TeacherWeb, Edublogs, Blogger — I have an account with each of them; and TeacherTube is easy to use and upload videos through; and CamStudio, the little Flip Camera, along with VoiceThread let me work with documents, poweroint, pictures, and stuff.

I think what I’m wondering, now that the school year has begun, is what I should be focusing on. Our school uses TeacherWeb, so I’m going there by default. I think I’m going to take my idea from here, which would hold a blog, video, podcasts, links to sites, a section for writing, a section for reading, and a section for young adult writers. I don’t know how well TeacherWeb is going to handle all that. I’ll add the link to my TeacherWeb on the side and hope that some of you add that to your RSS and I’ll go from there.

I added a new video to my TeacherWeb, by the way.

I was looking through some blogs and I saw that the Tech Chics, one of them, was playing with a Flip Camera and I had to play, too!

You see, we have some Flip Cameras in our library, so I checked one out, did some recording, and here it is. It’s my classroom. I know, I know, I should embed the video in here. After I recorded my bit, I uploaded it to TeacherTube. (Similar to YouTube but without the unwanted ads and questionable videos.) Unfortunately, TeacherTube and Edublogs aren’t playing well together. It seems Edublogs has updated/upgraded itself but TeacherTube has not. Some folks (in the forums) lost a lot of embedded video and are trying other routes. Anyway. I linked mine. Click on those words up there.

Oh, the point of this — the Flip Camera — I like to change my room around a lot. I have about 8 or 9 different desk arrangements. Eventually I thought I’d post them (on my TeacherWeb page) during the year so kids know what to expect. This was just for fun to show my room in rows. Just a little idea.

Setting Up an RSS Reader

Well, I have completed this week’s assignments, and I’m happy I am ahead of schedule. I set up a Google Reader because I knew I already had one that I never used.

It was annoying to sit here and add everyone’s blogs, but it really is such a practical way to keep up with everyone’s blogs that way. However, now my reader shows that I have over 150 entries to read. These aren’t only classmates’ blogs. They also include the new blogs, podcasts, and news feeds I added. In the future it won’t be this much of a hassle, I know, because I won’t be adding blog after blog.

Let’s see. Blogs I added include writing blogs, a grammar podcast (by Grammar Girl), local newspaper sections that will update me on book reviews, the New York Times book review section, and I think that’s it. I’ll definitely hone this list down over time. I am not a fan of overloading; that’s a huge turnoff and I would feel overwhelmed — that would lead me to never checking my reader. I think it’s important to control what you think you can read.

It would seem that a reader set up to read student blogs would be great at first glance, but if you think about it, that’s a lot of reading to do. Not all of them will post at the same time, unless you make the blog an assignment. I see a problem with this. As an English/language arts teacher, this is the old notebook problem. It’s great to get all the kids to write, but someone has to check all that stuff. It is time consuming.

My conclusion: An RSS reader has the potential to be like the top of an upright chest of drawers. You can put a lot of stuff on it, but eventually it just becomes a mess you ignore. It is best to organize your blogs into folders.

Click here to listen to the lecture. Here’s a retelling of a recent lecture I gave on the difference between the prewriting stage and the drafting stage. It’s rough, unedited, but pretty close to what I said in most classes. If this works, my intent in the future is to add more lectures that complement the work that we are doing in class.

Good question. I’ve been looking around the internet for an answer, and I don’t like what I see.

Some people define the word drily, as if they were dictionaries. This leaves the word devoid of meaning and makes an essay seem boring. Some define it historically, reaching all the way back to word’s French beginnings. Knowing a thing’s beginnings, however, does not make us like it more. This is trivia, fodder, a waste of class time.

Some define the essay according to its framework—they count the paragraphs or discuss thesis statements or general word counts; or, they may define it by categories—the academic essay, the personal essay, the philosophical essay, et cetera, et cetera. Here, also lives the essay that shall not be named. (Hint: it likes the number 5) The problem with categorizing essays is that people learn the rules for one and apply them to all others: a personal essay does not need a thesis statement, and a political paper needs more than 5 paragraphs. Not everything needs to be outlined, pre-written, or graphically organized, and what works for one writer or teacher does not work for everyone else. Strict rules stifle the soul of writing.

None of those definitions are what I am looking for. I am looking to explain what the essay means to the writer, what the essay says to the reader; I guess I’m looking to define the soul of the essay. (I may as well try to define a human being!)And as a teacher, just what is it I am teaching my students to write? Sometimes, I feel a twinge of guilt because I see these kids writing good stuff (better than what I wrote at their age) and yet much of it lacks depth.  Because of this, they aren’t earning high marks, and I know this demoralizes them a bit. I think they are used to being graded on basic superficial stuff, but I’m asking for more.

I am not the type of teacher who is concerned about teaching the mechanics of the essay—but make no mistake, I require the dottings of this and crossings of that. Therefore, if I am asking for depth, I need to teach them how to write with depth. O writing gods, what have I done! Writing an essay can be an art, but even artists have many skills and techniques that they have learned to use to best express themselves. That’s what I’m trying to do here. I teach my students skills and techniques in writing so they can use these things to express themselves as individuals. Alright. That basically satisfies me.

Now, I can answer the question: what is an essay?

An essay is you. In words.

My students have finished their first essay for this semester and now I have to grade their work. Over the years, I have come to question the necessity of grades. They serve no purpose, but the grading system is so embedded, like a tick, that we can’t seem to remove it from schools. (That image is kinda gross, but grades are bloodsuckers, sapping the life out of lessons, projects and work.)

 So… I try to be creative when it comes to grades. I came upon a new idea tonight. Instead of writing a grade, I’m writing a grade range. Generally, the range is about five points. For some kids, the range may fall between two grading tiers (C+ through B-or B- through A+), but that’s acceptable to me. There are those papers that teeter between two grading tiers and by assigning a grade range, I get to acknowledge this fact. I’ll return the papers and then I want my students to take their papers home and discuss them with their parents. Together they could decide what grade the paper specifically earns. The students then return the papers to me, each with a specific grade which I then record.

I love the empowerment for kids and parents. I hope they would feel more involved with this grading concept. There is, of course, room for disagreement. The range I give may be too low in their opinion, but I could sit down and discuss the reason for that range with them. I could ask them what range they feel the paper falls in. I think on a few papers I gave a smaller range of say three possible numbers. I’ll have to go back and make all papers cover a 5-point range. That seems to be the consistent thing to do.

I’m not naive. I know some people will take the highest grade. That’s okay. I’m giving the range. If I’m willing to give the range, then I have to be satisified that the mark they decide is one that I could have given as well. I’ll post on this topic again. It’s worth pursuing this further on here. I’m curious to see how this turns out.

I assigned an essay when school started up after the holiday break. I tried to get the kids to come up with their own topics and I tried to teach them a very simplified version of a detail paragraph. I wonder how that went for them.

 One thing that really annoys me is when kids ask about the rules about the assignment and not about how to write an essay. They want to know how many pages, can they write on the back, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t like talking about the rules. People always look for exceptions to rules and the conversation turns to that and the essay itself is ignored. I wonder, why do all those rules matter so much? (I know why, but I am still in disbelief.)

I want them to write a paper. I said it should be two pages in length at a minimum. I encouraged them to write as much as they needed to write. Now, they are worried about writing a two-page paper but I never said the paper was that long! I explained how to write a three-sentence detail paragraph, but I explained that they can add more details and sentences. I also explained that you could create a pattern of paragraphs in your essay. I also asked them to include a variety of sentences.

So, they’re now worried about writing three-sentence detail paragraphs exactly right, but they’re worried that I might want the detail paragraph to actually be longer. Just how many sentences do I want, they want to know. And they want to know what kind of pattern I want them to create with their paragraphs. Should every other paragraph be a detail paragraph? How many detail paragraphs should they write?

I want them to write. I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job.

I’m trying to get my students to write essays about their lives, about things that really happened or are happening, but they look at me with confused expressions. They simply don’t understand what an essay is. They want to write stories. They don’t understand that writing stories is more difficult, requires more skills in writing.

Well, this is for students and teachers. And for myself. I don’t know everything there is to know about writing, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have something to say about it. I still get excited about writing when I read books about this subject. Also, there are stories to tell, subjects to study, technology to be explored; and then there will be even more questions.

A podcast will complement this blog. Is it possible to teach writing with audio? I think so. I want to create something quite simple, practical, unassuming.

I work with this idea in mind – writing has three levels: skills, techniques, and strategies.

Skills are basics necessary in writing. We should be able to write simple, compound, and complex sentences; know rules of spelling and grammar; and we should have an inkling about why we are writing something. Skills can be broken down for beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers.

Techniques take things up a notch and combine sentences to create emotional effects, kinda like rhetorical devices. These can be anything from intentionally varying sentence length, to selective word choice, to other stuff.

 Strategies are the top tier of writing. We all do these things to some extent. If you can write with sarcasm or a hint of irony, or intentionally create a weepy bit of writing, you are using a strategy. You are using your skills and techniques to serve your purposes. (Only the bravest writers go here.)

 So I’m going to blog about this stuff, and I’m going to invite my students and fellow teachers to chime in.