Here is our Prezi presentation:
Here are links to two helpful blogging sites
Blogger is discussed in your Will Richardson book in chapter 3.
Author ArchiveLora Sanders MU NWP SI 2009 Ethnography
DATELINE July 7, 2009 The following is an investigation report of the cult-like gathering of teachers housed in a compound located in Corbly Hall, fourth floor, Marshall University. The climate in the compound is sub-arctic and forces the members to wear coats indoors in July. The information given in this ethnography is only the opinion of the ethnographer and should not be considered fact. The Ethnographer is relieved of all legal and civil obligations and cannot be held liable. Time: 9:00 am EST Ethnographer is positioned within the NWP Cult. She is disguised as one of the Fellows. Leaders are beginning to suspect she is not right in the head. Suspicion is growing. Note: a fellow is a new member undergoing the “Process” of joining the NWP Cult. Throughout the past two weeks she had endured many initiation practices and is now privy to inside information. Leaders of the Cult and Fellows gather in the common meeting room and seat themselves around some sort of uneven ceremonial table. Each comes in with journal and pen in hand. The group seems happy to be reunited as they were given leave to celebrate the 4th of July with family members who are not permitted on the compound. The group is divided between those who drink from cups with lids and those who have open ones. The majority is overjoyed with the food offering of Hostess doughnuts. It does not appear to take much to make them giddy. Sister Peggy, Head Priestess (she goes by other aliases Queen, Facilitator, Leader), refers to Beyond the Blush by an author the Ethnographer did not catch. The Leaders and Fellows are about to embark on the first ceremony of the day: Sacred Writing. Here they will bare their souls and further bind each other to one another through written and shared confession. They are instructed to write about an embarrassing moment. Giggles are heard as they begin to write and soon settle into silence. This will be a true bearing of souls. So not to blow her undercover FAC-ADE, the Ethnographer prattles on about peeing in a pink tutu and a disgruntled janitor. Then each Sister and Brother in turn reads their confessional. Brief summaries are included and subjects for further investigations:
Time 10:15 am EST Sisters and Brothers dismissed from ceremonial table. Some eat, some talk, some participate in the quilting bee and add meaningful quotes to the Quote Quilt. The Ethnographer escapes to the up-flush potty and is faced with a challenge of locked doors, walking under ladders and information exchanges with the undercover maintenance man. Access gained. Is the High Priestess having the Compound bugged in the ladies room? Time 10:30 am EST Note: While no formal uniform has been issued for today, one member is noticeably over dressed. He must be the human sacrifice to the Demo. Cult moves to some sort of meeting room known as The Lab.
Brother JD begins his demonstration titled “Addressing the Fear of Math: Mutli-genre Projects”. He leads the Brothers and Sisters in a rousing chorus of “I Hate Math” and begins to demystify the anxiety and the stigma of math in our schools. Through the writing of eulogies, arrest reports, and the use of video, he is able to convince the congregation that writing is a path for math instruction. He also uses humor to ease the isolation of students struggling with math concepts. Praise and suggestions conclude the demonstration. JD has pleased the High Priestess Peggy and the others so he will not be sacrificed – today. Approximately 12:00 pm EST Note: Fellows are not permitted to leave the compound during NWP hours. Celebration Feast is held daily at the ceremonial table.
Sister Jill has been assigned lunch detail. She serves chili, chips, and cheesecake to the cult members. A mysterious jar of red jam is offered and made from a secret recipe. The Ethnographer is brave, tries it, and is pleased. Again the Brothers and Sisters are giddy at the sight of food and beverages. 12:45 pm EST The cult is divided into something called Writing Groups. Here the Fellows read and revise pre-written pieces in groups of 3 or 4. Note: Ethnographer believes this is the portion of the day devoted to brainwashing and teaching of the NWP Cult ways. Fellows are completely free to share and support one another’s writings. The feelings built in these groups lead to the continuation of the NWP Cult. Writers are built who will later go out and recruit new Fellows. The Leaders stay housed in The Lab. Fellows are not privy to this meeting. It is the opinion of the Ethnographer that they use this time to plan Cult activities and contact the outside world. No Leader could be reached for comment and the door remained closed until 1:45.
1:45 pm EST Members are once again given a break from Cult tasks. Some Sisters, who will remain nameless to protect their identity, are becoming slap happy from the day’s pace. Brother JD seems dazed by being spared earlier. His eyes are glassy and he only nods in response when given Deep Revision information. 2:00 pm EST Brother Ian calls the group back to The Lab and begins the Technology Ceremony. He instructs the members to visit the SI site and focus on the Creating an E-Portfolio link. DO NOT LOOK AT THE EXIT SLIP. He then proceeds to lead the group in a demonstration of creating a table of contents using the WordPress page maker on our blogs and teaches the doctrine of link-making. Brother Ian speaks in tongues, but the ethnographer is able to pick out important phrases and extract meaning. He loves the new presentation website he has discovers. Cult members are hypnotized by the swirling words and pretty fonts. The Ethnographer has, however, forgotten her thumb drive and risks blowing her cover. Swiftly, she reads the exit slip and begins looking busy. While the High Priestess and other Leaders are working on Cult related tasks, she works the room interviewing other Fellows about their SI experience. Brother Ian is moving around The Lab offering aid and overseeing tasks of posts, revision help, Open Mic blogs, and archiving links. Sister Beth keeps him busy with questions while other Fellows multi-task with hyperlinks and ipods. He will report to the High Priestess on Techy-progress and grants permission to begin exit slips. Time Lost Ethnographer loses track of time and notices other Brothers and Sisters beginning to leave the compound. They are under orders from the High Priestess Peggy to return for the Sacred Writing Ceremony July 8th at 9:00 am. Tomorrow’s events will look similar to today. Note: The Ethnographer had truly enjoyed the Process of becoming a Fellow in the NWP Cult. If the High Priestess serves Kool-aid in the morning she will happily drink and then write about it. Using your blog What are your reflections on using your blog thus far in Summer Institute? How can keeping and maintaining a blog help you as a member of a professional community? How can you use blogs in your classroom? The Electronic Portfolio How does the e-portfolio project change your blog and how you use it? What ways can you use an electronic portfolio as a professional? How could you use e-portfolios in your classroom? Here is a link to our presentation for today. Here is a link to the e-Portfolio Table of Contents Template. Click the link to open the file in Microsoft Word then save it to your flash drive. Here is the text of the Prezi presentation if you prefer it in this format. Creating Your e-Portfolio
Pages
Making your e-Portfolio Table of Contents
Step 2
Ethnography Campus was abandoned today for the holiday weekend. The automatic door was locked, and I had to stand there for a minute like a moron trying to figure out if it was going to open or not. I hate it when that happens. S.I.ers filtered into the computer lab and meeting room as 9:00 approached. Jill was re-editing her digital story because she had become nervous at the realization that she’d put her children’s full names on the Internet. It was neat to watch her create a new video then methodically go about erasing the digital footprint of the old one. At 9, we met around our big table for sacred writing. Writing was delayed for a minute due to dithering over the prompt. Describe a place of time that makes you happy? We eventually decided you could describe a place that made you happy in the past, is making you happy currently, or maybe even makes you unhappy. Peggy had the correct response to journal topic dithering: “Oh, my lord.” A place that makes you happy After Ann shared her ethnography from Thursday, we all lined up for individual and group photos in front of our quote quilt. I made a peanut butter sandwich. Beth almost talked me into shaking some Fritos on it, but I decided that would be better at midnight than at 10:30 in the morning. We traveled down the hall to see our Writer in Residence, Laura Treacy Bentley’s final presentation. First, she discussed two quotes on the board—“Writing is Magic” and “Wild Mind.” She discussed how writing felt like magic to her and encouraged everyone to use their wild mind to generate powerful ideas. Laura reminded us, “If you love writing, and if you teach your students to love writing, it’s something that can last a lifetime.” She also shared with us the lyrics of a song by Terri Clark that Jill found. It reminded Laura and Jill of the painting “Two Together” by Marnelle North everyone used to inspire their ekphrastic poems. Her presentation focused on story structure. Our first activity was designed to help us generate detail for a short story. Laura distributed Post-it notes to everyone and had us fill them out as follows… 1. Run to the food room and find a quote from the quilt. Write it on your Post-its. (I was the last to leave the room because I was taking notes. Laura told me that she’d been watching your digital stories, and that she really enjoyed them.) 2. Write down the name you would have been called if you were born the opposite gender, a name you would choose for yourself if you were to change your name, and a place you know well. 3. Next, we were to go into the next room and choose the first line from a famous novel from lists Laura had scattered about. I was the last to leave the room again, and Laura was laughing listening to people find the lists next door. 4. Next, we wrote down the name of our best friend or confidant. 5. Then a time period we would love to live in. 6. Finally, we described the climax of a movie we love. Laura then had us pick a spot on the wall and arrange our Post-its in any order we chose. She explained that she used this technique to keep track of ideas for her writing. She has a mirror in her office. Whenever she thinks of a detail for the piece of writing she’s working on, she sticks it to the mirror with a Post-it. Then she has it handy to refer to while she writes. Laura then gave us three wild card Post-its to work in to our collection… 1. Scrimshaw 2. Sardines 3. Pigeons stare at me through skewed glass Laura recommended that when you are writing, you imagine a person you are writing to. This imaginary, narrow audience enables you to focus. Laura then discussed story structure. She reminded us of the elements of fiction and discussed briefly character, setting, point-of-view, and dialogue. To illustrate plot and importance of conflict, Laura treated us to an improvised performance of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We then discussed its use of conflict as it sets up a problem, piles on the suspense, and provides a resolution. Then Laura instructed us to go to our Post-it collages and write a story about the different words and ideas we’d collected there. We wrote for a while, but I was tired and hungry and mine turned out to be junk. I’m glad we didn’t share. By then, it was noon and time to head to the Tea Room across the needle bridge in Proctorville for our Field Trip Friday excursion. We traveled up stairs through the fountains and furniture and lamps, lamps, lamps into the cozy, dim café. We intruded on a group of old ladies with tight, curled hair having tea and sandwiches. Our waitress buzzed around, obviously discombobulated and stressed by the red-shirted gang swarming over two sets of tables. After ordering drinks, we wrote about our personal artifacts. Each person was to produce a piece of descriptive writing about an object that had personal meaning for them. The arrival of lunch concluded our writing time. After eating, we shared stories about rings and lockets and paintings and rocking horses and post cards and photo albums and books. After everyone shared and the check was tallied, we dispersed into a beautiful Ohio-side afternoon. I enjoyed a quick jaunt out to Beth’s house so we could all see where it was for use as a future meeting location. Jennifer told me all about her son’s 4H project—training their cat to be a therapy cat. Marshall University SI Ethnography July 2, 2009
I was introduced to the I-Search form of writing today. I find it very interesting so I am composing this ethnography report in the form of an I-Search paper.
The topic I chose to research is the Summer Institute of the National Writing Project at Marshall University. In doing my research I found that this is a group of teachers who are spending some of their time off during the summer to improve themselves and, in turn, improve their students. I find this very admirable. The students that will be having these teachers in the fall are incredibly lucky. I wonder what made them come here in the first place?
The day started at 9:00 in the small conference room with all the fellows gathered around a long table. They appear to have pens and paper ready for their first task of the day. Someone makes note of a member who has returned after a three day absence. I ask someone and find out that that person is Amy. Everyone is happy that she’s back.
The head honcho put a writing prompt on the board: My “mother” once told me…. Peggy, the head honcho, tells the group that it doesn’t have to be what your mother told you. It could be your father, an aunt, your best friend. I guess there has been some confusion about writing topics in the past because she also mentions that you can write about anything you want-there are no rules.
Jill, one of the fellows, asks, “How long do we have to write?” Peggy didn’t tell her how much time because she doesn’t want the fellows looking at the clock. As I observed Jill, she seems content with this answer. Maybe I will research more about the time thing in another paper.
The fellows wrote for 30 minutes. When Peggy called time, everyones head popped up. There were mumbles and murmurs of discontent from some of the writers when this time was up. One of them even said, “I have to keep going.” This writing must be powerful stuff. There is a discussion between Peggy and Beth, another leader, about Frank Lloyd Wright. I think he might be something I need to research further also.
There were lots of pieces about moms. The fellows wrote that their mothers had said things like look with your eyes and not your hands, don’t eat food on the toilet, breakfast is the most important meal, watch how you treat a man, turn the crock pot on at 2-no make that 7. Mom’s also said wise things like don’t depend on a man, don’t pluck out that first gray hair because you’ll regret it, chores first, play second, and I love you. There was one mom who is a nut job and one mom who is probably rewriting his paper as we spoke.
There was the father who told stories and used great voices for the characters. Somebody’s dad told horrible stories about a fire and dogs who had been put to sleep. I do not want to research that topic any further.
There was one person who took Peggy’s advice and changed the prompt a little. She wrote about a terrible teacher who told her not to be a teacher because she would hate it. From all the research I’ve done, I think it is safe to assume that person’s teacher did not attend SI.
There was some high level discussion about the art of tattooing and the safe practices that should be noted before getting one. I think I will definitely need to research that much more.
The next part happened at 10:15. Shuang read the Ethnography from July 1, 2009. She did a fabulous job and it was written as a story about all the fellows and their doings in Queen Peggy’s court. Very well done, Shuang!
The group took a break. It was now 10:30 and my research led me to learn that Megan was getting ready to do her demo. A demo is when one of these fabulous teachers presents some of their research about a particular topic to the other teachers in the group. I was excited to learn all that Megan had to say.
Megan began her demo at 10:40. Her topic was the I-Search paper, the very reason I wrote this the way I did. We started off by learning about the history of Megan’s research papers- the one about the cross-stitch seemed interesting. We had to do a writing about one of two choices- a research paper we remember doing or one that the teachers had assigned to their students. Everyone who wrote about the papers they did agreed that not much was learned by doing them. Some of the teachers wrote about papers they had assigned and their frustrations with these papers.
Megan showed the fellows the theories and research behind these papers. One of her statements from research was very interesting. She said that Ken Macrorie, the inventor of I-Search, had said that all the years of making his students do the typical research papers had “contributed to the killing of human curiosity…”. I agree with that statement. When Megan had finished her demo, she was able to get some helpful advice from group members. Great job Megan.
Twelve o’clock was lunchtime. Those teachers were very hungry. Bethany’s mom made the delicious barbecue. It was heated to the perfect temperature so her mother would be proud that she followed the directions for proper crock pot usage. The cookies were a wonderful way to wrap up the meal. Thank you Bethany!
Writing groups were formed at 12:45. Each group went to their respective rooms for some talk about pieces they were working on for their portfolio. I sat in on the group with Shuang, Beth, Mary Frances, and Anne. They talked about some deep revision pieces and a variety of other topics. They seem like a fun group. I can see how the work they do together is of great benefit to them.
Another break was taken at 1:45. Most of the fellows went back to their computers to enter some pieces into their blogs. Once again, I am amazed at their dedication and hard work.
Ian led the group in some technology things at 2:00. This is a very sharp bunch of teachers. They followed his presentation created on HYPERLINK “http://www.prezio.com” www.prezio.com and then uploaded their digital stories to the Vimeo website. He explained that he chose Vimeo over YouTube or TeacherTube because it was pretty and blue. Not really. He wanted to learn more about it and he couldn’t get YouTube to work. So this one worked and it was easy. Those are two very important criteria.
Each fellow created a free account on Vimeo and uploaded their digital story to the website. Once the videos were successfully uploaded, a link to each video was placed in the creator’s blog. Ian’s plan is to collect them all and put them on one page.
Ian then reminded the fellows of their need to publish something to the eAnthology along with doing the exit slip for the day, and check to see if anyone posts comments about the pieces that are posted to the eAnthology.
Peggy reminded all the fellows to bring $10.00 for the field trip to the Tea Room tomorrow. They are going on a field trip-now that is some authentic learning. Each person is to bring an artifact from their home. It can be big or small or if it’s too big, a picture of this item can be brought.
The videos slowly became available on Vimeo and the noise level in the room increased. People were watching the videos made by the other fellows. There was laughter and talk. It showed the great bond that was forming between these teachers.
The red SI tshirts were passed out. They have a nice quote from Laura Treacy Bentley on them. It says “In the becoming, I am transformed”. There is a nice bridge on the back that represents the 3 states that come together to form the Marshall University Writing Project. It’s a very nice shirt.
The day ended at 3:30. The fellows slowly made their way out of the computer room. Talking and laughing continued. Some people stayed late to work. I think the most important thing I have learned by doing this research is that a good teacher never stops learning. I now know what drew them here in the first place. It is the one thing they all have in common- the desire to be the best for their students. What lucky students! Most of you have now completed your digital stories. Let’s reflect on what this genre can do for us. Use these questions as prompts for a piece of reflective writing on your blog. How can I use digital stories with my students? How can I have my students utilize this genre of writing? What assignments or projects can I give my students to make use of the genre of digital storytelling? Why might I choose to have my students work on digital stories? Why might I choose to not have my students work on digital stories? How can I use digital stories in my teaching? Why might I want to make a digital story for use in my classroom? How can this genre of writing be used as an instructional tool? What ways can I use digital stories in my classroom? How can I use digital stories for personal writing? When might I want to work on a digital story? What ways can I explore the genre for personal projects?
Here is a link to the video hosting service we will use. Plain text of Vimeo presentation Hosting Video on the Internet You’ve created your video. To make your video accessible to anyone Popular Hosting Services YouTube.com Creating a Vimeo account.
Uploading your Video
Your Video’s Location
Jul
01
2009
 
Here is a link that that presentation website I used.Posted by iannolte in UncategorizedHere are some examples of cool presentations other people have made. Remember, this is a web-based presentation program. Everything is created, stored, and viewed on the Internet. Internet access is required to use it. (Thanks to Karen McComas.) |
||
|
||
Entries (RSS)