cyborgsdodance

To continue with my previous thinking on the wiki as a teaching tool, I've decided to try to use the wiki as a collaborative ongoing text. Much inspired by Matt Barton's students from St. Cloud State University do with their course wiki Rhetoric and Composition: A Guide for the College Writer, I would like to have the teachers develop a wiki as a guide for the middle school and high school writers. What exactly will be included will be up to the teachers. I will suggest some catagories and provide some examples, but then they will add to the wiki what they feel is helpful.

I value the idea of exploring online resources and then sharing the gems with others much like active bloggers do. I tried to promote this last year with having the students include one "resource link" per week to their professional blogs. While this was effective in getting the students to explore online spaces for writing resources, it wasn't as helpful in terms of sharing the gems. While the few that visited the individual's blog were able to benefit, posting the links on the the wiki, under organized catagories would make the resources more accessable to a wider audience, which taps into the collaborative potential of the wiki.

Some catagories that I'm thinking about so far are...

Researching
Prewriting
Drafting
Revising (genre ... )
Gathering Feedback (peer review ... conferencing ... partner share)
Editing (grammar... conventions ... mechanics)
Publishing
Assessment
Writer Identity (gender... race ... class in writing)
Testing -- The 5 Paragraph essay

This is just a start. I hope to add more ideas and examples of such collaborative wikis as I come accross them.

Posted by Candance Doerr at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As I prepare to work with preservice English teachers this coming spring, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to use different interactive software such as blogs and wikis.

I have a pretty good idea how I plan to use blogs. Last year I had students create and maintain indivual professional blogs. Some students told me that visiting and comment on each others' blogs was the first time that they were able to interact with their classmates ideas. So, I plan to do something very similar to the profressional weblogs.

My concern in writing now is to explore the wiki as a writing tool. I used the wiki this past summer with practicing teachers as part of the Minnesota Writing Project's Summer Invitational Institute. We used the wiki as a space to collaborative engage and write about books that we were reading in small groups. While collaboration was the goal of the wiki, I don't know how much this actually happened. My hope was that the groups would use the wiki to gather and link online resources and perhaps post comments and questions about the book. Then, I thought they'd actually sit down to collaboratively write, making decisions together on content, voice, and examples. From the feedback I gained, it seemed that most groups just devided the task among people. So rather than working collaboratively to create meaning, the group members worked individually on similar content.

What was a beautifly example of collaborative work were the final projects that the teachers presented about their book's. As a group, they needed to decide on what ideas to focus and how to present the material in an engaging way for the rest of the institute participants.

With this is mind, I'm trying to think about how I can restructure the book club reading responsibilities in a way to promote this collective problem solving. What are my goals, and how does the wiki meet these goals? These are the questions I need to think about.

to be continued...

Posted by Candance Doerr at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here lies my attempt to use a graphic organizer to organize my thinking. Inspired by how Krista Kennedy's students were "transforming text" with Comiclife to map out content, I decided to try some of the visual options and sounds effects for myself. I enjoyed the sound effects, especially the stretching sounds, that accompanied my movements of text bubbles across the page.

Sounds aside, however, I actually felt hindered in my ability to think through my ideas. In fact, when I finished I felt farther from my topic than when I started. I admit that this may have nothing to do with Comiclife. Maybe what this reveals is my dependence on the pen and paper to process through the initial stages of writing. I may be a digital native in some aspects of composition, but definitely not in terms of digital brainstorming.

Posted by Candance Doerr at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My experience researching about Dinkytown for our collaborative wiki project started out with some informal Google searches, which resulted in pretty much the same links that everyone else had found and already added to the wiki. Another obstacle for me was figuring out what I wanted to focus on for my research. Knowing that we would eventually turn our research findings into some form of a video blog entry increased the stakes in terms of process and audience. It’s one thing to throw words up onto the screen and another to weave together sound, image, and text to create some cohesive narrative. For some reason the fact that it will be a video makes the sense of audience seem larger and less forgiving.

Anxieties aside, I finally decided to “write what I know” and do a feature on Cumming’s Books, an independent, used-book store where I used to work. Focusing on something I already knew, allowed me to reallocate my energies to the actual research and production process.

Articulating how this research unfolded is somewhat difficult considering I’ve never researched with a visual end-product in mind, which is something to keep in mind as I consider assigning a similar project to my students. Some of my questions include…

To what extent did images influence my research question?
How much did that desired image or mood influence what data I gathered?
To what extent is there a visual discourse or grammar already shaping how I view my topic?
Will my images convey the same depth for the viewers that they contain for me?
How will I use language to project meaning into images and vice verse?

While I still fumble in my attempts to answer these questions, I’ve found Jason Ranker’s (English Journal, 97.1) description of fifth graders’ digital video production to be a helpful start. In his case study, he describes the literacy practices involved in video composition/production as moving “markedly into the visual realm” (2007, p. 78).

Much like the students in Ranker’s study, my reading of online texts was nonlinear, a navigating from one site to the next via a network of hyperlinked texts. McNabb et al. (2005) describe this type of buffet reading as requiring the reader to quickly evaluate the “value, sufficiency, relevancy and validity” of information in order to filter and sift through various sources. I don’t know how well I was able to evaluate the sites I visited, but I would agree that my clicking through sites was an attempt to move through the enormous amounts of energy. Furthermore, knowing that my end-product would be visual, influence my evaluation of these sources. For example, some sources did not have very informative text, yet I found the images to be helpful.
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See also my other explorations in online inquiry...

my research wiki, nonikwe's rabbit hole, devoted to digital literacies. I just started this wiki this month. My hope is that it will keep me organized.

(Below is the product of a new feature I just discovered, wherein I can link articles directly to my blog at the click of a button, while I'm doing research using the university databases/indexes. I don't fully comprehend the utility of this, but I'm sure it will come in handy eventually.)

Designing Meaning with Multiple Media Sources: A Case Study of an Eight-Year-Old Student's Writing Processes

Author: Ranker Jason J
From: Research in the teaching of English
Date: 20075
Volume: 41
Issue: 4
ISSN: 0034-527X
Pages: 402-434

Posted by Candance Doerr at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, my search for a good documentary vlog, inspired by recently seeing Ken Burns, was unsuccessful. That said, I know they are out there and I intend to find one. In the meantime, I have made a list of some of the blogs that I stumbled upon. I've listed them here for different reasons. They all have a different voice. What exactly I mean by voice when dealing with multimodal texts is still undeveloped--a concept I hope to explore more throughout the next few months.

If I'd have to choose a favorite at this point it would be pouringdown because of its artistic play with images. I feel that the vlog's writer is really trying to re-see things through his camera. I suppose most filmmakers are trying to do this. Also, this vlog features some videos that use extensive voice overs, which get me thinking a lot about how video composition might be used to motivate writing--writing being what you do to brainstorm and plan out a video. To get a feel for what I mean, check out this video "feverdream."

In terms of a vlog that I feel serves as a mentor text, I am drawn to Mom's Brag Vlog I love the way she takes short clips of footage and turns them into gifts for her family and friends, all the while compiling an archive of memories for her daughters growing up. See for example the short video "Telephone". I've been trying to do some of my own memory archiving of mine and my son's relationship. I really enjoy the process of making little videos or slide shows of him. The process of choosing images and music, or deciding what footage to cut and what footage to foreground really slows down my thinking about him and who he is as a little person. Everybody tells me that before I know it he will be going to school and then GRADUATING from school. Making the videos allows me to reflect on what is happening right now in his life. In some cases it actually allows me to better appreciate the little things, such as new words, diaper rash, dinner time, which any parent can say is a messy ordeal.

I'm currently working on a little video called "Pizza." I hope to have it finished and able to post within the next week. All of this play with video composing and editing helps me to better understand the process. Hopefully, it will make me better able to study and teach video composition. In the meantime, I'm having so much fun.

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Vlog sites:
Minnesota Stories
(personal picks include: Video Haiku, schmlog,Vlog Dan)

pouringdown (Daniel Liss' vlog)
seven maps (video assignments completed while visiting Montreal)
Mom's Brag Vlog
karmagrrrl (older archives)
90 seconds of Dave

Discussion of Vlogs:

The Film of Tommorow
loaded pun
Henry Jenkins' YouTube and the Vaudeville Aestetic

Posted by Candance Doerr at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As I look back on my recent completion of the Minnesota Writing Project's 17th annual summer institute I am drawn to the words of photographer and artist Andy Goldsworthy. Below he describes his process of collaborating with nature.

I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn. I might have walked past or worked there many times. Some places I return to over and over again, going deeper--a relationship made in layers over a long time. Staying in one place makes me more aware of change. I might give up after a while. My perception of a place is often so frustratingly limited. The best of my work, sometimes the result of much struggle when made, appears so obvious that it is incredible I didn't see it before. It was there all the time.

From the Introduction to A Collaboration with Nature

It is Goldsworthy's description of his learning, his process, as a "relationship made in layers over a long time" that keeps returning to me. Although he is describing his interaction with the materials and place he is working with in preparation for the photo, I feel these words also are fit for describing the writing process and and the process of learning that occurs in human relationships overtime. It is this focus on continual process, returning "over and over again, going deeper" that I feel is so powerful about the model of the writing institute.

It truly is not like other classroom learning experiences, which perhaps focus more on polished product. Instead, day after day we were working together in groups whether for writing, reading, or teaching and working through our thoughts. I have not had many opportunities to slow down and enjoy the process for itself. The institute forced me to do this. Daily I wrote. I wrote frivolous vignettes and playful scenes along side more serious inquiries. Then when I thought my product was ready for delivery, my writing group would reign me in to return once again to my writing, my voice, my words.

When I think about my final products for the summer institute (a wiki book review and a photo blog), I'm not all that impressed. Yet when I think about my process of revisiting my work through engaging with others, I see my relationship with the product as very "layered."

This hieghtened focus on process is just beginning for me, especially as I begin to look at digital writing as an outlet for process, making transparent the thinking that goes into product. These thoughts are all still in their infancy. I hope to develop them more here.

Posted by Candance Doerr at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To the participants and support staff that make the MWP possible...

“I’ve heard it said, that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn…”
from the Broadway musical WICKED

"Tribute/Thank You"

Bursting with color,
energy, compassion,
impatience, gentleness.

Changing with curiosity –
growing, responding,
believing, attempting.

Amazing in delicacy,
vibrancy, mystery,
intricacy, vulnerability.

Offering with courage,
hope, boldness,
fear, tears.

Gifts.

(“Tribute/Thank You” and attached photos by Ann Moeller – July 28-29, 2007.
These photos were taken in New Ulm’s Flandrau State Park.)

Posted by Candance Doerr at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Upon first viewing this vid, created by professor of anthropology Michael Wesh, I was taken in by the innovative presentation of text as unfixed, maleable, and alinear. He presents this new form of writing as changing how we conceive of notions that we otherwise consider fixed such as identity, authorship, and love. For the most part, I agree with Wesh's claim that this new form of text, which signifies as much in its medium as in its content is making more tansparent the fluidity of meaning. Also important to include, however, are the following response vids, which open discussion about notions of accessability and text that are left out of Wesh's production. Overall, I find the three vids together present a thoughtful inquiry on digital writing, its potentials and limitations.

Web 2.O ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Re: Web 2.O ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
This vid focuses mostly on accessibility.

Re: Web 2.O ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
This vid challenges Wesh's claim that "text" as we know it is changing by presenting text not as changing but as reproduced as simulacra through different media in a hyperreal ways (perhaps ?--I need to view this one a few more times. A recent obituary I just read on Jean Baudrillard may be over-influencing my interpretation)

Posted by Candance Doerr at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Rocket to the Moon" (1971) Romare Bearden
The composite, pastiche style of Bearden reminds me much of multigenre writing, which emphasizes more a collective understanding rather than a unified truth.

Below are some resources to help incorporate multigenre writing and "narrative thinking" into the work we do with words.

Websites:
"Your Multigenre Web: Everything you need to know to succeed"
This website provides an extensive list of genre types with descriptions and some examples. Also there are many classroom application models for implimenting multigenre papers into curriculum such as rubric, project calendar, sample table of contents, prologue, epilogue etc.
http://mshogue.com/ce9/multi_genre/multigenre.htm

Example MultiGenre Projects:
"Silver Screen Dreams" research paper on film: Download file
History unit on Vietnam: Download file
"Loretta" a multigenre film from youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF34HVuXdyc

Sample MultiGenre Assignment Sheets:
MultiGenre Research Paper --Download file
MultiGenre Fiction Writing assignment --Download file
MultiGenre MultiModal Metaphor for Writing --Download file

Sample MultiGenre Writing Tasks (Perfect for MiniLessons):
These and more are available in Barry Lane's Reviser's Toolbox
"The Tabloid Research Paper" --Download file
"Top Ten Lists" --Download file
"Research Recipes"--Download file
"For Sale Ad" --Download file
"The 'How To' Poem" --Download file
"Want Ads" --Download file

Posted by Candance Doerr at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The 6 Traits of writing has become a widely used terminology in the world of writing instruction.

I know that the Minnesota Writer's Project (MWP) is a big advocate of the traits. I myself do not know yet how I feel about them. My first reaction was to view them as commerical curriculum in a box. However, I realize now that some of that had to do with the poor quality of presentation of some of the websites I was viewing and not actually representative of the 6 Traits. My current take on the traits is more positive. I now see the uniform terminology as helpful for students to lable features of writing so that they have a sense of where to engage with revisions. The traits also provide a set of criteria for teachers use during assessment.

The 6 Traits are very similar to what I have been doing in my writing instruction the past 5 years. I just wasn't using the same key terms. I still have much to learn, but I look forward to learning more as I work with the Culham and Spandel texts I plan to use in a course I am teaching this semester.

Helpful 6 Traits links:

NNWP (Northern Nevada Writer's Project):
http://www.writingfix.com/Traits.htm

6 Traits Space (collaborative blog with listing of texts to use when teaching 6 traits)
http://6traits.blogspot.com/

Dennis O'Conner's blog devoted to resources for the 6 Traits
http://6-traits.blogspot.com/

Other 6Traits Resources:
Rubric -- Download file

Posted by Candance Doerr at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The following is a list of books, some known, some not, that may be of interest today or tomorrow.

PERSONAL rating system :
1-3 (3 being best)= theoretical presentation
A-C (A being best)= practical application to life/teaching
NA (not available) = I’m not familiar enough to rate the book. It has been recommended to me by someone.

TEACHING WRITING (K12):

Blasingame, J. 7 Bushman, J. (2005) Teaching Writing in Middle and Secondary Schools. (rating=NA)

Burkhardt, R. (2003) Writing for Real: Strategies for Engaging Adolescent Writers. (rating=NA)

Olson, C. B. (2003) The Reading/Writing Connection: Strategies for teaching and learning in the Secondary Classroom.

DIGITAL WRITING:

Wysocki, Anne Francis; Self, Cynthia; Sirc, Geoffrey. (2004). Writing New Media
Aimed for college composition instructors. Theoretical chapters with practical, sequenced lesson plans for application. (rating=3A)

TECHNOLOGY AND COGNTION:

Clark, Andy. (2003). Natural Born Cyborgs
A fun read that explores how technology expands our traditional sense of intelligence. The book's central premise is to complicate thinking as occurring only within the mind, or what Clark calls the "skin skull sac." (rating=4C)

Hayles, Kathrine. Writing Machines & My Mother Was a Computer (rating=NA)
I have yet to read these books. They were both recommended to me by Thom Swiss because of my interest in digital writing/literacies. I look forward to the opportunity to read them perhaps this summer.

Posted by Candance Doerr at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)