Final Project: Esperanza Rising Unit

To view my final project, click here. 

Overview
For my final project, I created a series of assignments and activities related to the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.  I chose this novel because it is taught in the sixth grade at the charter schools I support.  My plan is to share these ideas with my supervisor and, hopefully, promote more discussion about bringing technology into our classroom.  As discussed in previous posts and during class, I do not anticipate that major changes will be made immediately, but I hope to position myself as a person who can help when the company is ready to invest in our students' 21st century literacy skills.


Inclusion of Technology
Given the reluctance of some to bring technology into the classroom, I tried to design activities that blend traditional print literacy with digital literacy.  For example, the Character Journals assignment could be done in a notebook or on a blog.  I was also cognizant of the fact that sometimes technology is hard to access in schools.  There seems to always be more teachers and students wanting access to computer labs than time available.  So, I tried to build some flexibility into the activities if the technology was unavailable.  For example, the Image Slideshow could be narrated live for students in front of the classroom or recorded with a microphone on VoiceThread.


Additionally, I limited the inclusion of technologies to VoiceThread.  Digital literacy skills addressed are limited to image selection and description as well as audio recordings (Image Slideshow, Character Interviews, Digital Book Talk).  Blogging is suggested but left as optional (Character Journals).  I also focused on point-of-view and role play (Character Journals, Character Interviews).



Sequencing
Activities are designed to build on one another.  The Establishing Historical and Cultural Context assignment prepares students to complete the Image Slideshow.  Likewise, Character Journals serve as preparation for Character Interviews.

Each activity description includes:

• Preparation or collaboration needed in advance
• Assignment description with step-by-step guidelines for implementation
• Customized rubric created for the assignment
• Rationale of how the skills build digital literacy and why this matters
• References to outside sources (when applicable)

Design
I decided to create a wiki since it seemed like the most logical way to organize the information.  I created a sidebar to help viewers navigate from page to page. 

Reflection and Portfolios

Taking this course has been an eye-opening experience.  When this course started, I viewed it primarily as a means to completing my Masters degree.  I was hoping learn new ways of engaging the urban, economically disadvantaged students that populate the charter schools I support. Unfortunately, I do not know whether I am any closer to accomplishing this task.

Learning about the incredible possibilities that digital media affords in the classroom, whether it is primarily used by teachers or students, has lead me to be quite frustrated with the company I work for.  The classrooms in our schools do not even have ONE computer.  Not even one.  In most schools, teachers share about 2-3 computers in the teacher workroom.  Our teachers do not have the training or resources to bring in critical 21st century digital literacy into the classroom.  My awareness and heartache about this has changed since this class started.  Previously, I really didn't think much about it.  Throughout the semester, I have been brainstorming ways of bringing what I'm learning into our schools, and I do not believe that I am any closer than I was before.  We even had one school administrator REQUEST a website where teachers could share questions, successes, lesson plans and more about the literature anthologies developed by our company.  When I learned of this, I offered to develop and maintain a wiki for teachers at the school, and I said that I would do it without pay in my spare time.  I mentioned that I've been learning about this and could use it as part of a final project for my graduate course.  I was turned down.  They said that they didn't want me working on that project, paid or unpaid.

One classmate suggested that I continue to bring up my ideas and suggestions, even if they are turned down.  Eventually, the company will realize that it's 19th century model (and I do mean 19th century...our teaching method was developed in the 1880s and is now copyrighted) is not sustainable in the American public school system.  It will have to change.  They will have to adapt.  I can poise myself to be a resource during that time.  I like this idea.  It gives me hope and motivation to continue learning about the value--and potential drawbacks--of bringing digital media into the classroom.

It would be interesting to track student responses to writing prompts or reading passages in an online portfolio.  For example, students could post a blog or wiki page on a regular basis.  The prompt could either be a state-style writing prompt (many of these encourage students to write about personal experience or aspirations) or as a reflection of a novel, short story, poem or other reading passage.  If these were done weekly or bi-weekly, be the end of a semester, each student would have a nice portfolio of his or her writing.  Advanced or older students could be encouraged to incorporate personal photos and other images into their writing.  Mid-way through the term, students could go back and reflect on how their writing has developed and set goals for themselves in future postings.  For this type of an assignment, I believe that the most important aspect of assessment is development--how has the student's writing changed or advanced?  One potential problem with student reflections is that they might not be authentic.  Students might hesitate to offer honest criticism of their own writing so that they don't put "bad ideas" into mind of the teacher (i.e. grade-giver).  If the reflect is viewable by classmates, they also might not want to point out their flaws--or strengths--to their peers.

Minnesota e-folio might be useful for high school students applying for colleges.  It would be a way to store their writing, other work, transcripts, and personal statement(s) all in one place.

As stated earlier, I plan to continue learning about the benefits of bringing computers and digital literacy into the classroom as a way of positioning myself for the inevitable future development of our company.  I think the best way for me to do this is to regularly read educator blogs, keep up with the latest information from education organizations (e.g., NCTE), and network with other educators who are currently employing these technologies in their own classrooms.

Writing Assignment

For my final project, I am working on planning a unit for the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.  As part of that unit, students would write character journals as they read the novel.  Character journals are nice for several reasons.  Students become more engaged with the story because they start to look at events and dialogue closely to see how it impacts or is interpreted by a specific character.  Character journals also allow students an opportunity to engage in role-play, which as we have discussed, has a variety of benefits.  Journal entries are typically shorter, so they are assignments that can be done quickly during class or as homework.

My assignment gives a nod to blogging but would primarily be a paper-based assignment.  I did this intentionally because I am trying to develop a unit that could easily incorporate digital writing to add depth but could also be implemented if the technology were not available.  In the assignment description, it notes that entries could be completed in the students' blogs, which implies that it is something that would  have already been developed.  I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with using student blogs as a form of communication or assignment medium in a middle school classroom.  It brings up questions of privacy, availability of computer-access, and efficient use of instructional time. (SIDEBAR:  I predict that much time would need to be spent on set-up, organization, maintenance, and introduction to blogging.  Instructional time is valuable and limited and could probably be spent in better ways.  I think blogging would be great if it could be done in collaboration with a technology or computer class so that English periods could be spent on the communication and writing aspect of it.)

The rubric I created does not address presentation in any way.  This was not an oversight.  The focus of this assignment is on content and voice, which seems most appropriate for a character journal of this nature.  Other parts of the unit will concentrate on presentation.  I think it is important to focus primarily on only a few traits of writing in each assignment.

One concern I have about using rubrics is that they tend to skew the point value.  Too many points can be assigned to a given trait or element when the same value of points is used for each row.  I think the rubric I created avoids this because it has multiple rows for the same trait (content) that focus on different skills (support and accuracy).  In my experience, rubrics are helpful for grading.  However, I typically find errors in them in terms of how grades are distributed after I start the grading process.  I don't know how to avoid this.  I spend time thinking about possible scenarios and outcomes to see if the rubric is fair and accurate, but something almost always surprises me.

While completing this assignment, I found a very helpful website from the University of Wisconsin - Stout that includes many rubrics for use with digital writing.

Website Design: DOE sites

The design of a website is CRUCIAL.  It doesn't matter if the site is for commerce, personal connections, information sharing, or entertainment.  If the site is poorly designed, then it will not effectively serve its intended audience or purpose.

For a comparison this week, I decided to look at the design of two department of education websites.  I look at these often for my job and have found that some states are definitely more on-top-of-it than others.

LOSER:  Arizona Department of Education
Why is this website so terrible?  Oh, let me count the ways...

1. It is not as "user-friendly" as it could be.  There are too many links on each page with minimal explanation.  It is not always obvious based on the link title which one you should choose.  Often, there are links that have similar titles so it's especially confusing about which is the most appropriate.  Also, there is not always a pathway that shows you how you got to the page you are on, so it is hard to navigate your way back.
2. It is not visually appealing.  Whoever chose the color scheme and banner photos must be color-blind.  On the home page alone, text is shown in: blue, a brighter blue, black, white with green highlights, white with maroon highlights, and black with yellow highlights.
3. The font is not appealing.  Multiple--but very similar--fonts are used.  All are relatively normal sized, with nothing standing out or designed to grab your attention.
4. The images in the banner are cluttered and there is too much to look at.

WINNER:  Ohio Department of Education

1. This website is designed with a nice, simple color-scheme (mostly a muted red with some primary colors).
2. Headings and other "important" text stands out because it is larger at the top of the page.  When you hover over these headings, drop-down menus with more information appears.  Although there are many links, like in the Arizona DOE site, these links are much more clearly labeled.  Once you get into one of these sections (e.g., Testing), additional areas of interest appear on the left with descriptions of various links on the right.  I wish that the descriptions were not cut-off mid-sentence, but something is better than nothing.
3. The images chosen for the banners are simple and easy to recognize.
4. Links and information are grouped in ways that make sense.

It was difficult for me to complete this assignment because I wasn't exactly sure what to compare.  I wondered if I should focus on visual appeal, functionality, organization, color-scheme, amount/size/type of font, etc.

To teach students about web design, it would be interesting to have them complete a similar assignment that has a few more parameters.  As a class, students could generate a list of features that they think are important to website design.  On a SMARTBoard or projector, the class could compare a few websites to see how the design impacts the user's experience on the site.  I think that this would be a great way to introduce the concept of web design in a way that is engaging and covers the material in a reasonable amount of time.

My First Prezi: Justification for Digital Literacies in the Classroom

I decided to try Prezi to create my presentation for class this week.  I've used PowerPoint quite a bit and was ready to try something new and different.  Overall, Prezi was fairly easy to use, but it took me a while to figure out how everything would look in the final presentation.  There are so many possibilities with text layouts, presentation paths, frames, etc. that it could get overwhelming.  When I started, I envisioned a much more complex presentation, but then I realized that part of Prezi's beauty was in simplicity.

I had recently read several journal articles about digital literacy in classrooms, including "An American Perspective: Justifying Uses o Digital Tools to Foster Critical Media Literacy" by Richard Beach in The Journal of Media Literacy (Volume 57, Numbers 1 & 2, 2010).  The quote at the beginning of the presentation is from that article.  I was hoping that this presentation would help me flesh out some ideas for a final project.  Maybe it did.  At this point I'm not entirely sure, but I am also not entirely sure of the shape my final project will take.  Mostly, I've done a lot of brainstorming and thinking about it.  This my first tangible product.  Alright, let's cut to the chase.  Here's my presentation:

Justification on Prezi

Camping: A Breakfast Story

These photos--and to some extent the storyline--are from a camping trip in Kentucky a few years ago.

Overall, creating a comic was really fun and easy.  ComicLife is super easy to use.  It was really simple to drag in the images and add the text.  The characters are based on friends that were camping with me at the time, but I had to think about what they might say or think in brief snippets to make the story come to life in this comic.  Because so much of the story is told through the pictures, it was also important to for me to choose appropriate photographs to convey the story.  This is one thing that differs from most traditional print texts for adolescents and adults.

Digital comics would be great to incorporate into a multigenre writing unit, or even as a prewriting activity for narratives.  My students often struggled to zoom in on characters, slow down the storyline, and--the classic--show versus tell what is happening.  It would be so great to teach these skills using digital comics.  If I were writing a narrative about camping, I could use this comic to prepare me to write a scene about making breakfast.  When I was teaching, we actually did use a comic to demonstrate "zooming in" in writing, but it would have been even more engaging to have students create a "zoom" and not just look at one.

Unemployment: A Comic...sort of but not really

This is my feeble first attempt at creating a comic.  Although, this is not at all comical.  It sort of tells a universal story about the all-too-common experience of facing unemployment.  I chose this topic because I created a digital poem based on a found poem called "An Unemployed Machinist" by by John Giorno on poets.org.  I had the images prepared and the topic was in my mind.  I would like to make more of an attempt at creating a comic with more of a storyline, since that is a genre very unfamiliar to me.  My home computer is old and not the quickest machine on the block, so I will try to make it to class early next week so that I can give ComicLife a second attempt.

My digital poem

I created this digital poem for an assignment in class 11/9.

The poem is from poets.org.

Images are from flicker.

Potentials of Podcasting

I really enjoyed creating a podcast.  It was fun to choose a topic (reading a personal essay from 10 years ago) and then to actually do it.  The topic I chose allowed me to step back into the shoes of my 18-year old self, which was interesting.  It was encouraging and surprising to read my words again.  Especially since I was recording myself reading, I tried to get into character and feel the emotions I felt when I wrote the piece.  I loved it.  It also allowed me a chance to read my teacher's comments again, which was so encouraging.  Now that I am an educator, I read the comments differently than I did previously.  I understood how essential it is to provide feedback on a student writer's ideas, not just her mechanics.  I knew this before I did the podcast; I internalized it as I was re-reading my teacher's comments.

Once I finally figured out how to turn my blog into a podcast using Blogger, morphing my audio file into a podcast was simple.

Podcasting could be used for a variety of activities in the classroom.

• Booktalks:  If the technology were available, podcasts of booktalks could be shared among students, classes, and even from year-to-year to promote a culture of reading in the classroom.  Although I would not use this as an assessment for comprehension or independent reading, since students could easily read a summary online and translate that into a booktalk.  It would be a nice supplement to other classroom activities.
• Interviews:  There seems to be a lot of potential for using podcasting as a tool for interviews.  Specifically, I think it would be neat to have students interview characters, authors, or other readers about a book.  These would be excellent extensions for other activities in a regular English class.  Depending on the unit of study, students could interview other students, teachers, family members, community members, school staff members, etc. for a variety of reasons.  There really are so many possible uses for this tool!
• Radio Shows:  In a media class, it would be neat to have students research information about various radio shows, such as All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, call-in shows (for advice on finances, relationships, etc.), sports shows, conservative talk radio, etc.  It would be neat to have them look at the different kinds of radio shows, targeted audience, bias, and other unique aspects of the genre.  As a culminating project, students could create podcasts of radio shows.

It's been really fun for me to learn about podcasting.  I believe that this medium has so much potential for use in classrooms that have the available resources.

Getting Rid of the Gunk Podcast