Fly Guy on the Wall

I began the project searching for a way to publish my students’ writing digitally.  My students are motivated by the opportunity to publish their writing in our classroom and share it with their family and friends.  Publishing online broadens the audience to relatives around the world and strangers (friends we haven’t yet met) in our global community.  The context for student writing will be even more authentic as the audience expands beyond the walls of our classroom. Students’ motivation will continue and more students will be engaged.  Shy students will be able to share their writing without having to read out-loud to the classroom.  The pressure of reading in front of an audience can be avoided for students who prefer to have others read their writing instead.

In my classroom, students have been given the opportunity to publish stories using Kid Pix.  We have started a class blog and I have posted the stories to the blog.  Kids are communicating online through the blog and through publishing their Kid Pix writing.  The link to the blog has been shared with parents through email.  It is also posted on our classroom website through a new google site.  Parents love the blog already.

In addition to posting student writing on our blog, students have already begun to comment on each others’ writing.

Now that our classroom has a digital presence, the opportunities for real communication are endless.  We recently received school accounts for our first graders, so we will be able to create google docs, and students may even be able to write collaboratively.  I will be able to edit student writing through google docs, and students will be able to review the changes, something that we just never have enough time for during our in-class writing time every day.

In addition to publishing our “regular” writing and blogging about our classroom, I see lots of other possibilities for my students.  Google forms could be used for formulaic writing or poetry writing that has rigid requirements.  There are lots of other “story creators” available online for students to create other types of writing.  While I prefer to have kids create their own stories, sometimes they need to focus on specific aspects of writing, such as building the arc of a story, or character development.  Some of the story creators (although they may seem like glorified Madlibs), can help kids address individual aspects of writing.

• The Story Creator A lot like Madlibs
• Online Instant Story Creator Also a lot like Madlibs.
• Short Story Creator Seems to just make one story, but you fill in the blanks.
• My Story Maker (Thank you, Kery!) Kids choose a character and a goal for the character.  Kids can add emotions and interactions.  Help is provided in writing the story in the form of questions about the objects inserted into the picture.

There are places to publish writing online, but they often require writers to pay.  Examples include:

• http://www.blurb.com/
• http://www.lulu.com/

I don’t see how this would be better than publishing to your school’s website or your classroom website, unless you were trying to advertise and sell your published story.  Parents may enjoy these options for creating keepsakes or books to give as gifts.

My interest has moved beyond simply posting completed writing, to actually having students create and collaborate online.  Digital storytelling options seem limitless.

31 digital storytelling sites are described by an educator here: http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3190 There are even more ideas in the comments on this blog!

• SearchStories Here you can make your own Google search story, really easily by just filling in a few search words, choosing different search methods and adding canned music!
• PicLits This is a really neat site where kids can write about a picture.  There are words to choose from (think refrigerator poetry) or you can write on your own.  There are ideas.
• Domo Animate At this site, kids can create and animate cartoons with voice bubbles.  There are some actions and emotions.

Alan Levine offered 50 ways to tell a story digitally.  They can be viewed at his wiki: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+Ways

I think my students could benefit from audio recording some of their stories and thinking.  For some, it could be a step in the process of getting the words into print.  Audio can be recorded using imovie, garageband, or with video using our new flip video cameras.  Adding audio to the pictures and text that are digitally recorded will bring the writing to life.  I think family members and others will enjoy hearing the first grade voices and students will learn how to use a microphone and speak clearly.

Pandora’s box is open.  The possibilities are endless!

According to wikipedia, blogs were originally created to share “commentary or news on a particular subject” or “personal online diaries.”

“Repurposing” a blog to use in/with a classroom can make it a powerful tool.

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Using a blog in the classroom allows the conversation and learning to move beyond the classroom walls.  Classroom experiences are communicated with the parents and the greater community.  The greater community is invited to participate in those discussions.  The constraints of time are lifted.  Differentiation is achieved because students with a profound interest in a topic are able to further explore an idea in an ongoing accessible conversation, in their own time.  Experts can be invited in and participate.  Parents are included in the learning community.  Every teacher has the experience of starting a fabulous conversation with a group of students and then having to end the conversation to move on to Gym or another activity in the schedule.  By posting the conversation to a blog, students, families, and the global community can review the conversation, add to the conversation, and comment on the conversation.  The opportunity to review scaffolds the learning for some.  The conversation is no longer limited to a certain place and time.  It continues indefinitely.  It’s like the radio waves we send out into space, progressing indefinitely, but it’s interactive.

Click here to see how we used a blog to extend our learning beyond the classroom.

Here it is, what you’ve all been waiting for, a real PEEK into our classroom!  See

Typing our stories

http://blogs.d30.me/aneumann.  On Tuesday, I started a blog for our classroom.  We wrote a few things about our day and posted them.  Kids suggested ideas, I typed, and we discussed how to rearrange things a bit so that sentences about the same topic were next to each other.  Over night I added our Halloween picture.  The next day we wrote again about our day.  No one had commented, so I sent out the link to the parents in our classroom and I demonstrated how to add a comment.  I received positive feedback (via email) from parents right away, even though we had just started.

The kids have been publishing their writing this week using Kid Pix.  They typed in their stories and chose/created pictures to accompany the story.  I edited the stories for publishing.  As you can imagine, typing in first grade brought up lots of discussion.  I heard, “How do you make a space?”  First graders did not all know that the spacebar makes a space. “I clicked two times, but it’s not opening.”  Some first graders need to develop motor speed to be able to click twice quickly enough to open a document. “How do you put a period?”  It’s hard for some first graders to find the period on the keyboard. “How do you make [the text box] bigger?”  “How do you erase?”  Not all first graders knew that there is a delete button, or what that button does. “It won’t let me do the next sentence.”  We had a lot to learn, but our first graders were eager learners.  They helped each other and I believe everyone’s keyboarding skills improved.

First graders quickly took ownership of the project and talked about our school’s shared laptops with ownership, too.  “Can I go get my computer?”  “Here you are.  Sorry about that.” (a first grader talking to her computer.

Hard at work!

Laptops on the move!

I posted one of the stories to our blog, and demonstrated how to add a comment.  I have now posted most of their stories, and in class I offered the opportunity for students to read each others’ stories and post comments.  I opened up the blog on our four classroom computers.  Kids couldn’t wait to have a turn to post comments.  As you’ll notice, this is  their writing.  My editing was minimal, if at all.  I did help students to put spaces between their words and add missing sounds, if I saw the comment before it was submitted. I hadn’t intended to have so much unedited writing “published” right away, but the kids were enthusiastic and I didn’t want to be a road block.  I’m not sure how their parents will feel about “published” writing with developmental spelling.  My concept of publishing is changing.  Let me know what you think.

As you may remember, my initial ideas for my final project were a classroom blog and/or a digital way to publish kids’ stories.  I looked into Lulu and Blurb, as sites to publish kids’ work, but both are sites that you have to pay for.  I think a blog is still a good idea, but I would have to find a way to make the experience educational for kids.  Two ideas were blogging about a book kids had read (or I had read to them) and blogging about what they think first grade will be like in the year 2020.  I had the second idea while watching the moving Back to the Future.  I think reviewing the past and making predictions for the future allows kids to use their imaginations and knowledge in good ways.

My kids regularly publish their writing using Word.  I type in their words, we print the pages, and they illustrate using colored pencils.  While the kids and I love the process, I would like to offer a digital option as well.  A digital option would allow

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kids to share their writing with a greater audience.  Grandparents in New Jersey could read their writing, see their illustrations, and perhaps even comment.

For my final project I would like to search and find great ways to publish kids’ books digitally.  For a start, we could work with KidPix.  The kids are familiar with KidPix from kindergarten, so the leap would not be huge for them to begin to publish stories using that application.  If we are able to get google.doc accounts, I would like to have kids publish using doogle.docs or google.presentations.  Student learning will be enhanced by giving students multiple options for expressing their stories through digital media.

The project would naturally be sustained over time.  My kids write every day.  When they have written something that they think they would like to publish, they edit the writing and then we publish.  Digital publishing could be an ongoing option each time a student is ready to publish.  Over the course of the year, we could explore different tools for digital publishing and eventually kids could pick the tool that best showcases their piece of writing and their message.

In addition, if we are able to save our work on a site where it could be easily accessed by us and others, we could comment on others’ work, and read comments about our own work.  We would definitely start with “completed” works to publish, but by the Spring, it would be wonderful if we were able to begin composing using a word processing or publishing tool, so kids could give and

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receive feedback throughout the writing process, not just at the end.  In the classroom kids regularly do this by reading their writing to each other and then asking questions or giving compliments.

My family got their first computer when I was in 4^th grade.  I never wrote a long essay by hand, unless it was an in-class essay.  If kids are able to pre-write and write using computers, regularly, I believe their typing skills will develop naturally.  Using a word processor or publishing program for the writing process will enhance student learning because students will think differently as they write.  They will think about reorganizing their ideas, since it is so easy to click and drag text.  They will have spelling support when they know a word isn’t quite spelled correctly.  Spell check offers options, without having to break concentration to find a dictionary and attempt to find the correct spelling in it.

I look forward to testing out a wide variety of publishing tools, and guiding my students through publishing, and eventually the entire writing process in a global learning community.

I have created a screencast.  Like the voicethread, part of the challenge was choosing a project worth completing.  For this project, I really wanted to find something that would be useful at school.  To me, a screencast is like recording a video.  The difference is that the video shows action on a screen.

At first I thought I would create a screencast using a smartboard.  I really like the notebook software and it is easy to use.  I heard from other colleagues that it was difficult to use the mouse for drawing during a screencast, and the smartboard avoids that problem.  You can just draw with a pen, and lots of shapes are already created and ready to use.  As I explored Jing, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to edit without purchasing the upgraded product.  I needed to be able to record sound in a quiet place, and that wasn’t guaranteed in the library or computer lab where I have access to smartboards.

I decided to create a screencast using Jing to demonstrate the access of the Everyday Math Games online.  I have already shown my students how to do this, but it’s not yet easy for all of them.  I do have them help each other, but they still need my help, too.  In addition, I’d like the parents to be able to access the site from home, and a screencast seemed like a better option than writing out the directions.  If you haven’t viewed it yet, click here to view the screencast.

Actually creating the screencast was fairly easy.  A challenge was demonstrating the log in process without exposing a real password.  The Jing tutorial suggestion was to create a text box over the password, but that seems to only work for an image, not a video.  I decided to open multiple windows of firefox before beginning the screencast.  I prepared each window for a next step in the log in process.  Some information is shown, but it is not enough information for anyone to actually log in.

At first, I didn’t think there were many applications for screencasting in my classroom since I am actually there teaching.  I know it would be useful for kids who are absent, but that is a lot of work for just one student.  After creating the screencast, I played it for the class as a review of the process of accessing the Everyday Math Games online that they love.  They were captivated!  The kids were interested in hearing my voice and seeing things move on the computer while I wasn’t touching it.  Maybe there is a use for screencasting in my room!

free clipart available at www.school-clip-art.com

This week I created a voicethread to tell a story.  The hardest part was choosing a story to tell.  I think that is good, because for writers, authors, and storytellers, I think an essential question is choosing a story to tell.  I had to remind myself that this was just one story, and it didn’t have to be the best story of my life to give me the experience I wanted, of creating a voicethread.  I choose to write about my summer.  After researching about different ways to create stories, I knew that I could choose pictures first and create a story to go with those pictures, or start with a story and then find or create pictures to tell that story along with the words.  Click here to view my voicethread.

clipart available at pics4learning.com

I have been thinking about how I might use voicethreads in my classroom.  As a start, I’d like to hand the classroom digitial camera over to the kids.  Sometimes they create structures with pattern blocks that they would like to record.  At other times the kids have stories to tell about items from home.  By allowing the kids to take their own pictures, they would have images to narrate.

clipart available at pics4learning.com

At our school, kids are stretched to solve math word problems explaining how they found their answer.  First graders can often say quite a bit about how they found an answer, but they actually write and draw much less on paper.  I think voicethreads could scaffold their written answers.  Perhaps kids could narrate their answers and then go back and listen to their answers and begin to record the answer in writing.  By starting and stopping the playback, they could get more of their answer written onto the page.  Eventually   Great challenges for students who are ready, would be telling a story in just 5 pictures, or telling a story in just 6 words.

I really enjoyed Alan Levine’s presentation.  It reminded me of the cooking magazine Epicurious.  He provided a thorough examination of a wide variety of tools, from a relatively unbiased perspective (without advertising).  I learned the pros and cons of each tool.  I wish a similar presentation was available about the candidates before each election!

Thanks for reading!  Let me know if you think of any other uses of digital storytelling or voicethreads in a first grade classroom.

I must admit, I am not exactly sure where I’d like to go with technology in my classroom.

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I remember during a summer in junior high, I took diving class.  I was fine until we were supposed to do an inward dive (you stand at the edge of the board, facing back towards the ladder, then jump up and dive down and forward without hitting the ladder).  I could never do it.  I never even tried.  The coach explained that as soon as I could imagine myself completing the dive without hitting the board, I would be able to execute the dive.  I received similar advice in gymnastics, and it worked, but in gymnastics there was no chance of me skinning myself and then landing in a pool of chlorinated water.  I can’t yet picture my first graders working collaboratively on a blog.  While I know they would be motivated, and their writing mechanics would necessarily improve, I’m not sure how much technology frustration I could tolerate in my classroom of 22 students.  Our mechanics aren’t there yet.  We aren’t there yet.

I have taken baby steps.  This week I published our classroom newsletter as a google doc which I shared with the parents in my classroom.  I chose to use google docs because I wanted to include links and images.  There were mixed reviews.  The first response was a parent who was impressed.  The next two were parents who weren’t able to access the document.  I quickly sent them out the word document, and adjusted the settings to make the google doc public, but I’m still not convinced that everyone who was interested, was able to view the document.

I can imagine my students contributing to a classroom blog, but I think that would be more of a showcase of their work than a platform for feedback, collaboration, and revision.  Maybe that’s a start for first graders.  I can also picture having students create podcasts, presentations, and other forms of media to publish to a larger audience.  Again, I’m not sure whether this would be in a platform that would allow comments and feedback.  If it’s possible, that would be positive as well.  Currently, students in my classroom publish writing using word.  I can imagine giving students more options in publishing their writing.  Currently, after publishing, students share their writing with the class, their family and friends, and then peers pour over the writing in the class.  I would like to explore Lulu or Blurb as other ways to publish that could increase the audience.  I love the idea of having the kids pick someone to write to before they choose a purpose and begin composing.

Am I biting off too much?

I have also begun to set up a diigo group for one of my professional learning communities.  I invited the listserve to create their own diigo accounts, and next week I will send them invitations to join the group.  As a group of religious educators, we are constantly sharing links.  It seems very useful to store them in a site that we can all add to, comment on, and access easily, instead of having to look back through years of emails or paper handouts to find a link that someone has suggested.

I’m on my way, and I’ll get somewhere good, I’m just not sure where that is yet.

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Reading and writing have changed with the evolution of technology.  There are different languages such as t9 and abbreviations such as lol.  People think differently as they synthesize and evaluate their ideas to see if they are appropriate for a facebook post or if they could be framed into a tweet.  Reading occurs often on a computer. Kids can wonder or be curious now and find information in moments wherever they are on an iphone.  In the past, many of these “wonderings” would be forgotten before more information was pursued.  Readers need to ignore advertising and skim through volumes of text to find useful information.  On the other hand, information is at hand, so people don’t have to remember facts, they just have to remember how to get back to them or where they stored them.  Publishing is not something that happens years after ideas are formed.  In many cases ideas are formed DURING publishing.  Authors start writing about something mundane and as they write they reflect and occasionally come up with something profound.  Beginning planning stages of writing are accessible to an audience.  Instead of planning, writing, revising, and then publishing, students now reflect, retract, and repeat in the “nearly now.”  Even with young beginning writers, the audience can be the world instead of just the immediate family, friends, and peers.  Primary sources are more available for research, which is invaluable in writing.  Students are able to view original texts online instead of reading about someone’s interpretation of events in a dated textbook.

Students need to learn to read in new ways.  Instead of reading everything on a specific subject, students need to “manage analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information.”  They also need to “create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts”(NCTE).  Skimming is important in new ways.  Before students waste time decoding huge pages of information, they need to learn to quickly determine if the page contains reliable, useful information.

Writing has also changed.  Students not only need to be able to write on paper with a pencil, they also need “the ability to publish in a variety of media with the intention of connecting and sharing it with others who have an interest (or passion) in the topic”(Will Richardson).

Have classrooms kept up with these changes in reading and writing or are the changes only in reading and writing outside the classroom?  According to Keith Krueger, The U.S Department of Commerce ranked IT-intensiveness in education as less than that in coal mining.  As children write on Web 2.0 sites, they can benefit from “extracurricular social co-apprenticeship”(Will Richardson). Students can read each other’s writing, get ideas from each other, give each other feedback and suggestions, and support each other in composition, outside of school, before anything is “turned in” to a teacher.  The example of students who organized the “This is Sparta” writing campaign demonstrates that “students know how to compose, and they know how to organize, and they know audience.”  The question remains, “How can we build on all that knowledge? How can we help them  connect it to larger issues?”(NCTE)

Teachers have many more sources of content and teaching strategies beyond what is in the printed teacher’s manual.  They can confer with other teachers around the world who are teaching the same content, facing the same challenges, and coming up with many different solutions.

The tools are available.  Are we using them?

This week I was given the task of working collaboratively with an assigned group of peers to create

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a google doc.  We had to choose a big open ended question and then gather and organize materials to address the question.  I have found it is pretty easy to create a google doc.  My team agreed on a question relatively painlessly, and found abundant resources addressing the question.

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A challenge was actually collaborating with the group.  It is hard to coordinate people’s time.  When assignments are online, it seems as though you can do them any time.  In reality, if it is an online collaborative project, tech needs to be working and you may have to wait for others to contribute.  If you wait for 100% consensus from all members of the group before moving to a next step, you will likely run out of time to complete the assignment, or at least not complete it in a timely fashion.

Because the internet offers such an immense field of information, it’s hard to know when you have found the best resources to answer your question.  If you complete a good google search and explore the first 20 sites that seem to address the question well, how do you know that the 21^st site wouldn’t have been even better?  Since I am just beginning to delve into 21^st Century Learning, I don’t yet know the gurus or top 5 most important clearancehouses of information.  In the past, you could actually read ALL the articles written on a specific subject that were published in peer reviewed journals.  You could read everything that was published in the last 5 years on a specific topic.  What type of thoroughness is expected in the 21^st Century?

The only real frustration was when the moodle was down.  That is the “beyond my control” aspect of technology that has kept technology out of my personal goals in the past.  While I am comfortable trying new technology for my own growth and to try new things with kids, I usually choose not to rely on new technology when I am being observed or evaluated.  There are some components that are beyond my control.  I can always have a lower tech “Plan B,” but I’d rather know that I’m not rolling the dice before I invite others in to watch me teach.  The moodle was up and running the following morning, but the time I had planned to work the previous night was not used to read or view the articles from the moodle.  Perhaps I should have downloaded the resources when they were accessible so that I could view them with or without the server?  I don’t know the moodle well enough at this time to have made that decision.  At all other times, the tech ran smoothly, the group worked together, and my work was free of frustrations.

available at classroomclipart.com

In creating this blog, I’ve been given some video lectures and links to consider.  The video lectures were the “Plain English” variety (Blogs in Plain English and RSS in Plain English).  They probably would have been more helpful if I watched them before I wrote the first blog   While I find those videos to have a repetitive, patronizing tone, they do have good information and they are clear.  I did use the articles, “10 Habits of Bloggers that Win” and “Student and Teacher Blogging that Succeeds” and found them to be very useful as guides in sprucing up my entries.  I used their suggestions as checklists to review my posts (links, photos, tags, pings).  It was helpful that both contained not just ideas, but also the “how-to” details that allowed me to implement the ideas fairly easily.