Choose your own adventure

(Cross posted from Always Learning)

In order to create a truly exciting and enticing story for their 1001 Flat World Tales projects, many of our students are choosing to include alternate endings, in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80's.

When we started explaining how to create links between pages, and how they can create as many pages as they want, they realized that they can incorporate reader choice (in this case, the alien king) into their narrative (in an attempt to ensure their survival).

Some are doing multi-faceted stories with many different story paths; others just have two or three alternate endings; still others have created totally interactive stories. Feel free to check out all of their stories (but please keep in mind that they are still in progress).

Slowly, but surely they are also starting to incorporate visual media into their stories as well. We are hoping we will have some time to allow them to narrate their whole story, add visuals and actually vidcast their tale.

The best part is that all of the students, regardless of their English language or technical skills, are excited, enthusiastic and engaged every lesson.

Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f0/Cave_of_time.jpg/190px-Cave_of_time.jpg

1001 Project Update Carol Morgan School

What a long strange trip it has been....but we have made it. George, my third grade teacher participating in the 1001 Flat World Tales Project has posted his stories to the CMS Elementary Wiki. I will say this, I am impressed how George and his kids went about this project. George seeing an opportunity to tie the project into his curriculum had his kids explore "known" myths that the kids were familiar with. After partnering George with our writing specialist, Cassia they had kids dissect myths and determine what the "anatomy" of a myth is. From here kids were able to invent their own myths about certain aspects of Do Culture, Music, etc. Truly I am impressed and I think this pushed George's third graders to think a little differently about their writing. Did I mention the art to go along with the writings? Each student also has contributed an illustration of their story and Iminican Republic Geography, have not seen those but with the imagination I saw in the students as I looked over some of their myth stories, I no doubt will be equally impressed with those as well.

I will be honest about the next step of revision. I do feel a little intimidated for our kids being a grade lower than the kids we are sharing with and being the only non-native English speaking elementary class in the 1001 Project. But, I guess that is part of the experience and will hopefully be a cultural learning experience for our kids to read what native speaking children write like and vice versa on the part of the classes in the U.S.

Anyway, I have to now contact Terry Smith and Dean Meyer and let them know that kids can start revising our kids and to let them know that we will be doing the same for their students.

I'll keep you posted...whoever you are.

Logistics (3 Separate Spring Breaks) and Hiring Student Editors

[This is adapted from an email I sent to Chris and Michele.]

Spring Break is hitting our three schools in Denver, Honolulu, and Seoul in three different weeks. Another wrinkle in Flat World collaboration. Honolulu starts Spring Break this week.

It's not a bad thing, from a writerly view. One week off is good. But three weeks off? Uh-oh.

Anyway, concerning the current week, when Honolulu is off the radar, here's what I'm telling my kids:

Hemingway himself said that he lets drafts sit for a couple of weeks so he forgets what they look like. Then, when he re-visits them, he first pulls out his (and I quote) "Shock-proof sh#t- detector" before reading them.

Because he hasn't looked at his draft for so long, the bad parts really jump out at him. It helps him see what needs work.

So a one-week hiatus (and Michele, you and I need to coordinate our own Spring Breaks and find a way not to let this sit too long) is good.

That will give us time to breathe, figure out who should be "fired" (if necessary), and prep some exercises for word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.

Also, I'm going to start my editors interviews. Announcing it tomorrow: prepare resume (our college counselor just hooked the freshmen up with an online resume builder, so why not hook into that), samples of blog and other writing work, and samples of good peer editing from the project.

Expectations? Maybe two conference calls: first for our student editors to plan the process; second, for them to discuss and select submissions? Both to be podcasted as digital portfolio bullets of authentic publishing experience?

How does that sound? Can we set April 1 as the deadline to have our student editors selected? April 7 as the date (roughly) of their first conference call?

One problem: Skype conferencing only allows 5 callers maximum. That means one school either only selects one editor, or else we find a creative solution to enable more (for example, two students using a line-in headphone splitter (double jack) to plug two headphones into one computer).

Thoughts?

Podcast: Hawaii Students Sound Off on Classroom Blogging, Wiki Collaboration, More...

On Sunday, 11 March 2007 (oh wait--that's Korea time. It was Saturday in Hawaii), Chris Watson was nice enough to invite three of his students in Hawaii to join us in a Skype conference call/podcast. And Lindsay, Eddie, and Blake were nice enough to accept.

His two sophomores and one freshman did most of the talking, and Chris and I listened. What they had to say (and the relaxed, intelligent way they said it) was, I hope you'll agree, worth the listen. The talk was long and wide-ranging, but focused mainly on their experience of writing on blogs and wikis in the Language Arts classroom.

I have to add this: class discussions inside classroom walls--and tyrannized by classroom "factory bells"--don't hold a candle to what we did on Skype. There was no clock-watching, no hierarchy, no policing. We were just five people talking about writing and learning in this new world.

It was enough to make me consider getting a Ph.D. in administration--something I've never been interested in--simply to have the credentials to find funding to create a school without bells and factory rules, and with more conversations like this.

The podcast, if downloaded to iTunes, is extended with a time-stamped Table of Contents. For your convenience (I know I never have time to listen to hour-long podcasts), I've copied it below the podcast player.


Click here to get your own player.



00:00:00.000 Intro
00:01:31.000 Opening Questions on Student Blogging
00:02:31.484 Lindsay on Student Blogging
00:03:16.326 Chris' approach (Lindsay) and privacy
00:04:49.000 Frequency Eddie
00:05:27.333 Content Eddie and Lindsay EssenQs
00:06:25.000 Pitfalls: Rambling diaries
00:06:42.000 Reading other sts blogs
00:07:42.250 Lindsay: Reading Adult blogs for inspiration
00:09:47.375 Blake joins: reading blog habits
00:11:57.000 Lindsay's blog recommendations
00:12:26.250 Assigned to read/comment on others?
00:13:37.625 The Art of the Title
00:14:46.625 edit and revise, or just post?
00:19:34.875 Finding ideas
00:20:42.375 On sts who DON'T like blogging
00:26:35.625 Will you keep it after class is over?
00:26:59.875 Blake on 1001: Don't want it to end
00:27:52.375 Permissions and School restrictions
00:31:12.750 My school's "fresh start": anagrams and anonymity change writing?
00:34:49.375 On MySpace writing v. blogging
00:38:38.139 Does Blogging Feel like Homework?
00:42:20.526 How Teachers Can Ruin Blogging
00:44:37.838 Blogging Across the Curriculum
00:47:15.750 Students on Best Assessing
00:52:39.500 Flat World Time Management
00:54:01.969

Podcasting to Improve Writing

EyePod (Revised)
Originally uploaded by LeggNet.

(Cross-posted from Beyond School)

Real quick: for the 1001 Flat World Tales project, we had each writer record and podcast him/herself reading the first draft for an audience of one: him/herself (gender pronouns stink).

Podcasting for self-criticism. I know it's not new, but it's so easy now. And it seemed to help the young writers hear the parts of their writing that needed improvement. Here's one student reflection:

The first thing came to my mind was that I had extremely simple and frequent grammar mistakes. I was kind of embarrassed when I heard it. Also, ideas and details sound incomplete and insights are shallow in depth; it was just shallow that proves not much thinking and brainstorming. I should work on 'showing' since my second draft 'told' everything. It sounded like a lecture about Korean cultures. Well, it was embarrassing to listen to my own podcast anyways.

It's all so easy now. Odeo, Podomatic. Students pick it up quickly, often without needing the teacher to know anything about it at all. How many teachers realize how easy it is to do this sort of thing?

Just thought it was worth a share.

(Photo credit: "EyePod (Revised)" by LeggNet on Flickr.)

Reading & Writing Online vs Offline

(Cross posted from Always Learning)

Here in Malaysia we are quickly learning that writing, to be read online should look very different from writing to be read off-line. We spent today's lesson thinking about the differences between reading on- and off-line. We realized that when reading online we need:

• lots of space between paragraphs
• clear and deliberate headings in large, bold font
• bullets to organize lists of information
• horizontal rules (lines) to separate large sections of text
• less writing on more pages - links, links, links!
• images to break up the page

Many of these ideas are different from our natural writing instincts so this will be another area of focus and discussion for this project.

Our students also started their personal story pages today. They have added basic introductions (with links to their individual blogs), a description of the Malaysian record they are writing about (these are our story prompts based on the Malaysian Book of Records), and notes on what they believe makes a great story.

Next up: brainstorming their stories using Inspiration. The brainstorms will be posted next lesson on their personal story pages.

1001 Tales Elementary Myth Writing Rubric

'Were almost there here at Carol Morgan to finally join the 1001 project for real (meaning we actually have stories/myths posted). George Santos, the 3rd grade teacher I have been working with made a very simple rubric for the myths his kids are composing now. It is really simplified but for us Elementary teachers, this is a good thing. Yesterday while the kids were in the lab I saw several of them reading over their own myth and then putting checks into the boxes for the grade they would give themselves for their writing. It was refreshing to see and is a testament to the training George has given his kids in terms of using the rubric to self-evaluate. To see the rubric click HERE. It is an Excel file and we left it that way so you can modify it if you chose. Of course, we would love to have your feedback on the module as there is always room for improvement. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Greenwich Time / UTC: The Next Shift?

Chris and Michele, I vote we all choose one Greenwich hour for revision deadlines and feedback deadlines. The initial confusion of learning to think in terms of a uniform "world time"--+9 for Seoul, -5 for Colorado (DST?), -8 for Hawaii--will clear itself up soon enough, and more than justify itself with the end of the deadline confusion and "false arrests" for "laziness" that I suspect we're all experiencing.

Seems like we want four days for revision, and for two of them to bet Saturday and Sunday. So I say revision should be due Greenwich Monday 0900. That makes your local deadlines in the States past Sunday midnight.

Deadlines for feedback would be three days later: GMT 0900 Thursday.

We can translate that to our kids so they all know what time that is locally.

But the point, again, is that everybody around the world knows the deadlines are at the exact same minute, regardless of local time. (In the military we called it "Zulu" time, if I recall correctly.)

Other teachers, I strongly suggest you adopt the same policy. The deadline confusion causes unnecessary confusion and frustration. Learn from our experience and save yourselves a headache!

Thoughts?

1001 Flat World Tales "Kudzu" Update: Five New Countries Enter New Workshops

(Cross-posted from Beyond School)

Ms. Cofino posted an announcement that the first middle school (11-14 year-old, for non-Yanks) 1001 Flat World Tales global wiki writing workshop opened. One interesting spin-off for me was that I simply snooped into the wiki they set up for it, and saw so many improvements to my own wiki design for our current high school wiki that I see some major thievery coming in a future overhaul. Wonderful job, Ms. Cofino. When I read and watch you, I'm "Always Learning" too.

Again, real professional development just through watching each other work. Doesn't happen very often in the physical school-building, but one click with a web 2.0 collaborative colleague takes me into her virtual classroom, where I'm watching and learning in an instant. The wows continue.

To add to that wow: Here's how the Flat World Tales kudzu has grown in the two months since its inception:

• High school first workshop cycle: Seoul, Denver, Honolulu (in week 4, third revision)
  
• High school second workshop: Australia, Serbia, Shanghai (getting underway this week)
• Middle school first workshop: Malaysia, Serbia, Canada (now open)
  
• Elementary school first workshop: USA (Missouri), Dominican Republic (now open)

That's classrooms in ten countries making connections, writing together, aiming toward authentic publication on the "blook"--all for nary a penny nor a conference, thanks to the read-write web and some tapped-in teachers. Talk about the "machine us/ing us."

Go to the 1001 Reflections collaborating teachers blog for our exploration of how a "flat world faculty" team blog might help us and future participants. It's still messy, but it's far better than the neat boxes of the past, I think.

First Middle School Workshop Begins!

(Cross posted from Always Learning)

Today marks the first day of the first middle school 1001 Tales writing workshop! Our students have just been introduced to the project and will be working with students in Serbia and Canada to produce myths and legends for the alien king about Malaysia.

If you are a middle school teacher, and would like to be part of this workshop session, please let me know - we would love to have you join our group!

...And Student Empathy Too

Michelle's discussions were interesting to read and prompted me to add this post about my classes' Flat World Writing session yesterday (Thursday in Honolulu). We were working on feedback only. (Okay, now several anecdotes are popping into my head).

First, two students were sitting next to each other making their way through the organization rubric and their partners' stories. The first student's partner had not posted a second draft. So I asked if she put her partner's number and name on the 4th column. She said no. I asked why. She said that if her partner looked under history, she'd know who put her name up there, and she didn't want to make trouble (sorry for unclear pronoun references). So I asked her how she'd feel if she took my class, did no work, and I still gave her a passing grade.

Second, my other student was working on giving feedback on his partner's introduction. He was typing some rather discouraging and unhelpful notes. So I asked what his partner was supposed to work on after reading the feedback. And I asked him to rephrase his feedback according to Elbowing protocol. All of sudden, very useful feedback.
My observation is that because we don't share a physical classroom, each piece of feedback, every edit to the wiki carries more connotation. And that's a great exercise for students.

Finally, what's been really fun for my students are the two warm-ups that Clay created on the 1001 Writers blog. My students loved collaborating in a lower stakes activity. I think those really help trust/relationship building.

From Student Apathy to Global Collaboration to My Initial Thoughts...

Sorry, Clay, I'm been MIA! Swamped as I know we all are...just not coping as well as you all!

Here are some crossed-blogging links:

A discussion of the brilliant Hall of Fame...or Shame: http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/02/hall-of-fameor-shame.html

Questions that have rose from the global collaboration (challenge of time, relevance of this project in the midst of my Romeo and Juliet unit I had already started, and encouraging other teachers to take such risks):
http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/02/1001-flat-world-tales-wiki-update.html

My initial thoughts on the 1001 Flat-World Tales Project (I have continued to be pleased, too!):
http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-endeavor-across-ocean.html

This project has continued to be fascinating and it really is amazing watching the students grow through each draft. I often get students that say they like what they wrote and this forces students to really look at their writing, not only for a grade, but because they have other students, peers, reading and critiquing their writing. They do want to improve for the sake of the art of writing (not all of them, mind you, but many). Thank you, again Clay for your brilliance, your gusto, and your patience with all of us!

Adding a Student From Mrs. Davis?

As long as we're experimenting...Mrs. Davis in the high school group has a son, Carter, who wants to be involved. He has part of a story posted already. Since my class is only 16 kids, I'm inviting Carter to join my kid list and interact with the kids from the other two groups. Waiting to hear back from Mom. We have an empty desk Carter - want to join?

Terry

Finally Underway

It has been a busy day. After a couple morning emails between Terry Smith and myself and the teacher I am leading into this project (George Santos-3rd grade), I think we are finally rolling on my end. It will still be a week to a week and a half until George will have his writings finished and ready for posting, but at least he now knows what he needs to do. I did create a wiki space for participation in the 1001 Tales project and you can view it here if you like. I hope Dean and Terry are patient as they already have their kids work posted and I feel like we are playing catch up but hopefully in the end it will all be worth our respective wait.

Please Start Cross-Posting Your Reflections...Please?

Michele, Chris, all--I just dipped into my Bloglines for the first time in too many days, and noticed that you had all been reflecting, to one degree or another, about the Tales project so far in your blogs.

Please, please, a million times please: cross-post those blogs here! That's the whole point of this collaborative blog--to consolidate all reflections in one place so that a) we can reply to each other and collectively reflect; and b) so that future teachers can use this blog to learn from our experiences.

It does take maybe an extra three minutes to bother, but I hope you'll do it anyway.

Talk to you folks soon~

"Hey, You Got 15 Minutes?" A Three-Country Team Meeting, Cyber-Style (Podcast)

[Update: If you don't see the podcast in the player below, check back shortly for Podomatic to do its thing, or else click on the player to go to the podcast page.]

Terry Smith of Hannibal, Missouri, USA, Jeff Dungan of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and I (in Seoul, Rep. of Korea), have a "virtual faculty meeting" to plan the first elementary school writing workshop for the 1001 Flat World Tales Project.

It was the most efficient team meeting I think I've ever had. Length: 20 minutes.

(Download to iTunes to see extended podcast Chapter Markings.)


Click here to get your own player.

1001 Tales Update: Listen to Jessica's Student Tale

[Cross-posted from Beyond School]

Regular readers have met Jessica (grade 9) before, in a post featuring her experiment with teaching a grammatically stylistic sentence pattern via a YouTube presentation.

She's the first, now, of all 130 of the 1001 Flat World Tales writers, to learn how to podcast and embed her own reading of her own second revision of her work-in-progress. One of the "emerging talents" I mentioned a couple posts ago.

I thought I would share her story. She's setting the standard. And she set up the Podomatic podcast without teacher hand-holding. Seems she self-taught by following my own podcast to its Podomatic home, reading directions, and getting it done. Thank Nature for genes like hers: her example should create a ripple effect among her peers--"trickle-down learning"?

She made this with the disadvantage of not having a Mac with GarageBand, so there's no music loops (though she did add a nice photo to her product). But the story itself, and Jessica's oral interpretation of it, stand on their own anyway.

Remember, it's only her second draft. We haven't workshopped voice, word choice, sentence fluency, or grammar. Drop a comment to her here and I'll pass it on. And see her page on the high school 1001 Flat World Tales wiki to read her story. She made some smart revision choices as she read, which you can see if you read along as she recites. She heard the parts of the text that didn't work, reflected on improvements apparently, and just made them orally.

Which is the whole point of this podcast exercise.


Click here to get your own player.

1001 Tales update: Scaffolding the Workshop, Making it Real

Collaboration is wonderful. Chris and I podcasted a brainstorm last week about ways to improve the peer feedback in the 1001 Flat World Tales project--and make it learner-managed instead of teacher-managed--and we came up with (and quickly implemented) a four-column table on the wiki with these headings:

1. "Feedback Stars": exemplary critics (photo source)

2. "Too Nice to Be Helpful": the "Great job!!!" kind of "contributor." (photo source)

3. "This Felt Mean": for those who think tact is something used to mount maps on walls. (I actually had a student write "feedback" to a complete stranger from another country to the effect of, "After reading your story, I wanted to grind you into little balls of meat." Interesting thing was, the student was just trying to be witty. So he's living and learning.) (photo source)

4. "Hellooo? Where's your feedback?": I love this one. It says it all. You know the type. Students who hit this column 3 times will be "fired" from the project. Better they lose their first job over PlayStation now than later. (photo source)

--Learners simply enter the names of any peer-collaborator who falls within any of these categories.

We also entered a table called the "Writers Hall of Fame." Since 130 students are writing on the wiki, and reading and critiquing each other weekly in rotating cycles, their fingers are closer to the pulse of this project than ours. So we hope to see them placing names (with links) to the exemplary writers in the table, so other students can learn how great writing at their age-level can be. We're only into the second revision so far, and already there are some pretty impressive literary talents emerging from this group of young writers.

Finally, we're putting out calls for participating students to interview for positions on the student editorial board that will select stories from the project for publication in the 1001 Flat World Tales "blook"--and any other publication formats that might emerge as this project continues to grow. They will do what all publishers do: sit around a (virtual, Skype) table and reach consensus on which stories merit publication.

There's more to share, but it's late. More later. (And apologies to the photographers on Flickr. I'll try to find the credits and add them later.--Update: credits posted under photos.)

Navigating the Flat Seas: Time is Melting

time melting away..
Originally uploaded by areyarey.

1001 Flat World Tales update: Michele, Chris, and I seem like three shepherds trying to herd 130 cats in three different timezones. (I know I'm mixing metaphors--call me avant garde.)

Here are the things I'm noticing from Week 2 of the first HS world writing workshop that I hope we reflect on this weekend when we Skpye:

1. Flat World Time Management:

"Thursday midnight deadline" for peer response means this in World Time:

1. Korea: Thurday midnight (2400)
2. Denver: Thursday 0800
3. Honolulu: Thursday 0500

Doesn't seem like a problem, right? But..."Revise your stories, based on peer feedback, between Thursday midnight and Sunday midnight" means this, for my Korean students:

1. Denver's peer responses for my story won't be done until Friday 1600 Korean time
2. Honolulu's peer responses won't be done until Friday 1900

So really, my students don't have "Friday through Sunday." They have "Friday night through Sunday." They lose 19 out of 72 hours for revision time due to time zone differences.

We need to fine tune that. I notice, too, that the Thursday feedback/Sunday revise deadlines seem misguided: we're giving four days (minus lag time) for feedback, and three days (minus lag time) for re-writing? It should be the other way around. So I'll vote for Wednesday deadline for peer response, so the majority of the weekly round is devoted to re-writing, not responding.

We need to all learn, young and old, how to understand world time and work cycles. My students are "reporting" partner classroom students for late feedback because they don't see feeedback by their own Thursday midnight.

I want a parent who works in a multinational team to talk to my classes (Skype?) about how this looks in the real world. Would it make more sense for us to all use GMT/UTC time to coordinate this work?