Reaffirming the power of kids.

The readings this week have reaffirmed some suspicions I've had recently, mostly about how writing can fit into my classroom. First off, Kirby made me feel more better about not being a daily writer. He said students don't need to be daily writers, because experience is what makes writing interesting. "Great Literature could not be written if the authors did not experience the joys and defeats of their lives". I was always told that, in order to become a good writer, I needed to put pen to paper daily to get "comfortable" with the practice of writing. However, what happened is that, when I inevitably forgot to write once or twice in a row, I gave up the practice entirely believing that now I could never write anything decent. And that's not to say that students, who may be 10 or 11 when I teach them, don't have valuable things to say. Instead, I want to take up Schreiner's philosophy about students. His words are hopeful and optimistic, and I found them especially inspiring. "The students I began teaching were to be treated as writers, entitled to self-expression, capable of inspiring and being inspired, interested in writing about themselves for an audience larger than their teacher". This is the kind of writing I want to be teaching. This is the kind of activities I want to facilitate. I want to create a learning environment that fosters this. This week's authors provide some benchmarks to make sure you're developing a healthy writing environment, like outlawing mockery and insults to create a safe space. They also advocate encouraging students to use their own language, which is something I haven't heard many writing teachers talk about.

These encouraging words have reminded again to never lose sight of the ability of my students. It's my job to listen to the stories they have to tell and to validate the power that lies within them. I have the capacity to either bring these students' power to the forefront, and teach them how to use it, or conversely to stifle that power; to snuff it out. I believe in the power of children. I believe in my capacity to reaffirm the significant good natured souls of my students. I can do this through creating a safe space and helping them to develop their talents for reading and writing.

I come back time and time again to this amazing TED talk by educator Rita Pierson. She tells us to be champions for our students, to tell them "yes, you can do it. You have it in you". I feel like this is the mindset I need to rediscover before I go into student teaching. I have to be this person for my students. They will know that I recognize their power.

Maniac Project Screencast

Screencasts are for teachers.

After creating one, I think screencasts are a great way to present assignments. It shows students exactly the process that they need to follow, reducing any confusion about programs or expectations. It’s more dynamic too- you’re not just talking at your students to give them the important information; they’re watching a video. It’s more environmentally friendly than 50 handouts as well.

I enjoyed creating this very much. It’s fun to make creative assignment, because you know your students will enjoy them more than book reports. I believe creative assignments use similar analytic skills to traditional ones, so you might as well make them interesting! The project I designed revolves around Jerry Spinelli’s great book Maniac Magee. I incorporated two fluencies- creative fluency and media fluency. The students will be using creative fluency by creating unique short story that asks them to add a story onto the end of the story. I’m asking them to mimic the style of Jerry Spinelli, because in this theoretical unit we’ll be studying Writing about Difference, and one of the things I’ll be asking my students to focus on is writing style. I’m asking them to create a story 500 words or longer that uses multiple characters and is engaging. They then record the story they wrote, which brings in the media fluency into play. They follow the directions into the video to properly record, add music, save, convert and send their recordings. I wanted to make sure I hit on five important factors in my rubric, and settled on Creativity (making sure the project is original), sound quality (testing for media fluency), performance (see if the students could read their stories aloud like a books-on-tape narrator), written story (checking to see if they edited effectively), and following instructions.

Creating the video itself was a surprisingly easy process. I used Quicktime player to record a screencast. After rehearsing it a few times, I gave it a go. I reviewed it, saved it, and that was that. Really simple. I used Quicktime because it was so easy. I decided to have them use Word and Garage Band for the same reason- ease of use.

I would absolutely use instructional videos in future for many assignments, especially longer ones that have multiple steps. I also think I’d use it for any tech-based assignments, to make sure they’re using the right programs. This is such a great idea that I would have never thought of as a useful teaching tool.

Task 5: Narrated Slideshows and Fair Use

 This project was difficult because of its imposed simplicity- keeping the story to less than 250 words was very hard! In order for it to still sounds natural, I cut the written version down to 240 words so I could still throw in natural phrasing while I was reading aloud. When I was writing the story, I drew a lot of inspiration from Storycorps’ projects, which I’ve listened to before and enjoy immensely. I tried to mimic the way they make the narrator personable right away. As for the pictures, I chose pictures from my own collection (all the ones I had from the trip of the group and Mr. Lewis) along with some pictures highlighting Lewis’ incredible role in the fight for civil rights: his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, him leading a group in the march to Selma. I wanted to make sure the audience knew his important role in that history. I enjoyed the beautiful images of the photobus projects. Those pictures truly tell a story without saying a word. I don’t think my project goes into depth as much as those do, but hopefully the pictures are still very interesting and provide important background information. I chose this music because I wanted the project to be lighthearted and enjoyable.

I enjoyed putting this project together because it involved reliving a great experience in my life. I was very invested in telling this story. The only frustrations were with technology- importing pictures, exporting the video with the right file type, creating audio tracks- the same things that have befallen me before. It took a few tries, but eventually I figured out how to get everything together in one place. I am just building my expertise, one frustrating technology block at a time.

I also chose not to share the project on youtube because I want to keep videos and images of my students off youtube as much as I can, especially because I can’t ask them if it’s ok for me to put them up (KIPP doesn’t have a blanket media release form, and even if they did, I don’t think I’d be covered by it). Even though Blogger is a public website, it’s much less likely they’ll be easily seen than if the video was on youtube. In my gut, it just seems like the right thing to do.

I think this would be an interesting project to do with students either as a presentation of a past experience or as a new assignment. What I mean by this is I could assign the students to tell a story from their lives and illustrate it with pictures (this would be ideal for a media studies class for students at any age) or, maybe for an activism, storytelling or journalism unit, sending students out to take pictures of something in their community and telling that story, similar to the photobus projects. This could build on several skills for students. Not only will it build media literacy through experience with recording and editing tools, but it exercises critical thinking, builds writing skills and seriously hones editing skills. Keeping a story concise is trickier than it seems, but teaches the students that less is more. I think some activities that would help scaffold this assignment would be writing the story before recording and creating a storyboard. I also think it would help students to listen to Storycorps and research famous photo essays (this would be especially useful in an activism unit).

Overall, the readings and videos from this week were incredibly illuminating. I had never heard of “Fair use” before. It turns out that it’s a useful concept for educators across all subjects. Although it’s true we are too litigious as a society, apparently teachers are protected when they use copywritten media resources, as long as they follow the loose guidelines of fair use. What I look away from the guidelines was: use media appropriately and cite when you can. I’m now going to be aware of this as a teacher. I think it made me more confident in using media as the helpful resource it was meant to be. However, some things remain foggy: for one, I didn’t find a universal guide to citing images. And for public domain images- do you not need to cite them? My feeling is no, but I want to be sure. These readings and videos gave me a good base of knowledge about fair use and copyright laws as a teacher, which was undeniably useful. But I also have many unanswered questions, some of which I hope will be answered by peers’ reflection posts.

This one time when... we met John Lewis

photo credits:

John Lewis March on Washington: Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty

John Lewis Leads Marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965: The Birmingham News

Freedom Riders after the church siege in Birmingham: Johnson Publishing Company

Task 4: My Very Own Podcast

I loved this assignment. It was great to be able to make my own podcast based on a topic I actually wanted to learn more about. I chose to interview my friend Danny about being a USA soccer superfan during the World Cup. I interviewed him over Skype (he lives in New Orleans) and used Garage Band for the entire recording and editing process. I’m a big fan of This American Life and Radiolab, so it felt like I was making a show like those, which was fun AND motivating. Those shows are serious journalism, and sound high-quality, so I was hoping to imitate that in some way. I didn’t feel impeded by the open interpretation-ness of the assignment, I found it rather freeing, actually. I hope I met the criteria for “[podcast has] something new and interesting to say”. While I’m certainly not the first person to be talking about the world cup, I hope I did bring a new perspective.

I discovered so many new things. Firstly, Danny gets frustrated easily by my complete lack of knowledge. But mostly I learned about soccer- important players, greatest games and goals, the US’ surprise skill during this years’ world cup. My favorite thing I learned was about the player Zinadine Zidane. He became famous as an excellent player for Real Madrid and the French national team. During the 2006 world cup, an Italian player allegedly insulted Zidane’s mother and sister. Zidane put this jerky Italian in his place by headbutting him in the chest (!). What a rebel. He was welcomed back to France as a hero.

I enjoyed the editing process. It put me in full control of the podcast, and ensured that I was fully responsible for what it turned out to be. When we first started the interview, I planned to do a story about Danny’s involvement in a local soccer club league. But he was so much more excited talking about the world cup, and it came through in his answers. I decided during the editing process to focus on that instead.

I decided to include clips of soccer commentary during the podcast to give the entire thing a more authentic feel, and to demonstrate to listeners the fervor of soccer commentators (They’re the ones who yell “Gooooooooal” for hours). This was surprisingly easy to do, and since the clips were all on youtube, I can be sure they’re available to the public. I added music at the beginning and end of the interview as well, to provide some bookends to the project.

When thinking about using this as a teacher, I am excited about the possibilities this project has. You could provide students with a simple prompt (like “Pride”, “Struggle”, “Secrets”), possibly in conjuncture with a class book, and leave the project open ended. The software I used (Garage Band) was surprisingly easy (and FREE!), so I think students could maser it without becoming frustrated. I can see a few limitations- if the school did not have access to laptops or computers that have Garage Band installed (or laptops at all) then the assignment would have to be done completely outside of class, which makes me nervous (you can’t assume students have access to computers at home). I’d have to ensure that students could use school laptops before I develop the assignment. But that is the only drawback I can imagine, otherwise the project has so many possibilities that I am positive I’ll use it as a teacher!

Danny's teaching me...about the world cup.

I had a great interview with my friend Danny about what it's like to be a soccer superfan during the World Cup. Listen to our interview here