Finishing the Year with Google Docs

The best part of the new developments in technology is how they can make okay plans I have done in the past much, much better. I am hoping this is the case with my AP English Lit students' final novel study: Things Fall Apart. I have always had them tackle this novel in seminar groups where they prepared discussion ideas ahead of time then discussed the reading in small groups with me as a resource not their teacher. It has gone fine and even very well -- but the discussions ended in the class. I am hoping Google Docs will expand my classroom outside of the 45 minutes that happen in the four walls of my room.

I started by changing around the discussion prep work (see this here), incoporating sharing and reflecting on the group's Google doc before coming to class. Students have to, for example, add a question they have about the reading to the Google doc for the first seminar. For the second seminar, they have to reflect on the discussion their group had and note on the Google Doc the most important themes and issues they see thus far in the novel. In class, the Google Doc will allow all of the students to be clued in to their books and the discussion rather than typing furiously away taking notes (see seminar guidelines here).

Overall, Web 2.0 tools have given me class time I never had before -- the students' own time at home alone yet still connected with each other in web-based discussions. Individual literature reflections have become full-blown discussions before class even happens (using the Turn It In discussion board). I hope Google Docs can become yet another venue for this independent yet collaborative thinking my students have been doing. It just so happens that I really don't need to be guiding every aspect of their discussions -- they do just fine, if not even better, playing with the ideas on their own.

Pushing Inquiry Further

My students' work with the inquiry frame for Oedipus Rex (see post below) worked well enough that I decided to push it further as we start our final theme for the year: cultural identity and isolation. Doing something twice always means the second time is better, so I knew I had little to lose.

We began exploring this final theme on Friday just by looking into what the individual words "cultural," "identity," and "isolation" meant. This produced great ideas -- particularly the point that you can be be isolated even within the culture that creates much of your identity. We discussed literary examples to explore it more, and it was neat to see them play with familiar characters in a new way. I ended this part of the discussion by having them define what we would need to look at in our upcoming readings to help define this theme. On their own, they said we would need to define first the culture then define how the characters were placed in relation to this culture. From there, we could explore.

They defined my unit plan. On their own. This inquiry stuff works.

I ended class with the following question to introduce Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis: How do our everyday cultures (that is our families, jobs, friends, classes -- those things we experience every day) affect who we are and who we aren't? I told them that we were starting small with this exploration -- with a story that rarely even left a single home. We will the build on this by reading Things Fall Apart, starting as outsiders to the culture that is at the foundation of the novel.

Framing with Inquiry

One of the most worthwhile things I never find enough time to do is read about teaching methods. This takes me back to my undergrad and grad days where I had to write out formal lessons plans and try out new strategies. This forced experimentation always showed me how well things worked in ways I had not anticipated. So, a blurb about an inquiry-based approach to literature in the Council Chronicle has my mind working again as I think about WHY I teach a lesson the way I do. After years of teaching, I can often lose the original idea behind a tried and true lesson.

Today I made the inquiry-based approach the overt guide for our discussion of Oedipus Rex. We had looked at two questions before beginning -- "What if your search for self leads you to something you do not want to know?" and "Do our actions determine our fate?" -- and then moved on to reading the play in class and playing around with the character of Oedipus in nightly on-line discussions. Typical literature discussion stuff.

So I dragged out the questions again as the start to our class today, saying that now it was time to see what Oedipus could teach us about the answers -- my inquiry frame. Our discussions ranged from the strong characters of Sophocles's writing to the ancient Greeks' view of fate to the views of fate we have. This class tends to be quiet, so it was not the liveliest discussion ever -- but it was real. The students talked about how, as much as they want control, they like to think there is some fate in their lives -- that things happen for reasons. This led to their college decisions (which have all come in as of April 1 -- a coincidence or fate that I had this discussion today?!) and whether some of the difficult news they had heard had a role in a larger plan. Not all students saw it this way, and the give and take with this was impressive. They were not trying to convince everyone of their views -- just playing around with ideas. I ended class by having them write down their thoughts on fate and choice and life, and the keys did not stop tapping for a full five minutes. I don't know what they each specifically wrote, but I know they were intrigued and connected.

An old method proves effective again. I am now going to try to be more overt all year with my world literature themes -- phrasing them with the questions that have always lurked under why I grouped the particular set of books together in the first place. Going back to our roots as students of teaching often uncovers great things.

Playing with Literature

Our school is switching to an on-line book service, so we have had to turn in our book lists for next year this week. So I have spent the last few weeks thinking about texts, and it really has been fun. So often I get on auto-pilot as a teacher -- doing what I did last year but just trying to make it a little better. Thinking instead about the what we are reading (not just how I teach what we are reading) has pulled me away from the trees to see the forest. It is actually a daunting task to put my mind around. I have some control over what the students read from 6th through 12th grades, and to think about how my fellow English teachers and I are in charge of the exposure to literature that our students will get is a bit staggering. How can we introduce every genre, every diverse author, every great title? It is these choices that we must make that define our students' experiences as readers, and I hope I can do them justice.

So for now, we are replacing The Once and Future King and Frankenstein, while also considering How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents for incoming ninth graders' summer reading. Do you agree or disagree with these ideas? Other titles to suggest instead?

Tumblr and Google Notebook

Today was double-shot of technology day. My students had posted their Othello links to Tumblr for homework last night, and today I showed them how they could use Google Notebook to read and take notes on their on-line sources. Their enthusiasm about Tumblr remains to be seen. I hope they like the idea of having everyone's sources at hand, but I think the way I arranged the assignment made them not use what others had posted as much. They all had to post (maybe part of the problem ...), but I told them they could post a site someone else had found and posted -- they would just need to explain why they liked it too. But it is not easily clear in the postings when someone is doing this, so it just looks like lots and lots of sites. I will refine for next time, but in the meantime, they do have everyone's site to work from tonight as they start their research.

Google Notebook however was an immediate hit. They loved how it helped them take notes and recorded for them both the highlighted quote as well as the source. I really think they will use this, even though I am not asking them to. The only IF is that right now the sending a note to Google Notebook for them is not working, so it really doesn't do much. I am trying to learn why they can't get it to work like I can so that I can rekindle their enthusiam, but this technology wall stopped our momentum. My students would have read sources on Othello and taken notes on them to the very end of class if they only could have through the Notebook. Ah, next time ...

UStreaming My Students

Today at 1:00 was my first attempt at ustreaming -- my students performed live Act V of Othello. Click here to watch the video.

Google Notebook

I have been playing with Google Notebook and have decided to show it when we start researching our Othello character sketches. I am going to require that my students use Tumblr because I want a class-created resource list. But I am just going to show them Notebook and see who decides to use it. Since most of my students use g-mail, I feel like they may actually use other Google features on their own, and this is the idea I am playing with as I work to define my own philosophy as a teacher in this new world.

As I am sifting through all of the technology I COULD use in my classroom, some applications (like the Turn It In discussion board) make my teaching better by taking my classroom to a new level. But some tools are not necessarily better -- just different ways of doing the same thing. I am struggling with defining for myself why I might choose to use these tools. I would like to show my students how to use technology to aid their learning rather than just as for social networking. Their college professors and future bosses are probably not going to insist they use Notebook, so that old adage, "We are doing this to prepare you for college" is not true. Instead, I hope I am introducing tools they find useful enough to choose to use on their own. I am trying to pick carefully the tools I show then use those tools in various ways so the students come to really understand them. Maybe this is just my old 20th century brain working :), but with so much available to them on the web, I hope to help them focus on some really useful things I have found.

Thus ends another blog that was just to be about a new tool ...

Can't Sleep ... So Why Not Lesson Plan

It is 4:15 AM, and my alarm is going to ring in an hour. I have used my insomnia to finally have time to focus on my plans for my students' character sketches for Othello. I was worried about having the papers rushed at the end, which would have been a shame because we have worked very closely with this play and the papers have, consequently, real potential. I have now slowed things down to let our work sink in as they process their chosen characters' final moments in this tragedy.

The students move into this character study having performed live the entire Act V of the play (check my webpage later for pics and video!). Therefore, they know this play about as well as they can at this point. I hope the critical essays we then read (here and here) play an even bigger role in their papers because we are working through them a bit more. I am using Google docs to have them outline their chosen essay with a partner the night before they come into class to jigsaw. I have also included these essays along with other suggested sources on our Tumblr page so they are reminded that these can be outside sources for their character studies. Now let's see how it works out ... the best laid plans ...

Library Thing

I have used Library Thing all year with my AP Lit students. For each theme we study, they choose a novel to read on their own, and we have Book Celebration Day where we sit together and share our books. It has always been a great day -- nothing like an English class where you just talk about books you loved.

I have struggled though with how to have them keep track of their books and review them. Library Thing seemed like a great solution. We all joined a group and "friend"ed each other, so now we can see each others' libraries and reviews. I have not though used it as much as I would like, which means of course that my students weren't using it as much as I had hoped. In fact, I am pretty sure they don't visit the site unless a review is due.

But I tried something different in today's class -- this was Book Celebration Day #3. I projected my Library Thing page and clicked on each of their names and reviews as we went around the circle. I thought it would be fun to just see the number of stars each person gave their book, and then listen to why. This indeed was neat, but what was even neater were the reviews by other people that pop up in the righthand margin. We got to see reviews from all over the world about the very books my students had read -- some in other languages as well. This was not a HUGE moment in class -- instead it was one of those little moments that add up. My students have been studying "World Lit" all year, and today they connected in a small way to people around the world reading the same stuff. Neat. Now I am thinking about how to capitalize on this more so next year ...

The Text

I had a great few days in AP Lit this past week. They happened in my more challenging room -- the one where I have English class in the physics lab, the one where the big lab tables are oddly arranged and way too heavy to move. What has happened is that we have all just turned our stools towards the empty middle of the room and sat with our Othello texts and pencils in hand reading/acting/miming our way through the second act. The students have been more engaged in the TEXT (not the story -- that always grabs them -- but the actual book in their hand) than most all of my prior classes.

Pushing close reading even more has been a recent goal of mine. I have worked to remember to ask a student with every response to point us all to a place in the text, and what has happened is that this particular class has already internalized that. They start their responses with the text. As a result, they have seen and shared really cool things and made connections that other classes have not made -- or at least never expressed out loud.

It is an interesting thing to see happen -- reminding me of how one teaching goal can spawn unexpected results. I have ended up being able to change my discussion prompts. On Friday, all I did was to tell them to have pencil in hand and that those who did not have parts to read/perform were particularly responsible for marking new things they learned or "ah ha" moments. When the reading was done, all I had to say was, "So what did you notice?," and off the discussion went. I have tried this before with lots of silence in response. But this time, it was different -- and invigorating. I had a class marking all over the text and debating with each other, not through me. A good end to the week. A good end to what ultimately is a class training exercise I suppose. I am pleased with the results of course and now am still trying to figure out all of the reasons why it worked this time!

Teaching

Our English department had a retreat on Monday morning where we got to discuss the courses we would like to offer next year. First of all, kudos to the administration for empowering us in this way. We had a wonderful discussion of semester courses each of us would like to offer, coming up with a final list ranging from medieval literature to the 19th century novel to poetry writing. This leads me to my second of all ... the time to talk and share is what engenders great teaching. I know we all left this meeting excited about the mere possibilities of these courses, and I know we will all continue to talk about them should we get approval to offer them. It seems like such a simple solution: give teachers some control over their curriculum and courses and then give them time to act upon such control.

[Oh, and in case you are wondering, my courses would be "World Religions through Literature" and something about writing -- "Creative Writing" or "Poetry" or ... :)]

Going with the moment ...

I had a great tech moment yesterday. I had my students for homework find websites that had particular information about Shakespeare based on a list of topics. They then posted to our blog a write-up of the info with hyperlinks to the sites. One of my students who was to research producing Shakespeare went to You Tube and embedded two videos of casts working out their understanding of the scripts with a great explanation of how he had not realized how text/word-heavy the analysis was. I read the blogs before class and was so excited to see the work this student had done. I adjusted my plans to show the video he had found. I thought having a little video would be interesting, but it turned out to be the foundation of what we then did today as we tackled our Othello text. We referred back to the video, and I could remind my students that those actors always went back to the text for the meaning. Hence, so did my students ... and in a way they had never before in previous classes doing this lesson. Whether the video inspired my students or whether it inspired me to explain our analysis better -- I can't say for sure. But it sure went well, and it goes back to bringing into the lesson what a student had found to add to our learning. That is the great equalizing effect of the Internet and technology. The "teacher" role is always shifting, and I LOVE it when this happens.