Ignite Talks: How to Create Them Using Storytelling

When school starts back in the fall, my students are definitely going to be assigned an Ignite Talk. I may have them write and present one as an introduction to the class. I've always believed that everyone has a story to tell. This Ignite Talk sums it up. Enjoy!

If you want to join me in teaching this presentation format, 

check out the tools below. 

1. Teach your students the format of Ignite: 20 slides, 5 minutes to talk, slides move every 15 seconds. 
2. Show your students examples of great Ignite talks: How to give an Ignite Talk.

3. Give your students a storyboard to plan their talk. You'll need five copies of the storyboard posted below. Of course, student could complete their plans on a computer. 
4. Using presentation software like PowerPoint, students should collect and record their images. 
5. Last, but most importantly, allow time for your students to practice. It may be best to practice in front of small groups before moving in front of the whole class. 

Delicious Bookmarks on Digital Citizenship

Click on the following link to view my list of sites devoted to digital citizenship.

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP

Tweeting: The Never-Ending Professional Development Conference

Why did I wait so long to get a Twitter account? My extroverted, chatty, connectional personality is in love with this social network. Besides filling those dull moments while waiting in the car or grocery store line, Twitter is an excellent source of up-to-date information. Whether your passion is politics, education or NBA basketball, there's something for you on Twitter.

If you're reading this blog, chances are you're passionate about teaching 21st Century learners, who probably know more about Twitter than most of their teachers. If our students are using this medium of communication, then we should be abreast of what it offers educators, learners and the world at large.
How can we turn this attention-distracting device into an engaging educational tool?

I. Twitter Engages ALL Students in Discussion

Every class has one or two shy students who sit quietly and listen to those who dominate class discussion. I've tried numerous methods over the years to increase the equality of student participation. Some techniques work better than others, but none has given the super shy student the confidence to share boldly and often.

My husband, who is extremely introverted, once attended a 32-week small group study at our church and managed to walk away vocalizing only one or two sentences. Afterwards, group members knew little about him and his ideas. He tends to keep to himself, avoiding parties and other social functions. But anyone who knows my husband through Facebook and other social media will tell you he's a thoughtful, funny guy with much to share with the world. The birth of social media has given him an outlet.

You have students in your classroom like my husband. They often shock you with a brilliant, thought-provoking essay, revealing abilities you didn't know existed. These kids have comments and insights the rest of the class could and should learn from. They need to be offered a comfortable, safe and effective way to broadcast their ideas, and Twitter can provide the forum.

II. Twitter Encourages Concise Language

One thing academia has taught me is the art of BS.  You know, how to state a simple idea in a complex, long-winded way using superfluous phrasing. See, I just practiced the art in this post. I love that Twitter cuts to the chase. Students must choose words carefully because they only have 140 characters to articulate a message.  And all writers know that tight, concise writing is usually the most powerful.

An easy beginner Twitter lesson might involve students reading chunks of material and tweeting summaries of each chunk. Since summarizing requires condensing, a Tweet is the perfect format. My seventh graders would also be more engaged in reading and writing if they could use personal devices and their tweets were displayed on the screen as well as seen on each device.

III. Twitter Condenses the Paper Load and Tracks Participation

If you’ve ever been an online teacher, you already know the beauty of tracking student participation. Let’s face it. When you teach five to seven face-to-face classes a day, it’s hard to keep track of who’s engaged and participating and who’s not. Electronic messages like Tweets are recordable and can be evaluated after class dismissal. If you’re in the practice of collecting check-point assignments like exit slips and summaries, Twitter allows you to collect this data without creating piles of paper.

IV. Twitter Offers Never-Ending Professional Development

Okay, if you’re the teacher who counts down seconds until the final bell and usually beats the bus out of the parking lot, then you might not be jazzed up about this element of Twitter. But for those of you looking for innovations in education, then start following educational Twitterers right now.

Twenty days ago, I signed up. I am now following 156 people and am receiving educational research data and field-tested ideas literally by the second. Perhaps this is too much information to wade through, and I don’t read everything, but the 140-character Tweets make skimming easy.  Twenty days ago, I realized thousands of educators lived on cyber space ready and eager to collaborate with me. No longer do I have to depend on a department of four people for inspiration.  If two are better than one, how great is this worldwide pool of collaborators?

V. Need More Convincing?
If you still need convincing about using Twitter or need to know where to start, check out the following links. Please share your comments, ideas and experience with me. I look forward to the collaboration. 


1. Twitter.com
2. Impressive Use of Twitter in a College Freshman History Class
3. Teaching with Twitter
4. DigMe in an English Classroom
5. 100 Ways to Teach With Twitter
6. My Educational Stack of Twitterers: Educational Technology Twitterers

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a dream come true for an extroverted, education junky like myself. It's all about organizing and sharing electronic sources with fellow educators, parents, and students. What social bookmarking does for the research process is beautiful! As I'm searching a topic online, I simply click a button on my browser to save the URL of any source I want to remember. I file this URL address in a neat stack accessible to me anytime on any computer since my social bookmark is not restricted to my hard-drive.

If I am working on a project with a colleague, I can email her my stack, or list of valuable sites. She can look over my sources before we meet, either online or in person, to complete our project. We can even look at stacks by others who have a similar interest and add what we like. No longer do we have to travel aimlessly on the internet using only a search engine.

And let's not forget how this tool can help students. If I assign research on a particular topic and don't want students to spend four days searching for sources and evaluating their reliability, I can pre-select sites for them. Using my social bookmarking stack, students can still make choices on what to read. They just have a more narrowed focus. They can spend more time reading and learning about the topic.

Of course, my students need to use this tool as well. Teaching organizational skills sets up my students for success. Social bookmarking also helps with collaboration. This tool has me doing cartwheels in my language arts classroom. I'm so excited about the power it gives both my students and me to explore, organize, and share with one another.

Are you a social bookmarking newbie? So am I. Don't be afraid. It's easier to master than you think. Check out this video for a quick and easy explanation by Common Craft.

Social Bookmarking

Also take a look at the stack I recently created titled digital citizenship. I plan to share it with students next year.
http://bit.ly/KdRKUJ

Time to Log Off

This evening my son grabbed a stool, climbed into the pantry and removed five bowls, five cups, a bag of marshmallows, his favorite cereal, and some fruit cups. When I asked, “Whatcha doing in there?” he replied, “We’re going to have an author party, Mom.  Just wait a minute, and I’ll be ready.”

Upon his request my whole family, dog and grandmother included, piled in our small den and attentively listened to Luke read his original fairytale. He stood before his audience like a pro, showing the pages after reading and bowing when he was finished. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him so proud of an accomplishment.

Then he ushered us in the kitchen where we served ourselves from his snack bar. While eating our marshmallows, my daughter played a piece on the piano, and then out the door we went for the grand finale, catching lightening bugs. Joy suggested we let our buggy victims go all at once for a firework-type celebration. Fortunately, a big scary-looking beetle with mean pointy horns flew in while the door was open. We caught it, made it a home in a plastic container and fed it cantaloupe left over from dinner. The kids then fussed over who would get to bring the creature to school for show and tell. Lucky teachers, we decided they should take turns sharing with their classmates.

So what does my evening at home have to do with technology and education? Quite a lot, I think. While technology is grand, it has its place. Luke drafted and edited his fairytale on a computer. He printed it on nice clean paper that made him feel like a published author. But when the project was finished, we took time to stop and listen to his masterpiece, face to face. We made sure the TV was off, and no smart phone or laptop was allowed to be a distraction. The intimacy and attention validated Luke’s efforts and carved out one moment in our busy screen-filled lives just for him.  

The most beautiful moments I’ve witnessed in schools are when I’ve been a spectator listening to the band, choral and drama students perform live. Over ten years ago, I sat in a crowded high school library filled with parents and students, listening to teen authors who bravely approached a mic one at a time to share original poems, stories and essays. All these years later, I still remember that evening vividly. Their words triggered tears, anger, laughter, and nods of agreement. Those young people took a risk at vulnerability and offered us a piece of themselves. Yes, they used a microphone to amplify their voices, but they chose not to use any more bells and whistles.

I enjoy technology. It makes writing easier to draft, revise, edit, send to friends, post to the world, etc. But it has its place. Sometimes we need to know when to log off, pick up a pencil, play a tune, catch a bug and study it closely, communicate face to face, and share a moment in time that does not need to be recorded. Like most things in life, we need a healthy balance in our classrooms between logged-on, screen-filled moments and the face to face human interaction.  

Enough said. It's time for me to quit staring at this screen and log off!

Vocabulary Cinema

I've struggled for years on how to teach vocabulary effectively. I think I've failed more times than not. It's no secret that voracious readers are the ones with the greatest vocabulary. These students will be okay without me, but they make up about 10% or less of my class.

Traditional Instruction

So what should I do to increase the vocabulary of the other 90%, the group that depends on me for help? Of course, I teach vocabulary within the context of reading; I model how to use context clues, and I try to encourage as much independent reading as possible. I've also used well-known vocabulary resources like Wordly Wise 3000 and Vocabutoons, and I've asked students to generate sentences, paragraphs and stories using lists of words. I think every effort I make in this area is helpful, but I don't think I've done enough. The truth: students will retain more when they are engaged. That's the key. So I must change my approach.

Vocabulary Videos

Last summer my husband, who is also a middle school English teacher, discovered a unique vocabulary program called Vocab Videos: Bringing Vocabulary to Life. Created by educators with a passion for vocabulary instruction, the videos feature about 500 words most likely found on the SAT. Using a vocabulary word as as focal point, the producer creates a skit that demonstrates how to use the word correctly. Skits may last anywhere from thirty to sixty seconds and when strung together create a story. The only downside to this program is the price, which seems rather high for my taste. You can, however, sign up for a one-month free trial before making a purchase.

Flip the Lesson

One way to flip these video lessons is to assign students a word and ask them to create a skit focusing on the word's meaning. To kick up the technology component, students can video their work and post it for other students as a study tool. Once recorded, the skit can be viewed as many times as a student deems necessary for retention.

Here's a preview of the Vocab Video program:

Here's the website for Vocab Videos. You can see some skit examples here:
http://www.vocabvideos.com/our-videos.html

If you decide to use this program, I'd love to hear feedback. Please consider posting it to my blog.

Information Literacy

“If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.”  ~ Pierre Gallois

Unless we want the next generation of world leaders to be easily fooled, then we better train them to be critical. With so many resources at their fingertips, students need skills in evaluating information. Before starting any Web-based projects, teachers should provide students with tools and knowledge on how to tell what’s legitimate and what’s not.  

Here are a few sites to help students and teachers fine-tune their information literacy skills.  

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html (an extensive list of resources to help you and your students evaluate information found on the Web)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39mnu1Pkgw&feature=related  (a good quick explanation about why students should do more than just google a topic when researching. This is geared toward college students and upper level high school students.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlqZSg5ER6A (a prezi from Plymouth University about information literarcy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TqD0oKOT6Q&feature=related (a fun video to introduce a lesson about intentional plagiarism)

How Web 2.0 is Changing Education

Add together my years as a student with my years as a teacher and I’ve been in a classroom for thirty-five years. Without a doubt, I can say that teaching and learning have changed over the last thirty-five years. I remember the excitement of my teachers and classmates when dry erase boards were mounted in the classrooms and the way my senior classmates and I bragged about being the first students at our school to take typing on a desktop computer as opposed to a type writer.

In college I conducted research on microfiche and searched for books in a library comprised of at least four buildings spread across the university campus.  It wasn’t until my senior year in a journalism class that I was introduced to the Nexis Lexis. What a novel concept this electronic database seemed to me at the time.

When I accepted my first teaching job in 1994, the world of information technology was moving faster than I could keep up. Now I teach in a classroom with a laptop cart humming in the corner, a digital document reader, microphone, iPods, iPads, flip cameras, HD digital camcorders and an airliner at arms length.

Just last year, my students and I skyped a student from Egypt and heard first-hand how recent political and social events had affected her life. And last week students at my school traveled around campus with their smart phones completing a digital scavenger hunt that included hidden QR codes and links to information about the medieval world. What a juxtaposition of ideas that was!

According to the textbook authors of WEB 2.0: New Tools, New Schools, American schools need to change quickly to keep up with the progress that the rest of the world is making. If our world is shrinking, then our students will be competing with, communicating with, and working alongside people from other nations. The medium for all three activities is technology, especially technology like Web 2.0 that bridges the gaps almost immediately.

So what are some challenges that schools face in making a focus on 21^st Century learning a reality? I hate to say it, but money is a huge obstacle for some schools. I’m fortunate to work in a school supported well by property owners. But I often worry about the students just 20-30 minutes north of me in Birmingham City. Will the children of West End and Ensley, for example, have the same educational opportunities that my children have?  And what about the students who go home to places not equipped with a browser, internet connectivity or an electronic device that accesses Web 2.0? Should teachers assume all students can continue Web-based learning outside of the school building?

The authors of our text emphasize bridging the gap between how students live and how they learn, suggesting that all students go home to houses wired and filled with Wiis, DSs, and the like. We must also think of the bridge that needs to be made on the other side to students who are not as equipped with technology.

The lack of resources shouldn't slow us down. We have to be deliberate, however, in building in practical solutions to ensure all students have access to 21st Century learning tools.

We must also not forget to encourage life-long learning practices. Being afraid that students will not be able to compete adequately with others from progressive nations should not change our objective to only skill-based learning. If the world is changing, students need to learn how to adapt. They need to be masters of finding, evaluating, and using information effectively, creatively, and ethically. In a nutshell, they need to learn HOW to learn.  

Finally, I agree with Ken Robinson who shared in his TED talk that “education is supposed to take us into the future we cannot grasp.” If we don’t know what that future looks like, then we must take risks with our students and allow them to take risks as well. They must be set free to explore and create. We cannot be afraid of new ideas, especially those generated by students. It’s okay if learning is messy and mistakes are made along the way, even if it's the teacher making some of the mistakes. That’s how real knowledge is obtained.

Poetry App

While visiting with a poet friend of mine today, we discussed the pros and cons of traditional publication of poetry versus using social media. Let's face it; unless you are writing song lyrics for some big time celeb, your poetry will probably not make you a lot of money.

So if your goal is to share your art with as many people as possible, perhaps the best way to publish poetry is through Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and the like.

Check out these neat poetry apps for poets and readers. This may be a great way to inspire young writers in your classroom. 

Poetry Apps

Ignite Talks

I recently discovered the Ignite format for public speaking at a teaching workshop called EdCamp Birmingham. (EdCamp is another topic I'll blog about later.) I cannot wait to use this presentation format in my own teaching and as a presentation tool for my students.

What is Ignite? (Check out this link for all you need to know about IGNITE!) 
Ignite is a format for speaking on any subject. There are a few simple rules to follow, however.

1) Your talk has to be five minutes: no more, no less.
2) You must present twenty slides that advance every fifteen seconds.
3) And of course, you need to prepare and be enthusiastic!

Using this format, you can present tons of information in a short amount of time without boring your audience. And if you're a geek like me, you'll also love watching all the Ignite talks online. It's a great way to learn.

Here's one of my favorite Ignite talks:
Where do ideas come from?

I look forward to using this presentation tool to engage my learners and teach them public speaking skills at the same time.

Enjoy!

Digital Storytelling

As a composition teacher, digital storytelling really excites me. Basically, it's a way to combine photos/video, voiceovers and music to tell a story.

This story can be historical, fictional, journalistic, personal, etc. In fact, you can use this format for persuasive and informative pieces as well. I've used this technique in the classroom a few times and find that students usually forget the overall objective: to produce good writing. When I say forget, I don't mean that students ignore the elements of storytelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. I mean, they are so interested in the overall product, they forget the activity is academic. It's no longer "a lame paper that only my English teacher will read."

You do not need to abandon your traditional composition units to use digital storytelling. The writing is basically the same. The difference is adding images, music and voiceover.

We all know that students are often more engaged in writing when they know their work will be published somehow. At the end of a digital storytelling unit, you MUST either post the stories online for all to see or spend a day or two in class sharing stories.

TIP: I always have my students complete a storyboard before hitting a computer. An APPROVED storyboard is their ticket to continue. Without a storyboard, they have to sit at their desks until they produce one. This method proves to be a great motivator to get the writing done and done well.  Of course you could have them compose the storyboard electronically as well. I would advise you not to let them continue to the next step, however, without a finished storyboard. The storyboard gives students a map for the rest of the project. 

Storyboard template:
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/myplacemyspace/promote-your-day-out/with-film/storyboard-template.shtml

Check out these links and feel free to ask my questions about my experience using digital storytelling.

http://www.streetside.org/stories/digital-stories.htm


http://edweb.fdu.edu/folio/FrancoE/ST/resources.html


http://www.edutopia.org/use-digital-storytelling-classroom


http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2410


http://www.storycenter.org/


http://digitales.us/files/digitalstorytellingarticle.pdf


http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/powerpoint.html

Welcome

Welcome.  This blog is intended for teachers like me who want to keep up with all the new ways to engage learners through technology. Bells and whistles cannot replace good teaching. Instead, they are tools teachers and learners can use to explore, synthesizes and communicate. I'm on the hunt for how to incorporate technology in my classroom (and out of it) to ignite and sustain the passion for learning.

I'm a language arts teacher who loves writing lesson plans and changing up the way I do things from year to year. I get bored easily, so I'm always looking for a new book to read with my students and new stuff to learn.  I hope you will explore these passions with me by reading my blog.