Poetry Terms prezi

I have, in the past, used a Power Point presentation with my English 11 students to review poetry terms. While it's a clear presentation and simple to follow, it's not very engaging. Here's a presentation I've begun creating at prezi.com to attempt to make the information more engaging. It's not done yet, but my students gave a positive response when I used them as guinea pigs today...

Pomic comic

Here's an assignment I gave to my class today. Our volleyball team was in the state tournament, so I have a total of four students in class. Because we're studying poetry this week, I decided this would be the best way to engage the few students who are here in a meaningful activity while not making the other students feel too far behind. I'll then have the students post their poetry comics on my class wiki page.

Come see Harvey!

Reflections on Podcasting.

I can imagine that trying to create podcasts in a classroom would cause great amounts of stress among students and the potential for technology difficulties is great. My computer, for example, has an internal microphone, but the recording quality is fairly poor. Hence, my podcast sounds rather echo-y. I also had some technical difficulties in trying to upload the sound file, but that's to be expected the first time I try it. With students I would now be able to answer some of the questions because I've been through this once now.

Uses in the classroom:

I've discussed in other places some of the different uses to which I could put podcasting, including poetry projects and "This I Believe" essays, but I have since thought of a few more. First, students in my Composition class write an ethnography and are required to conduct at least two interviews. I ask students to turn in written copies of their field notes on observations, but have not found a good way to check on their interviews in the past. This would help with that problem. Additionally, if I were to make some of these interviews available to the full class, they would serve as effective examples. We practice interviewing skills in the class, but it's still something that makes the students very nervous the first time they have to do it.

I've tried to use hand-held recorders to capture literature circle discussions in the past, but the problem with that is I don't have enough digital recorders for every group and I'm unlikely to check them out to a group for use outside of school. Skype would provide a good solution for that. I like to allow lit circles the freedom to meet outside of class, but it does make evaluating their discussions more difficult. I've been searching for a couple of years for a solution to this problem. I'm delighted that Skype has possibly given it to me.

I am also looking forward to trying to give students audio feedback on their writing. Typically reading their work does not take long, but writing constructive criticism is very time-consuming. In an ideal world, I would have time to sit down and conference with each one of my students on their work. Realistically, however, this can't happen. There is simply not enough time in the day. Providing audio feedback that they can access another way (without me being there) would help to solve this problem.

There are a lot of students who would love the opportunity to use these tools for class projects. They always enjoy playing with GarageBand, but have never seriously considered using it for an English project. On the flip side of this, the use of technology beyond word-processing freaks out a surprising number of my students. Even in upper-level courses, there are many, many techno-phobes. This surprises me every time; typically in high schools the teacher is much less technology savvy than students, but there are many who are downright resistant to using new tools. Even something as simple as commenting on a wiki or blog seems to be too much. I haven't found a great way to solve this problem, but I do try to introduce technology in small, useful chunks. We'll use a wiki for a project one week, and then I'll add another component the next week. The students who chose to create their own wikis for the Personal Newsletter projects have become my best advocates for this--after figuring out the technology, they've determined how useful it can be for them, how much time it can save them, and how flexible it can be when they create their own projects. Hopefully, their positive attitudes will continue to positively influence the other students into conquering their fears.

Podcasting, part 2

In the vein of idea number 3, I've recorded some favorite poems. For students, I'll ask them to include background as well as a short explanation of why they chose the poem(s) they did. The podcast I've created is two Robert Frost poems that remind me of my grandmother. She was an English and Drama teacher (as am I) and was a huge inspiration for me coming into the teaching profession. "The Road Not Taken" was one of her favorites and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was in the bulletin for her funeral--"And miles to go before I sleep" seemed to remind much of the family of her character. The music in the background is a hymn tune that was one of her favorites.

Podcasting

I'll admit that, of all the new skills we've learned for this class, podcasting is the one I'll probably have the most trouble incorporating into my classes. That being said, I can see several places it would be useful, but it's also quite daunting.

Possible ideas:

1. In my CIS Composition class, students write a "This I Believe" essay as their first assignment. It's a good introduction to the class as it's fairly short, personal, but a different type of writing than students have typically done before. I've encouraged students to submit their essays to NPR, but having them recorded in their own voices for sharing with each other would be such an effective tool. I require all the students to read their essays aloud to their writing groups as an easy way to find errors and structural problems in their writing. I think that knowing their spoken essays would be shared with the whole class would help the essays to become even more well-constructed. An authentic audience (rather than the perceived black void that is merely turning something in to a teacher) is the best way to heighten a student's level of concern.
2. My Beginning Acting students spend quite a bit of time talking about inflection and how the way that lines are said is crucial to conveying meaning. In the past, I've had groups of students write radio plays that they perform behind a screen--trying to keep an audience's attention merely through their voices. Having the opportunity to record their plays and edit them with music in GarageBand would be a fabulous addition to this project, and would really help to drive these ideas home.
3. My CIS Literature students enjoy sharing their favorite poetry with their classmates (as I've mentioned previously, we read Billy Collins and Mary Oliver as a full class). Creating a compilation of poetry read by the students would be a fun enrichment activity for the students--these a usually over-achievers who would really enjoy the discipline of recording and adding music, etc.
   

Now that I've written out all of these ideas, I'm more excited about the different possibilities offered by these projects. The technology is still daunting, but I'm sure we can overcome those obstacles. Some students will be overwhelmed, but others will be captivated by the freedom and choices offered here. On a practical level, I'm always looking for ways to take home fewer paper-based projects to grade. Audio projects would certainly be easier to transport (and would prevent students from the ever-present excuse "I turned that in--you must have lost it.").