Changes in Teaching Writing from EduCon

This past weekend, I attended EduCon at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy in which teachers, librarians, education professors, think tank members, app developers, even representatives from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Technology came together to discuss innovations happening in education. While attending a number of sessions on innovations in the reading/writing classroom, which at EduCon are called conversations, I was fortunate enough to connect with two very dynamic SLA teachers -Larissa Pahomov and Meenoo Rami.  The session that Larissa lead on Sunday focused on the reading/writing workshop model, and conversations that started in that section have stuck with me all week as I reflect on changes that I would like to make in my own classroom.

Photo by vanhookc

As a National Writing Project fellow, Larissa's approach to teaching writing is similar to what I try to foster in my classroom, a way that is being questioned more and more in light of the increase in state-based high-stakes testing, especially given that student performance on these state tests will now be included in teacher evaluations, at least in Pennsylvania. Over the course of my teaching career, I have applied he ideas of the writing workshop model while teaching emerging writers. What this looks like is a classroom that engages students in writing for authentic audiences, writing in response to texts and to events, encouraging student choice, encouraging publication outside the classroom, all those higher-order thinking activities that research has shown encourages and engages students in a more thoughtful level of interaction with texts. I am especially interested in the doors that technology opens up when it comes to reading and writing with students. This has been my passion.

As a beginning teacher I was heavily steeped in holistic models of teaching which encouraged authentic assessment, formative assessment, differentiation, and student choice. Technology has allowed educators to help students understand that reading and writing are not activities done only in the classroom. I am interested in how teachers are leveraging technology to connect students with authentic audiences for their writing endeavors. But also I wonder how digital writing is changing how students understand texts.

Amanda Lyons' Visuals for Change from EduCon

The Pew Research Foundation just released a study that found just under a quarter of Americans didn’t even open a book last year. Yet, the content that is both being produced and consumed online rises exponentially. People are reading, though they may not be reading traditional texts. Students are reading and writing online. But have our models for teaching writing changed. What does this mean for how we teach young writers? I think it would be interesting to interview and perhaps survey secondary students from a couple of different locals school about their reading and writing habits outside of school and connect that with how students feel they have learned about writing. My guess is that many teachers use traditional printed texts as models for their student writing, asking students to practice the more traditional five-paragraph format of writing as this is how students are assessed on state and academic achievement tests. Yet since more and more of the text that is produced is digital, hyperlinked, and dynamic, shouldn’t the writing that we do in the classroom reflect the type of writing that is actually happening in our world? Which students feel more confident about their writing experiences and abilities - those that learn writing using traditional text models or those that write using digital mentor texts? I sense a research project for myself.

But don't misunderstand me; I am not advocating the death of paperback books in schools.  An e-reader cannot replace the feeling of a well-worn, well-loved book, whose pages are annotated with connections, definitions, and reminders of readings past.  Helping students understand how to navigate and enjoy a good printed book is a skill.  However, what I am advocating is that we need to bring the digital texts that students are also reading into the classroom, hold them up for inspection and help students become critical readers of these texts in thes same way we do traditional texts. But this is not a new suggestion.  Troy Hicks has been talking and writing about this for years!  And like Hicks, I agree that students should be using these digital texts as mentor texts for their own writing.

Oh, there's an idea for an e-book - The Digital Mentor Text: Teaching Writing 2.0.  So who wants to help write it with me?

Reflections on Connected Learning from EduCon

Often times we hear the term "Connected Learning" thrown around educational workshops and blogs in conjunction with building our students' digital literacies, and often it is used to refer to those connected online interactions that we attempt to foster with our learners. However, participating in today's EduCon conversation hosted by Christina Cantrill, Danielle Filipiak, Larissa Pahomov, Meenoo Rami, Robert Rivera-Amezola, and virtually by Antero Garcia has me reconsidering the term. My notion of connected learning is changing. Although connected learning does have much to do with fostering collaborative connections, it is not simply an online process. Connected learning is something that we do with our hands, with every part of us. We take the time to connect with what is happening in our world, learn from it, and connect with interested others. Connected learning is hands on learning. It is the type of participatory learning that humanizes what happens in the classroom. But how does it do this?

Today's presenters shared with us a graphic from the Connected Learning group outlining how connected learning empowers students. "Connected learning is a model of learning that holds out the possibility of reimagining the experience of education in the information age. It draws on the power of today's technology to fuse young people's interests, friendships, and academic achievement through experiences laced with hands-on production, shared purpose, and open networks." I know what you may be thinking, sounds a bit lofty, right? Here's what struck me during some of the smaller group discussions that we had during this session: this is why I became a teacher. I've been interested in connected learning, or some variation of it, my entire teaching career.

I started my teacher education program in 1994 when the talk of the time was holistic portfolio assessment which gave students opportunities to revise and select their best work for assessment. Portfolios provided students an opportunity to view their work over time, reflect on their growth as writers, and have choice over how and on what they were assessed. This is the start of connected learning, the foundation. When ownership over the ideas, in this case writing, remains in the hands of students, learners are empowered.

As I neared the end of my undergraduate program and student teaching loomed on the horizon, the professor of my Strategies for Teaching Writing course connected each of us would-be teachers with one of his high school English students. In a sort of pen pal relationship, we helped our students revise pieces they were working on and sent them creative pieces of our own for feedback. We weren't just writing mentors for this group of high school students. We were writing partners. And it is here where I really started to develop my interest in what was then called Authentic Assessment, giving students opportunities to have their work viewed by real audiences. This too is a component of connected learning; giving students real purpose for their work and a specific audience to tailor that work to not only engages students more deeply in their task but also helps students feel empowered.

When finally I found myself in my own classroom after a couple of moves and career detours, one of the big issues my English department discussed was student choice. Where are we fostering student engagement and differentiation through student choice? Not long after beginning my first teaching job, I attended the annual NCTE conference in Pittsburgh where I saw Carlin Borsheim and Robert Petrone speak about how they fostered student choice through a local action research project in which students selected an issue facing their local community, interviewed local experts, and put together research essays and demonstrations based on their findings. Their presentation changed the entire way I thought about teaching. You mean I didn't have to give students a list of topics? I didn't need to outline every step along the way that students needed to complete? When I came back to my tenth grade students following that conference, we ditched our traditional research unit. Instead, I told students that in the real world research was done to affect change, so that's what we needed to do. What did you want to change? Research became action. As I teach a non-Western literature course, the only stipulation that I gave students was that they needed to pick an issue facing a non-western country and do something about it. Along the way they researched, wrote project proposals, and typed up lengthy, citation-heavy essays about their topics, but the culminating piece was that they needed to do something with their topic outside the walls of our classroom. They needed to adapt their research to a specific audience. And over the last six or so years, students have fundraised to build a computer lab for a high school in Kabul, collected school supplies for a secondary school in Haiti, put together a bake sale to support an orphanage in Kolkuta, started a student club to raise awareness about genocide in Darfur, crafted articles for the student paper, put together web pages and Facebook groups, and so much more. And this, too, seems to be at the heart of Connected Learning. In fact, as described by the Connected Learning group, "Interests foster the drive to gain knowledge and expertise. Research has repeatedly shown that when the topic is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes." And this was certainly true when I switched from teaching the more traditional research paper. But, I didn't reach every student. Some students were not interested in issues taking place so far away from home.

@plugusin reflects on EduCon

So this fall, after participating in AJ Juliani's MOOC to learn with other teachers about 20% time projects, I knew I needed to teach research writing differently. Research? What students get excited to write a research paper? So instead of writing the ubiquitous research essay about bullying or problems facing students in Afghanistan, my students and I started 20% time projects in which 20% of our week (one class day each week) was dedicated to researching a topic that students don't ordinarily have time or access to research in the traditional school setting. My 10th graders learned to quilt, how to film a documentary, how to write a screenplay, how to write code, how to decorate a cake, how to start a business, and so much more. And as a part of their research, they needed to interview an expert in the field. We could not have done this without the help of Twitter and Google Docs. We created a spreadsheet with all the student topics and their request for people to interview. I tweeted it out, and within a few days we had a video game script writer at Bethesda Games to interview, a master cake decorator who appeared on Food Network, published authors, television production managers, photographers - all of whom connected with us virtually using Twitter, Google Drive, and email. And this is where it all came together for me - holistic grading, authentic assessments, differentiation, and student choice. Connected learning. It is not often when a teacher has students rushing into class asking if today was a research day, begging for more time to produce pitch videos, conduct interviews, and practice for presentations. And throughout this process, students were writing...a lot! Formal proposals, weekly blog posts, emails requesting and then thanking interviewees, reflection posts on interviews - my students wrote more and more often as part of this research than had previous students. And while I did not require them to write what would be considered a traditional research essay, many of them did in order to prepare themselves for presentations and speeches that they would later deliver. And along the way, we shared all parts of our research through our class blogs and shared Google Drive folder, which meant we could see each other's thinking every step of the way. We were models and mentors for each other. This is connected learning.

But how I got to this point, as you can see, did not happen overnight or even over the course of one year. So we must be patient with those new to this idea of connected learning, offer support along the way, and as Larissa Pahomov pointed out in our session today, remember that this is not an additive model of education. We are not adding one more thing to our curriculums. We are reimagining how we can teach the same skills that we have been teaching in a way that connects and empowers learners.

We Could Use Your Expertise!

A week ago I shared a bit about the 20% Time Research Projects that my tenth grade students are putting together.  One day each week, about 20% of our weekly class time, we will be using researching  topics of the student's choice. But this project is not just about researching…it is about doing something with what you learn.  To complete this project successfully students will:

1. Pick a topic they are passionate about, something they want to learn. Students may work alone or in small groups of no more than four.
2. Find a book on their topic to guide their learning.
3. Pitch their project idea in a project proposal to the class for topic approval. Students will submit both a written proposal and produce a video proposal to be posted to our class site for our community of learners to vote on.
4. Connect with an expert on your topic to interview.
5. Blog each Friday reflecting on their progress. Each post should also incorporate reflections on how their selected book is guiding the research.
6. Produce something – a presentation, a writing piece, a show – to share with people outside of our classroom.
7. Reflect on what they have learned in a TED-style talk.

At this point, students have selected their topics and many of put together their written proposals and pitch videos.  They are selecting their mentor texts over the next couple of days and identifying experts to interview.  And this is where we could use your help!

As you can see in our spreadsheet, I have students working on a wide variety of topics - everything from writing horror novels and screenplays to helping the local homeless population.  I would be grateful if you would consider taking a look at this list of topics and think about how you might be able to help.  If you are an expert or know of one, please add your name and contact information to the appropriate box.  Over the course of the next week, my students will contact you to share interview questions.

My students and I cannot thank you enough for taking time to support this project but know that we are indebted to you for your help! Please click on this link to support our research.

Students Excited About Research?!

I must confess that I might be just as excited as my tenth grade student!  Just before Thanksgiving, I introduced our second quarter research project.  I've never seen a group of students so excited about doing research!  Our research project, called a 20% time project, has students using 20% of our English class time each week to work on research of their choice.  The idea stems from a practice that the 3M company and Google have been using for years and gained traction as more and more people read Daniel Pink’s book Drive.  Pink, a former speech writer for Al Gore turned author, cites an idea that started with the 3M company and was expanded by Google.  Google encourages its employees to spend one day each work week, 20 percent of their work time, focusing on their own projects.  Why?  Well, it turns out that when people have autonomy over their work, time to master their skills, and a clear purpose, they are more motivated to learn.  And scientific studies and research supports this claim. In fact, Google’s philosophy of 20 percent time is how we now have Gmail! So students in our tenth grade English class have to opportunity to research anything...yes, anything!

Working either individually or in small groups, students will be completing a series of research tasks, including writing a formal project proposal, putting together a project pitch video, blogging their progress each week, reading a text connected with their research, interviewing an expert, and producing something to share their research with an audience outside of our classroom.   This is not simply a research paper.  Rather, once students finish the research phase of this project, they must do something with their new found knowledge.  Students will be creating products and presentations (either individually or in small groups) that will extend beyond the classroom, such as documentary videos for our school's weekly television program, web pages, pamphlets, newspaper or magazine editorials, an article for our school newspaper, letters, public speaking presentations, fund raising, music, plays…or whatever we can think of to best make our community aware of our research topics.  The idea is to reach an audience outside the doors of our classroom in order to share our research.

And the ideas that students have started to research are incredibly diverse!  I have students looking into:

• how to create a documentary film about Philadelphia,
• how to write a screenplay,
• how to start a cupcake company,
• learning quilting,
• creating an app,
• how to build a computer,
• learning to play hockey,
• what it takes to become a National Geographic photographer,
• becoming a certified in search and rescue,
• starting a new student club,
• learning C++ computer language,
• putting together a documentary on a young professional dancer,
• blogging about different psychological and social issues faced by teens, and
• how to become a horror writer, and so, so, so many more ideas!

As a teacher, I never expected to come into class having students begging for time to work on their research! Interested in learning more? Check out the playlist below that I shared with my students:

Kite Runner Connections

Connecting with Tech

A sea of eager faces stare back at me, pens poised in anticipation. Then, from the back of the room a hand shoots up and a call echoes forth, "Will I need to include this in my paper?" As a tenth grade English teacher in a large suburban school, I struggle with encouraging my students to write authentically, to bring their connections, their voice into their written work. But when students write for real audiences, they begin to see themselves as writers. Writing for a real audience gives students a sense of purpose for their writing. By ensuring that our students have opportunities to have their writing read by real readers, we can grow student writing skills and their engagement in the writing process.

"Readers make writing deliciously worthwhile," states author and teacher Mem Fox. When students have an authentic audience and purpose for their writing endeavors, they grow as thinkers and as writers. Technology can help emerging student writers publish beyond the walls of our classrooms.

Last Tuesday, students in my tenth grade English classes used Skype to connect with a variety of experts in the publishing field. My tenth grade English classes have been working on bringing a writing piece from our Writer’s Notebook to publishable quality which we then submitted to a variety of places for publication late last week. But before submitting for publication, students in my second block course Skyped with the co-creator and Senior Editor at Teen Ink, Ms. Stephanie Meyer, who shared with students how pieces are selected for publication on both Teen Ink’s online site as well as in their monthly print magazine. Then, students in my third block Skyped with the Production Manager of the Jenkins Publishing Group, Ms. Leah Nicholson, in order to learn more about how books reach publication.  And at the close of the day, my fourth block class used Skype to connect with Ms. Christine Weiser, the Executive Director of Philadelphia Stories who shared fantastic advice for revising both short stories and poetry, as well as details about what her editorial board looks for in the pieces that are submitted. Students had the opportunity to hear from and ask questions of someone in the publishing field before submitting their own work for publication this week. What fantastic real world writing connections!

Later in the week, we again had an opportunity to connect with those outside of our classroom using Skype. I am not an expert on psychology, but I know a few people who are. So when my tenth grade honors students started to learn about psychoanalytic literary criticism, I decided to invite those experts into my classroom.  And through the use of technology, I was bring those real world connections into our classroom virtually.  Last Thursday my students had an opportunity to Skype with local psychoanalyst, Dr. Robin Ward, who spoke with students about Freud’s theory of the divided self and shared a case example of repression to illustrate some of Freud’s concepts.  Students will be using this literary approach, among others, as they begin their student of Khaled Hoessini’s The Kite Runner in the coming days.

And this is why I am such a firm believer in using technology in the classroom.  When used well, technology allows us to open up our classroom doors to the world outside, to explore real world learning, and to in turn, learn from experts in the field.  Learning becomes purposefully, contextualized, and meaningful. Technology helps us connect our students with their world.

All About EdCamp

I must confess that I still consider myself to be an EdCamp newbie.  I attended my first EdCamp last May at the University of Pennsylvania.  EdCamp Philly.  Wow! I had heard of the unconference style of professional development before, but I could have never imagined how life-changing attending that first conference would be.  It is not hyperbole to state that EdCamp changed the way that I thought not only about professional development, but how I thought about my teaching style. The connections and collaborations that I made at the first conference really spurred me to become more involved in helping other newbies find the conversations and resources that I had at my first EdCamp.  So, that's why I volunteered to help plan the 2014 EdCamp Philly.

Our first in-person get together was this past Friday, and I must confess, I felt more than a bit nervous.  I was asked to sit down with Kevin Jarrett, Mary Beth Hertz, Kim Sivick, and so many of the enthusiastic and engaged educators that I have been following online for years.  Who was I?!  (In case you were wondering, that's me in the stripes.) I felt like a teenage fan girl sitting at the table with so many well-connected teachers.  But I should have known better.  Not only did this group welcome me, but the same sense of excitement about learning and collaborating with one another that I felt at that first EdCamp was palpable around the planning table.

So the next afternoon when I was attending EdCampHill up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, I knew that I had to step outside my comfort zone and not just listen to the conversations that others were having, but lead one.  As session suggestions were being posted to the board, I made my move, volunteering to lead a session on flipped learning.   What a great conversation.  Unlike other conferences where a presenter talks at the teachers in the room, EdCamp is all about conversations.  My session was just that.  I shared a bit about what I've been doing the past couple of years, and then others in the room shared their experiences, raised questions, and discussed.  I didn't have a slide show ready.  Honestly, I wasn't even connected to the internet for my session.  Instead, another session participant keep some notes on an open Google Doc for our session, which I later added to.  And this is probably the best example of why EdCamp works.  It is professional development that is tailored to what you want to learn about, but perhaps most importantly, it is about the connections.  Those face-to-face dialogues that move our thinking forward, that get us questioning and reflecting on our roles in the classroom, and that have us sharing ideas with the person sitting next to your are invaluable. And that's why I am all in.