IT Summit 2010 - Will Richardson - Connective Writing

Will Richardson
Connective Writing: Building Learning Networks Through Links
http://weblogged.wikispaces.com/Connective+Writing ( http://tinyurl.com/njnwp)


Big shifts:

• Publishing (push button)
• Multi-media
• web linking to write
• Connecting/Sharing

Writing in linked environments: using weblinks when you write. Use links to connect with others (to encourage interactions with other authors).

Tracking what happens to our text. See who has read it or linking it to their blogs. Sense the impact of our work on our readership. This makes writing a very different beast than it ever has been. No more writing for a teacher or a grade. You are writing for a wider audience, not knowing who they are.

Different ways we write:

• Texting
• Blogging
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarking/Notes
• Twitter
• Audio and Video

What is connective writing:
"...the ability to publish in a variety of media with the intention of connecting and sharing it with others who have an interest (or passion) in the topic." Will Richardson

Process of collective writing:

• Writing starts with Reading about something that makes you think. Blogging is reader response (This is a conversation)
• Collective writing in real-time using public pad wikispaces.
• Discussion about grammar and spelling - potential role for one of the writers or to use the tools available to correct spelling.
• Evaluation - make rubrics with your students to discuss with students.
• Real-time publishing environment: Coveritlive.com is a great tool to cover presentations or speeches that provides an automatic embed code for a blog. Also has a chat feature that comes with it.
• Blogger introduced as a way to easily start blogging.
• Discussion about nuances in writing. Dean Shareski suggested Grammar Girl to investigate further.

Fun with Wordle

Another web 2.0 app that I find intriguing is from Wordle. This webiste lets you represent your writing in a visual sense by organizing the words you use in a piece of writing or post to a website into a word cloud with the emphasis on the words you use the most.

Like my previous blog post where I analyzed my writing using typealyzer, I wanted to see what one month of writing looks like. Here is my blog in a visual sense. (Thanks to fellow educational blogger, Neil Stephenson for giving me the idea! Neil did the same thing after blogging for a month.)

I like that the biggest word in my Wordle is "students" and that if you read across the Wordle, it says "students learning things". I think that this is another website I will definitely be using with my students in the future.

I'm a Mechanic!

It is report card time and I have been spending a lot of time lately analyzing my students' writing. After reading a number of blog posts about Typealyzer, I thought it would be fun to analyze my own writing after blogging for a month.

This is what Typealyzer says about my blog:

"The analysis indicates that the author is of the type:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters."

Analysis
This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing:

What I find funny is that the analysis of my writing on this blog is pretty much how I operate at work and in life. I'm the problem solver type and tend to also be a good listener as I usually wait to hear what everyone has to say and then respond after thinking about it for a bit. The part I find funny is the last sentence about wanting to drive race cars or becoming a firefighter or police officer as none of these things have ever appealed to me. In reading my diagram, I have to say that I will need to work on the right side of my brain.

I think I will have to reanalyze my blog after a few more months of writing to see if things have changed. I think I might also have my students try out this app after they have been blogging for awhile. It would be interesting to compare notes.

Time Well Spent?

Sometimes I question all the extra hours I put into making things possible in my classroom. Is it really worth it? Does the extra time actually make a difference?

If you read this blog, you are likely an educator and can relate to the hours required after school to get the job done. Likely you spend even more hours than that to do your job well. Because I enjoy most of the things I do for my job, I don't really notice the extra time I put in. I have spent a lot of extra hours lately setting up a number of cyber projects for my students; Classblogmeister, Google Docs, 1001 Flat World Tales and an email exchange with a class in Australia.

My goal in participating in all of these projects was to get my students excited about learning and to give them the opportunity to collaborate and to learn online with others around the world. Being the person I am, I can't just do one project at a time, I have to do a number of things at once. Does anyone else have this problem? You start one project and then you see the connection and possibility in another, and it snowballs from there. After many sleepless nights as of late, I was questionning if it was all worth it.

Today, after finally getting everyone set-up on their accounts over the past few days, I couldn't help but get caught up in the excitement of my students as they showed each other how to navigate their way through the programs and applications we were using. They were so excited to try new things and to show each other what they had learned. Their enthusiasm was contagious and I left the school later feeling rewarded for the time I spent setting up our "Cyber School".

Tonight, when I logged into my school Google account to share a document with my students, I noticed that over half my class was online using the chat feature offered through their school Google accounts. Now I know that they would likely be doing this through MSN if they didn't have these accounts, but to see them actually using something school related after hours when they had other options, was very rewarding.

What made my night was when one of my students noticed that I was online and sent me a message that said: "ok.......you are the best teacher on earth!!! Thank you for getting us all connected and stuff."

Funny how you can put so much effort into connecting your students with others around the world, and in the end, they are just as happy to have the chance to be able to connect with each other. After receiving a 'virtual thank you hug' from a student, I guess it really was time well invested.

Podcasting with my students

Over the past two years, I've had the chance to integrate podcasting into my teaching. You can see our most recent podcasts on my podcastpeople website. Here are a few examples of what we've done:

Grammar Podcasts:

My grade 5 students did a wonderful job last year making podcasts that explained a variety of grammar elements in English Language Arts. They read a book about the grammar element and then they had to produce an explanation of their element for younger students in the school.

Meghan's Podcast on adverbs

Molly's Grammarcast on capitalization

"How To" Podcasts:

I found that a simple way to introduce podcasting to my Grade 4 students was to have them write "How To" speeches and then record them in Garage Band. They also had a chance to add some music to their podcasts. This was a great project to work on procedure writing. Here are a few examples:

Kim's How To Podcast

Zara's How To Podcast

Spencer J's How To Podcast

Snowman Podcasts:

My favourite project thus far has been our Snowman podcasting project. It was a great example of integrating technology into French Language Arts and Visual Art. I had the students work in groups to create a story about their snowmen that they had created in art class. We then photographed them in sequential order to go along with the story. They then worked together to narrate the photos in Garage Band and added some sound effects and music. Lastly, they saved them into a movie. The result was 7 "Snowman Podcasts" or "Les filmes des bonhommes de neige". We decided to hold a mini-film festival for other interested French Immersion classes in our school and gave all the students in attendance the chance to vote for their favourite podcast.

Their favourite podcast was:

Jordan, Kyle and Aaron's production of Le montagne mystérieux