Mid-Semester Reflection

Entering the month of November, I feel comfortable with the basics of the technology introduced in this course.  Photoshop became immediately applicable in my teaching; my students were thrilled to see themselves transported to other backgrounds.  Inspiration proved useful when I downloaded the 30-day trial and scoured their database for templates.  Many of the writing maps come with outline versions, which makes them particularly helpful in that they meet visual as well as verbal learners.  For instance, I used it to give a visual representation for a writing rubric.  Blogging has been pretty carefree and I recognize now the appeal.  It is relatively easy to deride the blogosphere because of its notorious narcissism, but such an attitude toward blogging is narrow-minded and unfair.  The beauty of the blog is the ability to publish for an audience with the click of a button.  As a writing instructor, this tool is invaluable because it is my responsibility to get students to understand the importance of point-of-view, audience, and purpose.  With blogs, those facets are glaring.

Working with GoogleSites has been a strikes-and-gutters endeavor.  Initially I was frightened by the terminology and the interface.  Although I have been a Google user for years, their Sites program was not immediately accessible to me the way Gmail or Google Calendar were.  However, with practice, I realized how remarkably user-friendly Sites is.  I am excited to use the website not only as my portfolio for this course but as an asset to my resume and a venue to share work with other teachers.  Sites allows me to embed GoogleDocs into the page so that I can easily share work that I'm doing with students.

For the remainder of the semester, I want to work on doing more to incorporate what I'm doing in class into the classroom.  For instance, I believe that I can have a class website up and running for the second term of the school year, which starts November 15.  I prefer using a website with my students to using a blog, though I know they are both useful.  I would love to post a GoogleCalendar and to keep a section for publishing student work.

My judgment of the course so far is that it has been well-paced, balancing short-term projects with long-term projects, and that the suggested and mandatory readings have supported well the technological projects we are creating.  Suggestions for Dr. Langran: If at all possible, I would want to have more lab time during office hours.  Jerome has been an amazing graduate assistant, very flexible and helpful.  I know that this has to do with availability, so I understand the challenges involved with securing time and having a supervisor.  Aside from lab time, I love the course and look forward to the second half.

Comments on the Latest from "Learning is Messy" Blog

Brian Crosby's latest post on his "Learning is Messy" blog shares seasonal lesson plans that use experiential learning.  He describes a lesson that closed a unit on the New Americas by having the students research the real first Thanksgiving: what was eaten, who was there, why they were gathered, etc.  After their research, students volunteered to bring dishes for a simulated feast.  Crosby encouraged students to bring some of the food that they eat at their families' traditional feasts.  A Vietnamese student brought duck, for instance. 

Crosby documented the entire event with photography and had students reflect on the experience.  Though he doesn't label this lesson as such, Crosby is using experiential learning--learning through the experience of multisensory events.  In this case, the experience is a combination of historical reenactment and multicultural sharing. The abstract historical data is made concrete in a festive atmosphere and is augmented by the appreciation of the students' particular versions of Thanksgiving, no matter their backgrounds.

I was recently thinking about doing something similar, though the focus would not be on holidays or seasons.  In my seventh grade Literature class, we are reading a mystery novel called Skellig.  In the opening scene, a boy peers into a spooky garage and sees for the first time the creature we find out later is Skellig.  The suspense of the novel centers on the mysterious origins and nature of the creature the boy finds.  In order to catch the student's attention early in our reading, I was thinking that I could recreate the scene and have another teacher play the creature.  Our school is ancient and spooky, so there are plenty of creepy rooms that would freak them out.  They could experience the fear and amazement that the boy lives in the opening scene, much as Crosby's students experienced Thanksgiving.

Inquiry-based Learning and Historical Thinking

I have used inquiry-based learning in my Literature courses through Reading Journals and Socratic Seminars. 

For a reading journal entry, students read an assigned section and keep a log consisting of ten categories: 1. proper nouns, 2. facts and information, 3. "my thoughts", 4. quote that caught my eye and why, 5. visualize, 6. make connections, 7. ask questions, 8. infer, 9. determine importance, 10. synthesize.   After modeling and guided practice, students come to complete these journals independently.  The journals are used as a source for an inquiry-based discussion.  For instance, I can ask, "What inferences did you make from last night's reading?  Please point to a corresponding passage."  From there, the students generate the inquiry by interrogating the text once potential inferences are presented.  The method allows for trial and error; students learn from their mistakes. 

Rather than giving them study guide questions, I give them categories for active reading and rules of notice.  This approach must be balanced with the traditional instruction of content; they are less capable of commenting analytically if they do not have the terminology for literary elements.  Nonetheless, the format of student-generated inquiry--in which, without prompting, they present the questions for consideration, generate the connections to the world, their lives, and other artwork, determine the "big ideas", etc.--supersedes the content of teacher-generated lecture notes.  If the student adequately interrogates and explains an ironic moment, let the word irony come later.

Socratic Seminars are foundational for inquiry-based learning in Literature, and I use them as a formal forum for the application of reading journal entries and five categories of questioning.  In order to participate in a scheduled seminar, students must arrive with five types of questions on the reading for that day's discussion: 1. close-ended, 2. open-ended, 3. world-connection, 4. theme/message, 5. literary/author's choices. While I take notes as a "fly on the wall", merely observing, students run a seminar with the purpose of addressing questions they have pondered and showcasing thoughts from their reading journals.  Questions lead to further questions and the inquiry becomes spontaneous, as students create new connections that were not prepared in advance.  The inquiry-based learning approach aims to teach learners how to learn, regardless of the content.  Proponents argue that students do not need the appendix to Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, but a toolbox of critical thinking skills that move from basic observation and literal comprehension to synthesis, application, design, and invention.  The Socratic Seminar meets the criteria of inquiry-based learning because students are not asked to come with a discrete set of answers and facts but with an amendable bank of inquiry topics and with evidence of active, critical reading.

Historical thinking theories propose that certain thinking skills result from the study of history.  Doubtless the same is true for the study of literature. For instance, in history, they learn chronology and sequence; in literature, they learn comparable concepts of plot and cause-and-effect.  Historical thinking proponents also advocate reading textbooks with a critical eye.  Students are encouraged to remain mindful of the biased perspective of all authors, regardless of their efforts to remain comprehensive and objective.  The same critical stance used in historical reading (of primary and secondary texts) should be applied in the reading of literature: questioning unreliable narrators, evaluating the effects of time periods on authors, etc.

I need to spend time this semester researching ways to incorporate inquiry-based learning and technology.

Link to my website

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Isaacs' Technology Portfolio

UDL Inspiration Map

 The above Concept Map of the Universal Design for Learning is the second map I made.  The first one I made was the diagram version of a far-too-long outline of our readings from chapters three and four of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age.  Once turned into a JPEG, the concept map was so small that the content of the diagram was impossible to see.  I include it below:

Yikes!  You can tell that this diagram is inaccessible and therefore useless.  The outline was seven pages when I converted it to a Word document, far too many words to fit into a concept map.  My myopia about the content distracted me from the overarching goal of posting a visible image on this blog.  The mind map at the top of this post is a more succinct representation of the essence of UDL.    

One thing I greatly appreciated in the UDL reading is that CAST practiced UDL in its presentation of the content, particularly with "top-down" networking through hyperlinking and sections labeled as "background knowledge".  In addition, the writers of this "curriculum" embed multimedia presentations and videos.  Often, educators of educators do not practice the methods they endorse, but CAST does.

Inspiration is a program that supports standard 3 of the CT language arts curriculum guide, which focuses on the writing process.  For prewriting, Inspiration mind maps and diagrams allow students to plan and rehearse using images and words in a spatial web.  The feature which transforms the data from an outline form to a diagram form and vice versa is particularly useful.  

UDL is a pedagogy that seems to work best "in the clouds"--on the internet.  One fear I have about CAST's approach is that it is so dependent on internet access that students who lack a home computer and network become disadvantaged.  Ideally, in-class instruction that attempts to maximize options will extend outside of the class.  How do we bring UDL into the home of a student who lacks the technology?  For instance, suppose a student has a personal laptop supplied by his school for in-school use only.  Suppose that student receives support for his reading through e-books that have text-to-speech features and hyperlinks to the definitions of challenging words.  This level of support is warranted and deliberately employed by his teacher in the class.  

What happens though when he goes home and wants to read independently for pleasure or complete his homework using the same support system?  Several of his classmates become self-reliant with e-books and their parents purchase e-book readers for them.  Where does that leave our student who must, for instance, manually and rapidly flip through a dictionary to comprehend a text, while his counterparts simply enter words into dictionary.com or move the cursor over the word in their e-reader and a footnoted definition magically appears?  UDL obviously favors those who have home technology to match the supports offered at school.  This does not undermine UDL's pedagogy and I'm sure the creative teacher would be able to overcome any home obstacles.  However, to use the architectural analogy, having a ramp at home would make having a ramp at school less of a tease.

Digitally Manipulated Image

After my first class with Dr. Langran, in which she introduced the idea of tableaux photography, I incorporated the strategy into one of my lessons on Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.  A synopsis: the novel is set in 1939 Munich and the protagonist is a foster daughter named Liesel Meminger.  Her foster parents hide a Jew named Max Vandenburg in their basement.  Liesel and Max befriend each other and try to survive in Nazi Germany.

For the tableaux activity, I paired students and assigned them short passages from Part Four of the text.  One of the passages was titled "The Sleeper," a section that describes Max Vandenburg's exhaustion upon his arrival and Liesel Meminger's curiosity about her new housemate.  The students pictured above chose the most representative image from "The Sleeper" and posed for a tableau photograph.  Below is the original:

In the image, Liesel watches Max, "the sleeper", and sizes him up.  An excerpt:

Max Vandenburg slept for three days. 
In certain excerpts of that sleep, Liesel watched him.  You might say that by the third day it became an obsession, to check on him, to see if he was still breathing.  She could not interpret his  signs of life, from the movement of his  lips, his gathering beard, and the twigs of hair that moved ever so slightly when his head twitched in the dream state.
Often, when she stood over him, there was the mortifying thought that he had just woken up, his eyes splitting open to view her--to watch her watching.  The idea of being caught out plagued and enthused her at the same time.  She dreaded it.  She invited it.  Only when Mama called out to her could she drag herself away, simultaneously soothed and disappointed that she might not be there when he woke.
Sometimes, close to the end of the marathon of sleep, he spoke.
There was a recital of names.  A checklist.
Isaac.  Aunt Ruth.  Sarah.  Mama.  Walter.  Hitler.
Family, friend, enemy.
They were all under the covers with him, and at one point, he appeared to be struggling with himself.  "Nein," he whispered.  It was repeated seven times.  "No."
Liesel, in the act of watching, was already noticing the similarities between this stranger and herself.  They both arrived in a state of agitation on Himmel Street.  They both nightmared (Zusak 205-206).

The students presented their tableaux photography and explained the rationale behind their choices.  

For my digitally manipulated image, I provided a backdrop for their tableau.  Using the Creative Commons search feature, I found images of a basement and a mattress that were public domain.  I then inserted my studenst into the setting of a dank, black-and-white basement.  Liesel is in the right foreground, staring at Max who lies on the bed.  Above the characters is the corresponding quotation from The Book Thief.  

Standard 3 for language arts in the CT curriculum guidelines demands that students gain an understanding of perspective and point of view and that they apply it in their writing.  Often, as a motivating prompt, instructors will guide students to imagine what it would be like to be another person, to empathize with a character and attempt to view the world from the character's perspective.  Though such a strategy can be effective without the use of visuals, it seems clear to me that creating a digitally manipulated image, in which students literally become the characters, magnifies the students' likelihood of truly rotating their perspectives.  For an assignment, I would  have them create their own digitally manipulated image and write an accompanying narrative.  The assignment demands that they transform the original text's third person narration into first person narration from the point of view of one of the characters in the image.  The assignment could be shortened by having them respond to an image that I have created in advance. 

Reaction to Brian Crosby's "Learning is Messy" Blog

In September/October 2009, Scholastic published "Top 20 Teacher Blogs" and categorized them according to the blogs' specializations.  For instance, there is a "Best Student Teacher Blog" and a "Best Special Ed Blog".   After reading Brenda Sherry's "Teddy Bears Go Blogging" and publishing my first blog post, my attention was caught by #18, "Best Classroom Use of Blogs," awarded to Brian Crosby's Learning is Messy. Scholastic quotes Crosby: "It is the strongest resource I have experienced in 28 years of teaching."  Scholastic also explains that they love it because of Crosby's undeniable creativity in the classroom and in the blog itself.  I scoured the blog for evidence to support Scholastic's judgment.  Scholastic's right.


In the upper-right hand corner of the Home page, Crosby has a subtle motto: "Roll up your sleeves and get messy."  Implicit in his blog title and motto is a belief in taking risks.  The graphics in the margins and on the header are of arts and crafts in disarray: a masterpiece of finger painting along the borders of the screen with a textured palette of colors, a crafts table covered with newspaper, glue, scissors, tape, paint brushes, yarn, broken pencils, and scraps of construction paper.  The traditional arts and crafts table is juxtaposed with a blogger's crafts table.  He seems to be saying that learning through online and digital media can be equally "messy" as learning through yarn, glitter, and glue.  But the messiness should not deter a devoted teacher from taking advantage of all available resources in facilitating learning.  The appearance of his blog provides this subtext.


He has been blogging for over four years and his topics range from technology in the classroom, public policy, outdoor education, and ESL teaching.  In line with his motto, he believes in a hands-on approach that gets the students to problem solve and apply their learning to community service.  Having thirty years of experience with "at-risk" students in Nevada, Crosby shows his passion for teaching in various ways.  He posts entire lesson plans on educational technology, letters he has written to government and media officials regarding education (specifically the bad rap teachers are getting in the national conversation), and anecdotes about successes and failures in his own classroom.  He places a great emphasis on professional learning communities and ongoing education.


But the most useful aspect of his blog is the tab that provides links to his students' work: a class Wikispace, a class blog, responses to the links, etc.  This section provides a model for other teachers.  After seeing his award-winning work, I am confident that I can replicate in some capacity.  I intend to "roll my sleeves up and get messy".  I will use his blog as a resource while I begin to integrate more technology into my classroom.

Reaction to Brenda Sherry's "Teddy Bears Go Blogging"

Brenda Sherry's article reads like a how-to essay for gradually incorporating blogging into the classroom.  The Teddy Bear Project was the vehicle for a transition from private publishing in e-mails to public publishing in blogs, about which classmates, pen pals, teachers, and parents can comment.  The key for me will be to create a similar vehicle, a comparable overarching project that motivates students to blog and to participate in a writing community. 

One vehicle that is already in place at my school is Project Amigo, a project that connects our students with Mexican students via Skype conversations.  Both parties practice their primary and secondary languages, moving back and forth between Spanish and English with the guidance of teachers.  An important objective in the language arts curriculum is to teach students to understand the difference between spoken and written language and to "speak and write using standard language structures and diction appropriate to audience and task" (Standard 4.3).  Blogging may be a way to augment Project Amigo with a written component.  Video chats engender fellowship and provide a simulated immersion experience--putting a face with the name, socializing informally, working on accents--but blogging and commenting between the schools allows students to write purposefully and conscientiously in Spanish and English.  Students will also have time to deconstruct/translate text and to craft responses.  Overcoming the language barrier will give students added motivation to follow conventions and employ appropriate grammatical constructions and vocabulary.  This is something I might pursue, especially because the partnership is already in place.

Sherry's most important point is that the "focus was on the communication, rather than the technology."  She emphasizes here that blogging technology is nearly foolproof once in place.  The teacher must oversee action like a webmaster, but the paperless concreteness of the Web and the user-friendly, do-it-from-anywhere editing features (certainly more user-friendly than files and files of word documents moving within networks and flash drives) take the onus off the teacher and put "control in the hands of the learners."  The learner must consider the essential questions about communication rather than the trivial questions about formatting, printing, saving, and e-mail.  They consider: (1) What do I want to say? (2) To whom do I want to say it? (3) How do I want to say it? (4) How will I use comments to my/our advantage?  (5) When and how will I revise what I say? 

Hopefully students will realize the importance of writing as a reader, as a critical audience member who will judge postings based on content as well as appearance, on ideas as well as conventionality, on message as well as form.  How will I present myself so as to be taken seriously by a general audience?  Who or what should I consult if I have questions about my communication?  The blogosphere is conducive to asking and answering these questions in an authentic and healthy way: to write as readers with the audience always in mind.


Because editing previous posts is so easy, integrating suggestions from comments or proofreading after learning a new convention in a mini-lesson becomes almost fun.  I suspect it must feel like turning back the clock.  "Thanks for pointing out opportunities for improvements," says the blogger when he edits a posting.  Or at least the thick-skinned blogger will.  I fear that a blogging community could crumble under the weight of a crass or insensitive comment.  That is why I was so relieved by Sherry's explanation of how she managed this risk: "I then enabled the comment moderation button, which meant that I received an e-mail copy and the option to publish or reject the comment.  This was a good way for me to screen the content for appropriateness and to make sure that Internet safety was a priority."  The comment moderation feature is perfect and allows the teacher to be the final firewall against the destruction of a a blogging community through unneeded controversy. 

I don't know if teddy bears will go blogging in my school, but I know students will.

Curriculum Standard Focus and Addressing Different Learning Styles

Of the four standards in the CT language arts framework, I chose Standard 3 as my focus for the semester, described in the Connecticut PK-8 English Language Arts Curriculum Standards official document (found here--CSDE Literacy/English Language Arts Publications) as such:

"Standard 3: Communicating with Others
Overarching Idea: Students produce written, oral, and visual texts to express, develop and substantiate ideas and experiences.
Guiding Question: How do we write, speak and present effectively?
Component Statements:
3.1 Students use descriptive, narrative, expository, persuasive and poetic modes.
3.2 Students prepare, publish, and /or present work appropriate to audience, purpose and task" (100).

Essentially, this is the writing standard, while Standards 1 and 2 focus on reading and Standard 4 addresses language conventions (usage, grammar, and mechanics) and Standard American English (switching from the vernacular as a appropriate).

What is remarkable about this writing standard is its flexibility.  Doubtless, traditional pen-on-paper writing is the understood priority; however, the standard is written to accommodate all "appropriate" modes of communication.  The most "effective" means of communication should prevail over the merely traditional means.  Therefore, the five-paragraph essay--complete with inverted introductory triangle, "first, second, and third," and constant repetition of the thesis--should not take precedent over a digital story unless the essay is more "appropriate to audience, purpose and task."  "May the best means of communication win," implies the standard.

Proudly viewing oneself as literate, identifying oneself as another reader and writer in a global community of readers and writers, is as important for a student as performing the actual tasks that demonstrate literacy proficiency.  Storytelling is pivotal in a student's self-identification as literate for pleasure and enrichment.  My focus this semester will be providing outlets for students to find their voices.  I will not link activities for different learning styles to this standard for the sake of the storyteller alone, but for the sake of audience, purpose, and task.  In other words, I will not encourage Jimmy to journal solely because he is an intrapersonal learner and a journal entry is the most comfortable way for him to express himself, but because keeping a journal is the most appropriate mode of communication for effectively fulfilling a purpose, reaching an audience, or performing a task.  Below are examples of learning activities for multiple intelligences that meet Standard 3:

• kinesthetic learners may write the screenplay for and act in a silent film, consisting of detailed, descriptive stage directions and concise on-screen text (for the intermittent explanatory writing between and during scenes), or they can read and deconstruct, then imitate published plays
• auditory learners may listen to audio books, then imitate the form with their own audio books, or create a series of podcasts
• visual/artistic learners may create comic books or digital stories
• verbal learners may write letters to the editor or keep a blog that showcases the best work in their portfolio
• interpersonal learners may conduct filmed or recorded interviews
• naturalistic learners may photograph nature and write poetic descriptive pieces or write persuasive letters to public officials about an issue that concerns them, e.g. climate change, air pollution, etc.
• intrapersonal learners may compose multimedia memoirs or keep a learning blog, which (unlike a confessional public diary) allows them to reflect on their learning (comprehension, confusion, further questioning, follow-up research, etc.)
• musical learners may compose song lyrics and raps or take responsibility for soundtrack music in a collaborative digital story or short film and write an accompanying piece that explains the rationale behind the music selections

For all above learning activities, there should be an authentic, high-stakes audience (beyond classmates and teacher) and a motivational purpose (to inspire, to reform, to entertain, etc.).  I look forward to exploring the connections between educational technology, multiple intelligences, and Standard 3 (communicating with others).