I facilitated a workshop at my school’s professional development day on Tuesday. My favorite part was explaining to everyone how Wikipedia works!
Here are the slides from the 20-minute presentation I gave at the Connecticut Association of Independent School’s “Too Many Tools, Too Little Time” mini-conference on December 13. It was a fun evening!
The reading for pleasure project I mentioned in my last post is over, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results. I spent two days visiting classrooms to watch the students’ presentations. Most selected Glogs, perhaps because they’re familiar with the medium, or because they’re easy to work on from home. A few chose to do book trailers — many of whom did a book trailer project with me last year — and one or two wrote songs or short stories.
A few things will be different next time, hopefully. We need to devote class time to teaching the students how to do book trailers, including how to find free and legal music online. Happily, the students who did the book trailer project with me last year automatically went to Jamendo to download their soundtracks. (AND, I was very excited to see the seventh graders going to Google’s advanced image search to find pictures for their Glogs, since I’ve been teaching them how to do this for a year and a half now.)
We also need to think about how to occupy the kids who finish their projects earlier than others. Some of the projects could be worked on from home, while others — most notably the book trailer — could not. So some students were scrambling on the second day of in-class work while others had “nothing to do.”
I also wonder about grading. When I asked one of the teachers if the students were being graded on these, she said: “yes. After all this hard work, I want them to be rewarded.” And I totally get that…. but I also wonder if sharing simply for the sake of sharing would work. After all, these kids are highly motivated by grades.
I’m only going to share Glogs, because they are easy for me to access and share. Unfortunately, I can’t embed using iFrame, so I have to share links with you instead. The students spent one class period sharing their projects with each other, with the goal of getting their classmates interested in reading it. I hope to get one video of a student rapping about The Hunger Games up on the blog later this week. PS: notice any themes in the books selected?
And finally, the title of this post comes from a seventh grader, a boy who seems to struggle with technology every time I teach it in class. On Monday, I was looking at his Glog, about the book Enclave. (Side note, this was by FAR the most popular book, with at least three people in every class selecting it.) I asked him if he had finished the book — almost — and if he liked it. With a very serious look on his face, he told me that it was, in fact, the first book he’s ever liked. For a moment, I just stood there stunned, because no one has ever told me this before. In the end, trying not to freak him out, I just managed a quick “that’s awesome” and patted him on the shoulder. But the truth is, I wanted to cry. This feeling was amplified a few minutes later, when two girls who had finished their books each grabbed a copy of Speak off the shelf and started quietly reading it to each other, section by section.
So I guess the obvious morals of the story here are that 1) Booktalking works. 2) Librarians can help get the right books into the hands of kids. 3) Kids like to read. Period.
Happy belated Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a great holiday. After a full week off — and entertaining family — the reality of back-to-school is really hitting me on this Sunday afternoon. And I’ve got a crazy week ahead. Monday and Tuesday are booked solid with middle school English classes, Wednesday is devoted to upper school English, and then things calm down a bit on Thursday and Friday.
But I’m very excited, because those two days of middle school English are related to an experiment that the three MS English teachers and I undertook this year. After a full day of booktalking last Wednesday, the students went home for break with a simple assignment: read from their books for 30 minutes. Upon their return to school, the students may choose from one of four options for sharing their book with their classmates:
- Create a glog, incorporating images and text
- Make a digital book trailer, using either images or original movie footage
- Create a mashup, either by putting your character in another setting or having a character interact with one from the class book
- Write an original rap or song and either record it or perform it live
I can’t wait to see what the students come up with. Because I’m the Glogster administrator, I am starting to see their glogs trickle in, and they’re great. About half of the middle school selected our library books, most pulled from those I booktalked, while others selected something different. I’m planning to collect some of these projects online, to act as recommendation tools for other students. And I’ll share that here when I do.
All this brings me to my main point, which is that none of this would be possible without the cooperation of these three teachers. When I decided to focus on reading for pleasure as a major library initiative this year, I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own. It’s true that YA circulation has gone up just by virtue of having more new titles, putting books on display, and weeding out old books. But increased circulation isn’t enough. This project grew out of my desire to have students share their books with each other. How can you do that with middle school students who are booked solid from 8 AM to 3 PM and then go home? When I sat down with the English teachers and asked them if they could devote class time to this project, they said “yes” without hesitation.
I am very lucky to work with these people. And for all the other teachers who are open to new ideas and who trust me with theirs. From environmental science to Islam, teachers are trying new things. I can do my job because of them. More than anything, they care about engaging their students. The excitement that our teachers have about new technology and new projects is infectious and inspiring. So for all those reasons, I’m thankful for them, and for my school.
It’s so insane that it’s almost November. My autumn is finally slowing down a bit after an absolutely crazy September and October, so maybe I should take a few minutes to catch up here.
For a little while I toyed with the idea of literally just posting all the stuff I’ve done the past two months, but that’s really self-congratulatory and, frankly, a bit of a turn-off. For you…. and for me. In fact, I just edited my CV on this blog to make it a bit less HERE IS EVERYTHING I’VE EVER DONE. The fact is, it’s only sort of an accomplishment to be busy. It’s great that people want my help and trust me, but on the other hand, it means I’m running from one place to another in a highly reactionary way. One thing that still troubles me is that I feel like sometimes we just throw out ideas to see what sticks, instead of thinking about the skills we want our students to have. Now, when you’re working at a fairly traditional school with a fairly traditional faculty, the fact that people want to try new things at all is an achievement. But the other day I was reading over Edutopia’s list of skills that elementary students should have, and I felt this spasm of panic — because when our students build these skills, they’re doing it incidentally. The teachers and I try to create projects that support the curriculum, and we try to vary the tools that students use, but there’s very few conversations taking place about the value of these tech skills. So, I need to find a way to address that in a way that’s not overwhelming to our faculty… which is daunting, considering it overwhelms me.
I created a planning worksheet over the summer for the very purpose of encouraging these conversations and I have yet to employ it. Mostly because I’ve been out straight, but also because we’re adjusting to a new model of integrating technology in the Lower School, a model which places far more onus on the classroom teacher. It’s been a bumpy ride, with moments of great success. As things normalize, we’ll be able to develop projects more thoughtfully, but in the meantime, much of my job is cheerleading the teachers as we all adjust to our new reality.
I guess this brings me back to the great debate about how to integrate technology — should it be done in support of the curriculum, or should certain skills be taught in isolation? Are some skills important regardless of what students are learning in the classroom? Should technology be treated like any other subject, or should it be woven into the other subjects? I’m still trying to figure all this out. I do believe that, whenever possible, technology skills should be reinforced in the classroom. I believe that students learn best when there is a way for them to apply what they have learned, and when the skills have context. But I do struggle with the lack of a technology curriculum that I have control over. It means that one of my major responsibilities is trying to influence others — which can be very hard, and feel weird. There’s a delicate balance between letting teachers take the lead (because they need to be responsible for bringing technology into the classroom) and trying to suggest that teachers employ certain technology. It’s a balance I have not yet achieved.
I do know that nothing but good can come of our school’s recent full-on technology explosion. Some teachers will quickly find tools that they love, some will stumble with tools that aren’t quite right, and sooner or later, everyone will find their own comfort zone. I will keep trying to forge my way through these thorny issues, and by the end of the year, we will have made great progress.
I’ll try not to go 4 months without blogging again.
I had a dream about Scratch the other night.
I think that’s because I just spent three weeks teaching Scratch and nothing but Scratch. The first two weeks, I had one class with six students in grades four through seven. The third week, I was still teaching that class, plus I added two more middle school-age classes, co-taught with Lorri. It was amazing, even though I was pretty exhausted by Friday, exhausted enough to plop my three-year-old in front of a Dora marathon so that I could lie on the couch and decompress.
The great thing about this experience was that I learned along with the kids. During the first week, we went through pre-made lessons together, taken mostly from the Scratch cards but also from other educators’ online lessons (I’m happy to share if you want). Just like my students, I at first struggled with understanding how Scratch works. You have to fit the pieces together? What are these crazy variables? WHY ISN’T THIS WORKING? (Hint: did you leave out your “forever” loop?)
So we Googled things together. Need help making a gun? Google it. Or, better yet, find a game on Scratch that has the element you’re looking for, download the code, and remix it. So not only were the students learning programming, they were practicing smart information gathering and reworking others’ creations, all without even thinking about the fact that they were learning. Pretty awesome.
The second two weeks were devoted to building games and interactive stories. A few of my students aimed too high at the beginning. They wanted to make Mario-style games with scrolling backgrounds and lasers that shot at the boss and health points. Two boys insisted on this, but one, at the end, made a catching game that was a thousand times better than his scrolling game, and he knew it. The students who had the most success took ideas they’d learned about through trying and then adapted them. We talked about game rules, objectives, making games challenging, and what the point was of playing games.
After some of them finished their games, they moved onto interactive stories. So amazing! One of the girls used what my colleague Chris calls “spaghetti code” – stringing a bunch of code together in a really inelegant way, like broadcasting back and forth and back and forth so that she had dozens of small blocks of code crowded into each sprite’s stage. But it worked!
Another great point that Chris made, when I asked him if too much help from the teachers was detrimental to the learning process, was that no matter what, if the students are watching you or doing it themselves, they’re thinking about programming language in a new way – they’re figuring out that blocks need to fit together, that there’s cause and effect, and that it has to make logical sense. With the middle school Scratch classes, we acted out a command. I asked the students how they would tell a friend to walk to the printer, and they all said “walk to the printer.” Now, you can’t tell a hard drive that. It’s not a human being; it’s incredibly powerful, but not a person. So how do you break down that command? “Turn 90 degrees to the left. Take ten steps. Stop.”
I have to say, of all the things I’ve taught, Scratch was probably the most satisfying, both for myself and my students. The feeling I got when a kid turned to me and said “It works!” with a huge grin on her face was pure joy. It can be extremely frustrating, too, but the process of looking at faulty code and making it work makes you feel very accomplished.
Want to check out my students’ work? Here are the games and stories they created in my three-week class. Some of them are unfinished. I am so proud of all of them.
August’s Tag Team Tech: 10 Alternatives to Traditional Slide Shows
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Starting from Scratch
by Sarah Ludwig
Giveaway ends July 15, 2011.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
It’s crazy to be thinking about this on the last day of school, but all it took was this article on the need for tutors in NYC’s elite independent school world to get me musing. So in the interest of getting my ideas down on paper, here are some jumping-off points for next year:
- Explore the idea of building a Writing Center, co-sponsored by the English department, which would provide training and peer support for students completing research and analytical papers – or any kind of writing, really – in the Upper School.
- Embed student assessment into the learning process, including having students write reflections or reflect on camera. Have students write in process blogs or simply jot down their thoughts. This worked very well with the Wikipedia project and I’d like to do it more.
- Think about collaboration in terms of tools and concepts. Much of what I have done this year is work with teachers on the former – Glogster, Voicethread, etc. – and I’m interested in developing more connections based on content – digital citizenship, copyright, using cloud-based tools for organization, digital resource evaluation, etc.
- Develop and discuss – but not necessarily implement – a semester-long course on media and information literacy, as a cross-curricular offering taught by librarians, classroom teachers, and myself. This could be an elective for seniors, or more of a foundation course for younger students. I am especially interested in learning more about the Media 21 program developed by Buffy Hamilton.
- Use LiveBinders in a more organized way to offer pathfinders and research guides for our students. This means they need to have one destination for all of their guides.
- Think about ways to gather student work in a more organized way. Right now we are using the digital projects page to highlight work, but there could be a way for our teachers to collect their student’s work in such a way that makes that work available to others in our community, as a learning bank.
- Work more on the information and digital literacy benchmarks that I’ve started hammering away at, especially in terms of planning a trajectory for our lower school students. What do we want them to have at the end of each year? Is there an overarching theme that we can apply to each year, or should the focus be more on supporting the curriculum and developing projects on a more case-by-case basis?
- Brainstorm ways to best serve our youngest students. For them, computer class is a building block, a foundation for the more challenging and content-rich experiences they’ll have as they grow here. How can we best support that?
In addition, I need to think about providing professional development for our faculty. The 19 Things project was a success and should continue in some capacity next year. I have been asked to provide training in TurnItIn and research skills (including Wikipedia) in the fall, which is awesome. How else can I offer training to teachers in an accessible way? I’ll be brainstorming this summer.
Before I sign off, I should mention that it has been an amazing year at Hamden Hall, due in great part to my relationship with Lorri Carroll, our Director of Technology. Working with Lorri has been the best professional experience I’ve ever had, because of how positive, open, and innovative she is. I always feel like Lorri’s got my back. And I’ve had the chance to work with some great teachers, too – people who love their job, always want to try new things, and have the best interests of their students at heart. And, of course, the kids are amazing. I love these students.
Happy summer!
The title of this post sounds very depressing, but I just chose it because the title of that book came to mind (I couldn’t finish the book, honestly, because I was feeling sad about something at the time and didn’t think it would improve my mood). The truth is, this post comes out of a very happy experience.
I was a sub for a 7th grade math class.
(This might be some people’s worst nightmare? For me, my worst nightmare would be subbing AP Lit… which I tried to do once; I couldn’t remember anything from college and ended up feeling stupid.) But anyway, subbing in 7th grade math was awesome. The kids were funny and only slightly crazy (today is their last day of class), they made me laugh and they did their work very earnestly.
When you’re a librarian or in educational tech, you don’t get a classroom, per se. If you’re a librarian, your classroom belongs to everyone, and if you’re in educational technology, everyone’s classroom is your classroom for a few hours or days. I do teach lower grades, but they’re in love with their homeroom teachers, not me. And when I was a school librarian, I did teach a few English classes (which I loved), but for the most part, both then and now, I was a piece of the bigger curricular pie. This has a lot of advantages, like the fact that it allows me to get to know a greater number of students than some other teachers. It also means that I rarely get bogged down in the sometimes-difficult day-to-days of the classroom teacher, which I know I should appreciate.
But man, there’s something to be said for being a classroom teacher. At the end of 50 minutes today, I was so happy and had such warm feelings for those students. And I feel that way every time I teach…. okay, most times. So wouldn’t it be great to sustain that, to see kids through their journey? What I do is amazing, it really is, but sometimes it’s hard to walk away, right when things are getting good.
Takeaway? At the very least: middle schoolers are awesome.
