In the Classroom: Evolving Technology

Franki at A Year of Reading has been thoughtfully considering new literacy tools in a number of posts this year.  Now she is focused on how Ipod Touches can be used in the classroom.  Now I have to say that due to many years in a fourth grade classroom exploring new tools I am a bit cautious about any particular thing.  I’ve had an IPod Touch myself for a year and I love it, but I have to admit I haven’t been interested in using it with my students.  Why?  Because I’m fortunate in having more than I have time for to use with my students.  But I’ll be following Franki’s journey with interest and perhaps she will convince me to feel differently.

I am very fortunate in being in a school that is very focused on using computers in every possible way.  We do our reports to parents online and they get send out as pdf files.  We communicate with email, blogs, moodles, etc.  Starting in 6th grade, every child gets a laptop.  In 4th grade we’ve had some sort of portable wordproccessor since the early 90s. (For how we got going on this see my article “Empowering Young Writers with Technology,” Educational Leadership, April 1994.)  This year we got netbooks for every fourth grader and they’ve been fantastic.  We are using ee pcs, but I think there are now others to use as well.  The kids do all their writing on them, internet work, email, photos, and more. They have been just wonderful!  (Especially after years other machines that were not nearly as easy to use.)  They aren’t, I don’t believe, that much more expensive than Ipod touches, yet do so much!

As for using Ipod Touches in the classroom I have the same reservations with them that I had earlier with Palms (there were educational outreaches for them too), and other smaller objects that don’t have keyboards and such.  You see, I’ve been  involved in classroom use of technology for a very long time.  (Starting when I worked at an AV  Centre in Sierra Leone in 1975.  I followed that with an MA in educational technology and another in computers and education. Came to my current school as a computer specialist and have been variously doing this stuff for several decades.)  What I’ve seen is it is tricky to consider what is going to be viable and workable in classrooms and what is not. What follows are some thoughts on various tools Franki and others are using or thinking about using.

Blogs

I’ve been blogging with kids for three years now and it gets better every year.  Check out all my teaching with blog posts for more on this.  I’m a huge, huge, HUGE fan of classroom blogging! (Here’s a presentation wiki I did recently on this.)

Podcasting

I was skeptical of podcasts at first.  I paid attention to how others were using them in classrooms, but wasn’t sure what they really brought that was new and worth extra sidework (editing them and such).  A couple of years ago I started using them here and there in my classroom.   I do something called Literary Salon where kids do readings from books and we did a number of them as podcasts and I put them on the class blog.  My favorite of these were the ones we did with my (as I chose it as a member of the committee) Newbery winner, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! There had been questions about kid appeal and the podcasts were great at showing their enthusiasm.

Last year I came up with another way to do podcasts that worked even better this year.  Our theme in fourth grade is immigration and one way we consider it is the kids’ own “migration” from a small lower school to a big upper school.  At the end of the year I had a class of incoming 3rd graders interview my 4th graders about this. The questions were the same ones my students had used in the fall for an oral history of an immigrant and in the spring when they researched and wrote a work of historical fiction about the Pilgrims. The questions worked well for all three situations.  And the podcasts are terrific.  Some samples are here, here, and here.  This year I also had them do podcasts about their Pilgrim stories. I was so pleased with them — check out this one and this one for a taste.

I’m at a point where I can use podcasts as casually as I use chart paper.  The kids can do it too.  We taught them to do just about everything and I had to do nothing!  When that happens the technology works, in my opinion.  But whether you specifically need to do them with Ipod Touches, I don’t know.  With the ee pcs the kids are able to record, save, and then put the podcasts on their blogs.  I’m less clear how this would work with Ipod Touches.

Flip (and similar) Cameras

A couple of years ago a wonderful tech teacher I know visited my class and urged me to buy a bunch of flip cameras to use. But I was again skeptical.  I’d done a lot of movies with my class over the years, but they always involved a lot of editing on my part.  I didn’t see the point of non-edited films — they wouldn’t be good, I wouldn’t want to show them, and the kids could do just as well without them. So I thought.

This year I began using a flip camera in a few ways that got me very excited — I had someone film lessons for conference presentations and I realized that they were great resources for the kids too.  A few weeks ago my class did a debate that we filmed (Resolved: Is the MGM Wizard of Oz movie a good adaptation of the book?), but when it came to figuring out what to do with it I became overwhelmed. Because the raw footage was raw, the sound was bad and major editing is needed for me to use it.  I will indeed use it (for a presentation at NCTE in November), but it is going to take a lot of time to edit it into something worthwhile.  So I’m still skeptical.

Smartboard

I’ve had a Smartboard for a few years and I do love it — I use it as I did chartpaper (and the way many teachers use overheads) — I can write with the kids, in front of the kids, show them something on the web, annotate something, and so forth.  I love it — but I can’t say I use it in terms of touching the screen — there are some games and such, but they seem very doodady and gimicky to me.  At least for language arts and history — seems much more worthwhile for math.

This coming school year I’m planning on a new afterschool club — book bloggers.  Kids who were in my class in previous years will be able to blog again and those who weren’t will be given blogs of their own as well.  We plan on having these kids read ARCs, new books, and generally give kid points of view.  We may do some podcasts, movies, and other stuff — who knows!  So that along with the work I do in my classroom shall keep me thinking about how we can best use new technology tools comfortably in the classroom.

In the Classroom: Kid Podcasts on Writing Historical Fiction

My fourth graders have spent the last few months considering historical fiction and preparing to write their own about the Pilgrims.  They’ve done a ton of research about these long ago immigrants (including an overnight trip to Plimoth Plantation) and are all diving into their first story drafts.  On Friday we taught them how to do podcasts and now you can listen to the ones they did in which they tell you about this project, their characters, their research and more.  I’m very proud of them!

Dorothy May Swan

Elizabeth Ann Warner

Dorothy May Rawlins

Samuel Hopkins

Mary Anna Dodge

Cooper Brewster

Dorothy-Ann Annie Cook

David Winslow

DW’s character on the journey

Elizabeth Brown

Teaching With Blogs: Capable Child Bloggers

This is the third year I’ve been doing blogs with my fourth graders and it has become such a natural part of the fabric of my classroom that I haven’t been blogging here about it at all.  However, a couple of weeks ago two  colleagues and I did a  session on blogging with elementary students at a technology conference and I thought some readers of this blog might be interested in it.  And so the powerpoint and wiki we put together for our presentation are here for your reading and viewing pleasure.   (They even broadcast our session and supposedly will be posting the video sometime in the future.  I’m very eager to see it myself!)

In the Classroom: Alice in Comic Land

There has been a lot of buzz of late about teaching with graphic novels. Having been a comic fan from way back (and I have my old Superman comics to prove it), I jumped on that bandwagon long ago. This fall, for example, I did a whole unit with Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. (Posts on my teaching this book to my 4th graders are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, this last being when Shaun Tan came to my classroom).

But this post is about kids making their own comics. For many years I’ve been been doing a unit called The Many Faces of Alice. It involves my reading aloud Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland while my students read along from my large collection of illustrated editions, a lot of discussion about the book, and then a project. Last summer I was introduced to Comic Life and so that is what we used this year for the project. The results are wonderful and I urge teachers with adequate technology and support to consider using it for projects of their own.

First of all, Comic Life is an easy-to-use program to make comics. I experimented with it last summer and decided that I was definitely going to use it for my Alice project this year. It was amazing. I’d been preparing the kids-technologywise all year for this. In particular, they were highly adapt at scanning and saving images. (A quick and easy way to use Comic Life is with photos, but I recommend using it with kid art — train them to scan the work in. As you will see when you look at their comics, they results are fantastic and well worth it.)

Since I think this would work well for other books, here is what I did:

1. After finishing our book study, I gave each child a copy of the book’s Table of Contents and asked them to number in order of preference their favorite chapters. I then paired the children up according to this. As always happens, kids somehow always get their first or second choices. I think this may be because Alice is so quirky that the different chapters all appeal to different kids.

2. We asked the children to come up with a list of ten scenes, a script, and a storyboard. Once those were okay they began their illustrations. These they scanned in and used to create their comics. What was very cool is that they were able to reuse these images in a variety of ways. They would draw an Alice, for example, and then print her out in various sizes, stick her on another background, and scan that image in. Along the way, my wonderful partner in crime, Ellen Nickles, did several lessons on Comic Life.

3. During the unit we asked the children to do a series of blog posts describing their process.

• What We Did First
• What We Did Next
• All About Alice
• Final Alice Post

4. We premiered the comic at the annual Alice in Wonderland Tea Party! (Some wonderful costumes this year, by the way.)

What I find really wonderful is how perfect Carroll’s work was for this medium. The kids absolutely know comics and used the panels, speech bubbles, and more to great effect in their work. And of course, they played off Carroll is clever ways — parodying his parodies (see the tea party for a new take on “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”), adding in little bits (an earthquake, for example, in the trial scene), a wheelchair for poor Bill (created by a child who was in one earlier in the year), and so forth.

And so, in addition to using comics in the classroom, I urge teachers to consider having kids make them as well. It is great for sequencing, deepening understanding of a book, collaborating, creativity, and tons more. Below are the links that take you directly to each team’s comic. Enjoy!

1. Down the Rabbit-Hole
2/3. The Pool of Tears & A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
4. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
5. Advice from a Caterpillar
6. Pig and Pepper
7. A Mad Tea-Party
8. The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
9/10. The Mock Turtle’s Story & The Lobster Quadrille
11/12. Who Stole the Tarts? & Alice’s Evidence

Teaching with Blogs: Electronic Portfolios

In late December 2006 I started a class blog and gave each of my students a blog of his or her own. Having only started this blog a few months earlier, it was an exciting time as I (with the great help of Ellen Nickles, a technologist at my school) and the children explored more and more ways to learn with the blogs.

This year I started the class blog in September and use it constantly. If I had modeled a piece of writing for an assignment I put it on the blog. If we’d made a chart of ideas I put it on the blog. Everything we did was there for the kids, the parents, and me to refer to. And so when they were given their own blogs in January they were eager and ready to go.

Since then we’ve taught the kids to scan in images and add them into their posts, do links, categories, and podcasts. They created their own banners and tag lines. It has been amazing and wonderful; I keep getting inspired with new ideas for them every day.

In addition to the class blog being a great archive for me (as I go back and look at last year’s posts when teaching something), the student blogs have become archives for them. In other words, electronic portfolios. I have accordion files for each child in a file cabinet and they put finished projects in them. For example, after weeks of hard work they have completed Cinderella stories and placed their many drafts in those files. As for their final stories, they will be publishing them on their blogs next week. Already on them are their Amistad poems and lots of other writing. Today we begin our Pilgrim unit and they will be putting a great deal of the work they do for it on their blogs.

And so, in addition to all the other great educational reasons for blogging with kids is the one that blogs are electronic portfolios — for teachers and kids.

In the Classroom: Kid Podcasts of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

Last Friday’s Literary Salon featured my students reading selections from the monologues and dialogues of Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! For a few weeks beforehand I’d read them one or two a day during our morning meeting. Each child selected one, practiced at home, and then read it on Friday. Not only that — I recorded their readings, turned them into audio files, and yesterday the kids put them on their individual blogs as podcasts. Of course, they are not as polished as those of the Park School fifth graders for whom the pieces were originally written, but my students had fun with them and performed them ably. Do have a look, a listen, and comment if you are so inclined. (They are very eager for comments!)

HUGO, the lord’s nephew

TAGGOT, the blacksmith’s daughter

ALICE, the shepherdess

THOMAS, the doctor’s son

MOGG, the villein’s daughter

OTHO, the miller’s son

SIMON, the knight’s son

EDGAR, the falconer’s son

ISOBEL, the lord’s daughter

BARBARY, the mudslinger

JACOB BEN SALOMON, the moneylender’s son and PETRONELLA, the merchant’s daughter

PASK, the runaway

PIERS, the glassblower’s apprentice

MARIOT and MAUD, the glassblower’s daughters

NELLY, the sniggler

Drogo, the tanner’s apprentice 

GILES, the beggar

In the Classroom: Thoughts on Teaching The Arrival

Using this book with my students has been a fantastic experience; I can’t recommend it enough. I will definitely do it again next year with few alterations. To review:

1. Before beginning, I showed the children Shaun Tan’s website on The Arrival. We discussed the images there, how to “read” them, and what they had to do with our studies of immigration. We talked about the challenges of reading a book that was all images, that had no words.
2. I constantly referenced back to our immigration studies. The Arrival follows the same structure of the children’s own oral history interviews. That is: Old Country, Journey, Settlement, etc. I showed them books and artifacts from Ellis Island that reinforced what was in the book.
3. I placed the children in groups of three to read the book. This seemed to be just the right number of children in a group — most of the groups worked well together and the children, in their journal assessments, remarked on how helpful it was to work together to determine what was going on in the story.
4. I gave the children small booklets in which to take notes as they read. Many of them commented that they loved the note taking. Perhaps because the book was wordless, there was something about putting their own words down as notes that was particularly satisfying.
5. At the end of each session, we came together as a class and one member of each group presented their findings in a podcast. This was incredibly motivating. I’m not even sure that many of the kids bothered to go to the blog to listen to the podcasts, but there was something about knowing that their presentations were being recorded and placed on the blog that was really compelling for them. After a couple of times, they became incredibly adept at passing the Ipod around as they commented on each others’ presentations. (Here and here are the final two podcasts, by the way.)
6. As they presented I held up a copy of the book to support what was being said. So we noticed even more during these presentations.
7. After we finished, my colleague Jenny Kirsch showed them a Powerpoint she had created, placing images from the book next to archival photographs on which they were based. This was exciting and fascinating for my NYC students.
8. Next they will write letters — I want them to make a box of memories for the hero of the book — full of his letters to his family, origami perhaps, whatever my students think should go in it. They may also want to write Shaun Tan. Letters seem the perfect final project for this book. Once these are done I will post once again on what the children come up with.

So teachers who want to try something new and different, give The Arrival a try! It is a wonderful book to use within a study of immigration, bringing together the essence of that experience today, historically, and always. And for anyone who found the book confusing, children will help you see it much more clearly!

Teaching with Blogs: Electronic Blackboard/Bulletin Board

Over the summer I refurbished the class blog (using a new template and banner image) and, with school underway, am using it all the time.

One way is for homework as I have a page for this. On it is an image of a page from their plan book (scroll down to the end to see it) showing exactly how I want them to record their nightly reading (as it is the most important homework I give).

And then I’m using it to post lessons. That is, after doing one, I’m putting up the models, instructions, and such for kids to refer back to if they need to. These are also there for parents to see what we are doing. For example, the first writing assignment is what I call an “author blurb.” After looking at two for E. B. White from the back of different editions of Charlotte’s Web I pair the children off, they interview each other, and then write up short blurbs. On the blog I put the instructions and my model interview (with a colleague) and the draft of the blurb I wrote in front of the children.

And then there is our bigger immigration oral history unit. This takes months as the children interview immigrants, transcribe the recordings, and create picture books. Before they do these individually we do one all together. So first I posted an overview of what we’d be doing. After I did the model interview I posted the transcript and a podcast of it. (The podcast is at the very end of the post.) It was very cool to be able to have the children listen to specific parts of the interview while looking at the transcript. This way I didn’t need to tell them what the ellipses and brackets meant — they figured them out all by themselves!

Now the children each have one part of the interview to illustrate. Once they’ve done so I’m going to teach them how to scan their illustrations and will put them up on the class blog as well.

By January when I will give the children their own blogs they should be very used to working with them because of this class blog. Or so I hope!

Teaching with Blogs: Alice in Videoland

One of my favorite teaching units of the year is the Many Faces of Alice unit. I begin by reading the book aloud, have the kids take a close look at the various illustrators, and then ask them to do a project of their own. When Roxanne Feldman came to Dalton she came up with the wonderful idea of putting a complete kid- illustrated version of the book on-line; we did this in 1998 and in 1999.

In 2000 I began having the children do Toy Theater productions. I bought a beautiful toy theater at Pollack’s Toy Theater Museum in London , had the kids create scenery and puppets, a script, and we filmed the results and put them online here, here, here. and here.

Then last year Roxanne came up with a new idea — to have the kids do a sort of book trailer — that is, they’d do a series of drawings and then a voice-over. The result wouldn’t be quite stop-motion animation (as that was way too time-consuming), but no longer a series of still pages either. We didn’t put last year’s version on-line, but this year’s is here on our class blog. Do visit and comment! I’m thrilled with the results and I think the kids are too.

Teaching with Blogs: We Aren’t Back in Kansas Yet

 

A few weeks ago, while my students were at gym, an associate teacher and I created a yellow construction paper road that led from the door of the classroom to Oz, in this case the Emerald City pages of Robert Sabuda’s pop-up version carefully balanced on a stool in the center of the classroom with a pile of Baum’s books elegantly scattered below.

When the kids came into the classroom they were instructed musically to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” and did so to our Oz, picked up a book, and went to Munchkin Land — I mean, their desks — where they discovered a few tasty gummy letters (in various colors including green and gold) and a little chapbook.

And so we began our study of L. Frank Baum’s American fairy tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I love having the kids read this book after our study of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is truly THE American fairy tale. While I’ve never seen anything that makes clear that Baum was at all influenced by Carroll’s tale, I don’t see how he could have avoided it. Alice was so popular and it is the story of a little girl going into a fantasy land, after all. Certainly it is very different — Carroll’s story is almost plotless while Baum’s is very dramatic and full of adventure. Carroll is more interested, it seems, in language, puns, parody, and humor; Baum seems more interested in creating an entertaining story for American boys and girls. Both are fun in very different ways.

 

I have my students read the book (a facsimile of the original with Denslow’s illustrations) on their own; it is completely accessible to all levels of readers. I have on display the other thirteen Oz books by Baum and additional copies of the two that follow the first one for those who finish quickly. I ask them to write/draw a response to each chapter in the little booklets, but that is all. I really want them to have fun reading the book and they do!

Before beginning I show them, “The Dreamer of Oz, a docudrama about L. Frank Baum which is very interesting because he is so completely and utterly different from Carroll. And the biographical details that connect to the story of Dorothy and Oz fascinate them.

After they are all finished with the book we watch the MGM movie together. Some have seen it before, but not all. The differences intrigue them — most of all those familiar ruby slippers, silver in the book. We also watch a documentary on the making of the movie that further captivates. And then the kids write an essay answering the question: Is the movie a good or a bad witch, I mean, adaptation of the book? You can read some of this year’s responses by way of the class blog (go to the children’s blogs on the right to read their posts on this topic).

When time permits the kids do projects. Last year they made board games and had a blast playing them during the last few days of school. I’m not sure if we will have time this year, but here are a few of last year’s to give you a taste.

 

At the very, very, very end of school when we’ve finished the presentation portfolios for the parent reception and cleaned the room, I show them Disney’s Return to Oz. Few seem to be familiar with this film, but it is fascinating after reading Baum’s book and seeing the MGM movie — a combination of the second and third Oz books it connects to Baum, the books’ illustrators, the MGM movie, and is a story all of its own.

It is an ideal final unit of the year — every kid enjoys the book, the movie is still fun to watch, writing about it a snap, and all in all a lotta fun! If you have never read the book and only know the story from the MGM movie, give it a try — it is quite different and very entertaining.