Tag: Writing

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Five Reasons Why I Blog

 
why blog

Greg Bell, a fellow jazz-loving friend and blogger recently tagged me to post “Five Reasons Why I Blog” – a meme that circulating around the blog world. Here’s my thoughts and thanks to Greg for making me do this.

1. Blogs compensate for my lack of originality. They allow me to easily synthesize content from different sources and present it in a new context. That why I call my blog Copy / Paste.  As W. Somserset Maugham said, “…Quotation…is a serviceable substitute for wit.” (See, I borrowed again. )

2. Blogs are learning tools. With new technologies we can be creators and consumers of content. It’s time to bring teaching and learning into the 21st century.

3. Blogs connect people. I recently ran a workshop in Portland OR for the Oregon Dept of Education. It was a big group (350) and I wanted to engage their thinking and comments. In addition to using an audience response system, I created a workshop blog. Participants took a survey at the blog in advance to help shape the agenda. Their pre-workshop posts became part of my presentation. (with citation, of course). We held the workshop in a WiFi enabled convention center and attendees read and posted comments during the presentation.

4. Blogs are easy. I’ve had websites at edteck.com and peterpappas.com for nearly 10 years. They’re created with FrontPage (sorry I never learned how to write in html.) Building them was far more work than blogging.

5. Blogs are fluid.  I don’t know CSS, so making a style change at my two other domains requires me to edit every page. Blogs compensate for the thin veneer of understanding I have of technology. I recently made a new header for this blog. One edit – shows up on every page.

Since this meme is set up like a chain letter here’s where I tag other bloggers – I’ve picked some educational bloggers in various stages of their blogging career. Your turn David, Bob, Patrick, Nancy, Julie and Pat

Image credit flickr/Kristina B

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Writing the Book on Test Prep

I don’t think the answer to improving student achievement is by narrowing the curriculum to devote more time to test prep. As I said in a prior posting.. “as if being a struggling learner is not punishment enough, increasing numbers are pulled out of classes that offer hands-on learning and outlets for their creativity. What awaits them is likely “drill and kill’ that doesn’t sound like much fun for students or their teachers.” More

I’m pleased to have just concluded a project that turns test prep on its head. In this case, eighth grade students designed and published their own guide to passing the eighth grade NYS English Language Arts exam. I was joined on the project by Pat Martin. We worked with the nearby Albion Middle School. Ten sections of students spent about 6 weeks reviewing various literacy and test taking strategies with their teachers. As they did, they generated their own guide to the strategies they felt worked best. Thus learning strategies find audience and propose. Students had the opportunity to reflect on strategies and rework them for a peer audience of “seventh graders.” And don’t kids love to give each other advice!

A team of student editors from each class worked to do the final edits with the three teachers who supervised the project. Each class designed its own 100-page book using Lulu.com’s web-based, print-on-demand publishing technology.  The publication cost was about $6 per book. (color covers and interior b/w pages.) Ten editions of the guide were published and a finished book for each student author arrived about a week before the exam.  This gave students time to take pride in their accomplishments and refocus their thinking to the task of the taking the exam.

The state test is given in mid January, but it will be months before we see the final results. As Albion’s superintendent said to me – this project isn’t just about higher test scores. It’s about giving the students and their teachers a chance to see themselves as innovative creators of content, not just a passive audience. Already there is talk about starting a new test taking guide written by the seventh graders.

For more on student publishing see our website Read > Think > Write > Publish. Check my blog entries under the Commentary heading for more on students and 21st century literacy skills.

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Proficient readers may not be proficient writers

Educators have focused on developing reading programs with the assumption that reading and writing are complementary skills.

Writing Next, a recent report by Carnegie Corporation states, “Writing is sometimes seen as the ‘flip side’ of reading. It is often assumed that adolescents who are proficient readers must be proficient writers, too. If this were the case, then helping students learn to read better would naturally lead to the same students writing well. However, although reading and writing are complementary skills whose development runs a roughly parallel course, they do not necessarily go hand in hand. Many adolescents are able to handle average reading demands but have severe difficulties with writing. Moreover, the nature of the relationship between reading and writing skills changes over time (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000). Researchers know that reading and writing often draw from the same pool of background knowledge—for example, a general understanding of the attributes of texts. At the same time, however, writing differs from reading. While readers form a mental representation of thoughts written by someone else, writers formulate their own thoughts, organize them, and create a written record of them using the conventions of spelling and grammar.”  Full report here 1.4 MB pdf

New digital technologies give students the opportunity to publish high-quality books under the guidance of their teachers. I am promoting digital publishing at conferences, school-based training and my website Read > Think > Write > Publish. The power of publishing enables students to think like writers, to apply their learning strategies and to organize and express their learning.

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Read > Think > Write > Publish – The Power of Student Publishing

I’ve launched a new website Read > Think > Write > Publish to promote publishing, an activity that enables students to think like writers, to apply their learning strategies and to organize and express their learning. The site provides sample student books and writing prompts.

Students at-risk for literacy need immersion in literacy tasks, reading and writing, that replicate the real world because they are the learners who lack the schema that defines literacy in the real world. Without publishing the student does not complete the writing process so they never rise above the level of “school work” to “real work.” They never function as a writer. Literacy must be grounded in the real world to have value.

Publishing student writing encourages the reluctant writer by strengthening self-confidence, rewarding interest and promoting a positive attitude toward writing.
When students publish, they think like writers. They have to problem-solve and make decisions as writers to assume the responsibility of a published writer. This supports them as readers. If they haven’t written themselves, they have trouble analyze another writer’s work. If they have experience they know what to look for and how to evaluate what they see. Publishing is an excellent method to accomplish three central tasks:
• Understand topics thoroughly
• Actively use the information they assemble
• Move knowledge into one’s schema

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Is NCLB Narrowing the Curriculum?

A recent report by the Center on Education Policy entitled Is NCLB Narrowing the Curriculum? notes that since the passage of the NCLB, 71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school districts have reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to make more time for reading/language arts and/or math. Twenty-seven percent of the districts reported reduced instructional time in social studies. Twenty-two reported cuts in science and twenty percent reported similar cuts in art /music. I guess the thinking is – if a subject is not tested, why teach it? Or perhaps they think that reading, writing and ‘rithmetic can only happen in English or math class.

Of course these shifts in instruction fall most heavily on low performing students. As if being a struggling learner is not punishment enough, increasing numbers are pulled out of classes that offer hands-on learning and outlets for their creativity. What awaits them is likely “drill and kill’ that doesn’t sound like much fun for students or their teachers.  Daily reading, writing and application of math should be common to every class. Let music students explore the mathematical elements of rhythm and then journal what they had learned.

Educational decision makers haven’t got the news that new technologies have spawned an explosion in creativity that could be harnessed to engage and support learners. They could take a lesson from the folks in Hollywood who are using innovative techniques to shore up the declining youth film audience. New Line Cinema is tapping into the creativity of their audience to promote their new film “Take the Lead” starring Antonio Banderas as a professional dancer who volunteers to teach NYC school kids all the moves. 

The Take the Lead  website includes a do-it-yourself music video maker. The viewer gets to select from a variety of images and sound styles and create their own movie trailer. They can enter it to win free stuff – like iPods. More importantly to the filmmakers – viewers can email their digital “mash-up” to friends to show off their emerging skills a music video auteur. Viral marketing at work.

Smothering struggling readers with remedial classes isn’t the answer. Instead educators might want to talk with designers of the “Take the Lead” music video maker. They said, “the goal is to encourage consumers to make a proactive decision to engage with the content… You can’t force-feed younger movie goers with traditional top down advertising…it’s all about giving these kids our trailers, our songs and letting them take control… our assets become their assets and that’s how they become fans of the movie.” Going Unconventional to Market Movies, NY Times 4.6.06

Glad to see that someone knows that engagement beats drill and kill.

For an update on this theme click here.