Final Project

Unit Plan: Bring Poetry and Pictures Together

Part One: Using Flickr

This week the students will gain an understanding of how to search the Creative Commons section in Flickr and put together a Flickr slideshow.

The students will also reflect on their Flickr slideshow as well as give feedback to their peers' Flickr slideshows.

Day One:

1. Show Google Presentation "Flickr Slideshow"

2. Have students sign up for Flicker.
3. Have students brainstorm topic ideas for a Flickr Slideshow in their blog.

Day Two:

1. Go over rubric for the Flickr Slideshow Project.
2. Have students sign into Flicker.
3. Students should search the Creative Commons section and add pictures to their "Faves".
4. Once each student has found enough pictures, the student should create a slideshow and post the link or embed the link on his/her blog.

Day Three:

1. Go over rubric for Reflection.
2. Each student should log into their blog.
3. Once there, they should watch their Flickr Slideshow.
4. After they have watched their slideshow, the student should complete a reflection post on their blog following the guiding questions handed out.

Day Four:

1. Go over rubric for Peer Responses.
2. The students should have the hour to watch and respond to their peers' Flickr Slideshows.

Part Two: Using VoiceThread

This week the students will take their understanding of Flickr and take it one step further. Using pictures they either find on Flickr or upload from their computer, the students will create VoiceThread and share it with their peers.

The students will also reflect on their VoiceThreads in a blog post as well as provide responses to their peers' VoiceThreads.

Day One:

1. Watch tutorials found on voicethread.com

What is VoiceThread?
VoiceThread in one min
Comment Moderation
Video Doodling

2. Go over the Educator's Guide to VoiceThread with students
VoiceThread Guide

3. Have the students sign up for VoiceThread.
4. The students should have the rest of the hour to play around with using VoiceThread.

Day Two:

1. Go over the assignment sheet and rubric for the VoiceThread project.
2. The students should complete a blog post in which they brainstorm ideas for their VoiceThread. They should also discus which of their poems they are going to read as their images come onto the screen.
   
3. Upon completion of their blog post, the students should begin searching for pictures either on Flickr or download them from their email for use in their VoiceThread.

Day Three:

1. The students should be at the point where they can begin recording and using the other tools in VoiceThread.
2. Let them have the hour to record their VoiceThreads.
3. Once they finish their VoiceThread, they should upload it into their blog.
   

Day Four:

1. Give the students time to watch their own VoiceThread and write a reflection in their blog.
2. Once complete, the students should have the rest of the hour to watch their peers' VoiceThreads and provide responses to them based on the rubric for peer responses.
   

Part Three: Using StripGenerator

This week the students will understand how to create a comic using strip generator, and do so using a poem as the subject for the comic.

The students will also give peer feedback and revise their comic strips based on the feedback they receive.

Day One:

1. Show Google Presentation "Creating Comics"
   

2. Give the students time to play around on stripgenerator.com
3. The students must decide on a poem that they are going to create a comic strip around.

Day Two:

1. Go over rubric for first comic assignment.
2. Allow students time to create their first comic strip.
3. After they have created their strip, the students should either link to their comic strip on their blog or embed it.

Day Three:

1. The students should start the day by revisiting their comic strips.
2. The students should complete a reflection post on their blog about their comic strip following the guiding questions handed out.
3. We will then review the rubric for Peer Responses.
4. The students will have the rest of the hour to begin looking at their peers' comic strips and writing responses.

Day Four:

1. The students will continue writing responses to their peers for half the class period.
2. Once the peer responses are complete, the students will read the responses they received on their own comic strip. They will then use the next day and a half to revise their strip based on the feedback received.
   

Day Five:

1. Once the students have completed their revised comic, they should either post a link to it or embed it in their blog.

Day Six:

1. Today, the students should revisit the comics they provided feedback for.
2. They should post a new response in using the revised comic.

Part Four:

This week the students will learn how to use the different features of iMovie. They will also put their knowledge to use by making an iMovie in which they speak one of their poems aloud while providing background pictures and sound to help deepen the meaning of their poem.

The students will also create an iMovie for a partners poem. Then, the students will reflect on the similarities/differences between their interpretations.

Finally, the students will reflect on this process in a blog post.

Day One:

1. Watch tutorials on how to create an iMovie.
2. For the first iMovie assignment, the students must upload images from Flickr into iMovie. They must then learn how to add sound, voice over, and other effects depicted in their rubric.
3. Once they have completed this assignment, they must upload their iMovie into their blog.
4. The students then must reflect on their experiences with their first use of iMovie. What they liked/disliked. What was easy/hard. What they want to learn for their next assignment.

Day Two:

1. Go over the iMovie assignment sheet with the students.
2. The students must first decide on a poem to work with on iMovie. The poem that they choose must be one that they wrote during this class.
3. Once they have chosen this poem, they must blog about what this poem means to them and what images could represent and deepen the understanding of the meaning of the poem.
4. Once they have completed their blog post, the students can spend the rest of the hour searching on Flickr for images they want to use in their iMovie.

Day Three:

1. Review the rubric for the iMovie project.
2. The students should have the rest of the hour to begin working on the iMovie project.

Day Four:

1. Today, the students should finish up their work on their iMovie project.
2. Once completed, the students should post their iMovie onto their blog.

Day Five:

1. Today, the students will get partnered with another student
2. The students should trade their poem with that of their partner.
3. For part two of the iMovie project, the student must now create a second iMovie using their partners poem.
4. The student should first read their partner's poem and write a blog post describing what they believe the poem means. Also, the student should brainstorm and come up with images that they could use during the reading of the poem to aid in making the poem understood and help to deepen the meaning of the poem.
5. Once their blog post is complete, the student can log on to Flickr and search for images.

Day Six and Seven:

1. The students will have the next two days to complete their second iMovie.
2. Once completed, the student must post their second iMovie on their blog.
3. They must also complete two blog posts. The first one should describe why they choose each image when depicting their poem and how they add to the meaning of the poem. The second one explains the images they chose for their partner's poem and how they add to the meaning of the poem.

Day Eight:

1. The students should get together with their partner and watch all four iMovies.
   
2. They should compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the iMovie based on poem #1. Next, they should do the same based on poem #2.
3. Once they have compared the iMovies, they must then reflect on this process on their blog. How were their visions similar? How were their visions different? What was similar/different in the interpretations of the poem and it's meaning? What images did their partners use to depict their poem that they really liked? Why did they like those images? What images did their partner use that didn't seem to reflect the "intended" meaning.

Day Nine:

1. On this day, each student will get up and show their iMovie to the class. This will be a time for the students to show off their poetry as well as their work on providing images to their poetry.
   

Dec. 8, 2009

Reflection on Blog Posts:

Our first blog post was on blogging. I had never blogged before. I have found that I truly like the act of blogging. I like the idea of reflecting on an issue or something that happened to me that day or even a frustration I have come across. If I were to continue blogging I do wonder if I would keep my blog to a topic (e.x. teaching) or if I would want to blog about anything. I would have to think about the purpose that I would want my blog to serve and the audience I was putting my blog out there for. I think that it would be good to use a blog in my classroom as a precursor to a large group discussion. I would give them the questions ahead of time and they would have to respond to them on the blog. I feel that this is a good idea because then everyone would come to class with an answer and be able to better participate in the discussion. So often, my students clam up when faced with a question when they haven't had time to process the question. They do not want to answer for fear that they look stupid in front of their peers. This would relieve some of that pressure. I would also encourage the use of a blog in my creative writing classes as a way of getting their work out there and garnering feedback that they might not get in class.

Our second blog post was on vlogs. Again, I had never had much experience watching or creating a vlog. I found that it was hard for me in the beginning to create the vlog due to both finding a topic and also what I should say. If I were to do this again I would probably write out more of a script to follow so that I could go over it a few times and get comfortable with what I was going to say.

Our third blog post was on the use of flickr and voicethread. I have to say that I loved this assignment. With the flickr assignment I felt that it gave me a place to be creative and interpret my word or theme in a way others may not have. My ideas only became stronger as I was able to put pictures to them. I think that I am going to use this assignment in my final poetry unit. You could really do this assignment when talking about theme in a literature class as well. You could have the students find pictures that give image to a theme that they find in any novel (or poem). Bringing the pictures into voicethread was great. i liked learning this technology and thought that it was the most user friendly as far as getting into it without having previous knowledge. I am going to have my poetry students use this technology by having the students put images to a poem that they wrote (as well as having them put images to a poem written by someone else) to see if adding those images helped with the understanding of the poem.

Our fourth blog post was on using wikis. Through this class I have found that my previous experience in using wikis was faulty. I don't think that I was taught how to use wikis to their full potential. We just used them as receptacles for student work. Never once were we shown how to use them for collaborative writing and other collaborative projects. I don't know that this technology is a good one to use in my school. A large majority of my students would not do work outside the classroom. Also, many of them do not have computers and/or internet access at home. I know that there is access at libraries, but good luck getting them to go to one.

Our fifth blog post was our reflection on the online role-play. I had never done an online role play before and did not expect to like it as much as I did. I thought that it was going to be boring to participate in. What I really enjoyed, however, was the asynchronous research and posting that we did before having the synchronous chat. I liked being able to take the time and find the material, post at my leisure, respond to others without hurrying through what I had to say. i felt that the synchronous chat was a little too much for me. having to keep scrolling through the posts to find either new ones or replies to your posts was a bit challenging. I would probably do the asynchronous role play idea in my classroom, but again have the same problems as the collaborative wiki. I would have to give students time to use the lab to complete the assignments and at that point it would become asynchronous and I am not sure that they would have gotten as much out of it.

I have to take a second and apologize to my blog partners. I know I am being a little long winded. Sorry.

Our sixth blog post was on using iMovie. I had never made a movie using this technology outside of our technology class when in the English cohort. I still don't think I know all the technologies surrounding iMovie that I could use to make the movie better. I want to learn more and then I think it would be fun to use in a class. perhaps to videotape a poetry performance in order to provide feedback to the performer.

Our seventh blog post was on podcasts. Honestly, I don't think I will ever use a podcast. I think if I was going to record a lecture I would save it as an audio file and just upload it to my class website. I don't think I would require people to subscribe to my podcasts and without that the technology wouldn't be a good one to use.

Our eighth blog post was on ToonDoo. I liked using this technology. I think that I would use it in poetry - again to illustrate what a poem is saying. I also could se using it to help the students better understand a piece of literature. It could be a creative project for a student - they could pick a section of a novel or play and have to create a comic strip or put a few comic strip together in book form to better illustrate what was happening in the story.

Our ninth blog post was about the readability of websites. Although that is not what I want to focus on. I really liked learning the technology of screenshots and applying them to my post. I had never done that before. I think that using a screen shot helps people understand what you are talking about. They don't just read your description, they get to see an actual picture of it. This would help visual learners in the classroom if screenshots were included on handouts.

OUr tenth blog post was about the use of feedback tools. I know I need to use them, but I don't often know which methods work best. I find that I am not always specific enough when it comes to a rubric and it leaves a lot for interpretation. It is a skill I need to get better with.

All in all I have to say I personally learned a lot in this course. I now need to take some time and figure out which of these technologies would be the most useful to incorporate in my classes and for what assignment. I don't just want to use them for no good reason. There needs to be a purpose behind them.

If I would ask my students to provide work to a portfolio, I would want to showcase their growth as a writer. i would use it in a class where they had to go step by step in a project as well as revise the writing piece multiple times. Then they could post each draft and insert comments about the changes they made as well as changes in them as a writer - what their growth was like. I liked the use of the classroom portfolio that was on Mrs. Autrey's website. I liked the fact that it was put out there for the parents to see as well as for them to reflect on their growth as a writer - like they did in their second letter to her.

Well, I think that I have talked ("typed") long enough. See you.

Dec. 1, 2009

When my students are completing a writing assignment, really any writing assignment, I try to have them get feedback from both their peers and me. I find that this can be a bit daunting, depending on how much they know about giving feedback, how much knowledge they have around grammar, punctuation, structure, and topic. I feel like to have the students give worthwhile feedback I would have to spend quite a bit of time coaching them on just how to do that, which I do not always have.

When the students give peer feedback I have them focus on specific aspects of writing depending on what type of writing they are doing. If it is a research paper they look at amount of evidence and organization. If it is a poem I have them write about its meaning and word choices. That gives me freedom to work on other things - grammar, punctuation, organization, etc. I typically sit down with the hard copies of their writing and mark it up. I find, though, that I still need to conference with each student to explain what I was trying to say. I liked the idea of having the students send me their papers electronically so that I can just insert the comments right into the paper. It would give me more room to type comments and explain them further. Also, I could them demonstrate the correct way to attribute a quote or where a comma should or shouldn't be inserted.

As I was talking in class the other day, I may be interested in using ToonDoo as one of technologies within a poetry class. I would have the students read and analyze a poem. Then, I would have them use ToonDoo to illustrate the poem, and hopefully provide more meaning and show a deeper understanding of the poem. I would also have them defend their choices. they would have to write a paragraph or two detailing why they made the illustrative choices they did and how that helps explain the meaning of the poem.

When providing feedback for this assignment I would have a portion of it come from their peers. I would have the students look at a comic that was not their own and try to decipher the meaning from the illustration. I would have them complete a survey or write a paragraph about what the illustration conveyed. If the student did not like the illustration or it made them more confused, they would have to explain why. The "artist" would them be able to sit down with their peer and receive the feedback and talk about where the disconnect was. Then, the "artist" could take the constructive criticism and modify their original comic.

I think I would look more at the structure, length of comic, and the students' defense of their comic to grade their work.

I made a very rudimentary rubric for a collaborative writing project that I may have them complete in a creative writing class that I am teaching now. Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.