Teacher Summer Week 3

This week I am participating in the Denver Writing Project's Tech Matters institute. It is a week where we get time to see some technology, play with it, and we actually have time to play with our new skills. The purpose of today's post is to help me figure out what I'm actually going to try to pull off this week.

I struggled with my Writing Lab students last year, there is no other way to put it. I want to do an overhaul of the class to create more authentic voices in the room. I am thinking that I want to have students create blogs where they write to a specific audience of their choosing. I am thinking that they can use Google Docs and Schoology to play with their writing before they post.

One of the things that intrigues me is the idea of having them work through the semester in "Make Cycles" that I have learned from the #CLMOOC that I've participated in this summer. The idea being that in a set amount of time you make something that is web/technology based. My ideas so far:

• create an avatar
• create a how-to about something they know a lot about (medium is optional)
• write/create a review about something they know about
• find a blogger in the area of their interest and follow that person's writing (I need to set up specific things for them to look for) to use as a mentor writer
• use our discussion board each day for writing warmup and then post their favorite each Friday that we meet (every other Friday)
• use G+ as a place to post writing and collaborate, how this will look I'm still thinking about.

It is important to me that my students re-find a voice for themselves that is authentic to them. 

Girlfriends Guide to...Blogging?

In the months before my daughter was born I read books about infancy until I got freaked out. I read What to Expect When You're Expecting from beginning to end. The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy was recommended by one of my close girlfriends. I appreciated this book because it told the truth about the process in a humorous way. It made me laugh. But the other books...they just made me freak out. I'm talking about full-blown panic attacks.

This week I went through the same experience...only different. No friends, I didn't have a baby. So before you jump in the car to travel down to your local Babies R'Us hold your keys, put them down, and listen.

My students began their own blogs this week. And it's about time.

Before I started, I began reading advice from other teachers who have their students blog. It completely freaked me out. I almost backed out of the process. So instead of quitting, instead of simply walking away from the project, I went to my girlfriend, my mentor, the computer whiz at our school, Christine, who assured me all would be okay. She agreed to be with me in the birthing room...uh...I mean the computer lab...as the students started.

I have to say, much like giving birth, the reward of having my students blog is worth the heartache and fear I felt before. To hear my students walk into class after their first post, to log in to their blogs, and hear them shout out how many readers they've had is worth it's weight in gold. After all, why do we ask kids to write? Is it for a test? No, of course not. It is so they can participate in the conversations of our day. For this, I am excited to see what the birth of new writers will bring.

Travelogue

I just listened to a discussion with Suzie Boss who wrote  Bringing Innovation to Schools about just that, how do we make our classrooms places for creative innovative thinking? She discusses how she has done some travel writing and how her book reads much as a travel log might read. It makes sense.

Each year we move through the school year as a new and different journey than the year before. If I begin to log it from the beginning I wonder if I might begin to see and help my students experience more opportunities for engagement. I wonder how that one shift might change my own thinking about innovation and what my students need. 

Boss talked about some practical ways to improve the chances for true innovation to occur. One of these very practical ideas is to have students design their ideal learning space. Think about what designs help them learn, what gets in the way of learning, and then trying out their ideas and revisiting them during the year. I love that because it says to kids that we will think through even the little things in this room, and that what you have to say matters.

It reminds me a lot of writing workshop. If we teachers give up just a tiny bit of control, our students will feel like they can actually engage in authentic tasks on a daily basis, It empowers them to think.