Blogging is Boring??!!

Students in my classes have been blogging about their independent reading books for a few years now. I remember when we first started blogging. The students and I were agog with excitement! Most of the entries were delightfully reflective. The comments were flying back and forth.

I hesitate to say this in the open, but it’s getting, well, boring. Recently, a group of students and I were in a chat room discussing the novel The Door in the Wall. Towards the end, our conversation evolved into a general discussion of the technology we use in class. The students brought up that they were “bored” by their independent reading blogs. After the first tentative use of the B word didn’t get anyone in trouble, a number of the students agreed. They did try to put it nicely and not hurt my feelings.

Here’s the worst part, I’m with them. It feels like a drill to read and respond to the zillions of posts that have been generated and it shouldn’t. It didn’t used to. I think I know why, but I’m not sure what to do about it.

We’ve lost the spirit of discovery, the feeling that we were breaking new ground. We also lost our voices. Our reading blogs are not the conversations they used to be. Instead, they are just assigned mini-essays about the books each student is reading. They’re writing for their teacher without engaging each other in conversation. These kids love to talk to each other though, so the failure is mine, not theirs.

There are two reasons for their lack of engagement that I can identify. One is that the format for the blogs is dreadful with the software we use. Students have no opportunity to personalize their pages and project their personalities through their design. A couple of years ago, blogging was so new to this age group that it didn’t matter that the only design choices they have are font and text color. Not anymore, this lack of customization is completely inadequate for their 21^st Century visual cortexes!

The other barrier to engagement is the lack of authenticity. I can see how unnatural our class model for blogging is when I consider my own modest, but successful efforts at blogging. I don’t write my personal blog at two week intervals. Nor do I “respond to a colleague’s blog entry in 2-3 sentences” for homework. Ugh. While I wish I were more disciplined, I write when the spirit moves me, although I am for two entries a month. My responses are even more fickle. I might write voluminous comments one evening, and then become a passive reader for a week or more.

How can we blog independently and authentically? We need to comply with school rules, legalities, etc, but it has to be real and meaningful!

Reunions in the Facebook Age

I just went to my 20th reunion. I will not bore anyone with my ruminations on age.

What was fascinating was the difference I felt in connection to those people I had virtually friended in the last couple of years. I've seen pictures of their kids and know a little ,about their day-to-day lives political views, and maybe favorite books.

My university (Duke) has a pretty far-flung alumni base, so many people fly in without kids/spouses. So, when I encountered people who are friends on FB, we didn't have to have the "so, what have you been doing for the past 20 years. . . " conversation.

Even better was the connection to people I have kept more close contact with over the years. Even when you do your best to talk periodically and email, life can make it hard to feel close to someone who lives three thousand miles and a few time zones away. Facebook can make it easier.

I know this isn't the way the young whippersnappers use Facebook, but it works for me. There are no wild parties portrayed on my college friends' pages (well, mostly not). Instead, there is a lot of political commentary and many pictures of children.

Social Networking helps strengthen bonds that were already there and reconnect those that have been stretched thin.

Too many books, blogs, and tweets!

I may not have written a blog entry in a month, but. . .

I've tweeted, Ning'ed, live-blogged, chat roomed, and even been interviewed for (geek alert here: EdTechTalk's 21st Century Learning) a podcast. I also wrote two papers and took an exam, btw.

What does all this mean?

It means I've been so reflective about my personal practice that I'm not sure I can stand it much longer. Right now I feel like a total sham as a teacher and an integrationist.

Why? Well, one of my papers was to fully transcribe a one-hour lesson. Now, I've known I talk too much all my sentient life. I can't remember the first time someone said to me "can you just NOT TALK for a little while?" Ironically, I was a shy kid, so I did all my talking around my family who just wanted a little peace and quiet. All this goes to say that I was trying so hard during my recorded lesson not to talk too much. After listening to the recording and writing the transcription, guess who had the most to say during the hour? Yep, yours truly. I've got to find and buy one of those posters that says "the one doing all the talking is doing all the learning" and hang it somewhere prominent in the classroom. Sigh.

Here's another reason I feel like a sham. I gave an assignment that didn't work out. Not an epic fail, where grand lessons were learned, just a whimpering, pathetic failure. Why did we (my students and I) fail? Because, after all these years of knowing what happens when I wing it, I still failed to plan thoroughly! (See the above re--papers and exams.) We tried something new, Comic Life, as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of any aspect of medieval life by making a comic book. It seemed so appealing, so 21st Century, so cool. Surely they would get it. Did I have examples? Did I have a thorough instructions? No and no. Guess what I got back? Stick drawings with no discernible medieval connection, just some sketched in blood, gore, and fighting.

And for the final entry, we'll go to the "you really only learn something when you teach it" category. I've just written my steps to successfully completing a writing assignment in the technology rich classroom. Now, I really like these steps. They're good. So good, they are worth their own post (soon, maybe tomorrow since I can't imagine I'll want this post to be the front page for long). I'll be presenting this list in a couple of weeks at a workshop, and therein lies the rub. I've never written this down before! Seriously, it's just the looming, ahem, approaching workshop that has made me reflect enough to pull together documentation of what I believe to be most powerful about the writing teaching I've done. Sigh yet again.

Actually, I'm writing this post tonight just because I can't bear the thought of going a whole month without a post. Maybe it would have been better to just let the month go by, but I don't think so.

I'm looking for a great closing now, but none is coming to me, so I'll just put in a plug for one of my other blogs. If you have children under 6, I've been keeping a blog as a class assignment. My premise is that you don't need to feel guilty for not getting a Leapster, Tag, whatever electronic gadget that will teach your kid to read. There's a lot you can do with your child to promote reading and reading readiness besides the "just read to your child" that we hear. So, check it out if you have time, I welcome comments, suggestions, ideas, etc.

Swimming Without Drowning

I went to a session at a conference recently with the above title. The session was led by a second year teacher (only halfway through her second year!) and the title referred to ways early career teachers could use technology (specifically web 2.0 technology) successfully. The session was, in a word, brilliant.

The leader took us through a number of strategies and tools she'd used in the classroom successfully and they were interesting and well-designed. What was brilliant though, was the philosophy that this young teacher has already developed well enough to be able to articulate it. Some highlights for me from the session:


Don't be afraid of the epic fail. If you type define: epic into Google (yes, you can do that, you get a page full of definitions from various web dictionaries/references) one of the first phrases to appear is "of heroic proportions." In other words, an epic fail is one for the books, in which the role of hero is played by a teacher. If you set out to write an epic with your students, even if you fail, there will be reflection, discussion, thinking going on. Your students will see you struggle, fail, and think about what to do next time. Isn't that what we want for our students? Lifelong learning? Persistence in the face of difficulty? That ephemeral "pick yourself up, dust off, and try again" ness? So why do we let fear keep us from trying something new? I'm not just talking about technology here either!

Create a window into your classroom. Blogging rocks. I already knew that. My students blog about what they read, their projects, and discuss their posts with each other. I personally blog in three different places for entirely different purposes, not counting the occasional Ning blog post. What I haven't done though, is start a lively, student-run blog with my students. Kinda, sorta knew I wanted to, but just haven't gotten it done. This phrase "a window into the classroom" hooked me. So, the infrastructure is in place, the students are invited and just wait until spring break is over!

Cultivate support. Duh, right? But so easy to forget. We're all about PLNs now, but that's only part of having a strong, collaborative support network. A supportive community doesn't just happen. More importantly, they don't stay strong without regular nurturing. Venting over lunch in the teachers lounge, while it has its place, is not a support network.

Ever since this session, I've been thinking about it in conjunction with a session I attended earlier this month at NAIS that was led by Peter Gow. Truly an illuminating session (I don't blog the boring ones). Peter focused on revitalizing veteran teachers. Peter's session was pretty crowded. Unfortunately, there were only four attendees at the session led by this brilliant early-career teacher. If more of the veteran teachers I saw walking around the conference were attending sessions like Swimming Without Drowning, there might be less of a need for sessions on how to revitalize them!

Imaginative rehearsal or the second half of books.

I've been thinking more and more about the literacy part of my "literacy, technology, learning" mantra. This may be because I'm nearing the end of my reading specialist coursework.

From page 44 of Kelly Gallagher's Readicide: = "struggling readers who do not read voraciously will never catch up." I've been thinking about the simplicity of this line since I first read it. There is abundant research available on the gaps among and between the various groups of children who enter kindergarten.

So how do we get children to read at all, let alone read "voraciously?" One thing that is clear, we must make time for this reading during the school day, we can't just say "go home and read." What must we give up during the school day to allow substantial reading? Gallagher has some suggestions that I want to start implementing tomorrow. He talks about the Article of the Week program he instituted when he realized that none of his students could identify the vice president of the US. Straightforward, doable, and ready for class tomorrow. I really can't recommend this book enough.

So, back to the title of this post, "Imaginative Rehearsal." In Influencer, Patterson et. al. discuss the fact that the most powerful method of behavior change is through experience. While direct experience is best, vicarious experience can be nearly as motivational. I know that film can have enormous impact on viewers, but I would argue that it is in books that good readers can best immerse themselves and truly become someone else for a while. Gallagher calls this an "imaginative rehearsal." I hadn't heard the term before, but it is perfect for capturing the ways in which reading a good book can help the reader become a better person. Repeatedly imagining oneself in the role of hero can lead to courage when life brings a challenge that calls for it.

How then, do we choose the books we ask students to read? If they are too slight, yet engaging, we may get the voraciousness we seek but at what cost? Clique books come to mind. What impact does light reading have on students' chances for imaginative rehearsal? When I read Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell, I was fully engaged in imaginative rehearsal. The book is an achingly beautiful story set in WWII Italy and centered around the fact that the Italians largely did their best to protect the Jews in their population from the Nazis. The book demands the reader think "could I, would I" over and over. Studies such as the Milgrim experiment from the 60's show how inhumanely humans can behave. Reading literature that asks us to be better than we are must be a part of education if we are to rise above our baser instincts.

There's an interesting debate going on in several threads on the English Companion ning on this very topic. Is it only the canonical classics that can best inspire deep thinking?

I'm not actually finished with either book yet, but I'm so engrossed I had to share. . .

Half Book Reviews

As in reviews of books I haven't finished yet, but have me thinking so much I need to write about them.

I'm reading a book that I didn't want to read. It landed on my desk (while I was away, sneaky) sporting a post-it with my name in big letters. An email arrived shortly thereafter, informing me that I needed to have read the book before an all-day meeting coming up in just a few days. All this combined to make me feel resistant to opening the cover and I usually am thrilled when I get a new book. The book is titled The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner.

Now that I'm halfway through (I'm such a reader I can't NOT read an assigned book) I am fascinated and thoroughly engrossed. I do feel the title is completely unfortunate. It implies that the book is going to bemoan the difference in test scores among American students and their counterparts in China and India, a la 2 Million Minutes.

Instead, Wagner efficiently describes some of the biggest flaws in education today and then goes on to actually detail a plan for fixing them. More interestingly, Wagner focuses on schools that most Americans would describe as working. Successful as in suburban public schools and expensive private schools with well-educated and well-paid parent populations. Schools that send almost all their graduates to college.

In one section, Wagner criticizes the formulas for writing that students are taught, then use to get 4's and 5's on AP tests, by pointing out that once students get beyond high school they will not be asked to write for 25 minutes on a topic they've never seen. I recently Diigo'd a page on the UNC writing center website that tells students to unlearn the 5 paragraph essay. I would take it a step further and contrast formula writing with, well, anything actually published that people read voluntarily. I'll never forget one of my professors telling me "don't assign anything you won't want to read in 72 versions."

At the moment, I'm deep into Wagner's thoughts on teacher education and improvement of instruction. Many teachers will be uncomfortable with what Wagner says, but he's right when he says that "many teachers and principals still think of themselves as independent subcontractors." He has some interesting ideas about improving instruction that involve videotapes of lessons and constructive, analytic discussion. Sounds intense, frightening, and productive.

The other book that I'm halfway through is Readercide by Kelly Gallagher. Gallagher argues that schools and teachers have destroyed students enjoyment of reading by simultaneously over and under teaching reading, then testing students within an inch of their lives.

I'm not the only one blogging about this important book right now. Bill Ferriter has the entire book available for download and hosted an interview and voicethread conversation with Gallagher. So, instead of going on, I'll just say that reading Readicide is making me really sad and angry for children who deserve better.

On a final note, I found a website that evaluates the reading level of a blog! Not sure what formula they are using, but I was glad to know that my blog was written at a high school level.

TV Reviews

Time for some little ideas!

By little, I mean narrowly focused, not unimportant!

I've been frustrated lately by reading assignments that are way too difficult for students. I bet they have been even more frustrated than I have! This is particularly difficult when content area teachers are doing their best to bring in authentic reading material such as current news in the field. The problem is that such material is written at a level that precludes independent reading. Instead, students end up needing a great deal of support.

When teachers assign reading material, sometimes it is difficult to know until after students have done the reading whether the material is too easy or too advanced. Here are two tools that can make evaluating the reading level of text a little easier.

For a rough estimate, Microsoft Word has the option to evaluate readability statistics as part of the grammar and spelling check. You turn this feature on by clicking on the MS Office button in the upper left hand corner, clicking on Word Options, choosing "proofing", and checking the box that says "show readability statistics."



Copy and paste or type about 100 words of the text into MS Word and save. Then, when you are in a document, go to the reviewing toolbar and run the spelling and grammar check. At the very end of the check, you get a window with a Flesch-Kinkaid reading level. It's not perfect, and I personally think it skews a little low, particularly if the text has a lot of dialogue. However, it is a great quick and easy check that a reading selection isn't way off base.

The second tool is a program that you can download called Reading Rater that is free. It's nice to sometimes do a cross check between the two, but I have found them to be consistent.

Hope these are useful for you!