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....

Art + Social Justice + Technology

I couldn't even think of a single lesson I teach much less consider how I would RAT-ify a lesson to increase student learning and engagement, so I procrastinated and jumped onto Facebook instead. Technology for me is usually about escape and connection. I wish I liked to play with different programs to create; it's something I'm working on. Okay, it's something I'm thinking about working on. Anyway, Facebook. One of my friends in NYC posted this video of poet Daniel J. Watts and Broadway actors, directors, technicians, et al coming together to protest through art the killing of Eric Garner by members of the NYPD:

Spike Lee created a video combining footage of Garner's death with the killing of the character Radio Raheem in Lee's 1989 film, Do the Right Thing (1989).

When we read Antigone and Animal Farm, we spend a lot of time talking about social justice and people (and animals representing people) finding their voices. Last year, my students wrote letters about social justice topics they were passionate about addressed to people who were in positions to make change in terms of rules and laws. Some students wrote to lawmakers about the need for gay marriage to be addressed as a national law rather than by states, others wrote to the security director at the Mall of America about the teen-curfew time, our principal received letters on topics like lengthening passing time and the need for more nutritious food choices in the cafeteria. It went well; students practiced writing for a specific audience and many told me that it felt good to do something. But the audience for those letters was very small, and, thanks to social media, my students are used to very large audiences. So, in addition to the letters (I'm planning to keep them because they will provide a basic foundation of research and argument and because the students will be testing out how to use the same information but changing it to fit the audience and medium.), I would like my students to put together a media art piece that would be presented in class and that they could share on social media. It would be really interesting to hear how their peer groups not in the class would respond to their social justice statements.

Here's what I could use from you: what tools/websites would be helpful in creating these pieces? I think that for some of my students, this would be amplification because they might choose to write a poem and record it as sound or video and share it. I can handle that level of technology and have used VoiceThread and Sound Cloud (Record-a-Poem) before. It's my students who will want to take this to a transformational level - who will want to create mashups or remixes that I could use direction for - 

Thanks! (And thanks to my friend Thomas for posting the video in the first place. Without his sharing, I would be sitting here crying to a blinking cursor.)

The Digital Divide: It's a Long Way Across

This morning I was listening to an NPR segment on the Ebola epidemic that has now affected more than 1200 people and it looks like it has spread into Lagos, Nigeria's most heavily populated city.   (They don't have transcripts online yet, so I can't link it for you) As I was listening, the discussion moved to literacy and that, of those who are literate - they quoted 50%, the vast majority of those are only functionally literate. This means that nearly all of the people affected do not have the level of literacy to understand a print source discussing what a virus is and how to decrease the spread of one.

It brings us back to this divide in literacy and involves the digital divide as Aleph Molinari's and Sugata Mitra's Ted Talks. Some might ask, "How does this involve the digital divide?" It has to do with speed, interconnectedness, and resources that can provide accurate information. If, as Molinari and RIS have done in Mexico, there were spaces where people could gather to increase their levels of literacy and obtain digital literacy, a virus could be researched, information disseminated, and doctors could be contacted through the speed of the internet. The chances that this epidemic could have been slowed by earlier by more understanding are great because while Ebola cannot be cured, it can be treated. Because of a lack of understanding, families were hiding their sick relatives and attacking health care workers who were trying to save the sick; because of cultural tradition, people were falling on and crying on the dead bodies of their loved ones, not knowing that at the time of death the Ebola virus is at its most dangerous.

I take for granted that when I hear a word I don't know, I can look it up online and find resources that are as basic or complex as I need them to be. Before this morning's news and my searches that are concurrent with writing this blog, I knew very little about Ebola beyond that it's a virus and that it sounds really scary. With a few clicks, I've learned a lot - but I have access - and that is what this digital divide is about.

The digital divide doesn't just happen in areas outside of North America and Europe. In my classes I have student who are on the newest iPhones, bring in laptops from home, share their latest mixes with me created with professional-grade software, and teach me how to use Prezi. I have other students without cell phones and/or internet at home who need help signing into Google Docs and still don't know how to get into Campus to check their missing assignments. This isn't the socioeconomic divide that was occurring in the suburbs when I was in 7th grade and thought/hoped/was pathetically certain that if only I had a pair of Guess? jeans that the popular (rich) kids would invite me to sit with them in the cafeteria (I got the jeans. They didn't.). This is a divide that keeps knowledge, power, economic potential, and more out of the hands of billions.

Digital Divide

Using Animoto was a good challenge for me in forcing me to edit and be very selective. I think that it would be a great tool for my students who ramble and a fun way to deliver a message primarily using visuals.

I don't have an iPad, but we are going 1:1 next year, so I need to start looking at how I want to use them in my classroom. Here is an article I found that wasn't nearly as overwhelming as "THE BEST TOP iPAD APPS THAT ARE MUST HAVES FOR EVERY CLASSROOM EVER" articles that kept popping up - I would love advice from those of you who have used iPads/tablets in class.

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/07/07/10-incredible-ipad-apps-for-education/

We Are What We Consume? I Hope Not.

Sarah Silverman, Wil Wheaton, the National Parks Service, Patton Oswalt, Jim Gaffigan, Jon Stewart, Dr. Cornel West, Simon Pegg and Elizabeth Warren. These are some of the people I follow on Twitter. I have only tweeted to my friend in England and only then because she is utterly unreachable in most any medium other than Twitter, other than that, radio silence from my end. Tonight, most of my feed right now is centered on Sharknado. Deep, I know.

I haven't used Facebook or Twitter with my students besides in general conversation or telling them to get off Twitter while we're having class. There is no real philosophical reason that I haven't used either one in school. In my previous school, I taught students who were too young to be on the platforms, and at Central, I have some students who don't have smartphones (this year we'll all be on iPads, so that will alleviate most of the accessibility issue). Additionally, I haven't used them in school because Facebook is part of my out-of-school life - a place where I connect with friends around the world; honestly, I like having time and spaces away from school. 

This past spring my students in Feminist Lit were doing presentations in lit circles, and one of my groups read I Am Malala. In response to the reading, our discussions in class, and their relationships with social media, part of their lesson included taking and posting a class photo for the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Some of these organizers were the same young women who told me they couldn't really call themselves feminists because they didn't involve themselves in rallies or make public proclamations. They felt proud and I loved seeing themselves thinking about a more global community and building confidence as activists. 

Potholes? Nothing catastrophic that I can think of now that both are so mainstream, although you may get students whose parents object. I could see falling off as a moderator simply because other things take priority. A lot of my students seem to be real experts in the Twitterverse (Ugh - did I really just use that? I'm so sorry.), so putting them in charge could help me and empower them. 

Possibilities: In perusing articles and classmates' blogs, there are many. It seems like there are a lot of ways we could use Twitter in class conversation where students could link other tweets, visuals, articles, etc. to enrich the dialogue. In terms of simply using the format to help students in their writing, the 140-character format can help students to tighten up their ideas, summarize an idea/character/etc, and Twitter or Facebook certainly could be used in character development and story telling.... 

Resource:

I really like the idea of #edchat but wasn't sure I understood how it really worked even after reading the NY Times article, so I found an article by one of the founders that talks specifics about how it works. It's a massive network!

http://blog.web20classroom.org/2012/03/brief-history-of-edchat.html

The (Changing) Definition of Literacy

I don’t think I have ever questioned my definition of literacy before, and my first thought after reading the question is that literacy is being able to read and write. Then I started wondering if simply knowing the phonemes and characters is enough – isn’t there a sort of an understanding (perhaps unspoken/unwritten) that literacy involves a level of comprehension? And that’s when I thought about the chapter from Gee and Hayes that discusses the movement from oral language to reading to writing and how that was used to lord power over those who couldn’t use it. It seems like a mean game that as soon as many people have gained a skill or are moving towards it, that we change the definition – now literacy’s definition seems to be heading in the direction of including the abilities to analyze, criticize, and synthesize.

Leu et al state, “Individuals, groups, and societies who can identify the most important problems, locate useful information the fastest, critically evaluate information most effectively, synthesize information most appropriately to develop the best solutions, and then communicate these solutions to others most clearly will succeed in the challenging times that await us.

When I put all of these ideas together, the picture that pops into my head is a person with a dollar on a string; as soon as another person gets close, the dollar is yanked away. I’m not sure if I’m on a track here or not. Or just cynical or a little despairing; Leu and friends do mention the dissemination of solutions to others rather than hoarding or selling to the top bidder. It does make me know that I need to increase my use of digital literacies in my classroom. Then my kids can band together and kick the ass of that trickster who’s trying to keep them from the power.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing for stasis in our culture or in our levels of understanding, but I am arguing that we move forward as a group – looking at the collective rather than the sole winner as Gee and Hayes get at in the chapter 1 reading.

O’Brien and Scharber use images in their conclusion that I will take with me as I continue to sort through the hows of digital literacy. “The perspective we…take…is one of bridging and mediating the best practices…with the most promising changes enabled by digital literacies….It behooves each of us to seriously consider how best to weave together old, new, and future literacies so that young people leave school literate in the ways of school* and in the ways of the world” (68). I’m not interested in throwing away literature or tools that those who want to turn schools into businesses seem to focus on, so I like the ideas of bridges and weaving to create a harmonious existence for school, literacy, digital literacies, etc.

*This “literate in the ways of school” is an interesting phrase to me – I think that it’s meaning is very dependent on the reader and context….

Questions for you:

How do we reconcile the push for “workplace skills” (which a lot of the digital literacy information seems to connect to) with other principles that are vital in an English classroom? Sort of the general education people vs specialized education argument….

What are you most nervous about in this increasingly digital culture? Or are you 100% on board and only psyched for it?

Resource:

Here is are current articles that discuss English departments, literature, and the swing towards digital literacies. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/pulling-the-plug-on-english-departments.html

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118025/advent-digital-humanities-will-make-english-departments-pointless

Same Task, New Tool

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, Margaret Weigel 

“The same task can be performed with a range of different technologies, and the same technology can be deployed toward a variety of different ends. Some tasks may be easier with some technologies than with others, and thus the introduction of a new technology may inspire certain uses…It matters what tools are available to a culture, but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools.

Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (8).

I've worked in three schools, none of which has been particularly focused on technology or been decked out with the latest and greatest. I've never had a real white board (this year I bought my room some shower tile boards, and my dear colleague sneaked in with a drill, avoiding the custodial crew and admin) much less a Smartboard or its equivalents. I've never had any student computer stations in my room, and count myself lucky that, most of the time, my ancient desktops would generally work; I've always used my personal laptop for most of my school work and about dropped over when our tech guy dropped off a school MacBook for me this spring. 

As I was reading the Jenkins article, I was thinking about the idea that "[t]he same task can be performed with a range of different technologies" and my classroom.  This year is supposed to be different in the St Paul schools because we are getting 1:1 iPads. Like most teachers, I require that my students have a notebook for class for notes and journal responses and am wondering if, instead of that notebook, I can have my students establish blogs like we are for this course where they will write reader responses and put class notes. I think this would be great in terms of encouraging responding to others' writing, hearing from those students who are reticent to participate, and making it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways."In addition, I love that I could spare my back the burden of 150+ notebooks being lugged from school to home (and back and back again because I didn't do them the first night)!

This is about as far as I've moved in my thinking in the last couple of hours between a visit from my sister, harvesting some veggies, cooking dinner, calling about getting my bike to the shop, etc. I'm hoping that some of you who have more blog experience than I do (um - this is pretty much my blog experience other than reading them) can give me some ideas. I'm wondering if there can be some posts that they make public to the class and if there are some entries that they could keep private or only share with me. Other tips or possible pitfalls welcome!

I know that we are supposed to include a resource that we have used successfully with students. This one was a big hit during the media literacy unit I did with my English 10 kids: Uncle Drew Part 1  

We laughed together really hard, which always feels like a success, and then we had a lot of discussions about whether or not this was a successful ad campaign. It was a big debate with my students and a lot of fun.

I haven't done more than glance through this website, but it has a lot of links and is appropriate to this blog possibility. If I don't put it here I'll probably lose it forever:

http://blog.web20classroom.org/2013/04/soyou-wanna-use-blogs-in-classroom.html