#DigLitSunday -- My Digital Writer's Notebook

Because my phone is with me most all the time, it is my most reliable writer's notebook. I use the notes and voice memo to capture fleeting ideas, and my photos constitute hundreds of seed ideas.

Just this morning, I took advantage of the cool, crisp (temporary) fall-like weather to take a quick bike ride before we hit the farmers' markets for tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, apples, and French pastries. The very tip-top leaves in the trees look like they are feeling the shift of the seasons. I started getting lines of a poem, and pulled over to record a few words before I lost them. I continued to compose in my head as I rode, and I pulled over one more time before I headed up the long hill towards home and recorded the key words I'd come up with. As soon as I got home, I sat down to my paper/pencil writer's notebook, and captured the first draft of my poem. I've tinkered with it several more times throughout the day, and I think it will be ready for Poetry Friday next week!

Thank goodness for my digital writer's notebook!


Margaret gathers the #DigLitSunday posts at Reflections on the Teche.

Photos Framed

Photos Framed: A Fresh Look at the World's Most Memorable Photographs
by Ruth Thomson
Candlewick Press, 2014
review copy provided by the publisher

"When photography began, it was an elaborate, expensive, time-consuming, elite activity, using heavy, cumbersome equipment. Today, taking photographs can be instant, cheap, and accessible to anyone. Despite the enormous changes in photographic equipment and technology since the nineteenth century, the purposes of photography have remained essentially the same, whether immortalizing, exploring, documenting, revealing, or showing us what we can't see with the naked eye." -- from the introduction of Photos Framed

It's amazing, isn't it, that in less than 200 years, photography has become a universal art form? Children can take photographs before they have learned to hold a crayon. I think I can confidently say that every student in my class has taken a photograph. And because of that, I can't wait to share this book with them and dig into the history of photography and the art of photography.

Photos Framed is divided into four sections: Portrait photography, Nature photography, Photography as art, and Documentary photography. Each of the sections features examples from the 18th through the 21st Centuries. And each of the photographs is explored in the same ways: there is a section of text describing and discussing the photograph, a section that tells about the photographer, three questions ("Photo thoughts") for the reader/viewer to consider, a sidebar ("Blow Up") that features one tiny bit of the photo and a question to consider, and another sidebar ("Zoom In") that helps the viewer to consider the photo as a whole. Finally, there is a quote from the photographer that accompanies the photo.

I'm thrilled to see that there are multiple copies of this book available in our metro library system. I am imagining a whole-class study of this book in the first weeks of school which would lay the groundwork for students to build a photographic/visual portfolio alongside their digital portfolio/notebook (folder in their Google drive) and their pencil/paper writer's note/sketchbook.

Writing that last convoluted sentence made me realize that there just about isn't such a thing as a plain and simple Writer's Notebook anymore. All of these digital and non-digital spaces need to be developed to provide students with opportunities to capture and hold creations of all kinds at all stages of the process.  Maybe it really is time to stop calling it Writers' Workshop and call it Composing Workshop.

Hmm...the wheels are turning...

June Mosaic

So many stories this month. Family quilt stories, carousel memories, All Write inspirations, heat and drought, storm damage, two animal rescues (Coopers Hawk chick and a little dog named Troy).

I have five years of photos in my iPhoto (6,988 shots), and three more years archived from my old computer. There are four years worth of mosaics on Flickr. I realized at All Write, that what started as a modified version of Project 365 on Flickr has become a really powerful digital writer's notebook. Sometimes I sketch before I write, sometimes I web out my ideas, sometimes I pick from a list of brainstormed topics...and sometimes my prewriting is just look at a photo and either tell the story that's there, or imagine a new one.

You can see larger versions the pictures (and bits of stories in the captions) on Flickr.