Have you seen Zigazoo?

 

Have you seen the new app, Zigazoo? Zak Ringelstein, co-founder of Zigazoo describes it as a "Tik-Tok for kids."  I discovered this app early this summer. I discovered it right about the time I was getting disheartened with all of the tech tools that went against so much of what I know about children and their learning.  When I saw Zigazoo, I was so happy to see something that is so grounded in what we know about children and their learning.  This app is brilliant--it shows all that technology can be for kids. It invites playfulness, and creativity and joy.  You can read more here, here, and here. 

Zigazoo is a Video Sharing App that gives kids of all ages (mostly preschool and elementary although it seems fun for adults too!) a daily challenge.  The challenge could be anything from "What's the Weather?" to "Can you make a treasure map?" to "Can you make a hopscotch design?" to "Can you read to a stuffed animal?"  to "What math problems can you make with 5 things around home?" And kids respond with a video.  Every single day, a new question for kids to answer.

I love that the questions are interesting to so many ages. I also love how open-ended they are and how many different ways kids can respond. Kids can work on these alone or with families. They can spend 2 minutes or 200 minutes.  Everyone can approach things in a way that makes sense for them.  For families looking for fun things to do, this seems perfect. 

There are also huge education benefits. The topics cover pretty much everything from music to science to literacy. The app builds oral language skills as kids work to think through and explain.  It invites creativity and confidence. Kids in charge and sharing their own brilliance every single day.  And it highlights the power of technology. Zigazoo has created a safe online environment for kids to use technology to share learning and to learn from the ideas of others.  So many lessons about digital literacy and being a digital citizen in one fabulous app.

Zigazoo has grown incredibly since I discovered it.  They have projects organized in a few different ways and they are adding more exciting components. I see so many possibilities for families and classrooms and it is a piece of pure joy during this pandemic. It seems like the perfect invitation to use this time at home well and to create fun!

With remote learning (or not), I see huge possibilities for Zigazoo in the classroom.  Remember when I started the Solve It Your Way site? I have always believed that when we throw out a question for kids, they have the chance to show their brilliance in ways we could never imagine. I see Zigazoo as an app that does this--invites kids of all ages to show and celebrate their brilliance, to share their thinking and to find joy in learning. 

Zigazoo has also worked on safety and moderation and you can read more about this on their safety page.  

I had a chance to talk with Zak Ringelstein, Zigazoo's developer last week and I asked him a few questions. 

What is your hope for families and classrooms?

During such a challenging time, our first hope is that Zigazoo's projects and video creation tools simply make life a little less stressful by removing some of the planning burden. Our other hope is that families and classrooms can find joy in the learning process together by doing Zigazoo projects that engage them in the stuff that matters. Life is already stressful enough and we feel like students should be exploring and creating and dreaming and growing in their self-confidence with peers instead of doing meaningless busywork quietly over a video call. Zigazoo is built in the philosophy of project-based learning, where children have ownership over their own learning and aren't just regurgitating facts.

Which have been the fan favorites of daily challenge?

Students like hands-on activities in all subjects, but I have really enjoyed watching students fall in love with science! They've loved exploding ziplock bags with chemical reactions and making slime in their kitchen and doing "sink-or-float" challenges and making raisins dance in seltzer water. Of course, students also like to sing and dance and do yoga and find ways to express their emotions through social-emotional learning activities.

What features other than the Daily Challenge are on the app or coming soon?

Starting next week, teachers can create their own private communities where they can assign Zigazoo projects to students. In early September, we have invited museums, zoos, puppet acts, children's musicians, authors, and more to create their own channels on Zigazoo! Teachers will be able to use their media to jumpstart projects with their students.

We know that our students know how to use technology for entertainment. And, as I've said for years, I think it is our responsibility, as schools and families, to help our students see the power of digital tools for learning. Zigazoo is definitely a learning app that is also VERY entertaining. Zigazoo is a free app with so many possibilities for families and classrooms. Check it out!

Thoughts on Teaching & Learning: Day 6

Over the past several weeks, I have found myself doing a lot of reflection trying to get this online teaching right.  I keep meaning to get my thoughts on paper but then get caught up in the day-to-day work of teaching in this pandemic era.  I know if I can catch my breath, there is a lot to learn and reflect on during this time. So, I decided that every day in May, I will share my thoughts on Teaching and Learning.  This is Day 6.

Had you asked me 2 months ago what my favorite time of day was I our classroom, I would have said Read Aloud time. The time we sit together in our meeting area, in a circle, and share a story together. We do lots of thinking and talking during this time and it is the time that I see many children comfortable sharing their voices and perspectives.  It is a happy time the kicks off our afternoon literacy block.

So, when we moved to online/pandemic teaching and learning, I built in daily time for a Google Meet read aloud. I have not been surprised that most of the kids in the class (between 21 and 24 out of 28 most days) attend the live Google Meet.

But my favorite part of the day is no longer read aloud. (Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE read aloud time--what better way to spend time each day than sharing a great book with children) I am finding that Google Meet has not yet invited the same depth of conversation that in person read aloud does. BUT the 10 minutes before we begin read aloud have been my absolute favorites.

I started opening the Google Meet about 10 minutes early when we first started, worrying that we might have trouble learning to mute, we might have sound issues, kids might have time getting into the Meet. But what I found is that these 10 minutes, as kids straggle in, have become the best 10 minutes of my day.  Kids arrive 2-3 at  a time most days. Some seem to be there waiting for me to open the room and are there the second that I am. Others pop in sometime in that 10 minute window.  This gives us me time to say hello and to catch up with each child as they arrive.

This reminds me of mornings in our classroom.  Because 5th graders are busy with various responsibilities in the mornings--some are part of Crossing Guard teams, some are part of the middle school Orchestra and some go to other classrooms to help out to star their day, our mornings when we were in school were often quiet as kids arrived at various times across a 20 minute window, depending on their other commitments.  I used to stand at the doorway and greet every child but I found this year that if I sat at our big classroom table, I could greet each child and also have longer conversations with several each day. Every morning I'd chat with each child. Those kids who had something exciting to share or who needed some extra support seemed to make it over to our big kitchen table where a group always gathered to talk and catch up on each other's lives. The space seemed to be an anchor for community. Some students stayed only a few seconds to check in. Others sat for 5-10 minutes talking and listening. But that informal greeting time seemed important, thinking back, It seemed to offer conversations that we really don't "count" in a school day, but conversations that add up.

Our 10 minutes in Google Meet before read aloud begins have started to feel like our morning arrival time in the classroom.  As students come in and I greet them and ask what's new, they share with others interested, just like they were at the big kitchen table in our classroom. Students who have been there for a few minutes, greet and ask questions of those as they arrive. Today we got to know a students' pet, we got to see photos of a students' newest baby sibling and we got to hear about a walk a student went on with his family.

I've been thinking about all of this because I've never really considered those first minutes of our school day--those minutes when kids arrive a few at a time-- because our day hadn't "started" yet. I never really gave it much thought.  Until our 10 minutes before read aloud started to have that same happy feeling.  Those ten minutes that we are waiting for everyone to arrive for read aloud that I may not actually "count". I don't think I could have planned a time for this to happen in Google Meet in an authentic way. I think there is something magical about the unplanned, informality of the sharing and greeting of each other that happens when we are waiting for everyone to arrive. I feel so lucky for those 10 minutes that just accidentally happened because I was worried about the technology.

Thoughts on Teaching and Learning: May 2

Over the past several weeks, I have found myself doing a lot of reflection trying to get this online teaching right.  I keep meaning to get my thoughts on paper but then get caught up in the day-to-day work of teaching in this pandemic era.  I know if I can catch my breath, there is a lot to learn and reflect on during this time. So, I decided that every day in May, I will share my thoughts on Teaching and Learning.  This is Day 2.

Online Writing Workshop: Creating Lessons I Believe In

Early in this online/pandemic teaching experience, I had lots of conversations with Mary Lee and Julie Johnson and Clare Landrigan about how to make the asynchronous teaching relevant and meaningful and authentic. I realized right away how much of my teaching was about listening and responding and I had no idea how to do this in this new platform.  After lots of thinking with Julie, I created this Board of Writing Choices.

Questions I asked myself:

What were things in the standards that most kids could benefit from and that could be applied to every type of writing?

How can I make these minilessons feel closer to the mini lessons in the classroom?

How could kids be active?

How could I use mentor texts as I usually do in writing minilessons?

If I use any of the fabulous videos by authors, how can I embed those in a larger lesson?

I knew the lessons would not be exactly as they are in the classroom but after asking myself these questions I realized a few things:

• The kids were excited about their writing from the first day. They loved the choice and got started right away. I knew I could easily find skills to teach that would help kids if I focused on revision.
• My minilessons were always planned in cycles. We never did something and checked it off the list. Instead we explored several ideas around some concept and then tried it.
• I used mentor texts for kids that we mostly knew and I often threw in a bran new text to study.
• When I used videos from outside authors, etc. I often embedded those as one of the ways we study an idea. It never really stands alone.
• On the floor in the classroom, kids always have a chance to "try it" in their notebook before they go off to work on their own.
• We would need time to talk. 

I created 3 revision lessons that spanned about a week and a half.  I created slides with audio on each slide so that I could talk to make it sound and feel as much like a mini lesson as I could. I read aloud a book on Kindle that I embedded for us to study. I embedded videos from experts and I sent kids off to read a few books on their own (free access throough Epic). I highlighted some excerpts from picture books and invited kids to stop the audio to analyze the piece as a writer and then I shared my thinking aloud.  I also pulled some excerpts from our past and current read aloud books to study as writers.  I found excerpts that were great examples of the things I was trying to teach. And then I gave them a very small spot to give things a try (like a large sticky note but on slides).   Below are copies of the 3 lessons I shared with students (I'm not sure if you can access the audio files on each slide, but you can get the idea from these slides, I think.)

Revision Lesson 1

Revision Lesson 2

Revision Lesson 3

In between these lessons, I scheduled small groups for writers. I tried to meet with all students and most showed up to one of the groups. Groups ranged in size from 4-8 and students came at various places in the writing process. They each had their writing as anchors for talk and we also had these revision lessons. So we could talk about which things had worked, share their revisions, give each other feedback etc.

This was in no way as rich as it is in our classroom with daily writing partners, daily live feedback, individual conferences and the absence of a pandemic. But these lessons felt more right and more real than any I had done up until this time. For a few minutes during each of the small groups, I forgot we were on Zoom. I hope the kids did too.

Things I am still thinking about...

• We only have a few weeks of school left. And with all of the other subjects and the limited time we have each day, we probably only have time for one more set of writing groups. But I want to learn from this and to reflect on the things I would do differently next time.
• It worked to have the lessons asynchronous and the focus of the writing groups on the conversation and feedback. I think the key was that the minilessons were active and had many of the same features kids expect from minilessons in the classroom (even though timing was different).
• Things are slower in this online/pandemic teaching. I haven't quite figured out how much time kids need.  I have found that with choice, some put a lot more time and energy than expected into writing projects they love.  But without daily sharing, etc. kids shared the challenges of doing their best writing at home, writing without the support of a community, etc.
• I want to use student work as I do in the classroom. Using student work as mentors to study.  That is such a powerful part of our classroom learning and I think that would be an easy add.

This online/pandemic teaching has made me feel like a new teacher on many days. I feel like I am not quite sure what is right for kids in this space. But I felt like these lessons helped me find some grounding and help me think about what we needed more of during these days. And they helped me think about what is possible and how to bring in more of who we are as a classroom community.

Still Learning to Read: Books We Love!

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

I love watching the tastes in the classroom change.  I love watching a student read a book and then that student recommends it to another and another and another. I love watching how books are informally passed around the classroom as readers know each other's tastes as readers.

This week, we worked on creating book reviews--we chose books we thought other 3rd graders would love to read. And we collected the book reviews on a Padlet.  So this Padlet is a glimpse into our classroom--the books that are currently popular.  Take some time to visit the Padlet, share it with your students and let us know if you read anything we recommend.  We hope you enjoy some of the books we love!

You can visit our Padlet here.

  

HUE Animation for Maker Space or Genius Hour

Hue Animation Studio
by Hue Animation
Kit comes with HUE HD camera with mic; the HUE Book of Animation, a 60-page full color book; a mini stage with background and 'green screen' and stop motion software with sound effects, printable activities and backdrops.
Review kit provided by Hue


Stop motion animation couldn't be easier than it is with the Hue studio. Once you've got the software installed, you plug the camera into your USB port and...get creative!

The first time I fiddled with the camera, I experienced firsthand one of the basics of stop motion animation -- the more pictures you take with smaller movements of your character, the better your movie turns out! The Hue software makes this easy by providing the image of the picture you just took on the left and a ghost image of that picture on the right. I took the pink box completely out of the screenshot below to show this ghost image, but when you're shooting your movie, you use the ghost to determine how far/what direction to move the object for the next shot. The on-screen tools are very intuitive, and the project autosaves on your computer. It's easy to create a QuickTime of the final movie so you can share your work. This is a tool with lots of "stretch." You can get good results in a short amount of time, or you can go crazy with creativity (including backdrops, sound effects, and an actual storyline) and get fabulous results.

I predict that stop motion animation will be a hit in Genius Hour this year. In less than 15 minutes, I will demonstrate the basics to my students and then I will be able to step back and watch what they create using objects from around the classroom (or that they bring from home), making scenery, writing/acting out stories, or just fiddling around the way I did for this test movie. My process:

1. I grabbed the button box where I gathered all the loose buttons I found in the laundry room/sewing area of mom's house. 
2. I chose a place to film that had decent light without a glare. 
3. I set the buttons free. 

I didn't know when I started what those buttons would do once they were free, so just like when I start writing with only the very smallest of a seed idea, I had the experience of surprise that comes with following my creativity wherever it chooses to lead!

My Online Reading over Spring Break

I loved my online time over Spring Break. I discovered lots of new things and found many new ideas to ponder. Here are some of my favorite online things from this week's reading.

Miscellaneous Articles

'When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels like Oppression' by Chris Boeskool

 Children Should Learn Mainly Through Play Until Age 8, says Lego

 I loved this post by Clare and Tammy at Assessment in Perspective:  We Know Our Song.

And I loved this story about a ten year old who designed new bathroom signs to include people with invisible disabilities.

Book Lists

I spent some time with two booklists that were announced this week.  Both of these lists added to my stack of must-be-read soon!

We're the People 2016 Booklist

2016 NCTE Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts

TED Talks

I watched  two TED Talks that I absolutely LOVED!

Shonda Rhimes' My Year of Saying Yes to Everything was powerful for me.  It is about work and play and family and creativity.  I will definitely revisit this one--an important message for all of us.

And I am so glad to have discovered Grace Lin's Ted Talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf. Wow! What an amazing talk and one that is so important for teachers as we think about the power of books.  

 Podcasts

And I have discovered how much more fun it is to clean when I am listening to great podcasts. I caught up on some podcasts I had missed and got lots of cleaning done at the same time!  I listened to the Scholastic podcast on Book Trends for 2016. It was fascinating!  Wish I had listened to it earlier in the year!

I also had time to listen to a bit from the Book Love Foundation Podcasts hosted by Penny Kittle!  These are incredible PD and such fun to listen to. I haven't had time to listen to all of them but I did have time to hear Kylene Beers and am excited to listen to the 2nd part of this podcast at Book Love. Another great podcast series!

I also caught up on several episodes of The Yarn (Colby Sharp and Travis Jonker) that I had missed.  I listened to Salina Yoon, Matt Tavares, Lindsay Eager and Jennifer and Matt Holm. All of these were incredible and such fun to listen to. The Yarn is the best--if you haven't made time to subscribe, you should do so soon!

Video

And if you aren't already excited about the upcoming book by Kate Roberts and Maggie  Beattie Roberts (DIY Literacy:  Teaching Tools for Differentiation, Rigor and Independence)
you should be.  And not only do we get a new great book, we also get a video series that goes along with the book! Whoop!

Friends with Fins: Informational Videos

I'm always looking for good videos for my students.  As we expand our understanding of what it means to be a reader in this digital age, I know videos are an important part of learning.  I want my students to have lots of experience with quality video.  I've heard over and over again from my students that they enjoy watching video for entertainment, but they don't really know how to watch video to learn. So I know part of my work is helping them to read video.  I think lots of kids pick up bits of info when they are watching for entertainment, but finding good informational videos for kids is sometimes a challenge.  Short videos that are crafted well so that kids can learn information as well as study the video for the craft are things I am always on the lookout for.

Recently I noticed that Jaclyn Friedlander, a Marine Life and Ocean Conservation Expert has been adding weekly video episodes to her blog. (I interviewed Jaclyn on our blog about her picture books a while back.)

The Friends with Fins videos are PERFECT for my students. They are short, engaging and packed with lots of fascinating information.  Many connect to our science standards and I'll watch them a bit more closely to see which align with our science standards.  So much of our life science is about habitats and animal adaptations and so much information connected to that is embedded in these videos.

I also plan to use the videos in Reading Workshop as we think about learning from video clips. And I will use them in writing workshop as they will be great mentor texts for informational writing. They are crafted well and there is lots to study as a writer/moviemaker.  The way that Jaclyn shares information is accessible to young learners.  There are so many possibilities for these videos.  I like them individually, but the collection of the videos on the site provides so even more to learn from.  Not only are these a great link to science standards, but Jaclyn is passionate about ocean conservation and uses her blog and social media to spread that message.

Jaclyn plans to add a video most weeks to the site will continue to grow.  (All of the videos are also available on her Youtube Channel as well. And her books are now available as Kindle or iPad versions.

Dublin Literacy Conference 2012 Slides

This weekend, I gave a session on Comprehension in a Digital Reading Workshop. Below are the slides from the session.Dublin Literacy Conference 2012

View more presentations from Franki22.

The handout included these reflective questions for teachers about our workshops. They are questions I am using to think about digital texts across workshop routines.

What role do digital texts have in your reading workshop?

Read Aloud

Do I choose to read aloud only texts from traditional books or do I share digital texts, audio books, blogs, etc. during read aloud?

Do we use web resources such as author websites and book trailers to help us dig deeper into the book we are reading?

Do I read aloud from websites and blogs?

Independent Reading/Reading Conferences

Do we use online resources for book previewing and book selection?

Do I limit students' independent reading to traditional books or do they have a variety of options for their reading time?  Do I place equal value on reading on e-readers, reading websites, etc. as I do on reading novels?

Do I help my students use online tools to support their lives as readers? Do I value annotation tools, bookmarking tools, RSS feeds, etc. as part of my readers lives? Do I model these tools in minilessons?

Do I introduce digital pieces and discuss digital reading when conferring with students.

Have I updated my reading interview to include questions about digital reading?

Reading and Writing Minilessons

Do I use digital texts or pieces when teaching minilessons?

Do I rely completely on traditional text or do I use film clips, blog entries, podcasts, etc. when planning minilessons?

Do I share process in my minilessons? Do I tend to share process only as it relates to creating text-based pieces?

Do I share my own writing process?  Composing in several types of media?

Shared Reading

Have I reflected on the resources I rely on for Shared Reading?

Do I include web reading and viewing when thinking about Shared Reading experiences?

How can I include a variety of texts for students to process through together?

Content Reading

Have I found sources for content reading that go beyond textbooks and traditional text?

Do I rely on newspapers for talk around current events or do I tend to focus more on sites like DOGONews and other sites that combine text and video?

How am I supporting the importance of visual information in the content areas?

Ignite Presentations With 4th graders

Our 4th grade team is working on a 4th grade project around Making a Difference in the World.  We began this project last year and it was inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  The project combines social studies (citizenship, economics, etc.). literacy and art.  This year, we've changed a few things and added a few things.

Our 4th graders are busy creating products to be sold at our annual Art Show in March.  Students are using art time to create their own products that will be marketable to the audience. I can't wait to shop!  Last year, each child donated money earned to an individual cause--one that they cared about and had researched. We changed this a bit this year. Our entire 4th grade will be donating one cause for the money. But we wanted kids to know that money was not the only way to make a difference. We want the to understand there there are lots of ways to make a difference and raising awareness about an issue is one of them.

So, each child has been researching a cause that matters to them. These topics range from homelessness to distracted driving to foster care to pediatric cancer.  Kids have spent the last several weeks learning about these issues and collecting information using diigo (more on that at another time!).

This week, kids will begin to create IGNITE-type presentations to educate others about these important issues.  As a team, we decided on an IGNITE presentation for several reasons.  If you aren't familiar with IGNITE presentations, they are similar to Pecha Kucha sessions but in Ignite, presenters use 15 slides and each slide is up for 15 seconds.The Ignite tagline is "Enlighten us, but make it quick." I love that and it seems that there is a lot to learn when given these parameters.  This seems doable for 4th graders and it is an authentic genre.
We knew that this format would support our teaching goals--research, nonfiction writing, visuals to support message, etc.  We have noticed that although our students used keynote, the presentations are text, rather than visual driven. We knew that an assignment like this could really improve the way they thought about creating presentations of all kind.

One challenge was to find samples for the students. Since many of them were not familiar with Ignite presentations, we wanted them to spend time studying the craft of the format before they jumped in. Finding Ignite presentations (or PechaKucha) so students could get a feel for the type of work they would be doing was a challenge--many are geared to adults and not appropriate for children. However, we did find several that we used and the conversations around what was possible with these have been wonderful. One of my goals when it comes to digital writing is to collect great mentors for kids--pieces that writers can study as they think about their own decisions as writers. For this project, I found four very different presentations that have helped us think through decision making when creating this type of piece.  Each of these four slideshows is very different and each opens up different possibilities for our stuents.  The four we have focused on are:

Clowns Without Borders: Pecha Kucha


Why Blog? Ignite by Chris Lysy


Ignite: Jessica Harvey: My Beautiful Wheelchair



And, How and Why to Make Video Games by Peter Justeson


This week, students will begin their work on their Ignite presentations.  I am working on one myself and we've created some planning templates to help students move forward with these projects.

This page has 15 squares on 2 pages for students to think through and plan their presentation as a whole.

Each student will receive 15 of these half sheets for detailed work---visual, script, and notes.

I think that this project will help students learn a great deal as researchers and writers, but I think they will also learn a great deal about visuals, creating powerful presentations, and presentation skills that they will be able to carry with them no matter what they create in the future.

I'll keep you posted!

Poetry Friday: Digital Mentor Texts for Poetry Writing

Last Friday, at The Opposite of Indifference, Tabatha shared several centos that she had found while reading THE GREAT GATSBY. A cento is a poem created with the words of another author. You might have missed that she followed up on Saturday with this digital cento -- a poem created by editing a video of a commencement speech by Steve Jobs.

When I saw this, I realized that Poetry Friday had a way into the Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop conversation that's been going on here all week. I can honestly say:

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!


Poem Flow is the first place that comes to mind when I think of where I might look online for poetry in a digital form that makes me say, "I could do that!" Not only do they have an online presence on their website and on Poets.org, but Poem Flow also has an iPhone app that delivers poetry line by line, word by word, phrase by phrase on a simple white background. Click here to view Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider in Poem Flow. Seems like that would be easy enough to do with PowerPoint or Keynote, but I know better than assgning it until I've tried it myself! (Franki's reflection on the importance of the teacher as digital writer is here.)

I would also love to create a typographic poem.  I've been stuck at the "How do they DO that?" stage, but I really have no excuse -- there are MANY how-to sites and tutorials online. Maybe I'll challenge myself to learn to make one before April! Here's an example that's perfect for Monday's holiday/remembrance. It's a poem that is a combination of typography and cento (and it was created for a school assignment). 



Here's a funny Taylor Mali typographic poem about language.

I used ToonDooSpaces, an online comic-making site, with my students for a couple of years. I could never convice any of my students to make a poem into a comic, but I had fun with Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty.

My students love to read poetry on the classroom Kindle and the Kindle app on our iPods and iPad. We have Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong's PoetryTag Time and Gift Tag, Gregory K's Kickstarter poems (on pdf), and Alan Katz's Poems I Wrote When No One Was Looking.

Here's an easy way to make a digital book of classroom poems. Show your students Laura Purdie Salas' 15 Words or Less weekly challenge. Same as Laura, start with a photo for inspiration. Then invite your children to write a very short poem that's as descriptive and original as possible. Drag your photo onto a page of PowerPoint/Keynote (ideally while projecting on your screen/whiteboard for students to see), then have the students bring their poems up for you to type, one on each page. Voila! A digital poetry book!

Tara has today's Poetry Friday roundup at A Teaching Life.

Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop: Living Your Life as a Digital Writer

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

I realize that my posts have been anchored on the things I believe about the teaching of writing and how I have been thinking about those when it comes to digital writing. Anchoring my work in the powerful things I've learned working alongside writers in writing workshops over the years is key.

Writers' notebooks are hugely powerful tools in the writing workshop.  It is not so much the notebook but the practice of living your life as a writer by keeping one.  A writer's notebook is hard to define as it takes on a bit of a different personality for each writer. Ralph Fletcher says,  "It's a place to collect, to react to ones world, to play with language, to stalk your inner voice, to find your stride as a writer."  And in her book Notebook Know-How, Aimee Buckner says, “A writer’s notebook gives students a place to write everyday...to practice living like a writer.”  


As a writing teacher, inviting kids to keep notebooks has always kept writing workshop authentic.  It was a tool that reminded me that living your life as a writer was key. It was also a place to focus on growing and being a writer, rather than on writing "stuff" and focusing on projects/products. 


So, I have been thinking about what this idea of a notebook means for digital writing.  How do we make time for kids to live their lives as digital writers and what does that even mean?


When I think about the writer's notebook, there are several things that make it powerful. A few things that writers do in the notebook:


They collect great writing--words, phrases, passages
They collect images and moments in their lives
They collect their thinking
They try new techniques
They play with language
They give things a try

A writer's notebook is the place where writers can play with the things they learn from other writers/mentors and make them their own. For me, a writers' notebook is often where the real work of mentor texts happen. It is a place where they can collect writing they like. It is a place where they can try a technique that they saw another writer use, without the stress of a finished product. It is a place to play with things.  Then, it is a place to go back to when publishing to pull out some of the things that will make your writing more powerful.

A Digital Writer's Notebook?

So, what does this mean for writers in this digital age. Obviously, a spiral bound notebook will not help our writers collect digital pieces, try our new techniques in film, or play with sound effects. But these things are clearly things that writers who use digital tools do. So, as the definition of writing has expanded, so has the definition of writer's notebook. 

Teacher as Writer
I try to look at myself as a digital writer first. What habits do I have that feel like a writer's notebook expanded to include my life as a digital writer?  Here's what I know about my life as a writer:
I blog regularly.
I read other bloggers' writing daily and often try things I've seen
I bookmark things I'd like to try in my blog writing
I save videos, presentations and podcasts that inspire me to try something new in my composition
I collect photos that I may use in presentations in the future
I play with new tools and often become obsessed with them as I am learning them
I try to create things with new tools for fun
I try various drafts of things and save the drafts
I revise and edit with online tools
I share writing online and immediately for feedback
I compose collaboratively using things like Google Docs

I am sure there are millions  of other things I do. I did all of these things before there was a digital tool for composing. The difference is that before, my playing with writing, my collecting and my drafting was all housed in a writer's notebook. Although I still sometimes use the notebook, more of these habits happen on my computer, ipod or ipad these days.

As writers, we naturally pay attention to things we want to try.  (Yesterday for example, Tony Keefer used a check mark symbol in a tweet.  I had never seen that so immediately decided I wanted to write a tweet with a check mark. I investigated and thought of a tweet that would need a check mark. Now that is something I can do. The point is, sometimes these things are very small and meaningless but it is the way writers pay attention to what is possible and try out new things that is key.)


Mentor Texts as Invitations
So, I want to make sure to use mentor texts in ways that go beyond creating products. I believe in study and I believe that if we are writing persuasive essays, we need to immerse ourselves in reading persuasive essays to begin the study.  However, I think an equally powerful way to use mentor texts is as invitation.  If we want our students to live their lives as writers, invitations and playing are key. Collecting is key. And going back through your attempts is key.

So, I am trying to add more things like this to my time with kids. Quick minilesson type invitations where we study something a digital composer did and try it out ourselves--not to share, not to publish, just so we have it as a possibility in the future.

A few things we've done that support this idea:
Our students have access to lots of digital books and they spend quite a bit of time on sites like Tumblebooks. They enjoy audio and understand the idea of podcasts.  And they know how to record in Garage Band. If kids are to create audio, I want them to have fun with voice and music. So, I invited them to try a few things.

I created an invitations in the library that we played with in a minilesson and a few kids tried out using the foam board displays. One was a foam board display entitled, "How would the character say that?". Scattered around the board were favorite characters and memorable dialogue. We tried reading it aloud in various ways in the minilesson. Then I invited kids to try recording different ways to read character dialogue on garage band. This was fun for those who merely wanted to play. For others, it helped them when they created audio podcasts of picture books for younger students.

I also try to create invitations by finding pieces that connect to student interest. In the past I have found how-to videos for students who like to build with legos and many give those a try while building--taking photos or video of their process.  Our students love to build and a favorite building toy is Straws and Connectors.  I wanted to give the students options for visual creation. On the Straws and Connectors site, you can access several PDFs of directions for building different structures. Once I showed these to a few builders, they created visual directions that will be turned into PDFs and put on our school website.

5th graders are currently playing with Numbers, learning how to make graphs, charts and tables. Eventually, they'll be invited to include those in some of the research that they do. They will also be able to use it when they conduct experiments, etc.  So this playing time is key. Some may choose to use this tool. Others may not.

And, I love to share the Klutz Tricky Video book with students. These have been amazing invitations for students to see how various film techniques work and to give them a try. Klutz actually has many resources when it comes to giving kids opportunities to try some new and doable techniques.

And kids are finding their own ways to play when it comes to digital writing. When they have play time built into their digital writing workshop, they watch television differently. They look at commercials differently. They examine webpages differently. They listen to sound effects and they notice when a film has a close-up and when the scene is shot at a distance.  Then they give things a try. I have to remind myself of this every time someone wants to create a talk show about nothing ("Mrs. Sibberson, don't you watch TV. Talk shows about nothing are funny!") or when they want to spend hours taking a million photos of themselves and embedding them in nonsense pictures on Pixie.   The products don't always work, but the students are becoming more sophisticated digital writers every time they play.  And they are living their lives as writers.

I have worried about this "play time" and am trying to figure out the balance between playing with tools, strategies, and techniques and creating quality products for an audience. But I have come to realize that this play time is the way digital writers live. It is the way I live as a digital writer.  I like to play with things, give things a try, work with new tools, attempt new techniques and formats. Then these things come back in more published pieces when I see the need.  This play time is critical and most of my playing comes from mentor texts I've discovered-something I've seen someone else do that I want to try.  

My challenge is to help my students find ways to collect and revisit these things as we do in our writers' notebooks--to reflect and reuse in future work.  I am still working on this idea but know that I want my students to live their lives as writers--writers who have access to digital tools and writers who are critical readers of all types of texts. If I want them to live their lives as writers, I want them to be awake to all that is out there, to notice what is possible and to think, "Hey, I can do that." I want them find things they want to try and then to have the freedom to play with an idea or technique without the pressure of a finished product--knowing that this will add to the things that are possible for them in the future.  Just as in pre-digital writing workshop, I want notebook type thinking that helps kids live their lives as writers, and I want time for students to work hard on a published piece for an authentic audience. Both are equally important.

Mentor Texts: Teach the Writer, Not the Writing

This is part of a series of blog posts on Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.  Contributors to this weeklong series are Troy Hicks, Katie DiCesare, Bill Bass, Tony Keefer and Kevin Hodgson. Posts are also being collected at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop. Please join our conversation!

One of the most powerful things I learned as a writing teacher, was by Lucy Calkins who said, "Teach the writer and not the writing.  Our decisions must be guided by what might help this writer rather than what might help this writing."  

I have come back to this quote often in the last few weeks as I am working with 2nd graders on creating e-Comics.  In Writing Workshop, before the digital tools entered, I had very little trouble remembering Lucy Calkins' important words. I was good at focusing on the learning, rather than the product. I felt confident about teaching things that my students would use in future writing--I was impacting the writer, not the writing. I learned early-on as a Writing Workshop teacher, that it was easy to "clean up" a student's writing to make the product "look good". I could do the revising and editing, make decisions for the child, etc. and have something nice to publish.  But I quickly realized that with that approach, students writing never improved. Students never grew as writers. I was lucky to learn from amazing writing workshop teachers and saw huge growth in writers once I stopped focusing on individual pieces of writing and started focusing on individual writers.

Enter digital writing...  I feel like I took a little step back in time and in my ability to manage an authentic writing workshop. It seems that more often with digital tools, I am a bit more structured and directive.  I have to continue to remind myself about my beliefs about writing and learning.  I have to go back to books by my writing mentors--Katie Ray, Ralph Fletcher, Lucy Calkins, Don Graves, Shelley Harwayne--to make sure I am staying true to what I know about quality writing instruction.  Some days, I look around and notice everyone in the same place in the writing process, everyone using the same tools to create or everyone creating similar pieces and I panic.  My workshop before digital tools was much more student-centered.  Students had choice in tools to use, formats to publish and how fast to move in the process.  There seemed to be fewer directives and more invitations.  My vision of what a writing workshop should look like is harder to make happen with so many new tools and possibilities coming so quickly.  I am working to make sure I stay true to what I believe about writing and that I give my students the right messages about what it means to be a writer.  I am moving toward making sure my writing workshop matches the vision I have for it.

So, back to the Comic ebooks.  This is a collaborative project I've been working on with our art teacher, our technology specialist, and our 2nd grade teachers.  We started this project to meet several goals/standards that included learning around narrative writing, text and illustrations working together, using draw tools, finding and saving documents, creating ebooks, dialogue and talking bubbles, and more.  

We used Pixie and Comic Life to create the ebooks. Comic Life has been a popular piece of software but we noticed students not really knowing what to do with it. The photos available didn't always make for the best stories. And they had no idea how to use a draw tool to create comics.  In reading, I noticed that our younger students focused more on individual frames in their reading of graphic novels, than in the story as a whole.  Understanding that graphica was just one more way to tell a story was key goal for us. It was a long unit of study as the students only worked on the projects during art and library class. As with our 3rd grade book trailer unit, we immersed ourselves in comics and made decisions about how our writing would go. 

Challenges:  

About mid-way through our study, students were noticing the various sizes and shapes of the frames in comics.  We talked about how many shapes and sizes they could find and talked about why each was different.  EVERY SINGLE child believed that the authors of comic books merely filled out the template they were given.  They knew Comic Life well and just assumed that comic book writers were given a template and filled it in.  They had no idea that the comic book creator was the one who decided on the size and shape of the frames and how critical that decision is to the piece as a whole.  I was a little bit alarmed. As much as I love the tools that make digital writing more accessible, I also saw the limitations.  The messages my students were getting from this piece of software, were that the software was in charge of their decisions as writers.  I had to rework the unit so that students understood the decisions authors made when it came to frames, and more. 

Another challenge that we faced was that, as teachers, we realized that we got caught up in technology troubleshooting. This was a huge project and there was always some issue that required a computer restart, help with a password, an undo, etc.  Our kids are great at problem solving and collaborating but there were many times when kids needed our assistance.  This seemed okay at the time--kids were learning important technology skills as we worked with them. But what we realized was that we had very little time to conference with the kids about their actual writing or their process. Our work with them focused on the technology  We had worked hard on the writing before they got to the computers, but many kids missed out on the in-the-midst conferences that they needed because we were caught up in troubleshooting. 

We worried about publishing.  Our plan was to publish the ebooks on a internal class site. Putting work on the Internet is a little more stressful.  Published pieces have always forced teachers to make decisions about what is acceptable to "publish". But it seems to be even more difficult when we are not merely hanging writing in the hallway or hosting an author event with student writing.  

Reflection

We stepped back and thought back to all that we had wanted kids to learn and realized they learned SOOO many things that would take them forward as digital writers.  No matter how their "product" turns out, every student learned to tell a narrative story using a draw program and in graphic novel form. In terms of technology, they learned to save and name documents, to use draw tools, to create text boxes, to use and manipulate templates, to export pieces, to change fonts, and more.  In terms of writing, they learned to make decisions, to think about their audience, to connect words and visuals. They learned the difference between dialogue and narration.  They learned how to revise when things weren't going as they had planned.  They learned how to reread and rethink when something didn't make sense to their reader.  

None of this is evident if you look only at the finished products but this learning--the learning that they will carry with them as writers--is far more important than what the product looks like.  I have been visiting and revisiting the Video Game Design website that Kevin Hodgson created to make visible all of the learning that went on in his game design unit. This website is hugely powerful and important work. If we are to have successful writing workshops, it is critical for us to make the learning visible and capture what it is the students learn as writers--things they will carry with them no matter what it is they compose. I also think it is important for us as teachers as a reflection tool. We need to take the time and sit back and reflect on the learning that happens in a project like this--otherwise, we run the risk of focusing on the project and teaching the writing, not the writer.

Celebration

Some days, these comic ebooks take over the library. It seems there is always a computer open that's screen shows a product in the midst of a comic creation.  A student who left a computer on, a child who popped in to work on something, etc.  And guess what? Our biggest, most important goal--the one we forgot about throughout the project--has been achieved.  Early on, we knew we needed good student-created mentors for our students. Pieces that students at our school created that would open up what was possible with the tools we had. As these open computers sit around the library or as I am finishing up moving a pdf to my flash drive as a new class comes in, someone notices the comic on the screen and someone says (almost every day)--"What is that? I want to do that."  I can only imagine what will happen in the next few weeks as these comics are put online for the school community.  So, we've met individual standards-based goals. But we've also met a schoolwide goal of creating a library of projects that our students can learn from.  In-house mentor texts that can open up what is possible for all students.  Every writer will grow a bit by seeing a few more things that are possible.

Teaching the writer, not the writing is key when it comes to any type of writing, especially digital writing.  Some days I feel like I am back to my beginning years teaching in a writing workshop-reminding myself of what is important.  I have to ask myself every single day-what I am doing to help this child become a better writer? What will he/she take with him no matter what he/she is composing in the future? What should I focus on now that will impact all future writing?

And I also have to ask myself, what am I doing to help this community of writers? How am I building our own library of mentor texts-pieces to learn from and to open possibilities for what is possible in our writing community?