Blogging? For a grade??

That's all folks. My first online class is almost over, and our blogging assignment for the past 8 weeks is over. I must say it was both fun and a bit challenging. I wasn't ever really sure what to write about for my posts, so I just shared pieces of the books I was reading that I thought my classmates would also find interesting (hence the meme below)

But I also really enjoyed the chance to use blogging "for good", rather than just as a forum for venting and raging and ranting. I grew up in the era of MySpace, Livejournal, and Xanga. These were never, in my eyes at least, used for school or anything remotely educational. They were just spaces for people to share thoughts and feelings, and customize their page to look however you wanted it to. While modern blogs like Blogger and Wordpress still offer similar customization techniques, more and more blogs for educational purposes are popping up all over the Net. And I think that's great. It gives people a chance to look into other topics they might be interested in, but the material is presented in a way on a blog that's not intimidating or overly academic (most of the time).

Overall, I had a great time sharing information with my classmates through my blog and I'm really excited to continue exploring blogging as a writing tool that could be used in a variety of ways in my classroom.

Thanks for reading!

-Catie 

"Make Me a Story" chapter 5

This chapter was really short, but had two really important takeaways for me. The whole of the chapter centered on assessment and making sure that student's storytelling projects are aligned with standards.

With regards to standards, Miller provides several examples of how digital storytelling aligns with standards from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) as well as the International Reading Association. But she goes even further to say that "it's important to realize that digital storytelling involves skills that some educational standards suggest students should master. It's not just an extra added on without connection to the curriculum" (Miller 80). While New Mexico has adopted CCSS as it's state standards instead of the other two standards mentioned above, I'm sure it would be just as easy to take a digital storytelling lesson/unit and demonstrate how it meets several of the CCSS standards for Language Arts for any grade level.

The other important point that this chapter emphasizes is that digital storytelling offers students the chance to show real learning and growth. It's should not be looked at as "a waste of time" or just something pretty that students are doing on computers. Miller explains it better than I can with this quote: "It's easy to demonstrate that students are doing much more than simply creating pretty slide shows when they're working on digital stories. They're practicing important skills and learning to think in meaningful way about the process of writing and using technology to put the different elements of a story together" (Miller 84). She then talks about the opportunity for students to create a rubric for this assignment, should the teacher choose to use one for grading and assessment. Personally, I don't like rubrics. As a student, they don't offer me anything helpful and often just encourage me to write my paper to fit the rubric, rather than the other way around. As an upcoming teacher, I don't want my students to get stuck in that same trap. Additionally, as objective as rubrics try to be, there is always an element of subjectivity involved in creating the criteria for a rubric.
Having said all that, I understand that rubrics will work better for some classes and students than others. If I were going to use a rubric, I would definitely follow Miller's example and allow my students the chance to contribute to the criteria, if not to set it up entirely based on what they think an outstanding assignment would look like.

That's it for this book! A pretty short read, and not quite what I was expecting, but definitely some helpful tips on how to successfully incorporate digital elements in to the processes of writing.

"Make Me a Story" chapters 3-4

This chunk of the book that I read for this blog post focuses on taking young writers through the writing process, making sure each step gets focus. Miller's version of the steps in the writing process are:
(I'm paraphrasing her steps, the whole list is in her book on pg. 33)
Write before writing: This is the step that involves brainstorming and asking questions about your subject

Research for writing: pretty self-explanatory; this step is all about finding more information about your subject through whatever method works best for you: library, Internet, or good old fashioned encyclopedias.

Begin writing: Finding a focus and starting writing! Things to consider: point of view, audience, images that might go with your story.

Keep writing: This is the step where you make sure all the parts of your draft are solid and coherent. Here would also be where you could plan where your images would go in connection with your story, as well as pumping up your story with exciting and interesting details.

Finish writing: Here is the final push, getting your story and all it's components together. This could include: putting your story in the computer, adding music and fancy transitions, and the presentation of your story to an audience.


Miller also strives to make clear that the writing process is most definitely not linear, even though this process is listed as such. I could definitely see many students getting confused about that, so I would prefer to present them with a model that looks more like this:

The wording is a bit more confusing in this picture than in Miller's linear model, but I think it better articulates the non-linear process of writing and revising. Maybe a combination of the two? Not sure, I'd have to try it.

I'm almost done with the book so my next post will be the last one from the book. Stay tuned!

"Make Me A Story" chapters 1-2

Ok, new book! Here we go!

This one's called Make Me a Story: Teaching Writing Through Digital Storytelling  by Lisa C. Miller. It's a total 180 from my first book: this one is designed to be more a help manual or a how-to on teaching digital storytelling. Another big difference: it's designed for teachers of K-5.

Dun dun dun...

Joking. As the daughter of a 4th grade teacher, I have only love and respect for elementary school teachers. It's definitely a job I could not do, and I'm pretty content in Secondary Ed.

I digress.

One of Miller's main points in these first two chapters is emphasizing that really, the digital stuff (Clip-Art pictures, voice overs, etc) is all icing on the cake that is the writing of whatever assignment you're doing with your students. In fact, she says that "limiting the number of images students use makes them concentrate on the story, and the story becomes the deciding factor in what images to use, not the other way around" (Miller 25).

She gives some examples of digital storytelling that she helped some 3rd grade students create. While I love the ideas, they seem, well...elementary. One story was about how an apple feels about being boiled up in to applesauce (not very, as you might imagine).

Any thoughts on how to incorporate digital storytelling in high school/secondary level? Bonus points if it is about Romeo and Juliet :)

Fin: The Bases Still Belong To Us or, Blog Post #4

Short post today. I'm through with my first book for this class! It was really an excellent read, despite what Goodreads says. (Seriously, don't go through those reviews. I try not to, but every once in a while I get sucked in.) I still wouldn't consider myself a gamer in the way that some of my friends, or my boyfriend is. I just don't have the patience for it, I think. He can sit for hours and hours (he's doing so right now, blasting away zombies! I know who's team I'd be on for the zombie apocalypse...) and play a game, and I can barely watch a movie without feeling like I have to do something while I'm just sitting and watching. (As I post tonight, I have two other tabs open in my browser, and I'm seriously considering turning on Firefly to listen/watch while I do other homework after this.)

So what did I learn from this book, you ask Dear Reader? Well, for starters: a whole heck of a lot more about the history of video games than I ever thought I would know. The book went in mostly chronological order, so the later third of the book was about games that I recognized: Grand Theft Auto, BioShock (which started out under the title "System Shock"), Bejeweled, and many others. It was interesting to read about the history of these recognizable games. I wonder though, if these games are too dated for our students? Maybe not BioShock, but definitely some of these others. The latest in the series, BioShock Infinite was released in March 2013. And what a damn good game that was! But I digress. I'd be curious to know what my students are playing, if they play video games. I know some of them play the 2-D exploration platform game Terraria (one of my favorites, and they lost their minds when I told them I've logged 150+ hours on it!) and some of them love playing first-person shooters games like Call of Duty. But I'd love to know what games they're playing in the middle, between those two rather extreme examples. Then I might have a better idea on how to incorporate games in to my class.

Do you play videogames? Share your favorite game below!

Ok. That's that, let's put the kibosh on video games for now. Tune in next time for the first post from my next reading choice, Make Me a Story: Teaching Writing Through Digital Storytelling by Lisa C. Miller.