Providing Online Feedback

For my final project, I plan on developing a Moodle or Ning site that I can use for my combined Theater classes during second semester. I will be teaching an Intro to Theater course and an intermediate-level Theater Arts course during the same hour next semester, and I’d like to see how I can use Moodle or Ning to help with the organization and execution of the classes, as well as using the tools within the sites to foster more digital writing.

Since theater is a performance-based art, there will be A LOT of performance-based assessments in these classes. I could easily see using the blog or forum features to have students journal about their progress during a particular unit or to reflect on their learning/performance after an assessment.
In terms of specific assignments, there is one that jumps to mind. The Theater Arts students will be using selections from the book Working by Studs Terkel to write character monologues. This will be part of the unit where they read The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman and The Tectonic Theater Project, which features monologues culled from interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming. I’ve attached the assignment sheet here so you see the gist of the assignment—it still needs some tweaking, but it’s pretty decent for a first draft.

When I provide feedback to students on their rough drafts, I would use two different methods. For the first draft, I will provide feedback via a podcast. Since they are writing a piece that is meant to be performed, I will start by doing a cold reading of their piece on camera so they can see and hear their work. Then, I will provide feedback from the perspective of an actor interpreting and performing the piece and from the perspective of a director looking at the structure of the piece. Changing my role from teacher to collaborator will automatically force me to switch into descriptive, reader-focused feedback-mode.

Before the second draft is turned in, we will discuss the students’ reactions to the first round of feedback. I will try to guide them to recognize the helpfulness of reader-focused feedback and then provide a brief overview and practice session on that type of feedback. For their second drafts, students will post their monologues on the discussion forum of whatever site (Moodle or Ning) that we’re using. Each student will have two or three people from the class for whom they must provide feedback. In explaining this process, I will also encourage them to engage in conversation with each other as they respond to each others’ work, so it becomes interactive and collaborative, rather than isolated and disconnected.

In terms of the assessment piece, the monologue itself will probably just end up being a Word document they print off and hand in. There really won’t be a need for a specialized rubric that takes digital writing elements into consideration. Where I will need a rubric like that is the Character Study. Check out the attached rubric I created to assess the Character Study. I divided it into three sections: section one assesses on the content of the presentation; section two looks specifically at the visual and audio components; and section three looks at how the digital elements work together.

Readability of Websites

So, for the two websites I compared, I took a look at one of my favorite websites--Television Without Pity-- and the website for Apple. Granted each website has a different purpose, but I thin they are still worth comparing for their design aesthetic.

Television Without Pity is a website devoted to following TV shows--it is a place where avid TV fans can read recaps of their favorite shows, view photos and video clips, and interact with other viewers in the forums, among other things. I discovered TWoP when I was following the series Veronica Mars. Now, I read their very snarky recaps of Glee, which continually point out the fact that Will Schuester doesn't even come close to resembling any kind of teacher on the planet, but that's a totally different blog post--one you can access here! When I first began reading TWoP five years ago, the site was still young and not quite as full of content as it is now. The burgeoning amount of information available on the site has transformed a once simply-designed-but-easily-navigated site into a bit of a mess. They have so much going on that it is hard to sift through everything or know where to look. The menu bar at the top of the screen, while easily found, is a pain when running the mouse over the page because all of the menus are drop-downs and they get in the way. There are also now tons of ads--particularly pop-up video ads--that come attached to every page and spring up on top of whatever someone is trying to read. The designers tried to make things easier to understand by using diffferent boxes to separate different content on the main page, but all of the boxes are the same size, making it hard to distinguish which are the important boxes. Lastly, the website started with recaps of shows--that's their bread and butter. The most recent reacps are hidden toward the bottom of the main page, not up at the top where most would expect to find them. I didn't even realize they were still publishing those on the main page because I usually don't get farther than the un-subordinated boxes at the top. Ultimately, the site is not bad--there are DEFINITELY worse sites out there--but it does leave something to be desired.

Apple. Ah, Apple. It makes sense that their website would be so beautifully and simply designed; their product looks the same.  It's streamlined, organized, sophisticated, and clutter-free. The menu bar is simple and to the point, featuring seven clearly labeled buttons that do not drop down and obscure the rest of the screen should your cursor stray over them. The most important information sits at the top of the page, accompanied by a large image to grab a viewer's attention. Each following box is subordinated by size, cuing the viewer in on the importance of each item in a subtle manner. With the understandable exception of the store page, each other page is laid out in a similar fashion so viewers know where to look for the same kinds of information. Apple is just so classy-looking, you feel like you ought to be sipping a well-mixed martini or a glass of a classic Old Vine Zinfandel while browsing their site. Unfortunately, the only thing TWoP's design reminds me of is the massive, groggy headaches after too many tequila shots and Long Islands at the bar during my undergrad years.

In terms of how this connects to my work in the classroom...
I think it would be really easy to do a comparison with my students on the design aspects of websites or presentations. They are pretty savvy with websites, and they've seen enough Power Point presentations from teachers and each other that hey could pretty easily identify a good website/presentation versus a poor one. I like the idea of having them do an activity like this in the lead-up to the persuasive speech in the spring. They are required to use visual aids and many of them automatically use Power Point to share facts, graphs, charts, or images. I think they would really get into options like creating their own webpages, Glogs, or Prezis. I could see starting by examining websites for good and poor design. The kids could brainstorm the categories that the design elements would fit into, and then I could fill in the categories or items they missed. They could do a group comparison of a pair of websites. Then, we could shift to paired work looking at presentation samples. We could talk about whether or not the same design principles used for websites apply to presentations as well. As a culminating piece, they could create the part of the assessment that looks at their creation and presentation of their visual aids.

Lots of opportunities to explore here, but I'm a bit too burned out right now to explore all of them in depth. Desperately in need of the 5-day Thanksgiving break. Will post more later! Happy Thanksgiving!  

Twelfth Night: Director's Concept in a Prezi

Using Wikis

I was first introduced to wikis several years ago in my Tech Tools for Educators class and have since used them with students for a a number of different assignments. In my sophomore class at Maple Grove Senior High, I used a class wiki to help students share poetry they had written. The students themselves also created wiki pages to share research they had done on the 1960's in preparation for reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I've done similar research projects with students at Chaska to prepare them for reading different books, including A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare.

Whether because I haven't done enough reading or thinking about it, I have never used wikis for more than just sharing information or writing. I have a strong feeling that there are a lot more uses for wikis than what I've used them for. I wish I had more time (doesn't everyone?) to explore and read more about what I could use them for.

I really liked the idea of the Dinkytown ethnography that we did in class. Instead of just doing a straight research project, it might be interesting to do an ethnographic study--via pictures and videos over the Web--of places where our stories take place. Like an ethnographic study of Sierra Leone, which is where A Long Way Gone takes place. It would be super cool to find a school in Sierra Leone with whom we could collaborate--interviews, photo sharing, etc.

I could also see using a wiki in my creative writing class. It would be super cool to team up with another creative writing class somewhere and have the students share their writing. How cool would it be for kids to know they have other eyes out there reading their work and commenting on it?

I think it could also be possible to use a wiki for my theater class. Kids could share useful websites they've found for monologues, upload designs for sets, costumes, or lights, upload videos of themselves rehearsing scenes or monologues, share videos/photos of productions of plays we're reading, etc.

There are a number of great ideas for wikis--I just need the time to think through them and figure out how they can best help students learn.

Using Comics in the classroom

Well, this is a very appropriate topic for me right now. I have several students in my classes who cannot pry themselves away from their manga books long enough to pay attention in class. On one hand, I'm very glad that they're reading; on the other hand, I wish that they were as interested in what we're reading in class as they are in their manga books. It's sort of driving me and my colleagues crazy.

Onto more productive thoughts. I have used comics before in my classroom. A couple years ago, I used excerpts from Art Spiegelman's Maus during a unit on the Holocaust. The kids responded pretty well, and the text offered some interesting ideas for discussion. Then, last year my accelerated 9th graders read Persepolis Part I as part of a unit titled "Seeing versus Being Seen," which included the novels A Beautiful Mind, The Bluest Eye, and Love Medicine, and focused thematically on issues of power, access, and voice. Persepolis in conjunction with the other novels, served as a fantastic jumping off point for some fairly in depth discussions. I also had the students create their own hand-written, hand-drawn comics about an issue in the lives of today's teenagers that revolved around the idea of voice and power. I don't think I explained it as clearly as I should have, because the results I got weren't exactly what I was hoping for, but it was the first time I'd tried it.

In the future, I like the idea of using comics as a way for kids to challenge texts by re-creating the stories and changing the things they had problems with. For example, a lot of the kids get a little frustrated with Romeo and Juliet and how impulsively they act, or how limited Juliet is in what she can do as a woman in the Renaissance. It would be really cool to discuss these things with kids and then allow them to re-write the story-challenging what they see as issues-using a comic book format. In addition to my students who are addicted to reading manga, I have a lot of artists who like to doodle and draw during class. This would be a great way to get them more engaged and allow them to share their talents with their classmates.

I think the real work on my part would be teaching them how the simple placement of characters and text can communicate something about the characters, their relationships with others, their relative status as compared to other characters, etc. That might take a little more preparation and modeling on my part, but it would definitely create a more thoughtful final product from the students.

Digital poem: "Fame is a fickle food" by Emily Dickinson

My ComicLife comic using rehearsal photos from Grease!