more Lord of the Flies

One of the most frequent questions I get from readers regards questions about web resources to enhance their teachings of the Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

In a previous post I recommended an online game from the Nobel prize website and a survival quiz, both of which are very popular in my classes. Presenting the quiz before reading even starts is very effective, because students learn that they know far less about the fundamentals of survival than they realized. It helps them to walk in the footsteps of the boys on the island, once they get into the story.

Two more online sources that may be of help:

• a webquest: this is a thorough approach to understanding the novel
  
• interview with William Golding by James Keating: very enlightening and straight from the author himself. 
  

What else can I help you with? What other web resources are you looking for?

young reviewers contest

Get your students fired up with a contest that will introduce them to the real world of publishing and scholastic recognition, not to mention real prize money.

The Virginia Quarterly Review is sponsoring a contest for young book reviewers. All writing contestants must be under the age of 30. It's a formidable project with the minimum word count at 2,000 words, up to a maximum of 3,500 words. Read about the requirements here.

Your students will probably be most interested in reading about the prize:

The prize for the winning entry is $1,000, publication in our Winter 2009 issue, and a publishing contract for three additional reviews worth up to $3,000. Finalists (up to five) will receive a complimentary one-year student or associate membership in the National Book Critics Circle, a one-year subscription to VQR, and may also be offered paid publication in VQR (in print or online).

Move fast on this one, as all reviews must be uploaded to the VQR website by September 30.

Here are two sites to assist with the fine points of writing book reviews:

1. Scholastic: Write a Book Review
   
2. Los Angeles Valley College: How to Write a Book Review
   

playacting as active learning

Edutopia (George Lucas's educational blogsite) encourages active learning through playacting in Writing Aloud: Staging Plays for Active Learning. The article points out that due to budgeting constraints, many school districts pay scant attention to drama, especially to productions written, directed, and staged entirely by students themselves. 

Yet, what better way to get students actively involved in learning about any topic?

The aim of the Arena Stage program, like that of similar theater-education programs across the country, is to offer the benefits of arts education at a time when schools are increasingly putting the subject on the back burner. Playwriting teaches kids how to construct a plot, write dialogue, and tell a story through action. But the benefits go far beyond that. Students also learn how to conduct research, perform in front of an audience, collaborate with their peers, and express themselves, says Adrienne Nelson, the Arena Stage teaching artist who worked with the class of thirty-two Stuart-Hobson students this year.

 The Edutopia article highlights a lesson in dealing with racism from a historical perspective, but drama can also be used to help students understand literature. You don't have to upset your entire curriculum to do it either. Keep productions small--limited to a scene or two--for big impact.

One of the most fun lessons in my 10th grade classroom is a re-enacting of the original Pyramus & Thisbe storyline from Ovid's mythology, during a study of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of course, we play it all in fun, in the spirit of Bottom & Co.'s production. By the time we read Shakespeare's play-within-a-play, the students are thoroughly warmed up, and ready to enjoy the players' version, as well as the lovers' critique. Students (in groups) write the dialogue, create mural settings, and paper-and-glue props. Their acting rivals Bottom's group!

 

chrome's tabs and windows

In yesterday's post, I wrote about the features of Google's new browser, Chrome. As a longtime cruiser with Firefox, I'd have to find compelling reasons to switch. Ultimately, beyond all the features I highlighted yesterday, only one reason stands out:

Chrome lets me work more efficiently.

Research

When I research, I take notes. Chrome makes it very easy to open several articles at a time all in separate windows, as well as Google docs, so I can jot down impressions, capture links and quotes, etc.  With Chrome I can easily pull contents from a tab into separate windows, which resize beautifully for easy reading. Scrolling is consistent from window to window, and I can work with as many open windows/tabs as I wish without worrying that they might slow me down or crash. I can highlight any word or term by right-clicking to do a quick Google search in a new tab. Just to write this post, I have four windows open for reference.

I often use Google Alerts in my research, so I keep gmail in a separate window in the background to watch for new information from the web to add to my topic.

Grading

Need to grade essays? Pull up the spreadsheet with the links to your students' docs, and put it in a separate window. Next, bring up your gradesheet. Since these are essays, you may also want to bring up your rubric, also in a separate window. Now, you're all set to grade. Click to open in a new window the first student's essay for evaluation and to add comments, enter rubric scores, enter grade, and click out of the essay. Click on the link from the spreadsheet to the next student's essay, and so on. Everything you need is on one screen in front of you.

This process works equally well if, rather than essays, you've collected quiz results using Google forms.

Daily lesson plans

When you click on the new tab button, Chrome highlights your most visited websites in snapshots, as well as sites recently accessed and closed. This makes it very easy and quick to get to your next period's site before they walk through the door, to bring up the day's lesson plan or opening exercise. You can also have ready the course standards for your state in a separate window, all set to project onto a whiteboard or screen.

one negative: no add-ons

The new Chrome is almost perfect for the way I work. The one caveat for me is that I will miss Firefox's add-ons, one of its most useful features. However, Chrome is so intuitive in its search bar, that so far I haven't missed much.

It's always fun to play with new toys. I'm looking forward to putting this one to work.

how to collaborate?

The Official Google Docs blog has a guest post from a teacher in Great Britain about how his students collaborated using Google docs. When Tom Barrett initially tested the idea, he found that the problems encountered were not intrinsic to docs, or any of the technology, but rather to the act of collaboration itself:

With hindsight it is easier to recognise that the children were not only being introduced to a new piece of technology (the Docs tool) but also their traditional way of working was to be challenged by the new concept of working collaboratively in an online document.

When asked about their biggest challenge, the students were quite direct while describing their thoughts on the collaboration process:

• The biggest challenge is to stop arguing.
• The thing I find hard would be the working together.
• It is hard to work with other people.
• When we are all not talking and people move stuff and people shout.

Collaboration for any group of any age can be difficult, especially, as Barrett wisely proclaims, their traditional way of working was to be challenged . . . . As we are all too aware, students learn how to be students; they learn how to get good grades. Collaboration upsets their normal procedures for doing so, as it introduces the unknown of how the other students will affect their output.

The arguments for collaboration center on the help it provides for weaker students, as it incorporates ideas and discussion from everyone. My experience has been that these students definitely benefit by a greater understanding of the project, since they are able to discuss it with others who will help them parse the instructions and gather resources. However, weaker students are often intimidated, letting stronger students do the greater portion of work.

Barrett provides an excellent solution to assuage discomfort of the unknown:

I found it very useful to model the process. Just as I would if I were showing the children a style of writing in Literacy or a type of stretch in PE. I worked with a colleague on an example document and gave the class a running commentary as to what we were doing. As we worked we talked to each other and I underlined some of the key features of what made that short demo collaboration successful for us.

Watching two people interact while creating a document together is a great idea, as it shows students what's expected from them, as well as how the process of collaboration can be successful.

Another method I've found to work well is to make certain each student in the pair or small group has a distinct writing portion to complete, at least for the first draft. Each student could be responsible for a particular topic discussion, subordinate to the overall thesis. One student can write the introduction, another the conclusion. Google docs makes it easy for you to see who writes what, which is very important for grade evaluation, even if you plan to assign an overall grade. Students are highly attuned to the 'fairness' of the grade with regard to their input or the lack of it from others.

Once you have evaluated the first draft and provided your comments directly on the document, the students can take on more group-centered activities for revision: suggestions to beef-up weak arguments and insufficient support, spelling, grammar, punctuation use, uniform paragraph transitions, etc.

Collaboration, done right, can truly show us and our students that the sum is greater than the parts alone.

a page of grammar

Daily Writing Tips offers one page of grammar, which just might be the perfect amount to give to your students in any class that assigns writing. As you'll see, the one page is comprehensive, yet not overwhelming. Here's an example:
The language is simple and clear for easy comprehension, and there are examples, though they are limited. Assign your students to come up with more.

Divide students into groups to present the different sections, maybe one section per week. Put together a quiz through Google forms after each presentation to make certain they understand the grammar terms and uses.

Place the link on your website for a quick reference throughout the school year.

diablogging: open discomfort

Are you concerned about someone stealing your syllabus or other class materials off the internet? This is not something I'd given much thought to until I read "When a Syllabus Is Not Your Own," a blog on the Chronicle of Higher Education site. Author Jennifer Sinor recounts her discomfort at discovering her syllabus, slightly redacted, put to use for another professor at a different institution. It had been lifted off the internet and customized by the new user.

I understand Sinor's unease, but I always assume anything I put on the internet is available for others to use. The whole point is that we are sharing information. Nevertheless, I can see how some teachers might want to preserve the authorial integrity of their work. Academhack provides an excellent suggestion:

What about syllabus stealing you ask? Here’s your solution: publish all your syllabi on the web, give them a creative commons license. Now another faculty can use as he/she sees fit, but only if they give you credit . . . problem solved.

Obtain a creative commons license for your syllabus, or your entire website, if you like. You may choose how your work is used, and the level of attribution:

• Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
• Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
• No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
• Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Licensing your work through creative commons couldn't be easier. Simply embed the license of your choice on your website.

Now, we can all get back to sharing.

satyrical maps and war dogs

If you are teaching the history of World War I, or war literature from the period, BiblioOdyssey features satyrical propaganda maps that make wonderful learning tools:

Maps that featured regional stereotypes, animals and assorted symbolic imagery and mythical and historic figures associated with particular countries became a popular vehicle in which prejudices, humour and political commentary could be assembled in a visual format.

The rise of the serio-comic map caricature genre, that had really begun in about 1870 (although the roots of the tradition stretch back at least to Munster's 'Geographica'** from the mid-1500s), reached its peak of popularity at the beginning of World War One.

The humorous propaganda maps stirred nationalistic fervour, mocked and belittled enemies and even served as a mnemonic tool for students to learn their geography. In many of the above maps you can see that the more distorted or grotesque depictions are saved for the least favoured nations while the home side is of course rendered as normal or heroic. The style declined in popularity as the war dragged on and film and posters became the more dominant media of propaganda. [quote from BiblioOdyssey]

Satyrical map publishers capitalized on visual appeal to inform the citizenry, but they also engaged their readers with the interactive appeal of a riddle:

Hark! hark! the dogs do bark!
The beggars are coming to town
Some in rags and some in jags
And one in a velvet gown

See if your students can solve the riddle.

Unfortunately, war is always relevant. Have your students draw a similar map depicting the current Russia-Georgia conflict, and write their own rhyming riddle.

Teachers of literature, here's the opening verse of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" to get you thinking about a war poetry lesson plan with history and geography providing the structure:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest³ began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots⁴
Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

opposing views

If you want to get your students excited about writing, give them something to argue about, and make sure their informed opinions come from qualified sources. There are plenty of textbooks that attempt to introduce relevant topics from an academic point of view, but they generally are out-of-date by the time they come to print. I was a contributor to one such text, and today it sits on a shelf collecting dust.

Opposing Views: Issues, Experts, Answers is a web site that attempts to keep us all up-to-date on issues that matter to our lives:

Each section of www.opposingviews.com is a channel, including politics, society, health, money, and religion. Our point/counter-point format gives each expert a chance to state their information and opinions on an issue. Meanwhile, the other side objects by calling out the flaws in that information, and then states their own side. Opposing Views brings together the information on the issue, the evidence on each side and their counter-points.

One of my favorite teaching sections was working in tandem with a science teacher on the topic of using animals for medical research. The students loved debating and writing on this issue; there was great passion in their views, whether they supported medical research or animal support groups. My English class wrote an essay, while the science class responded to an essay question on a midterm exam about what they had learned. Together, the students from both classes explored the issue and collaborated with their findings for the debate and essay responses. I used the internet to find relevant articles, pro and con, but the opposing views site would have been most helpful, with its point-counterpoint arguments written by field experts, all in one place.

The diablog this week centers around cross-curricular collaboration, such as the English/science section on animal testing just discussed. JustRead has an excellent, detailed post on putting together an English/history collaborative effort, in preparation for Natural History Day.

teen presidents with broadband

Here's your first writing assignment of the new school semester. The Alternative Teen Services blog offers a contest to get the under-18 crowd thinking about how enhanced communication through broadband benefits people:

"Entries for the new contest, “President for a Day - How I’d Change the World With Broadband!” will be accepted until the September 30, 2008 deadline. Contestants are invited to share their best ideas for using high speed communications technology to address a wide range of issues and problems. For example, do you want everyone to have access to health care specialists, even if they are located hundreds of miles away? How about telemedicine? Do you want to help solve global warming? How about a virtual conference to connect people and ideas? Do you want all citizens to be able to participate in the political process? Do you want all students to have the educational tools necessary to compete in a global economy? How would you use high-speed communications technology to make the world a better place?"

Consider the second to the last suggested question: Do you want all students to have the educational tools necessary to compete in a global economy?

Aren't you curious to know how students would respond? In what ways would they criticize or support the existing educational paradigm?

sources of violence

When we assign argument papers, we look for relevant topics because we know that passionate writing depends upon it. A popular subject for an argument paper is this: Do violent video games promote youth violence? The news media can be counted on to bring us fresh rants every time there is a new release of the most frequently bashed game, Grand Theft Auto. It's easy to find opinions--everyone's got one--but, it's rare to find arguments supported by credible sources.

Duke Ferris at Game Revolution responds to the argument with an article entitled, "Caution: Children at Play--The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games." Since Ferris is a gamer writing for a video game site, it's to be expected that he would support a position that is friendly to video games. To his credit, he doesn't merely prolong the argument, he provides sources to support his position.

If I may quote directly from the D.O.J. report "Recently, the offending rates for 14-17 year-olds reached the lowest levels ever recorded." The lowest levels ever recorded. In other words, the Playstation era has, in fact, produced the most non-violent kids ever. [Duke Ferris, quote]

Students will likely agree with Ferris's claims, since virtually all of them have experience playing video games and they don't consider themselves violent. So, the best use of this article is to model its use of sources, statistics, and charts, which come from the US Department of Justice. The DOJ site has updated its statistical charts through 2005, so have your students refer to these.

Ferris's argument is strengthened by his admission that overtly violent games are not for children; they are clearly marked 'mature' for a reason, and are rightfully not sold to anyone under 17. Emphasize to your students how this concession strengthens his argument, showing that he is willing to consider opposing arguments. He goes to the effort to link to a variety of opposing opinions, though I would point out to my students how outdated these sources are. We would also make it clear that simple links to other sources are not enough for an academic argument. Each source requires a discussion.

One of the strengths of the internet is ease in finding sources, though that ease is also its weakness: how credible are those sources? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments we find?

It's up to us teachers to show them how it's done.

reading room

Where do you do your reading and writing? Do you have a set place, or do you wander the house or coffeeshops? Though I have a vision of the perfect study, in truth, I'm a house wanderer, setting up nooks for comfy reading and solitary writing all over the place.

The Guardian UK showcases the offices of several authors, both living and deceased. The picture here shows Virginia Woolf's room of her own, a toolshed off the garden. Roald Dahl also worked in a shed, though most of the writers had or have workspaces closer to what we might imagine.

Ask your students where their favorite places are for reading and writing. Have them bring in a picture of themselves in their workspace, along with a short write-up as to why that spot suits their purposes. This would make a great beginning of the semester lesson, to get them in the mood for the school year.

remixed digital sources

There is great value in having students study original sources, and a great number of them can be found on the web. Simply viewing sources online, however, does not take advantage of their value. The ability to deconstruct these sources, literally, by tearing them apart while working over and through the ideas is very useful.

Take the example of my section on Romanticism. I've listed three original sources that I want my students to read and discuss. I want them to be able to cite their contributions to the Romantic movement as a whole. There are a number of ways to do this, of course, but I'd like to explore an Education 2.0 alternative.

First I find the source online, in this case, Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads. I want to be able to mark it up, write all over it, highlight and underline. There are very worthy digital annotation tools, such as Diigo, which I have used with success. But I've found greater simplicity in a Firefox extension called Google Docs Bar, which allows me to capture whole articles or portions of text, and turn them into Google docs, retaining much of the digital format. Once a captured article is a doc, I can manipulate it any way I like. Check out my example.

My plan is to use this as a viewing template, which students (in their small groups) can copy-paste into their own documents, and further annotate, defining words, answering my questions, and highlighting sections which support their responses. They will share those documents with each other and me. I will be able to see who is contributing what, as well as how far they've progressed in their comprehension of difficult reading material.

What do we accomplish when we tear ideas apart and put them back together in our own way? Understanding.

simplifying the overarching idea

We want our students to come away from our classes with the overarching idea which creates enduring understanding. Such learning is not forgotten over the weeks of summer vacation, but becomes a foundation for further understanding. So, for instance, we don't just teach Frankenstein, or a few poems by Wordsworth and Blake, and call it a day. The overarching idea is Romanticism itself, the abstract for which we provide concrete examples.

Now, it's certainly easy enough to put a list of the characteristics of Romanticism on the board for students to copy into their notes. That's Education 1.0, which they are distancing themselves from more and more everyday. We could put the characteristics into a slideshow, along with fancy graphics. I'd call that Education 1.5. But both methods merely point out how much I know, and how much they are able to memorize. What we want is enduring understanding, and a comprehensive yet efficient method for getting there.

Most textbooks provide information about the different eras we study, but it's just background noise, and students won't pay much attention to it unless we change the dynamics. Tell your students that it is up to them to discover the characteristics of Romanticism (or, any topic). In fact, narrow it down for them: Which are the four most important characteristics of Romanticism? The number doesn't matter, really; they can add or subtract as their research dictates. But providing a number limit creates a dynamic where they have to debate amongst themselves which factors are most important, and be able to defend their positions. The exercise only works in small groups, where they will end up competing group-to-group to come up with the best ideas for the right reasons.

What are you doing all this time? Monitoring. Clarifying. Providing resources.

As far as resources are concerned, you can point them to that blurb in the textbook as a start, if it's useful. There are other online sources for an overview listed on my course design notes page. On that page you'll see that even YouTube has some interesting videos on the subject. Your students will likely think them a bit corny, but no matter, they will augment the reading. These videos also add a further dimension of art and music.

Each group needs to keep their notes and ideas somewhere, so have them open a Google doc, where each group member is allowed to share from their own computers. Make certain they add you as a share partner, so you can monitor progress, see who's contributing, and leave comments. Tell them the first thing you want to see on this shared document is a list of four characteristics they think are most important, based on their readings and discussions. With each new source reading or viewing, they must rethink that list, and change it or reorder it if necessary. Google docs provides access to their revision history.

By the end of this exercise, your students should not have to memorize a thing. They will know the characteristics of Romanticism. And, when they read Frankenstein or Wordsworth's poems, they will know what to look for. And, you will have the tools to know what they know.

the art of science

Surfing the web is an exercise in making connections. We are immersed in what seems like a vast sea of chaotic noise, yet find ourselves congregating around those intersections of dialog from which form a synthesis of great ideas. Two days ago, I clicked on a New York Times article, New Curriculum to Unite Art and Science, which had climbed in popularity so much that it appeared on NYT's top ten list of most-read articles. Obviously, the concept appeals to many. Author Natalie Angier writes about the battle between the sciences and the humanities:

It’s been some 50 years since the physicist-turned-novelist C.P. Snow delivered his famous “Two Cultures” lecture at the University of Cambridge, in which he decried the “gulf of mutual incomprehension,” the “hostility and dislike” that divided the world’s “natural scientists,” its chemists, engineers, physicists and biologists, from its “literary intellectuals,” a group that, by Snow’s reckoning, included pretty much everyone who wasn’t a scientist. His critique set off a frenzy of hand-wringing that continues to this day, particularly in the United States, as educators, policymakers and other observers bemoan the Balkanization of knowledge, the scientific illiteracy of the general public and the chronic academic turf wars that are all too easily lampooned.

Binghamton University in New York has developed the New Humanities Initiative to counteract the split, not only to bridge understanding between two warring factions, but to encourage cross-curricular learning: we each have something to learn from the other.

As a huge fan of cross-curricular teaching, I believe using language arts to help students relate to science brings a bounty of understanding to both subjects. So, I was very excited to find this blog post from Munna on the run about an artist from London who has always loved the idea of physics more than the practice of it. Munna wrote poems about physics, but failed--miserably--at exams, while a student. It wasn't until later that the author was able to bridge the literary with the physical. Staying grounded in the poetics, Munna uses the 26 letters of the alphabet as symbolic placeholders for intensive physics training. Here's an example: (click on the image to see it larger)
You can view the entire alphabet here. This is how the project came about:

Many years later, in 2005, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at creating some kind of art. And all I could think of was Physics. Because 2005 happened to be the World Year of Physics. A celebration of 100 years of the theory of relativity.
I had this wild idea of creating typography from physics diagrams. After months of research and going through hundreds of those, I finally got hold of 26 diagrams that looked liked the letters of the alphabet. This poster literally transported me into a parallel universe.

Lesson Plan
Let's say you've got a class of roughly 26 students. Have each student take one of Munna's letters to create a cross-curricular project. First, research the concept the letter represents. Synthesize those ideas onto Google documents or presentation slides. If you have students working in pairs on a couple of letters, they can share those documents and you can monitor their progress. Finally, they can demonstrate what they've learned by presenting the concepts behind the art to their classmates.

Scientific illiteracy takes a bow and exits the stage. All I can say is, it's in the air, this idea of connecting in order to bridge knowledge.