Sunday, July 7, 2013
Geeking Out
Today was the day for answers! I enjoyed reading the articles on responding to student writing. I felt like the discussion and three-column chart helped me to sort out how to make these suggestions a reality in my classroom. I thought it was interesting that I wondered how asking questions and writing letters back to students would work for the revision process and immediately received a response from my partner. I did not have to attempt the trial and error process in the classroom. Now I feel like I can apply this strategy directly to my lessons for this year!
Additionally, the geeking out lunch provided me with the opportunity to discuss with partners the best way to present my ideas for the digital project. Sarah mentioned combing weebly and a meme for a more comedic approach to my topic. Steve sent out a tweet to other participants in the Summer Institute about the best way to create a meme and received an immediate response! It was pretty exciting to see that we could collaborate online and in the classroom simultaneously.
I am fairly confident that if Sarah had not recommended I take this approach to my ideas for the digital project that it would not have turned out well at all. I found that weebly challenged my previous technology experience because I had not created a multi-page website before. However, I did not know that such an easy-to-use format was available. I felt like weebly provided simple instructions with enough detail in the layouts that I was able to include everything I wanted. I did create a "meme," but actually decided against using a meme generator. I discovered that I could write on a picture before I took it with my webcam. This allowed me to create a dramatic slideshow based on the concept of a meme without using the generator. I tried to be as dramatic as possible in the pictures, so hopefully the humor came across. Please feel free to check out my website at
http://writingwars.weebly.com
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Ashley, I am so excited to see what you created! (By the way, I think your video is private right now - I tried to watch and couldn't. Any suggestions?) I, too, learned quite a bit from our collaboration today. I had a general idea of how I wanted to approach my digital project, but your suggestions and Steve's know-how helped me to solidify my thoughts. I think we can all learn a lot from our partnerships and writing groups during SI and take our experiences back to our classrooms to help our students understand the importance of having other brains to complement our own! Thinking and writing socially offers such unique and brilliant perspectives - I am looking forward to tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteI did like the writing letter idea in terms of responding to student writing! I'm excited as well to see how it plays out in the classroom this year. I loved going around the room on the gallery crawl and seeing all the different directions people went in for their projects. I really enjoyed seeing your slideshow pictures and reading about your inspiration for your meme. Lots of good questions about why we value some writing / writing purposes above others and why that matters or shouldn't matter.
ReplyDeleteAshley, I know that I said it on the sticky note I wrote you today, but I thought that your project with awesome....it worked really well to create a complicated image of our identities as writers. Also, it was awesome to sit by you and do a little thinking /trouble-shooting with you about how to meme-make. What you ended up composing on your Weebly page was way different than the initial idea we had talked about, and I feel like the writing you are doing in this post is way important in documenting your thinking process for how your moved from one idea to the finished product. I think that it's in those spaces that some of the greatest learning happens. Thanks for bringing me in on the process, and thanks for sharing it here!
ReplyDeleteAshley, I really liked your metaphor on writing wars weebly page and how this exemplifies the academic and creative tug of war with words. You brought up many good points about what other fellow writers "value" and consider the definition of good "serious" writing. The contexts of writers adds a new dimension to how similar and different writers perceive themselves as people and as writers.
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