Quillstress

Welcome Okemos Students.   What you’re looking at now is the blog I used to chronicle my summer of technology workshops at the National Writing Project.  Many of the things I have to share with you are from these sessions, and since I’ve had to send you here to link to our destination without setting off the school’s filters, I guess I can’t tell you not to look.  Boring teacher stuff, trust me.  The good stuff can be found consolidated HERE.

Yeah!!!! November is Nanowrimo time, so if I’m a little uncommunicative, it’s because I’m writing or playing on the forums. Check it out at Nanowrimo.org.

Well, the webquests ended up being a bit abrreviated, but it was really interesting playing with the template.   While templates do help people in many instances, I was a bit annoyed with the lack of scope.  I couldn’t find a webquest tailored the way I wanted to do it, not that I couldn’t have used one and adapted what I wanted to do to the format, but why?   I found the Webquest template interesting as a way of learning to build a web-based assignment, but now necessarily the ends.  My own idea was to link a webquest to my “website” I have envisioned in which students would use a Writely document to build a “database” of great studyskills links, but I couldn’t get the templates to cooperate in the way I required.  I think it would be far simpler to build the assignment myself.   This was for several reason specific to my situation (for instance, you couldn’t remove the “evaluation” section of the template, yet there are no “grades” in my study hall) and for more general reasons like lack of creativity in the design…you couldn’t even change the font in most instances.  I think it’s a really good first step for teachers not aquainted with web-based lessons or who don’t spend enough time online to really have a grasp of what is possible, but I’m not either of those.  (That sounded a little arrogant, not the way I meant it, truly.)  I’m pleased the resource is out there, it encourages teachers to step out a little, but I don’t think I’ll be using it except as “inspiration”.   There are quite a few really good examples of lessons that have been catalogued and I love to see what other teachers are doing with the internet.

Well, this was a blast. Not only was it a great review for the technologies I’d already encountered earlier in the summer, but it covered a lot of new ground as well. I particularly loved the Writely demonstration. The collaborative writing exercise was such a kick, a bunch of writers creating a guide to area restaurants in a matter of five minutes…and editing each other with impunity! lol You could tell Troy was an organizer…Bulletman I’m calling him now. I’m a think as I speak kind of writer, throwing up questions as often as statements. At least two other participants were masters of the scrolling mice as they were editing two ends of the document at once, and in it all I think we approached some demented version of a Vulcan Mind Meld for just a nano second there in the middle.

This was also my first introduction to the various social bookmarking services (Del.cio.us, Spurl, Furl, etc.) and their even more varied ala carte menus of features. We spent some time exploring a sampling of “citation” and online research tools ending with Google Notebook which I’ve been playing with for a few hours now. I have a new addiction, I’m never cutting and pasting to a word document again! lol I already have four notebooks up and running, speeding around the internet like an idiot snatching anything that fits in any of them…and the notebook does all the citation work, keeping every link and dateline! Such fun. = )

How’s this? Design concept number one, brought to you courtesy of ScreenHunter, Adobe Photoshop, and Flickr. Boy, talk about “integrating” software technologies…this is ridiculous!   lol lol

Well, I haven’t even commented on last weeks workshop and it’s already this weeks!

Ah, well, let me just say that the guys at the Writing Center did a great job. They gave a handful of teachers the responsibility of revamping a defunct zine called the Sentinel. We discussed all sorts of design and concept issues, looked at several really interesting examples of both good and bad website design before launching into our own designs. I had a blast…and it turned out suprisingly good. I know a few of the “experts” who were helping us were frustrated by Nvu at moments, but they’ve been spoiled by DreamWeaver…lol Not going to be appearing in my budget anytime soon and Nvu does a great job anyway. I actually ended up with two drastically different designs, playing with a more “artsy” graphic journal look to the one and a very clean “educational” looking version. It’s amazing how different they look and how much you can play in Nvu….Now if I could just find a free web hosting service I liked. Shopping is not nearly as fun as designing….so back to Nvu. ; )

Tuesday was the beginning of the Graphic Novels Workshop. We were honored to have a graphic novel artist come and speak to us about the genre and all things “comic”. Gene Yang’s book, American-born Chinese, will be released by First Second Books later this year, but the RCWP has copies to sell in advance. I already have one…and NO, you can’t have a peek. Go buy your own. ; ) As a bonus to all of Gene’s expertise as an artist, author, and practicing teacher, we got to read comics and even visit the special collection secreted away in the rarebooks vault of the Michigan State University library. Wow, pop culture and medieval manuscripts all housed together down there with my dad’s old veterinary school texts. lol What fun to have a tour from our venerable librarian/afficionado, Randall Scott.

As part of the second day we had some more fun reading and discussing how to teach from graphic sources and I chose to work up a lesson plan to teach narrative using Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O’Malley. There are so many elements of personal narrative used in this work in addition to the graphic elements that can be taught that I thought it would be a great way to introduce both genres. I also played with the idea of teaching ecology using Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds or Deogratias as personal narrative and cultural/historical narrative. There were just so many possibilities the more books you picked up. The world of great graphic literature does not begin and end with Maus and Persepolis.

The last day, Gene had to leave us, sadly, but Seth from the Writing Center picked up the reins and ran with it…first having us discuss and analyze and treasure trove of comics of a shorter variety and then having us put together our own comics using ComicLife. This, of course, required that we use the Macs (shiver) but I actually had a lot of fun with the program and I only had to restart twice. (oh, and I had to back in and out of Seth’s PDF file examples all the time because a third of the graphics wouldn’t appear until I did. lol ) It’s a very nice program to introduce students to comic visual conventions and structure, to let them play at narrative. Unfortunately the PC look-alike looks nothing like. Comic Book Creator was a bust, sadly, so I didn’t mind using the Macs. I ended up with a ten page adaptation of a scene from one of my short stories about an ogress…it was interesting to think of it as a different genre and media. Anyway, this was one of the best workshops of the summer, especially with all that I’ve been noticing students do with the genre already, I’m looking forward to putting what I’ve learned to good use in a classroom. (And I have to go save all my Bloom County and Outland books from storage!)

Well, here I am, weeks behind on responses to the workshops I’ve attended because…well, I’ve been attending a lot of workshops, getting ready for others, and reading all sorts of books in between. Aside from that, I go on Anarchy-Online or Oblivion and kill things. That’s pretty much my summer…with a few respites at the Lake and taking my labrador to the park just to get fresh air in my lungs.

Anyway, first let me comment on the Digital Storytelling Workshop and then I’ll move on to the Graphic Novel sessions I attended this week.

Digital Storytelling was the main reason this has become a marathon summer. This was the invitation that started it all, so I’ve been preparing for it since May. I had at least four ideas coming into it that I wanted to try. One was to tell one of my “short” stories…possibly one about an ogress or one of the “backstory” legends of the world I write about, almost as though my main character were telling the story to one of her grandchildren. Another idea I had was to do a flash “travelogue” of the regions and cultures of the people in my novels as a way of “cementing” details and atmosphere down for myself. The third idea grew out of the “Places” theme of the Digital Writing Marathon and I thought I could tell the stories of my “magic” woods and how my childhood places lead me into writing. Lastly I had an idea about some trees that grew near one of those “magic” woods that I called the Wedded Oaks and how they paralleled the story of my grandparents.

Due to a strange glitch in settings created by using my DSL providers software, Moviemaker wouldn’t work…I spent six hours with HP support and two more hours with the GeekSquad to confirm the fact that they didn’t know what to do except wipe the drive…which I did. Starting fresh from scratch is a nice clean feeling, but it’s a pain trying to get everything back to “normal”. [Even now iTunes is convinced this isn't the same computer, has authorized this same machine three times (leaving me only two authorizations left) and won't confirm the licenses on any of the musicI bought from their music store , so I had to do all the tags to my library manually...twice, since it had to go in Mediaplayer after iTunes just refused to run any of it.] So, I rebuilt…and then I went surfing…a lot. I surfed the net so long looking for materials for my stories that I actually touched the end of cyberspace. In case you’re interested, it’s just outside the nexus created between The Bat Segundo Show, the law of the playground, and Abe Vagoda.
So, I went into the workshop with a PC packed with images and things I’d gleaned, from CC licensed photos to free sound files…a dozen sites bookmarked in Firefox to search for more if I needed them and…..I was ready!

Well, I was…until….

First complication:

We are using only iMovie, so I can’t use my pc or anything I found or learned. (Oookay.)

Second complication:

High schools don’t use Macs except in Art departments, so I’ll never use anything I learn on one to teach. (uhh?)

Third complication:

Macs really stink. (grrrrrrrrrrrr…stop saving already….no, now save. Why is my entire project in the trash? Why can’t I get it out? Why don’t you have a pentagram engraved on the top instead of that innocent looking apple? Now I hate apples. Why is there never a cider press around when you need one?)

Fourth complication:

iMovie stinks worse than Macs. (What the….I only put you on the tool bar for two seconds! How did you scramble my entire timeline so quickly? What do you mean, where’s my soundtrack? You had it and an hour of my level changes to boot.)

Fifth complication:

Due to previous complications, waiting an entire day to get my “voice” recording, and having to change my project twice to work with Mac (file sharing…or not sharing, etc.) I’m a day behind, conservatively, and I only have two and a half days.

I spend an evening drawing just one of the “trees” I envisioned using in my piece called “The Wedded Oaks” since I can’t get my photos to move around with a flash drive. Thankfully I have the pictures of my grandparents (some) on a CD that a Mac can read. At the workshop, the scanner won’t read my drawing to either the mac or my pc, so I take digital photos of it and Apple likes Sony, so I have a picture. One. So I take more pictures of my drawing…cropping this and that and then start slapping them down on the timeline in Moviemaker along side the pictures of my grandparents story….soon I have the whole thing synced with the voice where I want voice…I’ve written the “text” parts on to tree drawings using the Title editor and all I need is one more picture to fill in the void where something didn’t work. I minimize iMovie so I can snag it from the CD and when I open iMovie again…my entire project is scrambled. I don’t mean it shifted down the timeline a little here or there, or that the voice and photos got out of alignment, I mean scrambled. Jigsaw-pieces-on-the-floor scrambled.

I finally get it all back together…I won’t even tell you what it took to get my soundtrack music pulled in…that took a day even when I had the actual CD and not a file. (I had to turn the computer off and on again three times to put CD’s in and take them out at this point since there’s no manual release on a Mac drive.) But I get the entire project done..all the voice and music levels adjusted just so over the transitionless graphics (since Ken Burns was annoying enough and I’d run out of time)…and burn it to DVD.

Wait an hour…then copy it to the workshops external drive…then prepare to demo.

The other teachers demos look so good, they’re all so clever and beautifully done. I dread even showing mine…it wasn’t what I had envisioned, not even close. I also hate the sound of my own voice and feel my story is too “mushy”. But it’s important…at least to me, that the story be told. So I turn on the dvd….

Well, the music completely obliterates the voiced parts. People can read the “tree” part of the story, but haven’t a clue what I said about my grandparents. They’re all very polite (they’re teachers, you know), but it was soooooo bad. I couldn’t understand what went wrong, I’d worked almost two hours getting all the volume levels just right. I go back to the computer just two minutes from boiling over, and I discover the Mac hadn’t taken my last four saves. (I had saved about every fifteen/twenty minutes toward the end…out of shear paranoia.) To make matters worse, when I go to open iMovies from where it is minimized after having shuffled the project file from the desktop to the workshops external drive, it tells me the project is in the trash. (again, this was the second time) This time it won’t let me have it back…not anyway that I tried or anyone else suggested. So, I turned it off and packed it up. I stuck the demo DVD in the folder with my blank CD’s, it’s a nice coaster. I’m using it now, in fact. Sitting behind it is the picture of the oaks that I drew. Did I mention that the very day I took pictures of the drawing I was walking back to my car and it started to downpour? Torrential is the word, I think. Anyway, when I got home the picture had inky black tearmarks staining it. Kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? lol

Well, the project was a loss, but the workshop wasn’t. I have a few rules I learned.

Rule the First of Digital Storytelling:

Don’t you DARE ask your students to do anything you can’t. That means checking out ALL hardware and software BEFORE you entertain such a notion. If you haven’t done three or four projects with the same equipment and technology as you’ll have available to students, let them draw doodles on the edges of paper for a grade before you put them through this.

Rule the Second of Digital Storytelling:

Stuff happens. Often. Repeatedly. Sound familiar? Digital Storytelling does not allow hard deadlines or other rigidity in terms of time. If you think it will take two days, it will take five. Stuff happens and if you’re not technologically savvy, then you better have someone on call who is…’cause stuff happens.

Rule the Third of Digital Storytelling:

Vision is everything. Every bump in the road that compromises a student’s vision kills their enthusiasm. If you have a student who sees it a certain way, be prepared to invest as much into making it happen as he/she does.

Well, it was enlightening and extremely frustrating. Enough said, though I would like to thank Pearson and the Bay Area Writing Project for facilitating this workshop. The possiblities are so awesome, but realities are such a pain. lol

Digital Portfolios July 12^th

This session provided some wonderful examples of digital portfolios and made me think very hard about what having a “public” face on the web really means. I’ve been a “lurker” on the blogosphere for a long time…I’ve been active on a few chats and forum, particularly the Nanowrimo sites. I’ve just recently started commenting on a few blogs I’ve become familiar with…I even game on more than two mmorpg’s, but in every case I’ve used a pseudonym. I don’t know why, particularly, but I’ve never been comfortable putting myself out on the web. We were looking at all these interesting ways to present our professional lives to students, parents, administrators, prospective employers and others; and I couldn’t get around feeling like I would have problems in term of my students’ privacy and my own. I’d be interested to know how many teacher’s sites and portfolios have their full name, first name only, last name only, or just how they’ve approached this question. You may have noticed, my blogs for both the writing marathon and this workshop response site are under the name “Quillstress”. Just who am I on line?

Slideshows July 11^th

Well, technology was fickle today. Something has gone wrong with my install of powerpoint, so no playing today. Rats. Anyway, the issues addressed today were very good…everything from the adaptability of powerpoint to the need to both use and teach basic concepts of design. I still can’t get passed the feeling that all powerpoint presentations are “business”…the look is so uniformly “commercial”. It also has a tendency to evoke “powerpoint speak” in students whose “writing” suddenly becomes stilted and abbreviated to the point of becoming nonsense. It’s very difficult to teach students to envision something more than an “outline” or fragmented synopsis when they’re work with slides. How do we teach a “totality of vision” as it were, the writing with the media?

My questions aside, there are some really great examples and resources you need to see on the wiki. I especially enjoyed some of the presentations by students from Hawaii. Some really creative stuff there, so maybe it’s best to leave the “how” to the students and shelve my questions. So check out the possibilities and see what kids can do with a little tech access. Aloha for now.