Archive for category english

ETA Conference: The Backchannel

Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, english, online tools, social media, technology on November 26, 2009

Friday morning will see Darcy and I braving the stage prior to the opening of the annual English Teachers’ Association conference ‘Hit Refresh‘.

Why?

Because for this ETA conference, for the first time, the conference is going web 2.0 – we’re stepping up the interaction, participation, and networking by providing some seriously cool online spaces for teachers to wet their toes in, and hopefully also dive right in to!  So, we’ll be getting up (in our awesome Twitter t-shirts 😉 ) to show the folks at the conference how to get involved in communicating with others, and how to use the backchannel.

What is a ‘backchannel’?

You know when you’re sitting, watching a keynote or presentation, and if you know the person in the next seat you might make the odd remark in their ear?  Well, a backchannel is like doing this on a mass scale – it’s like having a silent ‘channel’ on in the background for anyone who wants to make comments or ask questions that the rest of the audience can see, and if they want, silently respond to.

It’s like passing notes for grown-ups.  Ones that you know the teacher can read too if they so choose (so you can be critical, but must also be polite!)

From wikipedia:

The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker

…it is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.

What are we using?

The most effective way of paticipating in a live backchannel during the conference is to join Twitter, and post short 140-character messages called ‘tweets’.  Anyone who ‘follows’ you can see your comment or question – and some people might also respond.

Do I have to have a lot of followers for this to work?

(or ‘yikes! but I’m not that famous yet!’)

If you are new to Twitter, never fear.  If you tag your tweet with the ‘hashtag‘ ETAConf09, then the comment that you tweet will also be seen by anyone who has searched for that tag – not just the people who follow you.  This means that even if you have NO FOLLOWERS, you can add to the backchannel discussion, and people can tweet responses to you.  Here is an example:

Wow! I thought Kelli and Darcy did a great job explaining the backchannel! #ETAConf09

To which another user might reply:

Does anyone know where I can find the video they showed at the start? #ETAConf09

You see the potential here?  And it’s easy!

What’s this I hear about a conference ‘Ning’?

‘Ning’ is the cute name that the people over at Ning.com made up to describe their online site that is used for NetworkING.  It’s a very easy site to use, and a great way to introduce yourself to online learning if you haven’t already.

ETA members (all of you – whether you are physically at the conference or not) can join the ETA conference Ning and add comments and questions there too.  Darcy and I will be monitoring the Ning as well, and it is another place that a kind of backchannel will likely spring up.  It’s probably less likely that this will happen during the sessions though.  I imagine a lot of people will be logging into our Ning on Friday and Saturday night, and for awhile after the conference, to send comments to friends, colleagues and presenters, and to share ideas and resources.

For the most effective participation in a LIVE backchannel, I seriously recommend you use Twitter.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, you can post them here as a comment, or ask them on Twitter.  You can find and follow me at http://twitter.com/kmcg2375, or Darcy at http://twitter.com/Darcy1968

See you in the Twitterverse!

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It’s hip to be square

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, technology on September 29, 2009

With the Digital Education Revolution and the Laptops for Learning program putting laptops into the hands of every NSW public school Year 9 student next term, we ‘techies’ are finding ourselves very popular indeed.

There’s just not going to be enough support – tech support or curriculum/pedagogy support – for everyone to get it right straight away.  The laptop program can work in spite of this…in fact, it may even work better because of this.

The L4L program seems to many in schools to be a radical and dramatic project.  So radical and dramatic, in fact, that teachers seem to be happier than usual to admit they don’t know everything, and actually ask their colleagues for advice and help 🙂  Teachers in my faculty have started acting far more like a ‘community of learners’, rather than an ‘office of colleagues’ – people are motivating each other, praising each others achievements, and mentoring as much as they can.  Power relations are being disrupted as principals and head teachers are being mentored by classroom teachers; parents are having to concede that teachers have a level of knowledge and professionalism that deserves more respect than is usually see; students are realising that access to ‘technology’ means higher expectations, not more ‘bludge’ lessons.  Many are happy with this, and are rising to the challenge.

It is a Revolution indeed…one where it’s hip to be square!

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Suburbia

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, online tools, school on September 9, 2009

Workshop #2 with Lachlan and Year 10 tomorrow.  We will be discussing Suburbia, and how to see the suburbs (and other ‘ordinary’ things) through the eys of a poet.

To begin the workshop, Lachlan and I will both be showing a series of photos of the local area.  Mine are mostly of local gardens, skyscapes, and motorways.  I’m hoping to inspire the students to find unique and affective imagery in the world around them:

A great resource has also popped up this week – the youth current affairs program on Triple J’s 5.30pm radio show ‘Hack’ is focussing on the SUBURBS.  Throught the week they will be discussing Australian Suburbs: Paradise or Prison?

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Papercuts Poetry Project

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school on September 3, 2009

(Don’t you love the smell of alliteration in the afternoon?)

Today I taught my first lesson with Lachlan Brown, a poet that is going to be working for the next three weeks with my Year 10 class on a poetry workshop project, run by the Red Room Company.

Last week Lachlan and I came up with a program for my class, designed around the Toilet Door Poetry project.  In today’s introductory lesson, Lachlan spoke to the students about being a poet and writing poetry, and showed an accompnying slideshow of photos from his time writing in the crowded lower class suburbs of Paris.  Using examples of his own work, and some of his own favourite poems, Lachlan explored the rich inspirations for poetry that can come from our everyday lives and experiences.  To conclude the lesson, I gave the students a copy of Bronwyn Lea’s ‘Mineslec‘ on Poetry and Space and read this to them, leaving with the following questions for homework:

  1. Bronwyn Lea suggests that poems in public spaces can “deliver what we hadn’t thought to ask for”.  Come up with three ideas for what this might be.  Could our poetry aim to deliver a certain theme?  A certain form?    Other ideas…?
  2. Looking back over this reading, what points does Bronwyn Lea make that interested or surprised you?  Find something that you strongly agree or disagree with and explain why.

Day 1 edited

Next week the students will bring their ideas, as well as a photograph or an object that represents their everyday lives, and this will form the basis of our first poetry writing workshop.  Lachlan and I will also be taking the students on a ‘Poetry Walk’ around the school and nearby local street to practice ‘seeing the world like a poet’.  I can’t wait!

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12Words: kmcg2375

Posted by kmcg2375 in english on August 13, 2009

Using the same username as I do on Twitter, I have been posting my own ’12 word stories’ to the 12Words website, which was launched at the start of the month.

The objective is to use 12 words or less to “tell a story, convey a mood, or give a glimpse at a person”.  You can only submit one story per week.  These are the two I have submitted so far:

12wordskmcg2375Yeah, I’m hoping to refine my skill over time 😛

My suggestion to other teachers in my faculty is going to be that we:

  1. All English teachers write a 12 words story, and students vote for favourite
  2. All students write a 12 words story, and these are collected end of each day and put up on a noticeboard for all to read
  3. Depending on interest, we could also offer book prizes for best student stories, judged by Head Teacher!

I just love this idea, and am going to promote it to all of my classes 🙂

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Video Games and Storytelling

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, video games on July 30, 2009

Came across this excellent animated lecture by Daniel Floyd on Jawbone.tv.  Perfect for an introduction to narrative in videogames for my Year 9 class.  I think I’ll make a listening task for it – will post it up if I do.

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Narrative Unit: Texts

Posted by kmcg2375 in digital storytelling, english, school, technology on May 19, 2009

An update on how things are coming together for my unit of work on Narrative, which combined more mainstream print and visual texts with ‘new technology’ texts.

The texts I have selected to study are:

  1. The Raven – Edgar Allen Poe (poem)
  2. And antoher thing – Anthony Dennis (Sunday Life opinion article)
  3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon (novel)
  4. Fairytale and fable selection, possibly using a webquest
  5. Fox – Margaret Wild (picture book)
  6. Inanimate Alice (multimedia)
  7. and, if time permits, The Castle – Working Dog / Sitch (film)

After/while studying these texts, students will be creating their own narrative compostions:

  1. An individual digital story on the theme ‘Dreams and Nightmares’ (term 2)
  2. A group drama enacting a fairytale of students own choosing (term 2)
  3. A short story using hypertext to link to flashbacks in the story (term 3 – using new laptops)

I’m loving teaching this unit – so far we’ve looked at the poem and the magazine article, and are now reading Curious Incident…if we finish looking at the book by the end of week 5, that will leave plenty of time to look at the other texts (not a ‘close study’ – just exploring select aspects of narrative) and do some work on the assessment projects.

More updates to come!

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Arts and Sciences not seperate #TED

Posted by kmcg2375 in english on May 11, 2009

In this TED talk Mae Jemison makes some very poetic and logical arguments for teaching the Arts and the Sciences in a more integrated way, and about the importance of promoting human creativity, which she explains is found in both the Arts and Sciences:

The talk was interesting in itself, but the reason why I found this Ted talk so appealing was that it again got me thinking about the inter-related nature of the acts of reading and writing, and of what our English syllabus in NSW calls responding (reading, listening and viewing) and composing (writing, speaking, and visually representing).  You might already have spotted a problem with these divisions – although the syllabus names reading as an act of responding (because it involves thinking about and having a response to what is read), one can also write or speak a ‘response’, yet those acts are names as acts of composing.  Do you follow? 😉

The distinction being made in the syllabus however, is not really between the acts of reading and writing (for example), but between acts that involve responsive or comprehensive thought processes, and acts that involve original or creative thought processes.

Jemison is critical of the way we have been taugh to regard ‘intuitive’ and ‘analytical’ thought processes as seperate – to see ourselves and others as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’; ‘artists’ or ‘scientists’; ‘destructors’ or ‘constructors’.  While it may be handy for working out assessment task weightings to distinguish between acts such as listening and writing (although we will often test listening by getting kids to write down what they understood!), it is one way in which we reinforce the artificial binary of intuition and analysis.

One must be intuitive to be truly analytical.  One may work very methodically to acheive originality or create art.  Good English teachers understand this, and continue to promote creativity in all its forms.

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Macbeth

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school on March 30, 2009

Just beginning a Year 11 unit on Macbeth (comparing Shakespeare’s play to a film version). Going through my resources I would have to say that I find the following three online resources provide all the material my students will need to supplement their reading:

  1. Royal Shakespeare Company resources for Macbeth, in particular the online play guide
  2. The No Fear Shakespeare ‘translation’ of Shakespeare’s play into modern English
  3. Notes on Macbeth from the new literature website Shmoop (still in Beta)

These sites don’t take a ‘cheat sheet’ approach to the play, but instead help students to cut through the language and think more deeply about the play in production, which in turn helps them to find meanng in the play.  Are there any ‘must see’ sites that you would add?  Of course all the big Shakespearean plays have a million online summaries, but would you add anything from those to my best of list above?

I would LOVE to get more adventurous and use Angela Thomas’ Second Life Virtual Macbeth island, but the machines at school would seriously not cope (on so many levels!)  I might see later in the unit if the students would be willing to explore this from home.

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Narrative and technology project

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, technology on March 27, 2009

The lesson sequence that I am working on for the New Technologies, New Stories project will see students working toward a Digital Storytelling assessment to explore ideas about what makes a good story.  In particular they will be focussing on how images and audio elements can be combined to enhance meaning in narrative.

The Lessons:

Aimed at Stage 5 (years 9 and 10) this lesson sequence will see students analysing a range of fiction and non-fiction narrative texts to devise a set of class criteria for a ‘good story’.  In my year 8 unit on Newspapers I teach students the criteria for ‘newsworthiness‘, but it occurred to me that I don’t teach any similar guidelines for ‘story-worthiness’.  I wanted to design lessons that got students thinking about how to craft a story that is engaging to readers, and to demonstrate narrative skill across a range of modes.

Key Learning Ideas:

1. Writing stories that are more than a recount of events.

I often find that in Stage 5 students have learned a range of skills for building an effective narrative – they are well versed in character development and imagery, for example – but are still missing that ‘knack’ for writing a story that engages readers (and avoids clichés and stereotypes).  In particular I have found my students struggle to move from narratives that describe a sequence of events to using symbolic and figurative representations in their work.

2. Using voice, image and written text to create narrative.

When making Digital Stories with Year 9 for the first time last year, I was struck that most either chose poor images to reflect their story, or lost any sense of story because the chosen images weren’t used to build a narrative.  This was surprising – it hadn’t occurred to me that their choices in written imagery weren’t dull because of their writing, but because of their poor choice of imagery to reflect or contrast with the story.  I’m hoping that asking students to focus on building a narrative using a range of modes will help them to focus on the meaning and ‘flow’ of their stories, not just the technical skills and tools required to tell them.

Texts:

Before (and while) students begin composing their own digital stories, they will be engaging with a range of texts to explore the question ‘what makes a good story’.  To do this we will be:


…I’d love to hear of any more suggestions for stories I could use with the students.  As you can see I am lacking some good non-fiction and poetry texts.

Assessment

Students will make their own 2-3 minute Digital Story.

They must nominate 2-3 of the class developed criteria for ‘story-worthiness’ to showcase, and they will be peer assessed on how well they meet the nominated criteria.

Possible addition – Students transform their digital story into written form and write a reflection on the different language skills/tools needed to create the same narrative in different modes.  Written stories could be stored on a class wiki, with digital versions uploaded as well.

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