First, before delving into the afternoon activities of our Writing and Technology’s class, I have a powerful need to acknowledge that our class’s premier scribe, Sarah Glova, has placed the proverbial bar very high in her first record of our class’s morning activities. Thus, I am feeling the equivalent of a Napoleon complex, except that I’m almost 5’10—it’s some kind of envy that I’m mislabeling, I’m sure. Given this current onslaught of insecurity, here is a tragically less inspired account of how the W&T class spent the rest of our first day together . . .
After Dr. Engel’s rousing lecture on the vast historical and literary importance of the delightful and apparently saint-like Jane Austen, the class relaxed and enjoyed tasty sandwiches, chips and cookies. After this Honey-Baked repast, we began our afternoon work with a syllabus review led by Kevin Oliver (of the aforementioned banger conspiracy). Kevin started his speech by steadily and clearly summarizing the technical requirements of the Writing and Technology course, and by reminding all that this is a graduate level class.
Some immediate details:
Students will receive an adapter for use in England; we can ask more about voltage, etc. as we approach lift-off to the UK.
Ruie then interjected that students will also be supplied with digital cameras—sweet! Many students murmured appreciatively over this unforeseen boon. Kevin continued that there will be Wi-Fi on the Guilford campus and suggested that for the most efficient communication with folks back home, students should set up a Skype account before leaving the U.S. Everyone--please be sure to turn your cell phone off before arrival in the UK—not doing so could cost you big bucks.
Next, Kevin covered the major assignments for the W&T class, emphasizing academic rigor, but also encouraging everyone that the assignments are all very doable. He also touched a bit on grading and rubrics; students perused these tools in the syllabus as Kevin explained the details. Much of the student grade for the Writing and Tech course is driven by participation, a participation that includes an enthusiastic use of technology. Students will save projects at Weebly.com in our personal Weebly portfolios.
During this, our first class, students began small writing assignments, and these assignments along with all of our writing will ultimately be collected and stored on our respective Weebly portfolio pages. Again, please refer to rubrics to understand the details of how assignments will be scored.
Schedule:
Currently, the schedule for our trip is as detailed as instructors can make it. While in the States, students should pay attention to post-class assignments, including surveys, reading, discussion boards, and more. For every class we will complete follow-up reading and subsequent discussion—both online and in the physical classroom at Poe Hall.
Upon arrival in the UK, Kevin recommends not eating out too much because of price; however, we will have a pub-walk our first? day in England
The first weekend overseas will be free, (unscheduled), and train passes will be provided to students. Many people will probably want to visit London; possibilities there include the Market—shopping with Kevin—or the Globe—standing in awe of Shakespeare.
Kevin continued to discuss highlights of past and future trips, and explained that the class is designed so as to align technology with our outings; thus, we will merge writing and images in creative tech projects using fun tech tools. We will both collect and employ media throughout the entirety of this course.
Please note the class’s scheduled free days and free attractions—museums, etc. Furthermore, the class will meet with international students and travel to Oxford with these other students on their buses. Each of us will be paired with another international student. Later, we will employ Xtranormal or Toondoo to illustrate this experience. Pay attention to your assignments; the first major one will be the expository assignment. This afternoon we will craft a “Where I’m From” poem and later will use Prezi to display the work.
Again, the pub on campus has WiFi for both work and pleasure.
If you are interested in the Royal Family, there are many places to visit, and given the summer schedule, Buckingham Palace may be open. We have many other options to travel about the country on our free days.
Post-trip, we will meet on a Saturday to share our final project, and some students may also receive a grant to go to Salter Path in the spring for another Writing and Technology meeting.
On a side-note, if you have any information that needs to be changed on the class roster list, let Sara know and she will take care of it. Thus endeth the syllabus review.
Where We’re From
Mike, another class instructor, rose to warmly introduce the “Where I’m From” poem, our first writing assignment. He began his teaching time with us by outlining his varied academic and professional experience and by instilling general trust.
Mike stated that the “Where I’m From” poem is a cool way to introduce poetry about the self. Teachers often ruin the poetic experience for students by shutting kids down for misinterpreting a poem. Instead, Mike suggested that we give students multiple reading models, prompt them, allow for imitations, and simultaneously celebrate diversity and individuality. However, Mike stated that as teachers, we should probably emphasize how we are the same more than how we’re different, thus valuing similarities and making positive interpersonal connections.
Using details from childhood settings and experience, the “Where I’m From” poems are a fast way to learn more about your students and what they bring in/to the classroom. WIF poems also help with writing apprehension, and Mike stressed the importance of building up writer confidence, student confidence, and making students feel safe in the classroom and beyond.
After classmate Curtis eloquently delivered an original “Where I’m From” poem by George Ella Lyon, Mike modeled how to make reader connections to specifics details, images or nouns from the poem.
Next, in guided practice, the class spent about half an hour brainstorming individual background information for our own “Where I’m From” creation, and Mike shared his WIF poem as well as other examples of “Where I’m From” work in music and spoken word.
Once we’d all gathered a good page of personal history, (details from childhood homes, yards, neighborhoods, family sayings, etc.) class members began to create individual WIF poems . . . For about twenty minutes students and instructors drafted “Where I’m From” poems, and then each student shared his work with his peers. We learned more about each other during this brief exercise than we did throughout the rest of the day.
WEEBLY.COM
After a break, Megan Poole took the floor and introduced Weebly. Whoo! Go Weebly! We can go to SurreyTeachers.weebly.com anytime we want access to notes from or about this class. The Blog at Weebly is where we post our scribe reports, and students can review the main ideas of each class session. For posting scribe notes, login to the weebly (www.weebly.com). Click on the "blog", choose New Post, title it, and cut and paste your scribe notes (which is what Sarah and I will do after today’s session). If you’ve never been on a Weebly account, you need to accept the initial email invitation and subsequently create your own Weebly site. Megan showed the class the sundry tools at the site as well as the different locations at Weebly.com, and she further demonstrated the “drag and drop” method. Quote: “It’s very easy; it’s drag-n-drop.” When Megan drag-n-dropped, the technique certainly looked very easy, but the devil is often in the details . . . when one is alone . . . without tech support . . .
To edit our Weebly sites, we must go to www.weebly.com and log in. That’s the only way/place to edit, but in order to see what other teachers have posted, you need to visit the surreyteachers.weebly.com location. If you’re still working on a post, and don’t want folks to see any errors, don’t “publish” the work—just “save” it and click “publish” when you’re ready to show your stuff.
After this information, the students became busy accessing their Weebly page, adding pictures, etc. in an attempt to catch up with May Chung, the morning’s “signature winner” and the only student who had already posted photos on her Weebly site. If you’ve got a competitive streak, you need to keep an eye on Miss May, student of linguistics and self-declared “daughter of a Tiger mother.”
ISSUU
Kevin returned, sharing a writing template and ISSUU, which is where we will keep all of our writing assignments. Students can cache all of their writing in one place, embed videos, etc. through use of Issuu. To move material to Weebly from Issuu (lord, it’s a foreign language for me) one must “grab an embed code from the bottom of the ISSUU page, and then go to the Weebly and use the custom HTML block, pasting the code.” Writing and Tech students must learn to use both Weebly and ISSUU—a website editor site and publishing platform, respectively. Whew.
Assignment! Post your own “Where I’m From” poem by April 30th, and read everyone else’s work as well. Write at least one sentence regarding each poem created by your classmates for feedback and future discussion. And lastly, don’t forget to read the assigned chapter prior to our next meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Covington
Some immediate details:
Students will receive an adapter for use in England; we can ask more about voltage, etc. as we approach lift-off to the UK.
Ruie then interjected that students will also be supplied with digital cameras—sweet! Many students murmured appreciatively over this unforeseen boon. Kevin continued that there will be Wi-Fi on the Guilford campus and suggested that for the most efficient communication with folks back home, students should set up a Skype account before leaving the U.S. Everyone--please be sure to turn your cell phone off before arrival in the UK—not doing so could cost you big bucks.
Next, Kevin covered the major assignments for the W&T class, emphasizing academic rigor, but also encouraging everyone that the assignments are all very doable. He also touched a bit on grading and rubrics; students perused these tools in the syllabus as Kevin explained the details. Much of the student grade for the Writing and Tech course is driven by participation, a participation that includes an enthusiastic use of technology. Students will save projects at Weebly.com in our personal Weebly portfolios.
During this, our first class, students began small writing assignments, and these assignments along with all of our writing will ultimately be collected and stored on our respective Weebly portfolio pages. Again, please refer to rubrics to understand the details of how assignments will be scored.
Schedule:
Currently, the schedule for our trip is as detailed as instructors can make it. While in the States, students should pay attention to post-class assignments, including surveys, reading, discussion boards, and more. For every class we will complete follow-up reading and subsequent discussion—both online and in the physical classroom at Poe Hall.
Upon arrival in the UK, Kevin recommends not eating out too much because of price; however, we will have a pub-walk our first? day in England
The first weekend overseas will be free, (unscheduled), and train passes will be provided to students. Many people will probably want to visit London; possibilities there include the Market—shopping with Kevin—or the Globe—standing in awe of Shakespeare.
Kevin continued to discuss highlights of past and future trips, and explained that the class is designed so as to align technology with our outings; thus, we will merge writing and images in creative tech projects using fun tech tools. We will both collect and employ media throughout the entirety of this course.
Please note the class’s scheduled free days and free attractions—museums, etc. Furthermore, the class will meet with international students and travel to Oxford with these other students on their buses. Each of us will be paired with another international student. Later, we will employ Xtranormal or Toondoo to illustrate this experience. Pay attention to your assignments; the first major one will be the expository assignment. This afternoon we will craft a “Where I’m From” poem and later will use Prezi to display the work.
Again, the pub on campus has WiFi for both work and pleasure.
If you are interested in the Royal Family, there are many places to visit, and given the summer schedule, Buckingham Palace may be open. We have many other options to travel about the country on our free days.
Post-trip, we will meet on a Saturday to share our final project, and some students may also receive a grant to go to Salter Path in the spring for another Writing and Technology meeting.
On a side-note, if you have any information that needs to be changed on the class roster list, let Sara know and she will take care of it. Thus endeth the syllabus review.
Where We’re From
Mike, another class instructor, rose to warmly introduce the “Where I’m From” poem, our first writing assignment. He began his teaching time with us by outlining his varied academic and professional experience and by instilling general trust.
Mike stated that the “Where I’m From” poem is a cool way to introduce poetry about the self. Teachers often ruin the poetic experience for students by shutting kids down for misinterpreting a poem. Instead, Mike suggested that we give students multiple reading models, prompt them, allow for imitations, and simultaneously celebrate diversity and individuality. However, Mike stated that as teachers, we should probably emphasize how we are the same more than how we’re different, thus valuing similarities and making positive interpersonal connections.
Using details from childhood settings and experience, the “Where I’m From” poems are a fast way to learn more about your students and what they bring in/to the classroom. WIF poems also help with writing apprehension, and Mike stressed the importance of building up writer confidence, student confidence, and making students feel safe in the classroom and beyond.
After classmate Curtis eloquently delivered an original “Where I’m From” poem by George Ella Lyon, Mike modeled how to make reader connections to specifics details, images or nouns from the poem.
Next, in guided practice, the class spent about half an hour brainstorming individual background information for our own “Where I’m From” creation, and Mike shared his WIF poem as well as other examples of “Where I’m From” work in music and spoken word.
Once we’d all gathered a good page of personal history, (details from childhood homes, yards, neighborhoods, family sayings, etc.) class members began to create individual WIF poems . . . For about twenty minutes students and instructors drafted “Where I’m From” poems, and then each student shared his work with his peers. We learned more about each other during this brief exercise than we did throughout the rest of the day.
WEEBLY.COM
After a break, Megan Poole took the floor and introduced Weebly. Whoo! Go Weebly! We can go to SurreyTeachers.weebly.com anytime we want access to notes from or about this class. The Blog at Weebly is where we post our scribe reports, and students can review the main ideas of each class session. For posting scribe notes, login to the weebly (www.weebly.com). Click on the "blog", choose New Post, title it, and cut and paste your scribe notes (which is what Sarah and I will do after today’s session). If you’ve never been on a Weebly account, you need to accept the initial email invitation and subsequently create your own Weebly site. Megan showed the class the sundry tools at the site as well as the different locations at Weebly.com, and she further demonstrated the “drag and drop” method. Quote: “It’s very easy; it’s drag-n-drop.” When Megan drag-n-dropped, the technique certainly looked very easy, but the devil is often in the details . . . when one is alone . . . without tech support . . .
To edit our Weebly sites, we must go to www.weebly.com and log in. That’s the only way/place to edit, but in order to see what other teachers have posted, you need to visit the surreyteachers.weebly.com location. If you’re still working on a post, and don’t want folks to see any errors, don’t “publish” the work—just “save” it and click “publish” when you’re ready to show your stuff.
After this information, the students became busy accessing their Weebly page, adding pictures, etc. in an attempt to catch up with May Chung, the morning’s “signature winner” and the only student who had already posted photos on her Weebly site. If you’ve got a competitive streak, you need to keep an eye on Miss May, student of linguistics and self-declared “daughter of a Tiger mother.”
ISSUU
Kevin returned, sharing a writing template and ISSUU, which is where we will keep all of our writing assignments. Students can cache all of their writing in one place, embed videos, etc. through use of Issuu. To move material to Weebly from Issuu (lord, it’s a foreign language for me) one must “grab an embed code from the bottom of the ISSUU page, and then go to the Weebly and use the custom HTML block, pasting the code.” Writing and Tech students must learn to use both Weebly and ISSUU—a website editor site and publishing platform, respectively. Whew.
Assignment! Post your own “Where I’m From” poem by April 30th, and read everyone else’s work as well. Write at least one sentence regarding each poem created by your classmates for feedback and future discussion. And lastly, don’t forget to read the assigned chapter prior to our next meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Covington