Category: MAET Blog

This year as part of my second year in the Master’s in Educational Technology (MAET) Program, I spent four weeks in Galway, Ireland taking a critical look at my current curriculum, pedagogical principals, and use of technology. After focusing on an area of refinement, exploration, and innovation, I dug deep into research on the essay revision process and how film could be used to enhance that process. This post is a multimodal reflection of the ideas and ideals that I have explored with my colleagues this year.

Context

The first installment is a video representation of the context of the program and my progress (or at times, struggle!) throughout the process.

Remix

The second installment is a remix of the representation of the program given in the first installment. This year is the second year I had the opportunity to spend with my MAET cohort in Galway, Ireland. The connection I have to my colleagues, my friends, has grown into a network of support, encouragement, and innovative inspiration that I never dreamt I would have a chance to be a part of. In order to honor those connections as well as the experiences and challenges we have faced together, I focused more on the personal connections than the coursework in my remixed version of my reflection. Below is my rendition of Cups from the movie Pitch Perfect, in honor of the fact that our experience this summer cannot possibly fit into cups as we discussed in class (inside joke: context).

Lyrics (with a bit of cheese : ) )

I got my TPACK workin’ all year now,

Thanks to MAETy2 this year,

And we sure did have some sweet company

Getting Leigh & Michelle as professors here.

Chorus (x2):

Oh, when we’re gone, when we’re gone,

We’ll use our research when we’re gone.

I’m gonna miss my awesome peers, but through Facebook we’re still near,

Oh, we can collaborate all year long.

Spartan’s Will/ This Spartan Did

This year we played with MSU Branding and below is my first attempt at contextualizing my goals and ideals and then the final edition after the courses I have been through this summer.

After considering my curriculum for the past 2 years with my 9th grade language arts classes, a pattern began to emerge whenever I had students do project based learning. Students would write their formal paper, produce film about their writing, and then either write a secondary piece based on the experience or go back and revise the original writing piece.

As I looked back at the level of engagement and improvement evident in my class data from these project based learning experiences compared to the experiences where students wrote and revised their paper in a traditional drafting process, I started to wonder what exactly was sparking their improvement. This is when I noticed the connection to how they interacted with film. To be completely honest, I did not intentionally incorporate the filming process into their writing process in many of these units. I saw the film as a separate extension for them to engage in. What was really starting to happen was that students were able to use the filming process and their own produced film (whether it was performance based or reflective film of them talking through their projects/process) to think about their written work in a completely different way and notice elements they may have originally been unable to see and address in their formal draft.

As 9th graders (14-15 year olds), students really struggle to think about the writing process and edit their own content. It is comfortable for students to address grammatical and formatting issues that their teacher points out, but actually modifying the content and making sure that they are addressing the prompt to the best of their ability is a major struggle. So, I started looking at how I could highlight and engage them in this process of revision thinking. This led me to a lot of research on the revision process or what I found more often, the lack of revision writing that happens in a classroom. “Revision is essential in helping students learn to write independently because it pushes students to critically consider the effectiveness of their work, yet research indicates that revision is frequently overlooked by students and teachers” (MacArthur, 2013; Witte, 2013). As this statement suggests, I have noticed this in my own school setting, especially in a language arts department where each teacher has 140-150 students they are responsible for. The revision process takes time and that is something that is hard to work into a 43 minute classroom setting where every CCSS standard must be met and 15 days of class time are allotted for state PARCCs assessments.

The result of reflecting on my curriculum, researching revision practices, and the past 2 years of classroom experience with my kids was a desire to create a framework for the writing process that incorporates film and actively helps them engage in revision thinking. “Proficient writers revise throughout composing and use revision to think more critically about their topics as well as hone their work for the audience, making revision as much a process of discovery as it is creating a final product” (MacArthur, 2013; Sommers, 1982; Zito, Adkins, Gavins, Harris, & Graham, 2007). As stated above, revision is about the process more than the final product. The goal of this research to practice experience is to have my students work through this process in order to hone their critical thinking skills about the work they produce. This will be repeated, not only in the unit outlined below, but also in 4 other units throughout the year.

Learning Goals:

Many standards will be met throughout this unit, but the following are the focus standards that will be emphasized throughout the process and measured through formative/summative assessment.

CCSS Focus Standards:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.5 Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3 up to and including grades 9–10 here.)
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

Content of the learning experience:

The first experience will be our Narrative Writing Unit. The timeframe for this unit has been approximately September 7th – October 15th. Adding in the additional steps that will be necessary to focus on using film to revise and the added lessons on the process and production of film with written strategies I am anticipating this unit taking until the end of October, even with the early start to the school year we will have this year.

Basic Framework: (Write-Feedback-Script-Film-Evaluate/Reflect -Revise)

1. Students will write group narratives (3-4 students) They will be grouped according to the genre they choose to write in. The writing process will focus on narrative elements and framework we have been studying in class while they constructed their Personal Narrative Projects (first assignment of the year).

2. Turn in Draft 1 in Google Classroom for feedback from Miss Wallace. This feedback will be in the form of comments on Google Docs. The comments will be accompanied by a Google Doc Rubric with highlighted sections noting where the students are in their progress with the draft.

3. Revise and resubmit draft for “Green Light” on the scripting process. In order for students to get their scripts “green lit” they will be evaluated on their use of dialogue, pacing, narration (or lack of), as well as their creative decisions on what to leave in and what to take out from the original story in order for it to translate effectively to film. (evaluated with comments/simple rubric)

4. Write Film Script from story -Dialogue Development

~What will transition from the story to the script well?

~What elements of your story can be cut or should be?

~What story elements must be kept for coherency and completeness?

5. Submit Script Draft (While teacher looks over/offers feedback students are moving into the blocking process). If scripts are formatted correctly and students have a firm grip on dialogue development and pacing then their film will be “green lit” and they will proceed to blocking.

6. Film Blocking done in Graphic Novel style panels with a written strategy that will be submitted for feedback. (Strategy with guiding questions provided)

~Where will it be filmed? Why?

~What props/sound effects, etc. are necessary? Why?

~What camera angles/lighting will you use? Why?

~How do your decisions help set the tone in your scene?

~How will the actors’ body language convey the mood or theme being portrayed in each scene?

~Lines – are there any? Why or why not?

~How are you conveying your message to your audience without outright telling them your message?

7. Filming – students will film their scripted and blocked stories in the span of a week + 2 weekends: Students will be assigned or choose roles such as director, lighting, stage direction, continuity manager, props, makeup/costuming

8. Showing/Viewing films – Film Review Strategy

~Evaluative/Reflective individual piece on student’s own process and end product – w/input from class feedback (share out format on class feedback)

~Group Analysis Strategy where groups look at their role in the filming process, their expectations, reflection on changes they would make if possible, and how they feel the audience reacted to their end product.

9. Selection of  top film from the class to be viewed at the Freshmen Film Festival (6 total 15-20min films, Community invited, short Q&A after)

10. Prep for festival (this would be an extension piece to the assignment)

11. This experience will then be used as a model to work with Text-Film-Text in other units besides narrative.

Pedagogical methods that were considered during this design experience:

1. The standard, 5 step writing process – focusing on analysis, evaluation, and revision
2. Film design and using film design to showcase author/director choices
3. This writing-filming-writing experience results in a Film Festival, which would be a project based learning framework but we are sort of building the pieces outside of that framework and then working into it. (If that makes sense at all) *Capstone assignment maybe?

Technology that will be used throughout this process:

I am considering laptops, smartphones/cameras/other filming devices, editing programs and apps, youtube for informational supplementals about the filming process and checking out how scriptwriters / directors work through their process.

Feedback from Research to Practice Session

This unit plan designed through researching and reflection was presented at the GREAT15 conference at NUI Galway.

Online survey results:

1. Was the information in this research to practice session clear and applicable?

Three participants answered this question on a scale from 1-5, 5 being that the session was clear and applicable. The results showed that 2 participants rated the session a 4 and one participant rated it a 5.

2. What are some ways you could see film leading to revision thinking in your own classroom?

Responses:

Participant A: Film is an opportunity in some projects I already do, so maybe it needs to be more purposefully taught. I always run out of time, though.

Participant B: I know that teachers often shy away from having students create movies because of the time it takes. However, I think that see this spin on using film to enhance the revision process is incredibly valuable. I hope to get a couple of teachers to try it this year.

Participant C: I found the idea of using images to inform the revision process inspiring. It is always a challenge to engage students in detailed, descriptive and image-enhanced writing. The contrasting images of a similar scene (There and back again) is a brilliant way for students to describe nuances in a particular scene they are writing about. I will apply this example in my own classroom. Also, storyboarding seems like a powerful way to enable students to look at different aspects – props, facial expression, body language etc in a scene and then add them to a descriptive or narrative piece of writing.

Video Reflection:

I had the opportunity to film the final ten minutes of my Research to Practice Session, where participants were working on story boarding and then revising that story board with the addition of film elements, such as camera angles, lighting, and what props would be necessary in the scene. There were participants in the session that shared their thoughts on the idea of focusing on using film for the revision process. Reflectively, I noticed that even though I thought that I allowed for more discussion at the time of the session, really we only had time for a few short remarks. This is definitely a point of revision for my own practice as a speaker and classroom teacher. If I had more time I definitely would have allowed the discussion to flow much longer and see what other ideas or concerns participants could come up with for the use of film in the classroom.

Final Thoughts:

Throughout the process of building this Research to Practice unit and session there was a lot of reflection and revision involved. From the very beginning, the initial reflection process was very informative. Provided the opportunity to look back at my classroom practices and curriculum over the past two years, it was great to be able to really dig deep into how I have been running the writing process in my classroom and how I can work towards improving it. This observation and the following two weeks of research and feedback from peers, professors, and conference participants have led to a clear understanding and goal for my curriculum over the next year. It was so refreshing to get valuable feedback from other educators who were involved in the same mindset and using the same frameworks. What has emerged from this process is a usable, researched plan of implementation that I can use in my classroom this year.

References

Dinkins, E. G. (2014). MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF AND RESPONSES TO STRATEGIC     REVISION INSTRUCTION. Middle Grades ResearchJournal, 9(2), 75.

Early, J. S., & Saidy, C. (2014). A study of a multiple component feedback approach to substantive revision for secondary ELL and multilingual writers. Reading and Writing, 27(6), 995-1014. doi:10.1007/s11145-013-9483-y

Idea Formation:

After considering my curriculum for the past 2 years with my 9th grade language arts classes, a pattern began to emerge whenever I had students do project based learning. Students would write their formal paper, produce film about their writing, and then either write a secondary piece based on the experience or go back and revise the original writing piece.

As I looked back at the level of engagement and improvement evident in my class data from these project based learning experiences compared to the experiences where students wrote and revised their paper in a traditional drafting process, I started to wonder what exactly was sparking their improvement. This is when I noticed the connection to how they interacted with film. To be completely honest, I did not intentionally incorporate the filming process into their writing process in many of these units. I saw the film as a separate extension for them to engage in. What was really starting to happen was that students were able to use the filming process and their own produced film (whether it was performance based or reflective film of them talking through their projects/process) to think about their written work in a completely different way and notice elements they may have originally been unable to see and address in their formal draft.

As 9th graders (14-15 year olds), students really struggle to think about the writing process and edit their own content. It is comfortable for students to address grammatical and formatting issues that their teacher points out, but actually modifying the content and making sure that they are addressing the prompt to the best of their ability is a major struggle. So, I started looking at how I could highlight and engage them in this process of revision thinking. This led me to a lot of research on the revision process or what I found more often, the lack of revision writing that happens in a classroom. “Revision is essential in helping students learn to write independently because it pushes students to critically consider the effectiveness of their work, yet research indicates that revision is frequently overlooked by students and teachers” (MacArthur, 2013; Witte, 2013). As this statement suggests, I have noticed this in my own school setting, especially in a language arts department where each teacher has 140-150 students they are responsible for. The revision process takes time and that is something that is hard to work into a 43 minute classroom setting where every CCSS standard must be met and 17 days of class time are allotted for state PARCCs assessments.

The result of reflecting on my curriculum, researching revision practices, and the past 2 years of classroom experience with my kids was a desire to create a framework for the writing process that incorporates film and actively helps them engage in revision thinking. “Proficient writers revise throughout composing and use revision to think more critically about their topics as well as hone their work for the audience, making revision as much a process of discovery as it is creating a final product” (MacArthur, 2013; Sommers, 1982; Zito, Adkins, Gavins, Harris, & Graham, 2007). As stated above, revision is about the process more than the final product. The goal of this research to practice experience is to have my students work through this process in order to hone their critical thinking skills about the work they produce. This will be repeated, not only in the unit outlined below, but also in 4 other units throughout the year.

CCSS Focus Standards:

*Many standards will be addressed throughout the unit but these are the 3 focus standards.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.5 Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3 up to and including grades 9–10 here.)

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

Describe the content of the learning experience:

*This is a work in progress and will be updated with supplemental material links, class strategies I plan to use, and other resources/adjustments.

1st Experience will be our narrative writing project. (Write-Feedback-Script-Film-Evaluate/Reflect -Revise)

1. Students will write group narratives (3-4 students) They will be grouped according to the genre they choose to write in. The writing process will focus on narrative elements and framework we have been studying in class while they constructed their Personal Narrative Projects (first assignment of the year).

2. Turn in Draft 1 in Google Classroom for feedback from Miss Wallace. This feedback will be in the form of comments on Google Docs.

3. Revise and resubmit draft for “Green Light” on the scripting process

4. Write Film Script from story -Dialogue Development – (Resources soon)

~What will transition from the story to the script well?

~What elements of your story can be cut or should be?

~What story elements must be kept for coherency and completeness?

5. Submit Script Draft (While teacher looks over/offers feedback students are moving into the blocking process). If scripts are formatted correctly and students have a firm grip on dialogue development and pacing then their film will be “green lit” and they will proceed to blocking.

6. Film Blocking done in Graphic Novel style panels with a written strategy that will be submitted for feedback. (Strategy with guiding questions provided)

~Where will it be filmed? Why?

~What props/sound effects, etc. are necessary? Why?

~What camera angles/lighting will you use? Why?

~How do your decisions help set the tone in your scene?

~How will the actors’ body language convey the mood or theme being portrayed in each scene?

~Lines – are there any? Why or why not?

~How are you conveying your message to your audience without outright telling them your message?

7. Filming – students will film their scripted and blocked stories in the span of a week + 2 weekends: Students will be assigned or choose roles such as director, lighting, stage direction, continuity manager, props, makeup/costuming

8. Showing/Viewing films – Film Review Strategy

~Evaluative/Reflective individual piece on student’s own process and end product – w/input from class feedback (share out format on class feedback)

~Group Analysis Strategy where groups look at their role in the filming process, their expectations, reflection on changes they would make if possible, and how they feel the audience reacted to their end product.

9. Selection of  top film from the class to be viewed at the Freshmen Film Festival (6 total 15-20min films, Community invited, short Q&A after)

10. Prep for festival (this would be an extension piece to the assignment)

11. This experience will then be used as a model to work with Text-Film-Text in other units besides narrative.

Describe the pedagogical methods that you’re presently considering as you design this experience:

1. The writing process – focusing on analysis, evaluation, and revision
2. Film design and using film design to showcase author/director choices
3. This writing-filming-writing experience results in a Film Festival, which would be a project based learning framework but we are sort of building the pieces outside of that framework and then working into it. (If that makes sense at all) *Capstone assignment maybe?

Technology/technologies being considered:

I am considering laptops, smartphones/cameras/other filming devices editing programs and apps, youtube for informational supplementals about the filming process and checking out how scriptwriters / directors work through their process.

Works Cited

Dinkins, E. G. (2014). MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’     PERSPECTIVES OF AND RESPONSES TO STRATEGIC REVISION INSTRUCTION. Middle Grades ResearchJournal, 9(2), 75.

I recently spent a significant amount of time contemplating online literacy, specifically information literacy, through the creation of our Special Interest Group Information Literacy Skills (SIGILS).

One concern that was immediately evident as we began to gather information for our SIG was the way students and teachers currently use literacy skills and how that structure does not fit with the new digital texts that kids are interacting with. James Paul Gee alludes to this idea and offers a solution in his book The Anti-Education Era, “Let’s call this essential early foundation ‘talk, text, and knowledege mentoring,’ or ‘TTK mentoring’ (where “talk” means interactive, sustained, elaborated talk)” (200). TTK mentoring is a way to promote literacy development through multiple platforms from an early age. The ability to talk about texts in an elaborate and interactive way is a skill that students will need to have in order to be competitive in the work force. If parents and teachers are fostering this type of talk and text connections through TTK mentoring from an early age, then students would be much more prepared to engage in critical thinking at the high school level. Gee backs this idea by stating,

“Children today will have to ‘read’ (consume) and ‘write’ (produce) with a whole suite of technologies, including texts, digital tools, and social media of different forms often used in social media away from kids early, but to build on experiences with these media to create a pathway towards higher-order and complex thinking, skills, talk, and texts, just as we want to do with books” (Gee,  201).

The  task  of navigating and connecting all of those technologies and texts will help students solve complex problems if they are carefully guided through the process. If students are introduced to this framework at a young age then by the time they are middle or high school students the process of navigating and connecting digital texts should be the platform that their learning is built on. This would allow higher level educators to push students to extend their thinking and create/produce material that they would not be able to tackle if they did not have prior TTK mentoring.

Gee also speaks about how humans all strive for meaning, which resonated with my own life and teaching practice. I teach language arts to 9-12 graders, we tend to talk about material that gets a little more personal than some other subject areas. Connecting the author’s meaning or a character’s viewpoint to my student’s own viewpoints and lives is a daily occurence in room 205. Finding meaning in a text, analyzing what the meaning is and why it is important in the grand scheme of a life is important for student growth and promoting lifelong learning. Gee mentions,

“For some young people, lack of meaningful learning in school can be ameliorated via learning out of school. For all children there are twenty-first-century skills that are, at least today, more often developed out of school than in it” (202).

Every lesson and every subject will not resonate with every child and the meaning behind the work will not always be clear. Students use technology to search out their interests and learn about those interests at an alarming rate. Their vocabulary, creativity, engagement, and collaboration skills can be exponentially enhanced through their online involvement. This could also be seen as an incentive to start flipping the classroom setting. Providing students with small, web assignments and then giving them several options of how they can build upon that knowledge may spark students to build off of what is meaningful to them and craft new meaning through the choice they are given.

The problem lies in the fact that these literacy skills need to be fostered from an early age through TTK mentoring  in order to have a lasting impact on students’ thought processes.  As Gee explains, “Nothing weighs heavier on the human mind than complexity” (140). We can help students sort through that complexity in order to obtain meaning and make connections by constantly having conversations about the connections between texts and ideas in the primary years.

References:

Gee, James P. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.

[Untitled image of a lightbulb with plant]. Retrieved July 21, 2014 from http://pixabay.com/en/bulb-light-bulb-growth-plant-light-216975/

Team teaching is a part of my daily classroom routine in room 205 and I was delighted that I had the opportunity to team teach through the program as well. It’s always interesting to teach with someone new and meld your ideas together into a lesson. As long as there is a collaborative spirit, two minds are definitely better than one. You have two people available to address student needs, to troubleshoot, to help differentiate and deliver the material in engaging ways. Each person brings their strengths to the table and has someone who may be capable of backing them up where weaknesses emerge. Team teaching also provides teachers with a way to validate what they are doing on a daily basis. Instead of wondering whether or not the material is truly connecting to core standards, the project you created has any loopholes in it, or the disciplinary action you decided on was effective, you have someone in your classroom who can constantly help assess what you are doing and back you up if questions arise. Although it may be daunting to invite someone into your classroom space and a bit unnerving to hand over the reigns, I truly believe that building a strong co-teaching relationship really provides the kids with a better classroom experience.

On that note, the team teaching I did for the program was with Joie Marinaro for two readings from edge.org written by James O’Donnell and Howard Rheingold. The question both authors were trying to answer was, “Is the Internet changing the way you think?” Both authors voiced that the internet will surely change the way you think, but their viewpoints on how they would change and how much control you would have in the process differed. O’Donnell wrote about how this change is actually a physical change in the way we interact with technology, which is evident in the title of his article, “My Fingers Have Become Part of My Brain.” While Rheingold’s piece “Attention is the Fundamental Literacy” discussed how technology users can either learn new literacies and ways to be attentive or allow them to overtake their attention.

When we planned our lesson, we wanted to allow time for discussion of two questions that were generated from the reading. In order to get everyone tuned in for the discussion, we opened our lesson by asking  students to respond to the following on Mentimeter: “What strategies do you use to sustain your attention while interacting with technology?” Our goal was to have the class reflect on how they stay attentive and we predicted that many people would dull one of their senses as a way to focus. When we had everyone’s responses we formed a word cloud and discussed the outcomes through Mentimeter. One hiccup with Mentimeter that we encountered was that it did not filter out the prepositions or articles that people wrote in their responses, so we had to sift through the word cloud a bit. In the future, maybe it would be a good tool for one word responses but not open ended questions.

The answers that everyone came up with led into our discussion of the two focus questions we wanted to address:

Do you agree with O’Donnell’s assumption that shifting literacies are involuntary–that we are victim to our tech. use?

Do you agree with Rheingold that it is inevitable that the Net will change how and what we think as it teaches- or reteaches- our attention span?

Although the conversation shifted from our initial outcome of talking about the new literacies and became more of a discussion on digital citizenship and the importance of teachers in a student’s netizen education, the discussion turned out to be quite engaging.  We used Prezi to navigate through the discussion and the activity that we planned using Snagit. Everyone was asked to snag an image of a netizen and create their own interpretation of what a netizen is.

In hindsight, it would have been beneficial to breakdown what the difference was between a citizen and a netizen because everyone was using the terms interchangeably. Because our discussion morphed and went longer than anticipated, we decided to have students do the Snagit activity in pairs and then instead of sharing them all one by one, we held a gallery walk where everyone took a stroll around the room and admired the interpretations of netizens that the others had created. I actually thought the gallery walk ended up being a better discussion/presentation strategy than our original plan.

I thought the lesson went rather well. Yes, it ended up veering in a different direction from the original plan, but the class was engaged and had the opportunity to have an authentic discussion about issues that are part of our current classroom environment. We were left with the question, What is a teacher’s role in preparing students to be responsible netizens?

References:

O’Donnell, J . (2011). My Fingers Have Become Part of my Brain. In J. Brockman (Ed.), Is the Internet changing the way you think? Retrieved from http://edge.org/response-detail/11113

Rheingold, H . (2011). Attention is the Fundamental Literacy. In J. Brockman (Ed.), Is the Internet changing the way you think? Retrieved from http://edge.org/response-detail/11370