understand the limitations of your tool of choice. ShowMe, for example, is slow to erase a screen and insert a new image. So maybe this transition should happen only one time. Keynote transitions, when sent to video, are all set to one transition and one slide delay - so animations and builds will not work smoothly.
to listen for feedback from your students and adjust your presentation accordingly.

Class time:

This would be the traditional continuation of the lesson, which would follow concept direct instruction in a classroom: more practice, questions answered, a quick assessment. Students who have completed the flipped part of the lesson on their own should be ready for the next step upon entering the classroom. Theoretically, it is possible to move almost twice as quickly through material as you would using a traditional teaching methods.

So it is possible to view a Flipped Unit as a sort of instructional notebook for students - a text without practice. With this image in mind, teachers can include both print and digital materials in their thinking about flipping. I personally would have students DO something with or in response to the content - something short. If you use reflection journals - paper or digital - that is the place to make a connection to content and a connection to concept.

The Back-Flipped Classroom

Practically speaking, the model will not work perfectly a large percent of the time at the middle and high school levels. Students will not do the flipped HW, students will be absent, the lesson will be too hard or too large or poorly presented for some or all students. Parents and tutors might want access too, but not be quite on board. So let's not lose sight of the value of back-flipping classroom instruction and practice. Most good tech-using teachers have been doing this for several years.

Back-flipping simply means using any and all means available to capture and digitally or otherwise share progress made during a class period. Class wikis and blogs, teacher webpages, bulletin boards, Smartboard captures, smartphone photographs of representative student work, QR codes posted to teacher web pages or emailed to students, test masters and answer keys: These all become the next step for any flipped lesson. Student learning and insights so archived become the building blocks of a unit. If the flipped lesson is the instructional notebook, classroom practice and back-flipping create the student learning notebooks.

iPad/iPhone solution: The $.99 app JotNot will take a picture ("scan") of any document, board, etc. and send it directly to either Dropbox or Evernote, with tagging. This is a fabulous way to back-flip your lessons! Saves a few steps too.

Why digital back-flipping? Why not just require notebooks? Digital levels the playing field. I believe in that - enough said. Taken together, flipped lesson materials, class time well spent, and back-flipped archives create a learning experience that is about as complete as a teacher can make it.

In Sum

The Flipped Classroom is a powerful concept - but a deceptive one. It is not easily accomplished. It can potentially embed significant errors and misperceptions in the minds of students. It has to be more perfect than a "live teacher." And it can not stand alone.

So educators, please, slow down. Take time to think through the ramifications of mandating flipped lessons and classrooms. A bad flip is worse than no flip at all.

QR Codes - Digital Engagement

2011-12-07T05:58:00.001-08:00

Miller's post

Andrew Miller has written in Edutopia "Twelve Ideas for Teaching with QR Codes." There is a QR code for his article's URL to the left.

You should have been noticing these little digital squares showing up all over the place. I find them on posters, embedded in flyers, in blogs, on cereal boxes... Not yet in books, but that is coming.

Miller provides a gentle overview for new users. Additional information is provided in this article by Greg Borodaty. Here it is in a schematic from the creators of one QR reader/generator, Kaywa.com:


reader/Kaywa.com

My favorite app for QR codes is QuickMark. It reads barcodes and QR codes. It also creates them from:

Contacts
Location (name, address, phone, website URL) - nice because it contains GPS information so that the creator of that QR code can be located on Google Maps
URL - a quicker alternative to using QuickMark for this on a laptop is to copy the URL, open goo.gl (Google URL Shortner) and paste the URL - it also generates and saves QR code for the URL (in Details)
SMS message (address and text) - scanner of code can send the message - great for "crowd sourcing"
email message (address and text)
any text (pasted or entered, short or long)
clipboard text (short text, pastes contents of clipboard automatically - this can then be edited)

Your codes are saved and can be tagged, searched, and shared. They are saved to the Photos app.

NOW go back and re-read Miller's article. Teachers interested in expanding literacy into real-world collaboration and learning, teachers interested in leading students to new resources quickly by using the tools students use most, should explore this technology.

Annotation of "Flowers" done on iPad

Let me add to Miller's ideas:

Take a "creative walk" around your community with mobile devices. Take Pics and attach coded location information to them. Use the information in a QR coded guidebook that links to reviews, site/artifact information, etc. I would have used this for my Native Plants guidebook, had it been around.
Send students to "fast fiction" and visual fiction URL's with QR codes. One poster on the wall saves tons of paper! Then challenge them to apply analysis tools by sending illustrative passages - with commentary - back to you. To the right is an assignment I gave myself: Read Alice Walker's "The Flowers" and annotate one short passage for symbolism. This is a great activity because there is a text size limit. How-to:

I copied a selection of text from the story in Safari
opened QuickMark
clicked Create
clicked Clipboard (text automatically pasted)
used the Delete key to isolate symbolic images
used the keyboard to add annotations
clicked Done
emailed myself the QR code
I also synced QuickMark to my Dropbox (in the Scan - Export Data settings). The code automatically appeared in my laptop Dropbox (in a QuickMark folder).
An option when the code is read by QuickMark is to Copy it -
I pasted the text into Notes so that I could comment on it and return it to myself with comments...
I could have created a SMS message and sent the code to an entire class or just a cooperative group

Send students around the campus for a "writing workshop" - use QR coded instructions for guiding them (elementary and lower middle especially) - this can be a scavenger hunt, or an information hunt (e.g. resources, teachers, etc.)
Use QR codes to create a group story - let the students figure it out
Energize your school's ELA with "stealth quotes" posted in QR on posters around the school - famous quotes would be the best - have students pick up on the idea!
QR code a list of URL's pointing to apps that you want students to download. Most creators of education apps have how-to's posted on the web. Ideas would include flash cards,

Yes, it means smartphones used in school. But that is going to happen anyways. Might as well move students toward using them smartly.

Other QR readers are reviewed here.

Pleasure Reading

2011-12-06T05:58:00.001-08:00

Just discovered this list of suggested Pleasure Reading for High School Guys and Girls (separate lists), put together by Nancie Atwell. It speaks to the need for up-challenging readers. How many of these titles appear in HS classrooms? It stands as an antidote dumbing down for the sake of pleasing readers. A lot of what I read is not totally pleasurable. I have to work hard at it (Iron Council and Ray Bradbury, The Life of Fiction) or I cringe at the content (The Road, The Bite of the Mango, Little Bee) or I really am not interested but am reading with my husband (Old Masters). When the reading is done, however, I feel the pleasure of completing something hard. That's an incentive, which is more what we should be offering our students than pleasure.

There are some books on the list I would NOT give to most high school students, and many that I would add (mysteries and SF, global titles, Frank Norris and other American masters, for example), but this is a place to start.

Do you wonder why "after 8th grade-and without booktalks and classroom libraries-it can be hard to find books for pleasure reading." What about HS and public libraries? Teachers are becoming too insular. Student readers are too babied. Reading books used to be about the pleasure of sharing a good read - and that is part of the Atwell message. So let's get back to the idea of sharing freely, which means supporting the public and free collections of good reads that are in our schools and communities. The goal of developing reading as a life-pleasure should be also about learning how to find one's own books.

Dan Pink for ELA: What Drives Kids?

2011-12-02T08:26:00.001-08:00

Daniel Pink has a theory of motivation, or DRIVE. He outlined it in a TED talk and has written the book. Now his idea has been animated in a wonderful RSA Animate video.

Here are the building blocks of DRIVE:

autonomy - directing one's own life
mastery - getting better and better at what we do
purpose - do what we do is in the service of something larger than ourselves

Here is clincher: When "highly cognitive" tasks are involved (thinking/creating/problem-solving), people who succeed are not motivated by tangible rewards. Motivation is intrinsic - driven from within. When tasks are rote, the "carrot and stick" rules of motivation work well: the greater the reward, the better the progress.

To me, this sounds a great deal like what education IS and what it SHOULD BE MORE. But first of all, teachers need to accept the fact that there is a dual task/skill set at all levels k-12: Rote and highly cognitive. Both are necessary for learning, both have a place in the learning experience - but they need to be approached differently.

Rote tasks in ELA are fewer than in other subjects - or should be. They comprise the first three levels of Bloom's taxonomy (remember, understand, apply). Examples:

phonics - letter sounds, combinations, recognition
sight words and tier 1 words for understanding sentences - colors, action verbs, pronouns, etc.
spelling rules (and the major exceptions)
definitions of tier 3 ELA words - parts of speech, literary terms, plot diagram elements, poem study terminology
(for some teachers) - definitions of the tier 2 words found in texts read
words used in text-identification and analysis (headings, introduction, conclusion, character, POV, main idea, etc.)
rote tasks - labeling of rhyme scheme, counting of syllables, using correct capitalization and end punctuation in sentences, indenting/double spacing, aligning to margins
rote grammar - NOT making the top 10 grammar errors (it's/its, your/you're, their/there/they're, etc.)
matching, cloze, fill-in exercises, categorizing, labeling, etc.
write a sentence containing two adjectives and a prepositional phrase.
use each of these vocabulary words correctly in a paragraph
trace the plot steps leading to...

If Pink is correct, the rote learning of this material should be rewarded and this reward will serve as an incentive. Period. If it is not done correctly, it is not rewarded. Students will fail to earn the reward until they do the task correctly. That is the "bad side" of incentive-based learning. But it works.

It works IF and WHEN students are allowed:

autonomy - In practical terms, this means choice of how task/skill/rote practice is going to happen - when, where, and how. Not all students learn from writing out letters. Not all students learn when sound or motion or image is connected to a word. Some students learn best in an entirely oral or entirely visual environment. Others learn best in a multi-sensory environment. Some learn best in a comfortable class, others learn best on the bus, or at the kitchen table. Some learn best in a digital environment. For others, this is both frustrating and fearful. From an early age, students need choice of when, where, and how to do rote drill. Give them iPads, iTouches, workbooks, flashcards, computer games, websites, volunteers, partners, parents, crayons, headsets, cameras. Give them what they need. And give them the freedom to explore using it.
mastery rewards - Mastery can not be communicated without goal-based assessment and it can not accomplished without small-steps. From an early age, children should be given stepped tasks for rote learning and stepped-up rewards for mastery. This is what providing incentives means. Not everyone will earn all 5 stickers in the first week of school. Not all spelling tests will earn 100%. Not every 4-year old easily get through all of the levels in Fish School. Children will fail - all children will fail at some point, probably repeatedly. This is not a popular stance in education today. But think of it this way: Students are learning, through extrinsic rewards, the habits of autonomy that they will need post-schooling. I believe in this absolutely. Parents used to provide this schooling in "habits for success" - schools now must take on the task.
purpose transparency - I have never found it difficult to tell a student that the purpose of rote ELA tasks like those above is to read, write and speak smarter. I know that this too has fallen out of fashion. But, given the pressures in this country to raise reading and writing performance (at local, state, national and global measures), we can not longer pretend that rote ELA tasks don't matter. Spelling, grammar, usage, vocabulary, writing mechanics, knowledge of core literary terms (etc.) do matter. Adults are judged by them in the real world. Skills and methods used repeatedly to demonstrate rote learning become automatic skills and methods used to process new information. That is purpose enough for me - and for most kids. Most kids want to be on top of new information - to master it quickly. I would suggest that one greater purpose for students is a passing school or a school that sits at the top of the state report card. Schools that go there, get there. Another greater purpose is success at the next level of tasks, all of which are needed for eventual success in the adult world.

Put rote tasks into this framework and students will have the incentive to achieve mastery. Not only that, but they will enjoy it! I have to say that a digital environment makes it easier to provide autonomy and mastery, but PD (pre-digital) ELA teachers did a fine job. They just had to work a little harder at the details.

Highly cognitive tasks in ELA are everything else - or should be. They comprise the remaining levels of Bloom's (analyze, evaluate, create) and should be the majority of the curricular locus. ELA teachers who make cognitive tasks into rote tasks don't get it (or are unsure of the material or just plain lazy). When students are cognitively challenged, there is no one right answer or argument. Examples:

Compare/contrast the book, movie, and graphic novel versions of...
Explain why prepositions are essential to the English sentence.
Character study - analyze or trace the growth of X... What decisions did the author make in creating this character?
Critique the author's portrayal of the childhood experience
Create a personal response to the theme of a poem/story/novel
Analyze the use of repetition, figurative language and parallelism in the passage

If Pink is correct, the more highly cognitive the challenge to demonstrate understanding and learning, the greater will be the drive to do well. Rewards are not the incentive here.

This works IF and WHEN students are allowed:

autonomy of task - This means choice of task, choice of text or passage, choice of method (at times a paragraph or essay is not best response to a challenge). Teachers should be looking at the method, reasoning, and argument behind the solution, not just the final product.
mastery of process - Whether the process is close textual analysis, idea-finding and idea-critique, persuasive analysis, or use of oral, visual, paper or digital tools and methods, students need to feel that they learn mastery through clearly explained and articulated steps. This means, for the teacher, careful planning not by unit, but by year. Students will demonstrate incentive when the final "product" contains elements that have been mastered slowly throughout the year. For some students, this will be mind-bending. For others, it will seem parochial. The trick for the teacher is to support, scaffold, and honestly evaluate each student's efforts individually. This means rubrics focused on content, skills, and quality. This means standards-based cognitive challenges. The CCSS are going to be helpful here.
purpose - It's not easy in ELA-land to create "authentic" outcomes without seeming terribly fake. One letter to an author, one to the principal, maybe a proposal to a community group... but this does not work for, say, an analysis of Frederick Douglass, Winston Churchill, or even a dystopian novel. For these standards-based outcomes, purpose needs to feel more like authentic audience. Students who complete a highly cognitive task are doing something original - albeit small. Purpose comes in the sharing. Publish their work!

Of course, we are talking about kids, not workplace adults. None of this will work at all if all Hell is breaking lose at home or on the social scene. The best teachers have a feel for that. There are times when the best student can not handle highly cognitive and needs instead a very rote path. Like all things education, there is no one plan, no one measure, and no one driver.

Nonetheless, it is interesting to think of there being a serious rationale behind much of what I developed on my own...

Beyond the Hunger Games

2011-12-01T11:12:00.001-08:00

Enough already! The Hunger Games may be the most-included fiction book in classrooms grades 8-12 this year. On the EC ning, teachers continue to call for lesson plans, engaging activities, and rationales for teaching THG (as it has come to be known). The lexile of this novel is 810. That puts its complexity in the 4-5 grade range, not even at the top of the "stretch" band for students in those grades. (If you don't believe me, refer to lexile.com's Text Complexity Grade Bands, redrawn to reflect the new Common Core.)

I am losing faith in my ELA colleagues across this country. In the past, I have championed dystopian literature, graphic novels, iJournalism in graphic form, and even children's books for use at the MS and HS level. But I stop short of making a light read the focus of a serious, standards-based literature curriculum.

That the Hunger Games appeals to student readers is not arguable. But why does it appeal to so many ELA teachers?

I'm afraid that the answer is, "It's easy." Easy to read and easy to teach, given the plethora of teacher-created unit resources being shared (sometimes freely, sometimes not) online. Schmoop has a guide. The movie has been made. Hunger Pains, the graphic novel parody, has been written. An authorized graphic novel is probably in the works. There are book-related recipes floating around. There are classroom simulation activities available. The novel has become the center of thematic units ranging from authoritarian societies to family. Family?? Like a good Dickens, THG seems to be suitable for any MS or HS thematic unit.

I know this book. I know its sequels. It is NOT literature. It is not Dickens. A great story, yes, but the center of a serious ELA unit, no. Teachers who believe that there is a deep ethical or moral dilemma played out in the novel are kidding themselves. Nothing is played out in the novel. Everything just happens, in a video game-respond-don't-think-way. The adult bad guys set up, pursue, harass, and are ultimately defeated by the teen protagonist, who works with no or little adult support - at best with a poorly drawn mentor. Students are deeply engaged in a linear plot related in the 1st person by an insipid and rather shallowly drawn narrator.

Just happens is the essence of the average YA dystopian experience. I understand this appeal. I understand that today's students do not, for the most part, want to stretch themselves with a text. I understand that most kids do not want to exercise that "go back and reread" skill required by denser and more complex text. If you are wondering about why, read through the discussion at this GoodReads forum: Dystopias and Social Critiques.

I do NOT understand why so many of my colleagues have rolled over to the pressure to make students not have to stretch. While they sit around wondering "what kids need to grow up successfully and well into the 21st century," too many teachers are giving students no new or stronger insights into what it means to be an adult in an adult world.

Middle Ground: There are excellent dystopian novels out there for the classroom. Not surprisingly, most of them have support materials available online and in print. Teachers who don't want to be lazy - who are willing to risk the rolling of eyeballs - should lead their students in the direction of these literary dystopias.

A word about lexile measures - they are only one of three measures that should be made of a novel. I personally don't give them more than a cursory glance, preferring to read several chapters (or the book) and then a few reviews before deciding how to match book to student. I understand that this is not the way ELA reading selection is structured today, and I lament that. I am not providing lexiles, I am providing recommendations. These are literary titles that I know. Forget the lexiles. I would make the same judgement of THG (too fluffy for serious literary study) if I did not know its lexile.

Dystopian novels exist that are solid stuff, that will stretch most MS or HS readers, if not in terms of text complexity, then in terms of literary qualities (figurative language, style, tone, narrative and plot complexity and variation) and thematic depth. (Lexiles do not reflect these last two qualities).

Teachers - You have to read the books. Stretch yourselves to stretch your students!

Middle (7+) - Overall, the protagonist is a child, the antagonists are adult, but these deal with deeper issues that are not at all childlike. I might call them baby steps to growing up as a reader.

Coifer - The Supernaturalist - future dystopia where unwanted children are... also graphic novel
Ness - The Knife of Never Letting Go
Anderson - Feed
Pearson - The Adoration of Genna Fox
Hautman - Rash
Card - Ender's Game
Philbrick - The Last Book in the Universe
Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Golding - Lord of the Flies (not really dystopia, but so like one...)
Pratchett - Nation (not really dystopia, but so like one...)

Higher: - Overall, the protagonists are adults in adult worlds. Overall, the books are long. These are for kids who are ready for the autonomy of growing up and thinking at the same time.

Fialkov - Elk's Run - graphic novel - post-Vietnam utopia gone wrong - for those who have grown up after The Hunger Games - MSOrwell - 1984 and Animal Farm
King - The Running Man
Kitano - Battle Royale
Wells - The Time Machine
McCarthy - The Road
Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Atwood - The Handmaiden's Tale
Gibson - Neuromancer
James - The Children of Men
Clifford - The Book
Wyndham - The Chrysalids
Moore - V for Vandetta (graphic novel)
Brooks - World War Z
Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

iPads in the Classroom: Submitting Writing

2011-11-28T15:49:00.001-08:00

image source

I spent the morning today with a 6th grade class in South Portland. We were writing poetry as part of a Telling Room project. The students had iPads, which they were not allowed to use. I was fine with that. Paper is huge for spontaneous ideas and language - it's messy like creative minds.

When it came time for us to leave and for the students to get keyboarded finals to us, we stalled. The students did have Pages for writing. And all iPads come with Notes. The keyboarding part was easy. But getting the files to us was problematic. To do so would require a student email account created in the iPad Settings. These are school-owned machines. It is not legal for a child under 13 to create and use a web 2.0 account without specific parent permission - which the students did not have because the school had not created a system for this (easy to fix and should be in place in every school using web 2.0 tools).

Of course, several students had already figured out how to set up their personal gmail accounts (easy). But from the point of view of the teacher, that was rule-breaking (good for him).

It so happens that this same issue is all over the EC Ning technology discussions this week. There is no easy app for that!

Dropbox comes close. I have written about its flexibility before, and have since learned more.

IF students can set up email (a free-for-schools Google gmail acct. is the best way to go), then following this set of directions for sending documents from Pages to Dropbox is handy. Problem: It only works for the teacher if the Dropbox folder is a 2-way street - so setting up means careful planning (e.g. Professional Development).

IF students can not set up email (or if you the teacher can not expect this), it gets more complicated.

There are three easy, but purchased, solutions that I have found. It is too bad that school districts don't fully investigate the uses of the iPad for ELA before installing apps.

Here is a slimmed down version of my post to the EC Ning:

Having students write and email you the file directly is easiest. Apps that do this include Notes, Pages, Evernote. Read 10 tips for teachers using Evernote.
Postereous connects to Facebook and Twitter and creates blog-posts (including media, which can be interesting...). Students would need accounts for class use. Facebook is an interesting idea, as Evernote also will post there.
Dropbox - a free app that you can Admin from your laptop/desktop. Students can access a folder (class or individual) that you create and share, then just upload their files into it FROM A FEW APPS ONLY. You can open the files in the app used to create them (or GoodReader), comment, "flatten" (that makes your comments permanent), and send back to Dropbox. Students will need to keep a clean original on the iPad.
DROPitTO.me accts. do not (yet) work on the iPad (along with many web-based upload sites. I would be concerned that wiki uploads would not work as well - check it out). [note: photos and URL's can be uploaded to Dropbox from within an iPad using free apps, so it is useful for submitting media to you]
For $.99, the newly update Notability app might be the best solution. Like the apps that follow, it syncs to Dropbox. What I like about this app is its integration of audio, handwriting, word processing, and now Photos. What a great tool for recording a group learning session or a lit group discussion!
The $1.99 app call My Memoir is perfect for submitting writing - sends directly to the Dropbox folder once the "connection" is created. Students are also creating a writing workshop journal and a portfolio as they use it. I wonder if a teacher can get a deal from the creator? Read about it here.
Textforce is another great app, maybe the best for teacher use - it was created for using Dropbox to edit "in the cloud" - nice formatting features too that are not found in other iPad writing apps. Read about it here. Students create docs in Textforce and upload directly to DropBox (which again has to be linked to a teacher acct. - but it can link directly to a folder a teacher creates or a student creates in the Settings). Unfortunately, it's $3.99.
Pages will send files to a WebDAV acct. - ask your Tech Guy if he can set this up for you on the server. Also to an email address, but students will need to have one set up in their Settings - so we are in a loop below grade 8. I wonder also if teachers could use a free iWork.com acct. to share Pages or other documents. Students would need an AppleID - many probably have one if because of using iTunes for music.

To be honest - it is surprising that in any school or district this important detail was not ironed out over the summer! Professional Development should have happened, focused on classroom scenarios.

Every one of the solutions mentioned is expensive or time-consuming for the teacher. I wonder if that all does not balance out printing costs...

Reading Infographics

2011-11-28T15:35:00.001-08:00

It is a peculiarity of Blogger that a post, once begun, remains at that position in the posting timeline. Today I completed a post called Teaching Infographics - Teaching Reading, but it is dated Oct. 27.

I think it is both important and timely. And it contains my first completed flip lesson. Please check it out.

Here is a recently published infographic to add to the lesson. It "illustrates" that students who use a mobile app to study (in this case, StudyBlue) spend more time studying. Or does it? Studying Online Flashcards on Smartphones.

Dying - not Killing - in YA fiction

2011-11-13T14:34:00.001-08:00

source

I have always found the Ouroboros symbol somewhat frightening because it is hard to get my mind around it. It is a symbol of death and also of rebirth. It is an angry symbol but also a smooth, flowing symbol. It is and it is not possible.

I am not alone. Because of these dualities, death is one of the most common themes in YA (becoming-adult readers) fiction and all other fiction, with the exception of children's picture books.

The continuing prevalence of quick and dispassionate deaths in YA fiction has caused me to think about the other kind of deaths that can be found in YA fiction - the slowly and deeply experienced deaths. Needless to say, these are not nearly as common, nor as widely read. Their tellings are often lyrical and thoughtful - in a dark sort of way. These are not the matter-of-fact deaths of dystopian and fantasy fiction. Nor are they the out-of-sight deaths that precipitate much orphan and realistic lit.

Don't misunderstand me. I am a reader and fan of dystopian, fantasy, orphan, and realistic lit. In fact, three of my current favorite titles fall under this umbrella (Good Omens, Monster, and The Good Thief). I have read lots of mystery, WWI fiction, some horror (Stephen King), and adventure (e.g. Ice Claw) and appreciate their appeal as well. Death in any form is compelling.

Right now, however, I am musing about novels that muse - books that live through rather than just tell about death - about a loved one dying, an unexpected death, or one's own death. These novels are as far away from interactive video games as can possibly be, yet the reader interacts deeply with the dying(s) in them. The dying stays with the reader. For this reason, they are, in my mind, literature.

For adult readers, dying and death have a deep literary presence. From my own reading life, I immediately conjure up The English Patient, Atonement, Regeneration, The Road, and others. This is not true for middle and high school students.

I think fiction about the human side of dying, and grieving, should be read in middle and high school. In most classrooms, death has happened, is happening, or will happen in the extended family. Death happens to all of us. And to pets.

But most kids will not find these titles on their own. Teachers and librarians have to make them available and talk them up.

My only purpose here is to share titles. Please add to the list. In no particular order:

Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls (730) - new short novel (Kindle available) about a boy whose mother is dying - fantasy qualities, but deeply moving
Jonathan Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - death of father sends young son on odyssey - highly recommended over movie, but that is a tie-in
Libba Bray - Going Bovine (HL 680 - not for MS) - dying teen takes a "trip" - I find similarities with Cervantes
Joan Abelove - Saying it Out Loud (no lexile, 7+) - girl deals with dying mother
John Green - The Fault in Our Stars (no lexile, 7+) - teens dying of cancer - and living
Paula Fox - Eagle Kite (740) - boy with a father dying of AIDS
Mark Harris - Bang the Drum Slowly - baseball players learn that teammate is dying of cancer
Molly Hunter - A Sound of Chariots (no lexile) - girl grieves for father
David Almond - Skellig (490) - dying creature found in the attic
David Almond - Clay (490) - a Golem story about "life" and death
Morris Gleitzman - Once (no lexile, 7+) - begins with death and grieves through a Holocaust summer
Sid Fleischman - The Entertainer and the Dybbuk (610) - after WWII, a ventriloquist is possessed by the spirit of a dead boy
Melina Marchetta - Jellicoe Road (no lexile, 7+) - mother, lover, friend die; this is a book about grief as much as it is about finding oneself
Mary Pearson - The Adoration of Jenna Fox (570 but don't trust that) - a slowly realized grieving for oneself
Shel Silverstein - The Giving Tree - (picture book) - I read this picture book early in every year - it is rich in symbolism, plot, character, etc. Ur book.
Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus - (no lexile, 8+) - deeply rooted in the idea of endless life and meaning of life
Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes (820) - death is integrally connected to the good-evil theme - great pairing with the previous book
Brian Fies - Mom's Cancer - graphic novel
Ross Mackintosh - Seeds - graphic novel - death of father - I purchased it within the Comics app for iPad
John Gunther - Death Be Not Proud - father's memoir of son
Marjorie Rawlings - The Yearling - pet death
Myth and story: Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Antigone, the Bible, Faust (orally in middle school - it can be done), Beowulf - every culture culture has these stories - Why?
"The Scarlet Ibis" (really fabulous compared to death in King's "Here There by Tygers" and Bradbury's "The Veldt")

Please add to this list.

Writing/Thinking Smarter Tools: Beyond the Blueprint

2011-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

source (not my cabin)

Jump down to the SCAN review.

I've just come in from inspecting a cabin we are building in the woods. The two young builders - bright young guys who work for Morse and Doak - wanted to show us a problem area. Seems we have three walls on the 1-room central tower that a challenge to finish. One corner cantilevers out over the great room, one cantilevers out over the bedroom wing hall, and a 3rd continues the stairwell wall into the room. What did we want to do to finish each so it doesn't grate visually against the other walls and spaces? Great question. I never knew it was a question until today. I never thought about how many ways there are to finish a wall. I never thought about how much math there is in building a frame cabin. Granted, it is not a simple design. When an "organic designer" draws up the plans, there are going to be complexities.

"We have so many ideas," grinned Darius, "so many ways to solve the problems. A lot of crazy ideas just crashing around." As we discussed the ideas, he and Lonnie explained the pros and cons of each. In the process, they had two or three more ideas. The energy surging between the two ladders to the 2nd floor was palpable. Their solutions were inventive, each firmly founded on knowledge of the topic (generally, boards and measurements) and the problem. These weren't, in fact, crazy ideas at all. What was crazy to Darius was the shear number of ideas he generated in response to the problem.

I was lost. I said, "I leave it up to you - just make what you are thinking and doing clear to me." And they did, translating what they know into language I could follow, providing evidence to support the options they recommended, clarifying counter-proposals. We made an action plan.

The experience got me thinking about thinking. All kids think - but isn't Darius and Lonnie-type thinking what we want kids to do? Isn't this how we want our kids to approach learning problems? Granted, my builders are highly trained and highly experienced. But they are also always thinking. And they think smart - beyond the blueprint.

ELA connection: For the ELA classroom, the challenges focus mainly on thinking and writing about text and on the process of persuasion.

There are writing workshop models, writing curricula, reading workshop models, and reading curricula. But what it comes down to is this: You can not write well about anything unless you can think well about it. And writing well carries a high premium - for both students and teachers.

It goes without saying, and is outside the scope of this post, that you can not think well about "it" if you can not read well about it. Darius and Lonnie have skills I do not have: they can read blueprints and wood. Presumably, our students come to us with the skills they need to access the information they need by reading. Huge supposition - and often not true - but the essential question for this post is: What can we do to help student DO something smarter with what they read? Whether the challenge is to analyze or to persuade, What can we do to help them think?

Heather Wolpert-Gawron argues that all writing about text is persuasive writing. I find this a clarifying idea. It means that all thinking about text - whether fictional or informational - is framed by the goal of persuasion. It means that the essay can be re-imaged as a forum for convincing the reader. This adds a vital dimension to writing - connection. And connection leads to the need for: voice, style, evidence, explanation. I have always known this to be true of good writing, but now I understand what makes it true. My favorite motivational turn of phrase, Writing is problem-solving, remains true also. The two concepts work hand-in-hand.

Read/Think then Write/Think. You notice that in the above image Share is also embedded in the writing process. As my builders demonstrated, discussion extends and clarifies thinking. On the other hand, reading and idea-forming are highly individual activities. The best processes for writing require both individual and collaborative thought.

A last point. It is essential that students push the write/think connection all the way to the level of what Randy Rambo calls The Warrant. This is the step that involves explicitly making the connection between the claim (point, opinion) and the evidence used to support it. Some teachers call it the discussion or explanation. I call it the So what? Why is this important? Omitting this step is the most common flaw in middle and high school writing. The second most common flaw is insufficient or irrelevant evidence. Most tools put a premium on having evidence, but few require students to evaluate it. Good, solid evidence-gathering is essential for any academic writing task. Beginning as young as 1st grade, students should be asked to provide information to support their opinion statements. Sloppy thinking habits begin with low expectations.

The tools: Luckily, there are tools for education that help our kids to learn to think, to love new problems as much as Darius and Lonnie do, and to organize their thinking for writing. Here is a short list of those I consider to be the best.

SCAN is a brand new online interactive tool for "arguing" - I think it is a powerful tool for thinking. Imagine a RAFT activity that grows organically, one in which all of the roles interact OR in which one student can explore all of the roles. I was so interested in this model that I created a SCAN session for teachers and students to use collaboratively. Here is the link to Should We Cancel Halloween? Please contribute - it is a public discussion. I believe that it is possible to use the SCAN tool to investigate a novel-based thesis. You might, for example, explore violence, trust, or individual v. society in any dystopian novel. Roles can be characters or roles can be points of view. It seems to me this is a highly adaptable tool that ELA teachers should embrace. I used the free tool; teachers and schools can get larger functionality by paying a reasonable subscription fee.
ReadWriteThink online tools include Persuasion Map and the Webbing Tool. The webbing tool can easily be used to construct a paragraph or an essay. Their Essay Map does not contain the warrant or discussion step, so don't use it.
Not all students think best in bubbles. Some prefer a linear or outline organizer. Unfortunately, I could not find a solid organizer that includes the warrant. I did find this neat little organizer that can be used for every claim and easily extended. Students can also use the interactive Thesis Builder to begin the process of developing an outline. The outline generated by the tool can be used as a model for the creation of a blank paper outline. It would be interesting to use this tool with a group.
Practical idea for the classroom: We all know what Word Walls are. The Phrase Wall is a similar concept. Few students have internalized the transition, connection, and rhetorical phrases that help them to truly write/think about and through a text. Refer to the Wall when oral thinking is happening in the classroom. A large visual of the phrases that can (and should) be used in writing is not a crutch - it is a necessity. Add to the Wall as writing becomes more challenging. I find it most useful to put Phrase Wall phrases into categories:

ordering phrases - first, second, in conclusion - (not recommended for final drafts, but very useful when drafting - have students use them then take them out)
linking phrases - another, also, furthermore, in addition to...., moreover, etc.
change of direction phrases - however, on the other hand, but not, etc.
rebuttal phrases (specifically for "the nod to the opposition") - it can be argued that, evidence also points to..., etc.
idea starter phrases - consider..., an important/the most important..., etc.
evidence phrases - according to..., when [this happens]...[this happens], etc.
warrant phrases - ______ is saying that, if this is true then..., this leads to..., by
comparing, as a result..., because..., etc.
conclusion phrases - it is clear that, clearly, (these can also often be removed)

Thinking in the classroom: Activity tools. Just talking is easy for adults, but not easy for children. It is a good idea to embed deeper thinking about a topic, text, or question in a short activity. These activities are also valuable as stand-alones to develop thinking skills and language. Some ideas:

"body voting" followed by "build on someone" statements of opinion, evidence, or explanation
"fish bowl" discussions in which evidence must be presented and evaluated, discussed - here is a nice guide
"hot seat" in which evidence is used to question a character or role-player
"easel pad" discussions - evidence is displayed on large pages - groups move round the room adding explanation or discussion statements
"silent conversations" - small groups tackle a topic or thesis, not speaking but writing and adding to the point of the previous writer - can be done in roles
Last point: In using any group tool, it is important to set the guideline that every student must participate. No passes on thinking.

Teaching Grammar: Can You Find the Errors?

2011-11-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

I hate the "their" error. Someone, anyone, one, a person, the person = he or she. Every time I see it or hear it, I correct it boldly. I have been known to use permanent marker on District classroom signage, been known to correct missives from the principal. I have written to the D.O.E. about grammar errors in position papers and newsletters.

It may be a losing battle, but it is one I choose to fight. Join me.

Above is a screen shot of quite a wonderful infographic, What does it take to get a job at Google? There are three grammar/usage errors here. Can you spot them? Challenge your students to spot them.

PS: The last interview question makes for a great literacy lesson: sequence, cause-effect, vocabulary (multiple meanings, is/is not), connection-to-self. I get it. Can your combined students get it too?

I wrote them and pointed out the error. I have done this often lately. One voice is just a voice - many voices is a shout.

Here's another error. This video trailer for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is all over TV. What a wide spread for an error! Do you have the courage to ask students to pen letters to Activision? I wrote one.

scene from video trailer

Here's another, this one containing errors in parallelism, sentencing, misplaced modifiers, capitalization:

JitterbugDirect.com

Of course, the most effective examples will come from the texts that your students actually choose to read and the media they access regularly. Challenge your students to find similar errors in print and digital text (many YA novels are a great source of pronoun and punctuation errors), in advertisements, in media-speak. Share these prominently in your classroom. This might go a lot further than a set of canned, or even digital, skill lessons.

Kindle News

2011-11-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

I am sure that you are aware by now of Amazon's new Kindles. The $79 Kindle is a great deal for schools. I still prefer the Kindle Keyboard at $99, but students will move seamlessly into the new touch environment. Here again is a short list of the pluses of Kindles for the classroom:

Cool factor - many non-readers get hooked
Energy consumption - 1 charge lasts up to 2 weeks
Bang for the buck -

$10 book can be loaded onto 6 Kindles
New Kindles can contain well over 2,000 titles
Free books - most classics
$.99 books
1-year replacement warranty

Reading support -

Text-to-speech (not available for all books)
On-board dictionary (locate-to-lookup)
Wikipedia look-up (with wifi on)
Font variability
Landscape or Portrait views
Bookmarking and note-taking/underlining
New Kindle Fire (color)

Kindle book sharing (14-day) - www.amazon.com/kindle-lending
Vocabulary games (free)
Purchasing advantages -

Speed of purchase (with credit card)
Ease of download

Educational support -

Sharing of notes/printing
Laptop integration
Sharing .pdf and .doc files via email
Kindle on Mac / iTouch / iPhone / iPod / iPad - sharing and synching with free apps - same for the PC
.mp3 playing (audiobooks)
magazines and newspapers too!

Students like:

Size and weight
Immediate access to new books (once purchased)
Cool factor (especially true with new Touch format and books downloaded to smart phones)

On the other hand: Here is a fun little read to share with students: "The Future of Books - a Dystopian Timeline." Is this a case of "it can't happen here" or it is a case of "we have met the enemy..."??

By the way:

Amazon has a new service: Kindle Loans. If you have a Prime membership with Amazon ($79/year and worth it if you purchase a lot: free shipping), then you can borrow eBooks for free, one at a time. If you are a school with Kindles and an account, consider spending the $79. Every registered Kindle device can participate in this program. Currently, attractive titles include: The Hunger Games trilogy and lots of vampire books. You can also borrow most of the Galaxy Project short stories and novellas (read my description).
Amazon Student is a special membership level. It requires a .edu email address. This membership also makes you eligible for the eBook Kindle Loan program. If you can wrangle a .edu email address, setting up the account is worth it.
Amazon has the below $.99 titles available. If you have classroom Kindles, or an Amazon account of your own, you should read these guides (or have your librarian read them).

Amazon.com

SF and a Mini Review: Patrick Ness's The New World

2011-11-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

This is a free short story offered by Amazon.com for the Kindle. The story is a prequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking trilogy) - one of the best SF/dystopian reads for upper middle school and high school.

I downloaded the book and asked Colleen D. (grade 8, Freeport Middle School) to review it. Here is her review, straight off her email:

In this short story by Patrick Ness, Viola faces some of the hardest challenges she will ever have to face. Her hope is "down." She and her parents are to leave the main ship to go explore the New World. Things do not go smoothly. A fire in the engine room. The cockpit ripped apart. Viola won't even cry.

**** Colleen rates it four stars.

If your students have not yet met Patrick Ness, introduce them. If they have read Knife, or the entire trilogy, give them this story for closure. Remember: Kindle titles can be read on just about every digital platform with a free app or download.

Also highly recommended: the audio CD versions of the trilogy (the CD of this story is not worth the price). My students who struggled with the stylistic challenges of the novels found that reading with the CD helped them to read the novels. Most did not need to listen to all three books (e.g. they got better at reading).

Chaos Walking has been called both SF and dystopia. It is both, crossing space travel with the classic dystopian theme of a society gone terribly wrong. Students love them. Exploring Kindle titles available for free loan, I ran into a series of stories in the Galaxy Project series. These are classic stories by the best SF writers of the last century. At $1.99 each, or free Loan (read about this in my next post), they offer the ELA teacher easy access to great classics that will also grab today's students. Why? Because, like Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and "2 B R 0 2 B," these are dystopian stories.

Galaxy Magazine's editor, Horace Gold, was fascinated by reversals and "what if's." Each of the Project stories takes a satirical, dark look at what happens when a single element of life is exploded or reversed in the future. They are, in short, dystopian. Many of the stories were written in the 50's and 60's, so cold war politics and technological advances (media, science especially) play a large part in many plots. There are great historical connections here.

The stories in the Galaxy Project Series will ring a bell with readers of today's dystopian fiction. Check out the blurb for Ask Me Anything, by Damon Knight: "Knight’s tortured cyborgs in ASK ME ANYTHING - the amputated brains of children placed in metallic contraptions designed for combat and killing - have a horrifying validity." Unwind meets Ender's Game meets The Adoration of Jenna Fox. Send your students back to the source. They will be reading great writing, grappling with compelling ideas (which are still valid today), and thinking about the act of creation.

Where did Harry Potter and The Hunger Games come from, anyway? What's new? What's different?

I have selected "The Tunnel Under the World" (Pohl) and "The Big Trip Up Yonder" (Vonnegut - sounds like The Declaration - available in other $.95 editions, one with "2 B R 0 2 B") for starters. Reviews of other titles are welcome.

NAEP Scores: National Shout-Out

2011-11-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

As prep for a longer post I am writing on the topic of Infographics, I took a look at the NAEP State profiles for the 2011 testing year, focusing on my state, Maine, and at grade 8 in particular.

Imagine my delight when I received, the same day, a FOR IMMED. RELEASE online press release from the D.O.E. Director of Communications, David Connerty-Marin. The headline is:

Maine up in 8th grade math; flat elsewhere

Oh?

The release goes on to explain that:

Maine’s scores and the percentage of students “proficient” – that is, meeting or exceeding expectations [in math and reading] – has remained largely flat.
“Maine has continued to show no progress in reading for far too many years.” Bowen [Commissioner of Education] said. “There is compelling scientific research about how kids learn to read, but we are not applying those methods universally.”
in reading in grades 4 and 8, Maine showed no statistically significant change.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

As I read the data (chart and graphs shown above) and did some research,

I notice that the X axis units are not the same - what happens to the Reading or Mathematics score lines if the tics are identical? These graphs can not be compared.
Writing is no longer tested. So why are the NECAP writing test results from 1998-2010 not part of this article? I want to know if those scores are improving. Writing is, after all, the 2nd most compelling and important element of literacy, and a significant part of the state's reading test.
Reading in Grade 8 is not flat - it is decidedly up and down. And in the last 2 years, it is decidedly UP. Does this indicate that we are beginning to see some up-trending as a result of 3-5 grade efforts in literacy over the last three years? Or is it simply an indication of variable test groups and cohorts?
For several years, while the nation decreased in Reading, Maine improved. What was going on? What happened between 2007 and 2009? (HINT: End of Local Assessments + Readicide + Economic Depression in Maine = curricular confusion at the 6-8 level. I know - I lived through it.)
a 2 point change is not significant, but a 4 point change is. OK - so why don't the graphs mine us down to the 1 point level?
It looks to me like Maine is recovering.

Perhaps something good is already happening with Literacy in Maine. What's so bad about that? Mine must be a very unpopular point of view. I wonder if anyone talks about what GOOD is happening? and Where? and How?

But then again, data can be mined for a purpose, which may not be the purpose of the actual data. This purpose seems to be tied to making a sound argument for funds for preK-3 Literacy development in Maine.

Those funds and that attention to literacy are needed, but I don't understand the purpose of selling a state's progress short in order to gain funds. Or maybe it is important to agree with the national take on the NAEP results.

It seems as of this morning that this headline is national news. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Education Week carry it as a story. It seems that superintendents and commissioners around the country are jumping on this story.

The Times article is the only one to suggest some reasons for the "stagnant" reading scores.

I have heard all of these reasons before - for at least five years. If Literacy funding can combat poor parenting, poverty, an educational system and schedule that discourages rather than encourages "deep reading," and an emphasis that is less on understanding each child's reading need than on average and aggregate scores - go for it. But I think perhaps more programming is not the best answer.

There is far from one "scientific understanding" of how and why a child learns to read. There is no scientifically based understanding of why many children stop learning to read before middle school. There are as many research based pedagogies and programs as there are universities, reading recovery programs, best-selling educators and teacher's colleges. I have reviewed, worked with, or read much of this - and every single program works. As long as it is matched to the specific needs of a specific child reader. If you don't give children your time, they won't learn as quickly or as well.

There is no one band-aid for reading. Never has been. I fear that these catch phrases - Flat Scores and "the knowledge economy of the 21st century" (Arne Duncan) - will lead to another search for the better band-aid, at the expense of some excellent child-centered practice. I'm not sure that we are a "knowledge economy" - or that we aspire to be. We do seem to be heading in the direction of a "knowledge-based economy." That's knowledge, not reading ability. They are different.

What is needed, in Maine and elsewhere, is a good long look at the districts, schools, and teachers who ARE making progress happen consistently, coupled with a data-driven look at the students with whom they work. And states should study those math programs that are working for DC and elsewhere. How do they work? Why do they work?

Celebrate this and model what works. My sense is that a little celebration will go a long way toward energizing education.

I know that SHOUTING OUT FAILURE is not going to motivate teachers - or their students.

Teaching Infographics - Teaching Reading

2011-10-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

infographics classi

#1 I have to critically think in college, but your tests don’t teach me that. (20 things students want the nation to know about education)

When I was in the edtech world, a major check-point on my peer rating system was appreciation of Edwin Tufte's infographics tetralogy (Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Beautiful Evidence). If I saw his texts on an office shelf, I was immediately hooked by that office holder. If an edtech teacher knew of Tufte's short text The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out Corrupts Within (which demonstrates that a poor PPt presentation failed to prevent the Columbia disaster), I knew that this educator knew her stuff. These are brilliant studies of visual information across global time and place.

Not being a particularly visual learner, I knew immediately when I met Tufte's 1st book that I had much to learn.

No, our students should not be thrown to Tufte. But they must be thrown to his legacy. When what I taught was called Literacy, I always included a discrete infographics unit. I also included infographics in pre and post reading activities for informational text - sometimes even for fiction text (historical and international fiction, for example).

I am a fan of embedding visual text into reading standards.

What is an infographic? Wikipedia has the definition used by every how-to I have found: "graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly."

Infographics belong in ELA as texts because they require that students (quotes are from CCSS ELA Reading 6-12):

Identify text structures and their purposes
Read for detail - "Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it"
"Determine central ideas or themes of a text"
"Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text"
"Summarize the key supporting details and ideas"
"Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words"
"Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence"
Think critically
Ask questions
Identify purpose and audience
Problem-solve

I mined the net for a short video on "How to read an infographic" - but there does not seem to be one. This is the perfect flipped assignment for ELA. In fact, as discrete instruction goes, it is one of very few flipped lessons that will be successful or useful in an ELA classroom.

So I made my own flip-lesson video called Reading Infographics. Find it on YouTube or look at it below. One thing you might do with students is have them use the YouTube Annotate function to interact with the lesson and with each other. I have embedded many activities/exercises into the resource than can be used this way or assigned for HW or classwork.

In the Middle School classroom, I made a Concept Wall containing the key concepts and vocabulary from this video.

If you want a copy of the original Keynote, contact me.

Positive Raw Places: Where to find them in YA lit

2011-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

The Giving Tree - source

Today I ran across the 20 Things Students Want the Nation to Know About Education. 12 of the 20 are directly about connecting to kids. #19 You need to love a student before you can teach a student.

I believe that compassionate teachers are among the best teachers. I also know that teachers can connect with students on many levels, without loving them. I know that some great teachers can not or do not emotionally connect directly to students, but the students know there is caring anyway. I am pulling these "I statements" from my own EBHS experience, 6-12, over 50 years ago (ouch!). That students need teachers has not changed.

On the other hand, this article made me reflect on the fiction texts (aka novels) that are read and discussed in ELA classes today. How many go to the positive raw places that often lead to emotional connection with students? How many are about love and loving? How many are about unqualified caring?

I find it easy to list books that are about negative raw places (betrayal, fear, isolation, bullying, inadequacy, fear, loss, selfishness, disaffection, disappearance). Most of dystopia (especially Hunger Games trilogy). Most adventure and fantasy. Most SF (some of Bradbury excluded). Most horror. Most chick-clique. Most sports. Most realistic. This is the stuff of YA lit.

Positive raw places (trust, love, selflessness, supportiveness, family, constancy, giving) are hard to find. Often, today's YA novels have to be mined for the positive; in most, it remains well hidden. I suspect that pure positive doesn't sell well.

Even when you find a good read, it's tough to talk about love and caring in class. It can be corny. It can be superficial. It is often painful. But the discussion is rewarding. As I teacher, I found that it always made me weepy to read The Giving Tree aloud, which I did to introduce incremental repetition. But I did read the book, and I did weep, because students responded to the emotional power of the story - and I wanted them to know that I responded too. I am talking middle school and high school.

Here are some titles that will help you get students to those positive raw places. The lowish lexiles are generally deceptive. Because of their emotional edge, these titles are more challenging in content, style, or often both - they may more take patience to read than the books your students gravitate too. They are generally harder. Luckily, most of them are brief.

Jellicoe Road - Marchetta - 820 (the 2nd most challenging on this list)
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes - Crutcher - 920 (HS)
Before I Fall - Liver - 860 - (HS)
Bridge of San Luis Rey - Wilder - 1080 - (HS) (not kidding - I read it in 9th)
If I Stay - Forman - 830
Eggs - Spinelli - 610
Firegirl - Abbott - 670
Freak the Mighty - Philbrick - 1000 (worth every minute of it - challenge up)
The Water Seeker - Holt - 730
Water for Elephants - Gruen - 730
Life as We Knew It - Pfeffer - 770
Because of Winn-Dixie - DiCamillo - 610
Marley and Me - 1050 - or Marley - 760 - Grogan (nonfiction)
Skellig - Almond - 490
Pictures of Hollis Woods - Reilly - 650
Phoenix Rising - Hesse - 610
Make Lemonade - Euwer - 690
Nightjohn - Paulsen - 770
Night Circus - Morgenstern (no lexile)
Something Wicked this Way Comes - Bradbury - 820 (most challenging on this list)
Stitches - Small (graphic novel)
Whirligig - Fleischman - 760
Little Bee - Cleave (no lexile)

Not a very big list, but I did not include chick romance, vampires, or werewolves. Suggestions are welcome.

Drop By: Dropbox and Connected Apps

2011-10-25T05:46:00.000-07:00

I use Edublogs.org to host my other commentary blog, U & D, a holdover from experimenting with it as a host for individual student blogs (worked well and I recommend it). Because it has a teacher-centered mission, Edublogs provides support and training beyond just hosting. The Free Tools Challenge makes available step-by-step tutorials for online tools that support classroom learning, student creativity, and collaboration. There are other tutorial sites and other tools - I like Richard Byrne's Google Tools collection at Free Technology for Teachers and Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch.

But I am especially excited about Free Tools Challenge #17.

DROPBox and DROPitTO.me are management tools - specifically, tools for digital file submission, storing, and sharing. Using them together is great for final drafts and big projects. These are cloud tools, accessing a web-based storage and distribution system that synchronizes seamlessly with apps on digital devices.

The DropBox app is fully cross-platform and cross-device: Mac, Windows, Linux, mobile (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry). You will need the app on each tool you will use to receive, upload, and download files sent to you by others (or that you want to send to yourself). These are free downloads.

submission interface

DROPitTO.me is a web-based upload service. Here is the big picture:

you set up your DropBox app and account once - if you have not done so, do it online
with that account open, you go to DROPitTO.me and set up a submission account with two passwords: one for your only (administration) and one for everyone else (submission)
you get a unique URL for DROPitTO.me - this will use the login your specify (mine login is eskymac: dropitto.me/eskymac is the URL)
you send this URL and the submission password to students - or post them somewhere - you can even use QR code for this (put it on an assignment or a poster)
students upload files into a folder called DROPitTOme within your DROPbox (created automatically) using the web submission interface (above)
you access these files on all devices that have the DROPbox app
there does not seem to be a limit to the types of files uploaded - but there is currently a 75MB file size limit (huge)

Get a great set of directions at Free Tools Challenge #17.

Caveats:

The capitals are really annoying - you don't need to use them to access the site or to locate the app in iTunes/AppStore.
Yes, you open up a file space for students to send you viruses and other nasty content. Since nothing comes with a "from" you will not know who put it there.
It is NOT yet possible to upload a file from an iPhone or iPad to DROPitTO.me, via Safari. Apple locks the upload feature for the most part - works only for apps like Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Dropbox - and at times is limited to photos and images. In fact, it seems that unless you want to jailbreak Safari Mobile students are stuck uploading from desktop devices. I hope this will be changed in the future. That means that students will still need to use e-mail or a different app (see below) if the files have been created on a mobile device.
There are some concerns about the security of files - if you are concerned about this, use an in-network file transfer, which you can actually complete over wifi, or use email.
This is not a 2-way street. You can not return corrected files through your Dropbox.
However, you can share folders using controls in the computer and online (not on mobile device though) versions of your Dropbox. This creates a 2-way street. So, you can share the DROPitTOme folder with students, or share a folder within that folder (you will need to manage this a bit).
And there is no reason why you can not flip the ownership - students can install Dropbox on their own mobile devices, create and share folders with you.
Students with iPhones and other mobile devices CAN upload photos/images and videos to their own Dropbox folders. Once this has been done, students can email the photos to you or move them into a file folder that you have shared. Or share their folders with you, in which case you see the folder in your Dropbox. Sounds complicated, but once you try it, it is very quick. Does not work with other file formats yet (Pages or Keynote documents, for example).

Other solutions: These apps work to send content to the specified Dropbox account - which would probably be yours. So they are useful to you as a teacher when you share the folders they create. Sharing subfolders will give you a measure of security.

DropVox is an app that uses the built-in mic on the iPad and iPhone (probably also Android and Blackberry devices, but I can't check that) to create audio files that are automatically uploaded to the linked DropBox account - a DropVox folder is created. This is another great way to receive and share audio within a class.
Drop It is an app that uses the "Select - Save" touch controls on the iPhone or iPad to send URL's to the linked DropBox account, directly to a folder called URLs.
Drop It! (confusing name choice) accesses your iPhone or iPad photo library and simplifies the process of uploading photos and images to the linked Dropbox account - or you can use the camera from directly within the app (Note: this is an iPhone app, but it works on the iPad too).
Textforce is an app that uses DropBox for collaborative .txt (text) writing. Read about its features here and also here. It is possible to create a document on an iPad, continue it on an iPhone, and finish it on a laptop. Textforce accepts copy/paste also, which makes it easy to share files for the purpose of editing or annotation. Caveat: this is Plain Text - which is also the name of the folder it creates in your Dropbox. There will be minimal text formatting. Some formatting is available using its onboard tools. The nice aspect of Textforce is that a file is opened within Dropbox, so downloading is not necessary. Students could easily submit writing this way!
Videodropper is a web-based free tool for sending YouTube video to your Dropbox. All you need is to allow access to your Dropbox acct, then copy/paste the YouTube URL. This downloads the video, not the URL.
By the way, you CAN have two Dropbox accounts simultaneously on one Mac - but to do it, you need to tweak the command line code in Terminal. Directions. Try it if you dare.

If you want to try it: I suggest doing so with a few students, as trial runs. A few experts and simple directions are all you will need to use Dropbox effectively in your classroom.

iPoems & Other Flash Fictions

2011-10-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

I just posted to U & D, my Wabanaki studies blog, an announcement of new works by two of my favorite Native authors, Joseph Bruchac and Sherman Alexie. If you are at all interested in contemporary Native American literary works, please check out Alexie and Bruchac: New Texts.

As a result of writing that post, I learned that an iPoem is a format created by Narrative online magazine. The guidelines are interesting - this is a format for the digital age. Take a minute to read the five examples provided. My initial supposition that this was an "about me poem" could not have been more naive (and less native). Cool that Sherman Alexie got it all!

While I am at it, let me remind you of other interesting short formats that attract today's students:

the iStory, like the iPoem, can be easily viewed on an iPhone screen. Narrative specifies that an iStory be "a short, dramatic narrative, fiction or nonfiction, up to 150 words long" (Guidelines). I first met this form, a subset of flash fiction/sudden fiction/microfiction, at Wondermark, where it took the form of The Machine of Death. Although I would not share that book with middle school students, I might share it with high schoolers. Or I would make up my own constraint for submissions. A contest has been entered, for example, or a text message has been received... It is fun also to set your own word count: exactly 150 words is a problem-solving activity! 50 words is another commonly found limit. There are book length collections of short-short fiction, but students really do not need too many examples. This seems to me to be a great use of blogs or wikis for posting and commenting.
the six-word story is a somewhat of a classic story form. Hemingway has perhaps the most famous, but many literary authors have penned one. There are collections online to serve as student models (Six Word Stories, Wired archive - edit this one! ). Daniel Pink has written a column about it, suggesting that this format can expand the mind, or at least that it is a 21st Century format. Here is a lesson plan suggestion that ties the form to informational text/video text.
a story in emails [alt. version: a story in texts] is a fun format found at times in The New Yorker. Short and sweet, fitting on 1- 2 pages, 2 columns, it tells a story entirely from emails written by a character in the story. I love this recent example, "Dear Mountain Room Parents" by Maria Semple. I think back to my "postcards from the novel" project and regret that I did not have students display their postcards (6 in all) as a collection, rather than randomly. What a great way to retell a story while at the same time conveying comprehension of character and theme.
and on the topic of The New Yorker, it is always fun to stir imaginations by taking the caption off of a great "story cartoon" - create your own contest. The below cartoon, from the Oct. 24 magazine, would be great for this project. Think of the tasks you can embed in this activity: establish reference/allusion, define the irony, identify setting, narrator, establish mood. This is a great mini-lesson in many literary terms (get that out of the way early in the year...). Students can, of course, also be challenged to tell the beginning, middle, or end of the story in a flash format. How much fun would it be to have those texted and emailed to you, to the entire class, or to an Evernote page!

The New Yorker, Oct. 24, 2011

i-Documentary and i-Journalism

2011-10-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

DVD cover

Nigel Marvin is the star of ITV's short-lived but long-remembered and well-preserved mockumentary mini-series, Prehistoric Park. In the series, the intrepid Nigel speaks directly to the camera from back in time, where he has gone to capture prehistoric creatures and corral them in 21st Century. His every move, and every fact that he knows related to the adventure at hand, is chronicled by a combination of "live action" camera and his present tense commentary. A 3rd element is provided by voice-over narration, which moves omnisciently between past and present tense as the story timeline unfolds.

It is a powerful combination! I have often wondered why our digital classrooms do not make use of this technique for informational projects. Most students are natural hams; all students "see" the story they have researched along with learning its facts; in connecting to historical events and people, students move fluidly back and forth along a timeline which only partly includes themselves. The i-Documentary is a powerful tool for learning, K-12. Why is it so powerful?

research must be accurate and deep, or there is no content, no detail, to flush out the video and commentary - Nigel and the narrator must be credible and omniscient
it is fun - fun to make, fun to watch - and that makes for learning. There is something inherently comic about a student acted documentary, but also much underlying seriousness as students strive earnestly to convey their learning
it is personal and persuasive - in controlling the angles, lighting, framing, setting, etc., the student director is creating mood, tone - he is not just reporting, he is making a commentary about his topic
it uses tense to create tension, voice-over and dialogue to control pace and tone.

This is good literacy practice and craft. The same four points can rarely be made about a middle or high school informational essay.


Gregg Cook - "What we so quietly saw"

Nigel's tools are so good and so powerful, in fact, that serious journalists have adapted them into a graphic format that some call nonfiction picto-essays. Others call it comics. For some critics and creators, it is graphic novel. I call i-Journalism, a subset of creative nonfiction. By upgrading the name, the teacher can focus students on seriousness of purpose. The best examples of this format use graphic arts - cartoon and comic - tools to retell and comment upon a personal or a serious event, or to make a social or cultural observation. In a sense, they are the literal representation of the movies that run "in the head" of good readers of informational text. Think of it this way: characters (real people) "speak in quotes" but also in facial expressions, actions, body language, dress, relationship to setting, proximity to objects and to other people. These are the stuff of graphics.

Good journalistic creative nonfiction is based in the true and actual. But it uses personalization and a storytelling style in place of a dry, reportorial style. I would recommend offering students some samples of contemporary creative nonfiction journalism along with i-Journalism texts. Sources should be contemporary journals: New Yorker, Harpers, Sports Illustrated, Slate, and the fan mags that should be found in your school library.

Students can, and should, read great examples of i-Journalism, with the caveat that the texts are personal and persuasive. In this, they are more literary than journalistic. They deserve to be examined not just for factual/historical references, but for their print and visual literacy. Questions such as "What is the message?" and "How is this message developed?" must be asked. Students should attend to the text (tone, POV, voice, language), to speaker, to the personna of the cartoonist (who is always in the story), and to the graphic design of the panels themselves (color, angle, line, close-up, layout...). It might be useful for students to read selections from one of David Kiersh's short Cartoon Talk commentaries. He has interesting points to make about design elements and message.

Jarod Rosello, who uses Syncopated (see description below) as a text in teaching his writing course (syllabus), focuses students on this question: "How does this text help explain what it means to be human?" I think that is the essential question.

Neri - Yummy

A selection of i-Journalism titles for students - MS = not recommended for middle school

Bloody Sunday - This picto-essay tells the story of the massacre of the Wobblies, a Pacific Northwest labor event in 1916. Compare the graphic essay to the Wikipedia article. It is short and free, so it makes for a good introduction to both the historical event and the iJournalism form.
Comics and Art: a picto-essay is available for .99 from Amazon.com (Kindle edition - read using a Kindle, iPad, or other device with the free Kindle reader installed) - this is wonderful introduction to how and why the graphic format works
Synchopated: an anthology of nonfiction picto-essays (Amazon.com) - these short pieces range from the personalized report ("Penny Sentiments") to powerful reports on historical events ("Like hell I will" and "What we so quietly saw") and people ("West Side Improvements" - which can be the backbone of an entire HS unit when read with McCann's This Side of Brightness and Toth's The Mole People). Please do not use "Welcome Home, Brave" - written by a non-Native, it is rife with offense even though the opposite is clearly its intention. A lukewarm review of the collection, a critical review, and a positive review might guide your selections.
AD: New Orleans after the deluge - Neufield (Amazon) - MS - follows 6 survivors of Katrina - read the author interview on the Amazon site
The Complete Persepolis - Satrapi (Amazon) - memoir of an Iranian girl-to-woman
Joe Sacco is, I think, the most powerful i-Journalist today. MS - Available from Amazon: Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, Safe Area Goradze, The Fixer and other stories, War's End (the last 3 are a Bosnia trilogy, all the more powerful in light of recent war crimes trials and reportage)
Guy Delisle's work is more like cultural commentary. Available from Amazon: Pyongang: a journey in North Korea and Burma Chronicles.
Deogratias: a tale of Rwanda - Stassen (Amazon) - MS (?) - the story of the Darfur genocide, which will be powerful if read, as I experienced it, with a viewing of Raindrops over Rwanda.
Yummy: the last days of a southside shorty - Neri (Amazon) - based on a true story of a Chicago youth's life and death, this would be a great pairing with Monster or other work by Walter Dean Myers, including his memoir Bad Boy.
The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam - Fleming (Amazon) - an i-Journalism memoir of a Chinese immigrant who led a fascinating life that reflected the culture in which he lived - one of my favorites
We are on our own - Katin (Amazon) - another memoir, this one of escape from the Nazis, nice because it is by a woman author - obvious pairing with Once, Milkweed, Upstairs Room, Book Thief, Maus and other Holocaust titles
Waltz with Bashir: a Lebanon war story - Folman (Amazon) - MS (?) - Israeli - Lebanon war - this story has also been told by the author in an "animated documentary" film of the same title (Amazon), begging comparison

and more - The American Library Association gives a prize to Great Graphic Novels for Teens, which includes a nonfiction category. Although most of these are not what I would call i-Journalism, a few are. The current list (2012 nominations) includes i-journalism on Sacco and Vanzetti and Israel. Previous lists include Yummy (gangs), Gettysburg, Trotsky, and more.

Next steps for teachers:

Find out what texts are in your library, classrooms and resource rooms. Build a collection!
Think of a way to embed the collection in your curriculum.
Urge students to create "photo essays" or "graphic essays" of a journalistic nature. Smart phones and flip cameras are perfect tools for this. ComicLife is a perfect fit. Upload to YouTube - Teacher.
Announce your student work to EC Ning and, of course, to your parent community.

Compelling Unit: International Texts

2011-10-21T04:27:00.000-07:00

source

[look for additional titles on the Graphic Novels for MS/HS page to the right]

Janice Murphy, a highly qualified, highly successful, and highly regarded teacher at Freeport Middle School, has shared with me a reading workshop unit comprised of texts - fiction and memoir - from an international palette.

There is no doubt that we are living in a global world, one that challenges educators to open student eyes, as appropriate, to life beyond the bounds of a zip code. This means, more often than not, exploring cultural, social and political realities (and/or histories) not discussed or explored in the traditional curriculum.

Janice's unit is particularly powerful for middle school (she teaches grade 8) because at its core are adolescent issues: fairness, power, identity and "place", equality (social, gender, class), and the voice of the individual within his or her culture and world. Instead of focusing the reading on culture, history, etc., or asking endless comprehension questions, she personalizes the reading experience. Her Essential Question is: How do the situations or events in memoirs, autobiography, prose or historical fiction have relevance in my life?

This question is a powerful one. Moving from text to self is at the core of reading.

As designed by Janice, this is a collaborative unit. Students read in groups - some as small as two - from a list of titles that have been purchased in multiple. There is choice. This year, the majority of the choices were not read. This is to be expected in some classes, especially when insecurity about reading and heightened social awareness are the rule (I know this class of kids). Nonetheless, the larger the range of choices, the more chance there is that you will find a good fit for every student. You may also find, as I often did, that good choices and good discussions lead students to make a 2nd choice - and even a 3rd.

Janice used two straightforward organizers to focus discussion of the texts: Collaborative Homework Questions and Critical Thinking Map, both from ReadWriteThink. In combination, they direct discussion and serve also to give the teacher a quick assessment of how individual reading is going.

Beyond that, I don't know the details of Janice's adventure. Aside from the fact that it worked. She shared with several stories of students who read, for the first time, in a new zone. One boy discovered a voice to talk about his own culture. High readers asked for even more challenges. Some self-professed non-reading boys connected to the realistic nature of the genre.

You will find at the bottom of this post Janice's reading choices, to which I have added some titles. More ideas welcome!

Here are some ideas of my ideas for quest level activities (to continue the gaming metaphor I began in the previous post):

culture/nation/news/history research (including fact-checking from text) - wiki - perhaps an edu.Glogster.com poster for the wall -
tier 3 vocabulary lists from text - student selected - word walls (would need to contain images)
video and audio files, images, artifacts - edu.Glogster posters or Prezi
author research - wiki (same as other research)
character study map or Prezi - the powerless protagonist (growth or change?)
text passage selection - wiki - I would organize it by the Homework Questions topics - this can be huge in developing the Boss level project
creative writing assignments: RAFT pieces, audio recordings, POV pieces - this can be sustained as one character throughout the unit or change with reading assignments (depends on the book - students should decide)

At the boss level, Janice is using the Social Issues discussions to have students develop essay responses to the reading. That is perfect for her personalized Essential Question (let's be frank - text-based writing is a Standard in Maine) - and it allows her students to develop personal statements in the introduction and conclusion. Very fine twist on the 5-paragraph essay.

If you wanted to use a more global question rather than the personal question, you might ask students to prepare a persuasive presentation for a global roundtable (simulated UN) on the question of .... Groups could then use a tool like TitanPad to write and refine an actual position paper. In classes where I have used this approach, we had sit-ins, signage, graffiti (chalk), and lots of demonstration around the key points of discussion.

Who says ELA is boring and disconnected?

Reading list: (lexiles given where available)

All the Broken Pieces - Burg - Vietnam boy immigrant (post-War) - poem format - HL680
The Arrival - Shaun Tan - immigrant experience - graphic novel
Bamboo People - Perkins - Burma - 680
Before We Were Free - Alvarez - Dominican Republic - 890
The Bite of the Mango - Kamara - Africa - Sierra Leone - 800
Burma Chronicles - Delisle - Burma - graphic novel
The Breadwinner - Ellis - Afghanistan - 630
Breaking Stalin's Nose - Yelchin - 670 - Stalin's Russia - graphic illustrations - Newberry
BreakingThrough - Jiménez - Mexican immigrants
The Bride Price - Emecheta - Nigeria - 1060 (retold at 610)
Chinese Cinderella - Mah - China - 960
Colibri - Cameron - Guatemala - 730
Cuba 15 - Osa - Cuban immigrants - 750
The Disappeared - Whelan - Argentina - 780
Esperanza Rising - Ryan - US/Great depression/Mexican Am. - 750
Exit Wounds - Modan - Israel - graphic novel (not recommended for middle school)
A Hand Full of Stars - Schami - Syria - 810
Haveli - Staples - Pakistan - 1030
Heart of a Samurai - Preus - Japan - 760
Home of the Brave - Applegate - Sudanese refugee in US - poem form - 860
Homeless Bird - Whelan - India - 800
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Ford - Japanese American-WW2 - 730
The House on Mango Street - Cisneros - Latino - 870
Inside Out and Back Again - Lai - Vietnam (fleeing at end of War) - National Book Award, Newberry - poem form - 800
The Jade Peony - Choy - Chinese-Canadian children
The Jumping Tree - Saldana - Mexican immigrant in Texas - 770
Kampung Boy - Lat - Southeast Asia (Muslim) - graphic novel
Little Bee - Cleave - Nigeria (escapes to England) - not for MS
A Long Walk to Water - Park - Sudan - 720
A Long Way Gone - Beah - Africa--Sierra Leonne - 920
My Name is Not Easy - Edwardson - First People (Canada)
Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You - Jansen - (Rwanda)
Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida - Martinez - Mexican immigrant - 1000
Persepolis - Satrapi - Iran - graphic novel
The Red Glass - Resau - AZ. and Mexico - 800
Shabanu - Staples - Pakistan - 970
Shiva's Fire - Staples - India - 990
Shizuko's Daughter - Mori - Japan - 820
A Stone in My Hand - Clinton - Palestine (Gaza) - 540
Thursday's Child - Hartnett - 970
Two Kinds - Tan - Chinese-American - online - also Tan's "Fish Cheeks"
Zahra's Paradise - Amir - Iranian boy disappears after 2008 elections - graphic novel - also may be available serialized online

Game Models in ELA?

2011-10-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

from Andrew Miller - cloud by Tagul

I am not a gamer - board, computer, and video games are not my "go to" activities. So I surprised myself last week by taking a week long side-trip into video gaming. First, I had to learn more. Serious gaming pedagogues point out that seriously interested teachers should learn by playing - but I had my fill of gaming with WolfQuest one long Friday a few years ago, an experience that also introduced me to Flower, a PS3 game that won my heart but would have broken my pocketbook at the time. I am currently gameless.

So first I observed. I observed my 2.5 year-old granddaughter, Beatrice, manipulate my iPad 2 for an hour at a time twice a day for a week (limits wisely imposed by her mother). She played and explored apps in folders I had created for her. Her favorites:

interactive books (Green Eggs and Ham, Grover: There is a Monster at the End of this Story, Triceratops Gets Lost, The Itsy Bitsy Spider),
Build A Train,
Fish School,
Peekaboo Wild,
Tiny Wings,
Weet Woo!

Bea did not ask for help - in fact, she flatly rejected it. Since I am fixated right now with the idea that "the brain you have at 3 is the brain you live with for the rest of your life," I asked these questions as I observed: Do I see significant independent learning happening? Is literacy developing?

Yup and yup.

I observed:

transfer of a visual vocabulary from one game to another (directional arrows and icons, words like "start" and "play", glowing stars, moving and flashing objects)
transfer of textual organization from one game to another (corner clues generally)
transfer of tactile interaction from one game to another (swiping, tapping, dragging, press and hold)
transfer of learning and problem-solving from one game to another - If it did THIS in the last game, it should do THIS in this new game
sequencing of actions replacing random actions
reading of site words (including animal names and objects highlighted in the games), including attention to letter order in many words (spelling out the word: L-I-O-N)
number sense and number recognition
prediction, which was eagerly communicated
attention to detail and to the repetition of pattern, both of which were communicated to me

And then I read about gaming.

from James Paul Gee - cloud by Tagul

Who and what I read:

James Paul Gee:

Big Thinkers: James Paul Gee on Grading with Games - View this video to get a good grasp of Gee's influential ideas on gaming in education. He is not really talking about "grading" - he is talking about a better path to learning.
"Good games confront players in the initial game levels with problems that are specifically designed to allow players to form good generalizations about what will work well later when they face more complex problems. Often, in fact, the initial levels of a game are in actuality hidden tutorials." ...  "In a sense, all learning involves 'playing a character.' In a science classroom, learning works best if students think, act, and value like scientists. Games can show us how to get people to invest in new identities or roles, which can, in turn, become powerful motivators for new and deep learning in classrooms and workplaces."   ("What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy" - .pdf)
As suggested by the word cloud above (made from the article), Gee believes that gaming is the new - and essential - literacy, the key to learning in the current 21st century. He does not believe that either reading or movie-watching engage and motivate the student like gaming, by causing them "to feel as if their bodies and minds have stretched into a new space." I disagree with this statement - for the simple reason that when I read and watch great movies, I DO engage that deeply. And yes, the feeling motivates me to read - and learn - more. It may be that children today have lost the ability to read, watch, and empathize deeply. Isn't developing this skill one of the foci of Reading Workshop as it is structured today? Isn't this why we are paying so much attention to "just right" texts?
Gee's is, however, a persuasive point, especially his message about gaming as a path to difficult text - and thus to complex learning tasks. The danger is that teachers will, in the rush to change that comes with all educational fads, offer games in place of text and stop there. Gaming should not mean giving up on "the read imperative" - it should not become a substitute for challenging text.
I focus on Gee's as a message for meeting the literacy challenges of the individual student.

Andrew Miller is a great place to go after Gee - for a simplified, entry level introduction, more like a how-to. Miller is more concerned with the group dynamic of the game model than with the individual dynamic.

"Game-based learning units for every teacher" - Here is your Tier 3 vocabulary list for the article: GBL, quest level, boss level, badge, avatar

Quest levels sound a bit like tasks in a WebQuest environment
Boss levels sound like projects
It might be possible to retool some of the great WebQuests

"Get your game on: on to build curriculum units using the game model" - includes a sample unit (Athens-Sparta). This reminds me of simulations I designed P.D. (pre-digital), which makes me immediately sympathetic to Miller's ideas - they work.

Judy Willis: "A neurologist makes the case for the video game model as a learning tool" offers a cognitive perspective.

Achievable levels should strike a chord with ELA teachers and literacy strategists. This is now the rage. I heard this morning about a 3rd grade veteran teacher who was required to remove hundreds of books from her classroom because they were outside of the tested reading ranges of her students. There is danger in taking level measurements too literally. Assessment tools are not gods. But there is no denying that achievable levels are clearly a key element in learning. The thing is, in a gaming model it is the student who measures ability to achieve and who sets the achievable level. What this means for the classroom is this: time, large chunks of it.
Rewards is a bit dicier as a concept strategy. For example, the debate is still active about how and how much to reward students for reading. Willis suggests that small, ongoing rewards for individual efforts (clearly identified) are formative as well as motivational. This is key component of the game model.
Risk and Failure ("no pain no gain") are another key element. I think it deserves a place in the ELA Concept Hall of Fame. Willis promotes building challenge, and therefore often failure, into what happens in the classroom: "Individualized achievable challenge level is one where a task, action, or choice is not so easy as to be essentially automatic or 100% successful." Are we gradually, through reading workshop models and persistent testing, designing a teaching schema in which failure does not happen often enough because students are not, in fact, encouraged to "level up"? Or is the opposite true - are we, by making assessment scores and omnipresent choice accessible to students, motivating them to take on the next level? Is an F-and-P score a badge? Should it be used this way?

Mary Beth Hertz provides an "in the trenches" look at all of this: "Using the video game model in the classroom."

Her article made me think specifically about writing development. A true workshop model would outline individual challenges as part of a leveled process and also track success. There should be an app for that! (that is the one I have asked Apple for). It should also provide mentor texts for all levels - texts that clearly demonstrate levels of writing skill. I love the use of short texts, blogged responses/imitations, etc. for just this purpose. Writing well is a game. Most students do like to play it when they see those small levels of success.
It also makes me think of my daughter's 1st grade class. Spelling papers that were perfect were put on the board - a badge of success. Willa reversed an "e" in one word (common for a 1st grade lefty) and was the only student left off of the wall. In her mind, that E was pinned to her chest every day for the rest of the year. I think about the dangers of rewards as well as the positives. We can not make picky editing details the measure of writing skill. Nor can or should we teacher-edit student work. There is a great deal about writing workshop that is misunderstood - to the detriment of student writing development.

Aran Levassur writing for Mind/Shift asks "Is gaming the new essential literacy?" and returns us again to collaboration and interaction (with other students/workers), which are two of the buzz words for 21st Century Workplace Literacy - and (we are buying into this as a country) success.

From my point of view, part of this is a wide river away from little Bea's experience - and from the experience extolled by Gee. She did not need or want collaboration. She wanted to interact on her own with the game environment. Her learning was self-directed. Will she make a good worker bee? No. Will she make a good queen? Yup. It might come down to the skills that employers really want to hire - on how the students learn to play the games.
On the other hand, Levassur also underscores the "embedded trial and error" that make the games, well... gamey. Or is he identifying creative problem-solving? That is a bit cloudy. I know boys who love to advance levels by cheating - for some, cheat codes are very profitable indeed. Trial and error - problem-solve - cheat. I don't see how it is possible to claim that the game model provides more growth through one than the other.

Isn't the message here that today's students will learn best - and most willingly and happily - when they are in the "just right" zone? Over 90% of today's kids ages 8-18 play video games (I heard that today on 99.9 The Wolf - it is supported by Pew data). This is "empty data" - too many variables, too little disaggregation - but it is data that is driving change.

So am I game? There are many ELA units that would fit the parameters of the game model. In fact, when I think of the best instructional practices in an effective ELA class, I see all of the elements at work. Perhaps ELA teachers need just to be more metacognitive about encouraging risk-taking, riding failure to the next level, starting over, collaborating, setting achievable and individual levels but also having a Boss level always in mind (and made clear to students)... Sounds a bit like a Universal Design lesson to me.

Is gaming really change for ELA? Is the game model really more about engagement and fun - badges and success points - than it is about achieving standards? Or is the game model really more about student-driven learning replacing teacher-driven learning?

I think it can be all of these things - but the best ELA classes always have been all of these things.