Digital Memoir

Kat and Erin's Digital Memoir

Here it is - our version of Sandra Cisneros's Eleven.

Digital Feedback

“[W]e need to employ different criteria for evaluating digital communication, but we also need to employ digital communication tools that themselves enhance teachers’ and peers’ uses of multimodality, hypertextuality, and interactivity in providing feedback to students. Producing, reading, and assessing digital texts, then, emphasizes the ways that communication itself is inherently social, formative, and evolving”(158).

Digital feedback readily allows writers to interact with teachers and peers throughout the writing process in a way that is more practical and efficient than passing hard-to-read drafts to a neighbor in class. Using digital tools allows a conversation about writing that encourages a dialogue rather than simply sticking on a grade at the end or a few comments once during the process that may or may not lead to follow-up questions by the author. It becomes a more fluid conversation where we ask questions of each other with the expectation of further conversation. Beach does warn that this can become less efficient for teachers because it is easier to open the communication channels and we can find ourselves spending more time and sometimes giving more than students may be able to handle; these are potential pitfalls or at least need some mindful consideration. I know that I get sucked into giving more comments when I use google docs and am working to set strict limits for myself. In the end, we are seeing students more invested in the revision process, thus becoming stronger, more engaged writers.

Before reading this article I had already written that new criteria needs to be incorporated when assessing digital writing. Most of the overarching ideas about writing assessment stays the same, but in looking at coherence, for example, one must widen the definition to incorporate the coherence of links, images, etc (or add an additional label). The rub is finding the language and examples to make those expectations clear to our students. While they are lifers in the digital realm, they do not necessarily look for the same attributes online that we will be looking for in their digital productions. In that way, we are navigating this new landscape together.

I have seen tremendous growth in writers when we work through the process within Google docs. When they are able to get timely feedback as they write, they are more apt to make improvements than if they turn in a completed draft and I inform them they need to go back and make substantial changes. It just feels too hard, and I seem like an outsider jumping into the process in the middle or nearing the end. When I make comments early in the process, we engage in dialogue, and they often come back with specific, thoughtful questions about what they have and how to proceed. When I assigned moodle discussions for my juniors and seniors, I appreciated having the time and space to hear from the students who were often silent in class conversation. This medium gave them the thinking time and took away the pressure of being “in person,” and I learned more about them as people and thinkers in those few online conversations than I did in the rest of the semester. It also allowed them to respond to each other when maybe we wouldn’t have had the time in class for such an extensive dialogue. In my last grad class, we had a lot of discussion around portfolios with questions about digital portfolios but little more; I am very interested in learning more about potential resources for online portfolios and would love ideas from those of you with experience.

I'm planning to start the year in creative writing with my memoir unit. My students will still be writing memoirs/personal narractive but then will go a step further by creating digital memoirs or trailers for their memoirs. Here is the rubric I may use; I would like to have my students help me in creating the project's final assessment rubric.

Digital Memoir

Common Core Standards:

·       11.7.2.2b Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts and concrete details

·       11.7.3.3 Write narratives and other creative texts to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chose details, and well-structured event sequence

·       11.7.4.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience

·       11.7.5.5 Use a writing process to develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, drafting, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose or audience

·       11.9.5.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

·       11.9.7.7 Adapt speech to a variety of contexts, audiences, tasks, and feedback from self and others, demonstrating a command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.

Digital Memoir Rubric

	4	3	2	1
Topic Development	Topic is thoroughly developed	Topic is developed	Topic is clear but lacks development.	Topic is needs clarification.
Storytelling technique	Engages the audience with careful selection of details and effective narration. Language is vivid and pulls the audience into the piece	Engages the audience with appropriate detail and attention to language choices	More consideration needed in selecting story details and language.	Details and/or langauge are lacking or take the reader away from the purpose.
Coherence/ Organization	Style and organization demonstrate sophistication and clearly consider the audience.	Organized and coherent; the audience has been considered.	Generally coherent; organization needs to be revisited. Audience needs greater consideration.	Lacking coherence
Writing Process	Feedback was considered and self-reflections demonstrate thought and self-awareness as an author. Thoughtfully revised and polished.	Self-reflections demonstrate thought. Revisions were thoughtful.	Self-reflection was done in a largely superficial manner. Some revision is seen.	Writing process was lacking.
Digital Media	Digital media (images and music, et al) have been strategically used to enhance the story and experience of the audience.	Digital media add to the experience of the audience	Sometimes the digital media choices detract from the storyline.	Digital media is distracting, divergent from the rest of the piece or not included
Audio/Tonal Qualities and Speech Choices	The speech used adds to the audience’s experience and understanding of the piece. Thought has clearly been given to how to affect the audience through vocal qualities and choices.	Speech is clear and adds to the audience’s experience of the piece.	Speech is generally clear and does not detract from the audience’s understanding.	Speech is often unclear.

The biggest additions to this rubric in terms of considering how the digital aspects are assessed are in the final two rows. Despite having done projects with technology embedded in them, I don't know that I've actually written my own rubric with those qualities in mind. I foresee that the first time I use this (or a similar rubric) I will discover the holes in my thinking. The bigger change for me is that while I do address language choices and organization, I am not actually assessing the student's writing here. That will be a tough one for some of my students and their parents to reconcile and a challenging piece for me to take in, as well. Now, I told you above the rubric that this digital memoir will be in addition to the written piece, but perhaps after a year or two of this idea, the written aspect will be part of the planning but not a product for assessment. Interesting to think of the directions this will take!

You know what they say about Assessment, right? It makes an ass...oh, wait...wrong one.

Ah, assessment. It has been the bane of my summer.

I think that how assessment of digital writing changes most markedly from the assessment of writing in general is considering the choices students made in conveying their ideas. Let's face it, in English class there are a limited number of options in how students will write essays or short stories, for example, and a few more choices in how they might create poems. Compare that with giving digital choices, as we were today in class, and those opportunities for individuality are innumerable. So, did students consider all of the usual factors in writing - audience, content, voice, organization, use of evidence, word choice, language conventions, etc. - and choose mediums that best illustrate their ideas in a coherent manner? If so, they are probably on track.

In some educational circles it is controversial to discuss the assessment of effort and creativity, but digital mediums lend themselves well to both. Did students challenge themselves to try new programs or use multiple modalities to meet the expectations set for the assignment and the needs of their audience? Did they make connections that are fresh and interesting? As we talk about these new literacies, we keep coming back to ideas of innovation, problem solving, connections, and using multi-media. As we encourage our students to expand their thinking and to reach wider audiences than we ever could in our lives as K-12 students, effort and creativity are increasingly part of the equation.

As part of the assessment of any writing, but even more so with digital writing, is the need for the inclusion of self-assessment. With so many possibilities, students need time to reflect on their processes, medium choices, effective communication of the message to the audience, etc. With more consideration on the process and those pitfalls and possibilities that we have been discussing, students will challenge themselves and each other to bigger and better end results.

Trello

Here's how I found out about this winner - I googled "best online collaborative tools," read a list and saw Trello commented about by loads of people. I'm glad I checked it out!

It reminds me of when I wrote a research paper on panda bears when I was in second grade and when I did another research paper in 9th grade (education in Japan, I think) and my teachers made me write one fact per notecard. This is that but online so you can add pictures, attachments, links, etc. and share it all with your group. I think this would be a great tool for group projects because it's very easy for a teacher and group to see who has posted what (and who hasn't posted at all), and organizing is easy because you can move the cards around just by dragging them. The headings (in the above pic they are "beginner," "intermediate,"and "advanced") but they could be changed to anything you wanted (pre-WWI, During the War, Post-War Effects, for example). I started a board for Macbeth because last year was my first year teaching it, I teach it with another 10 Quest teacher, and it would be easy to do separate columns for different scenes, themes, characters, etc. I can also see it being an easy place to link online videos or pictures that you want to show the students without any frantic hunting. Checklists can be made to help teams organize - I could see having each student group start a checklist and add on as necessary as well as check off as items are finished. That would help me see where groups are quickly. For my own use, I could see my PLC planning different units and activities on this one board so it's all in one place - as opposed to binders all over the place or even dropbox (which I use) where it seems files get misplaced or mislabeled pretty easily.

I haven't used it enough to discover many cons - people online who were raving about it had been using it for a while and liked how it worked with a team of people.

Reading over my post, I can see that I'm all over the place with discussing my planning with Trello, as well as student groups, and PLCs. All in all, it feels like an easy-to-use tool that could serve a lot of different collaborations effectively.

This could enhance the professional experience for teachers because it allows people to contribute where ever they are and it keeps a sort of running list of ideas and resources that can be added to or chatted about any time (as long as you have wifi). It's also flexible, which teachers require in order to tailor it to their needs and preferences.

This replaces those old notecards (thank goodness - ugh!) and amplifies that system because it increases the efficiency in having links, pics, attachments, etc.

PicLit

What a silly poem! But I do recommend PicLit as a fun warm-up or a low-stress foray into poetry with differentiation built into it. Here's how this works: PicLit has a stream of pictures at the top of the screen. When you click one of the thumbnails, it shows the picture larger below and you can then choose "drag and drop" or "freestyle." I chose drag and drop because I'm lazy and have kitchen cabinets to prime and paint. Real life, people. It's like those poetry magnet sets. I like that it's limited in one area but very open in another because if you click "freestyle," you can write any poem you want. You can put the words anywhere on the picture that you want and there is a little choice as to the form of the word and capitalization.

In teaching poetry, I always get kids who are all over the spectrum of comfort in writing poems. This (free) website allows kids choice in terms of the photo and how they will write the poem. It was challenging to write the poem with the words that were provided because I would get an idea but then a word or words wouldn't be available to me. It would be fun to see how different the poems would be with the same picture and same word choices; I would guess there would be a lot of variety within the narrow parameters. I was thinking that the students could also create their own word lists (they could all use the words from one of Macbeth's monologues, for example) to see what new piece they could create. The students would have fun and feel comfortable sharing them because they wouldn't be terribly personal, as sometimes poetry can be.

In the RAT framework, I think this would be amplification, I think. It could replace the magnet poetry, but here students could be using the tool at the same time and posting or sharing to social media or a website.

How would it enhance their educational experience? I think it would be really fun and challenging for kids to come up with a poem from a limited list and pair it with a photo. It would be a good jumping off point for kids to take one of their photos and write a corresponding poem. It also puts poetry in a pretty safe space, which is what a lot of students need. You can't really be wrong with creating a poem from a non-negotiable list.

For a totally non-school appropriate idea: this would be really fun at a party with some drinks. Okay, this would be really fun at a party with some drinks if your friends are delightful nerds, which mine are.

Evernote

Organization is this dream of mine. Sometimes it's just there at my fingertips but a lot of times it's buried in the bottom of my closet, beneath a pile stinky socks. I see people with color-coded notebooks and systems that they should trademark, and I try to emulate these paragons of efficiency. Sometimes I make it until October, providing it's not too complicated.

Evernote has been on my phone for 2-3 years, ever since a colleague told me that it was the greatest thing ever. I "tried" it for about 6 minutes and then never really looked at it again.

I've now messed with it for a couple of hours (Remember, I had that goal of getting better at playing!) and this actually could be a system that works for me. The problem that I always have with paper and pencil systems is that most of my life is online. Evernote makes sense because I can dump things I find into different notebooks (School, English 10, 10 Quest, Creative Writing, Cooking, Knitting, Daily To-Dos) and then add tags (feminist, Zadie Smith, writing rules, Vonnegut, Hermione, etc.) so that I can find notes by date or label. I can also share the notes and notebooks with others, either allowing them to modify or just allowing them to view. So, when I take a picture of my whiteboard, I can send it to a student without sending it as a text or giving them my personal email. I've already shared my Daily To-Dos with my husband so he can mark items off the list or add to it.

Because of the digital rabbit holes I'm constantly getting lost in, I have bookmarks and screenshots all over the place. Evernote, with the Evernote Web Clipper, seems like it will give me places to put everything. It actually works a lot like Pinterest but I can also add text to pictures and have notes that I write. I could see this being really handy for classes that revolve around current events, like my Feminist Lit class did, because I could stash articles and pictures as I find them and sort through them later to decide what I want to share with students, what I want to post on Twitter, etc.

As far as the RAT framework, Evernote is far more than a replacement for my post-it notes scattered everywhere and bookmarks saved in my browsers. If I can use it as it's intended, it will save me from seemingly endless searches for that one thing I know I have somewhere or remaking something from scratch. In that way, it is an amplification. I wonder, too, if it might be seen as transformational in that, unless you are a master at creating indexes for yourself, I don't know that you could search your notes as easily or share what you've saved as efficiently.

I'm not sure how quickly I will use up the space in the free version - that could be a drawback, but if I keep using it and like how it works for me, I would be willing to pay for it. Another drawback - and maybe this is a possibility that I haven't seen yet - I wish that it had a calendar option so I could keep notes and calendars in the same place. I just thought of that idea, so I'll have to do some research.

Come November, I'll let you know if I'm still with it!

Comic Life: Oedipus Edition

Here is my start to an Oedipus comic strip! I think my students and I would have a great time using this and that we could use it to lots of different ends....