Which Web Works West (I mean Best)?

Over the summer, one of our courses was Web-based learning, and at the end, we had to create a tele collaborative project. Mine centered around six-word stories, helping students learn the power of words when they're chosen judiciously and purposefully. Supposedly the first six-word story was written by Hemingway, who, when asked what was the best thing he ever wrote, replied: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." That can be interpreted so many ways. A book of six-word stories came out a couple years ago, and I've had my students write them for a while. This would have all been done through a website that teachers would be able to join, and it would be monitored. I would have been the one designing and managing the site, which would have been accessible to teachers around the world.

With a Web 2.0 tool, like a wiki or a blog, getting everything up and running would be much simpler than building a whole website. I could go to PBWorks, start a wiki, and get a number of other site "administrators" to help with ensuring the content is appropriate. And where the website would have only allowed uploading of text, with a wiki, I could more easily allow people to add videos or audio, instead of just the text of their six-word stories.

The biggest benefit of the Web 2.0 tools is the ease both for me and for those who wish to contribute and benefit from the site. The biggest challenge would be maintaining the quality of the wiki and ensuring that content is appropriate. I'd have more control with a blog, where comments would require approval, but that also means more work, and I think a less user-friendly environment, because with a wiki, I could set up pages for stories on different topics or involving different categories.

Video killed the podcast star

So, podcasting was fun. The GarageBand software was easy to use, and the plethora of free sound effects would allow anyone to make a pretty professional-sounding podcast with very little practice. Video required a bit more skill and, since my group was using software on my Mac instead of the PC-based software, it also required a lot of Googling to answer questions. But answers were easily found, and, again, the software made it easy to add effects, transition, title slides, etc., that resulted in a well-edited end result. Of course, that was just the practice public service announcement (we got permission to be a little bit irreverent in our promotion of the ITS graduate program at George Mason University.)

The creation of our advocacy wiki PSA went well, to a point. One of my group members had a great idea that was pretty easy to put into a script and a "treatment." We uploaded our video, changed out some sounds, learned how to put certain audio over other. When we wanted to do a picture-in-picture effect, I found instructions on doing it online, and another group member created the "thought bubble" images. The thought bubbles went in easily, and then it all fell apart. The still images were making the video freeze, and then the iMovie program crash. When I reached the point I was ready to throw the computer out the window, we called it quits for the night, and I promised my group I would figure it out and put the finishing touches on the video.

Which brings us to today. Specifically, about four-and-a-half hours ago. After lots of online research, lots of failed attempts, then basically recreating the whole 30-second movie, I got it all to work (though not exactly the way we wanted) and to export into a .mov file. You can see the source of my frustration here:

I think there is great potential for using video in the classroom. It's fun. It gives students exposure to media literacy concepts like camera angle, sound, etc., and another form of literacy to practice encoding and decoding. But it also has its drawbacks, like technical errors. It just reinforces the idea that teachers MUST be prepared for just about everything, and must know the programs they're using inside and out. And, though we had the opportunity to practice with the tool a week earlier, still learning the tool while completing the final objective is a bit too much of a challenge for my students.  If I'm going to use this tool with my students, I need a great deal more practice and lots of backup plans for overcoming roadblocks that may get thrown in our paths.

A blog about ???

There's no specific assignment for this week's blog, so I'm using it as an opportunity to try to synthesize some of what we've ben doing this semester. This past week we were able to buy our caps and gowns for graduation, and today (March 9) we're 68 days away from graduation. On Thursday night in class, we were supposed to create short videos to promote the ITS program. My group decided to take an irreverent tone, and we mostly complained about all the work we have to do. And while not every single assignment has appealed to me, working on our wikis on all the topics we've learned about and compiling my portfolio has given me an opportunity to reflect on just how much we've learned over these past two years.

Maybe it's because I didn't initially go to school to become a teacher, and there's a lot about teaching and learning that I should have known coming into the program. And maybe all that stuff has been just a good refresher for my classmates. Regardless, I know I am a better designer of lessons than I was. I am more reflective than I was. And I'm gaining confidence to become more of a leader.

I thought teaching alone was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. But teaching AND going to grad school is much harder. But my students are reaping the rewards, and that's really important to me. It has challenged me and stretched my skills in everything from time management to creativity. It has helped me see (and work to improve) my weaknesses and recognize my strengths. It has shown me that there is never just one way to get at accomplishing a goal, whether it be a goal for myself or an objective for my students.

I've also met some really great people. So, all in all, I'm glad I did this.

An addiction? An illness? Or harmless entertainment?

Last week, my journalism students proposed an article about Social Media Anxiety Disorder, or SMAD. According to The Huffington Post, the creator of the term is "Julie Spira, author of "The Rules of Netiquette." (Just a note that SMAD is not an actual, medically recognized condition at this point.)" Symptoms are as varied as freaking out if you forget your power cord to recharge your device during the day to taking your device into the restroom with you. (So that's how all those iPhones wind up sitting in rice to dry out!) Others say they're neglecting their children or losing relationships because they spend so much time on the phone/tablet/whatever.

I really got into Facebook after I decided not to go to my 20th high school reunion. They set up a page for the Class of '88, and it was fun to see how people were doing, and how their lives turned out. It also kind of makes me chuckle to myself that I'm now "friends" with people who wouldn't give me the time of day when we were students together. I don't consider myself to be suffering from SMAD, but I do participate in some habits that I shouldn't. I'm guilty of looking at my phone during a meal with friends to see if there's anything interesting on Facebook. And I do check my phone at school (usually in the bathroom). But I'm able to go whole blocks in school without it and even an entire evening. My students, however, can't seem to, and that does concern me.

There's not only the issue of giving away too much information to strangers. Though I think our children are more educated about that now, horrible things still happen when children are taken advantage of online by preying adults. And I also worry about cyber bullying and students airing all their dirty laundry (breakups, makeups, hookups, and mistakes) online, without the real understanding of how that could all come back to haunt them. Our school started a "pause before you post" campaign, just asking for the very basics of impulse control. Are you sure you want that out there for all the world to see?

I do think there is some educational value. Students are reading and writing, though sloppy text-style writing makes me nuts when I see it in a formal paper. I have to keep reminding students that their pencil won't automatically add apostrophes in contractions or capitalize your i when it is used as a pronoun. And, yes, I have had a student turn in a formal paper with text abbreviations such as u and ur.

But I know students also use it to talk to one another about assignments or to share questions and answers to help one another prepare for a lesson. And I think that an understanding of other people and the rest of the world is available through social networking. A news item might creep into your news feed or a take on a topic that you'd never considered before. There's also the fact that it is a good way to disseminate information to a lot of people very quickly. For example, there were bomb threats four of five days last week at a high school/middle school in the county where I teach. The schools are connected, so both have to be evacuated when something like that happens. Two of the days, the evacuated students had to be held on buses because it was too cold to keep them outside. Parents were able to learn quickly that their students were safe, but also that the buses would be delayed in much of the county as a result of that. While that's not really an educational benefit, it does point to the speed and breadth of information that can go out over social networking sites.

I do think schools have a responsibility to help students learn to use social networking responsibly. Pause before you post was a decent idea, but it was a one-and-done. Counseling did it, gave everyone little pins, and then it just dropped off the radar. Like anything like that, it needs reminding.

To podcast or not to podcast?

We recently worked with a partner to create a podcast. Our authentic problem was that we were making a travel blog about a monument or memorial in Washington. The steps were clear: research, figure out the angle to take, write a script, record, and edit. I'd worked with sound-editing software two years ago when I made a sound slides presentation as part of a journalism-advisor fellowship. I used Audacity and found it very difficult to work with, so I wasn't anxious about trying it again. But my Mac has Garage Band and, maybe because of my experience with Audacity, I found it to be user-friendly and rather simple to create the podcast.

So the obvious question was, how could I use it in my classroom? I was talking with a colleague who recently got a Mac for use in his classroom with gifted students. A few years ago, when his son was a fifth-grader, the class went on a field trip to Washington. Each student had been assigned a memorial, and wrote a little talk to give, including history of the memorial and something the student would change about it if he/she could. We wondered if we could do something podcast-related with that, but we both agreed that the public-speaking component of his son's assignment was important.

I thought about lessons I already have that might be able to be modified to incorporate a podcast. And I came up with this. Last semester, I had students prepare a short "last lecture" speech to go along with the book "The Last Lecture." There's no reason their speeches couldn't be turned into podcasts. (There are lots of other opportunities for oral presentations in my class.)

I would need to spend a lot more time working with Audacity to see if I can learn it well enough to teach it, and I would run into the always-problematic scheduling computer lab time. And then there's the issue of a quiet place for students to record audio. Lots to think about, but I like the technology.

Wikis

My only true experience with Wikis up to this point was Wikipedia and, like most English teachers who do research as part of their curriculum, I'd always told my students that it's fine to look there, but I didn't want to see it cited in a research paper. With that said, I not-so-guiltily admit that if I want to know something, I usually go there first. I love that it provides link to other sources so I can start verifying the information if it's something that requires verification which, to this journalist, is almost everything. There's a joke in newspapering that if your mother tells you she loves you, you better find an independent source to verify it. So even at a "reliable" website, such as .gov or .edu, I'd still probably seek at least one other souce to verify information I found. I consider a healthy skepticism an important piece of being media literate.

Other than that, I'd never really considered Wikis and their potential in the classroom. But this exercise for grad school, and its timing, has be considering the possibilities. For example, on Wednesday, I gave my English 9 Honors students all their work for Wednesday through the weekend, in anticipation of the snowstorm closing school for the rest of the week. I explained the material, gave the work, and promised I'd check email regularly to answer questions. But literature (we're doing short stories) begs discussion, and working from home, alone, with just the book and the activity, pretty much ruins a huge chunk of my unit plan. But if there was a Wiki, I could still have the students participating in discussion and contributing to the "social construction of knowledge."

The challenges this produces is that not every student has a computer at home or internet access, and I'm not certain how to overcome that. I'm also thinking it might be a more "fun" and interactive way to do study guides for tests.

My blog about blogging

So, yeah, the former (and occasionally still) journalist should be the natural person to embrace blogging, right? Not so much. As a journalist, I almost always wrote about other people. In my few forays into first-person writing, even that usually focused more on other people, like a column about my grandfather (a World War II Marine Corps veteran) when the National Museum of the Marine Corps was getting ready to open at Quantico. After I was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, writing about my situation was something I had to do. Without the ability to write--to make sense of all the things that were going on in my head and body at the time, I'm almost certain I would have lost my mind. But that was a pretty extreme situation.

I've followed blogs for years--mostly those written by reporters and other professionals I admire. I've not been a big one for personal blogs. In the short time I've been an educator, I've read a few here and there, but nothing regularly. And I certainly never considered writing one until we got this assignment to blog for my graduate program. In thinking, reading about and now writing a blog, I've thought a lot about how this could be useful to me in my teaching. Others in my classes have suggested really great things, like using a blog for PLCs, to improve communication with parents, or to use it to help with training. I use our school Fusion site regularly for parent communication, and I like the idea of a blog that would allow for questions and comments (something Fusion doesn't do).

As far as using it in my teaching, I'm not sure for a couple of reasons. One is that I can't be certain that every student in my classes has a computer and internet access at home. Secondly, getting a computer lab reserved at my school practically takes an act of Congress, because there aren't nearly enough labs, and the ones that exist often have numerous machines not working or are reserved for SOL testing, which seems to be a year-long, every-day event this year. I could definitely differentiate for students who don't have computers or internet access by having them keep a journal, but that precludes the interaction/feedback component about blogs that most appeals to me. But that's also, I think, one of the challenges of blogs. A student who knows his/her work will be read by peers might be reluctant to share true thoughts and feelings, for fear of judgement. So, I'm still thinking about it.

I read "The Last Lecture" with my students, and it's an amazing book that should have the students doing some pretty deep thinking--about life and its challenges, about their futures, about death and the legacy that one leaves behind. It would be a perfect place to use blogging; I just need to figure out the best way to make it work.

My name is Laura Hutchison. I'm in my fourth year of teaching, after spending 18 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers around Virginia. I got out of the newspaper business because I had become a dinosaur. Like newspapers themselves, I'd let technology pass me by. I tried playing catch-up. I took classes in XHTML and Web design. I learned how to shoot and edit digital video, but it all seemed like it was too little too late. When my family owned newspaper (which filed for bankruptcy last week) was forced into layoffs for the first time in its history, I got scared. I would not have been in a position to get another media job because I wasn't a Web journalist. So I thought about the only other career I'd ever considered--teaching. I'd been so strongly influenced by the amazing teachers I'd had the luck of being instructed by. Maybe, just maybe, I could be that kind of teacher. At any rate, it was the only thing I could think of that I might be able to love as much as I loved being a journalist. So I entered a career-switcher and got my license.

I got my first teaching job in October 2010. I could not have even begun to imagine what a task there was in front of me. I knew my content (kinda--it had been a LONG time since I'd had to think about the different parts of speech or literary elements. And I knew HOW to write, but I wasn't all that great at teaching someone else to do something that had always come easily for me.) I realized I had a lot to learn--probably a lot more than I had to offer as a teacher. At that moment, I vowed never to be behind the 8-ball again. I would keep up with technology, learn from my peers and my students, learn from anyone, anywhere, who had something valuable to teach. So I entered grad school, and have spent the past four years (between teaching and grad school) working harder than I've ever worked in my entire life. But I've also been as fulfilled as a human being as I've ever been. (Most days, at least.)

So, I guess that's really what I care about. I care about learning--lifelong learning--for myself and for my students. I want my students to be voracious about learning. To do that, I know I need to design lessons that will speak to them, that will matter to them. If I do that, I'm not only going to teach them about the plot diagram or soliloquies. I'm going to teach them that there's something to learn from every single thing that we do, that there is no human being from whom we can't learn something. And sometimes, we even teach ourselves. And if I do that, I'll feel like I succeeded.

I got a note from a student last week. I've gotten a few in my short teaching career. This student did well in my English 9 Honors class; finished the course with a B. I also teach her in my year-long journalism class. I knew she'd enjoyed English; she was an active participant in class discussions, turned in all her homework. But, had she not written me this note, I would never have learned that I really REACHED her. She said she'd learned a lot about literature and how to be a better writer, but the most important thing I'd taught her was how to live life. Specifically that you should do things because they are the right things to do, not because someone is watching. That note meant more to me than she will ever know. It meant that I had impacted her the way some of my teachers had impacted my life. And, for that moment, I felt like I was doing something right. And, as much as I enjoyed the note, it really only motivated me to do more, be a better teacher. Because if I could make that impact on one student in one semester, maybe this semester, I can reach two students in that way.

So I'll learn more, design better lessons, reflect more on how I can do and be better. I had the amazing opportunity as a kid to work for the legendary editorial cartoonist Herblock. I now serve on the board of the foundation he started in his will. One of his quotes is a favorite, and something I think about almost every day. It is: "There's always a clean slate, a fresh sheet of paper, a waiting space, a chance to have another shot at it tomorrow. Tomorrow!"