Happy anniversary to “nashworld.“  This post is the 65th of the year, and it comes exactly one year after my first post on April 21st, 2008.  Wow.  Looking back at that post, it was quite clear I was full of questions for the coming year of study and reflection, but very shy of answers.  In fact, this blog was initially titled “virtual southside” that first month.  My first plan was for this space to be a group blog to facilitate PD for our brand-spanking-new tech cohort starting in June.

Forming a purpose

Then I found Ning.  In one weekend, it was clear to me that this platform would be a far better, and more flexible, match for our school’s edtech PD mission.  It also served to bring some comfort for our staff in the world of social media.  Though we control membership to the site, it is certainly a more free-wheeling place than a simple group blog.  It was the decentralized nature of a Ning network that I loved.  I didn’t want to drive “virtual southside.”  I didn’t want anyone to drive.  I wanted to be merely another loud voice on a very enthusiastic and speedy bus.

So after a quick rename, nashworld became more of a personal place for reflection, sharing, and synthesis of thought.  I do drive this bus.  However, I had my first guest move up from the passenger section just this month.  Though I certainly do have an amazing passenger list here, this is where the metaphor breaks down, for the readers of this blog certainly help steer my thoughts and words with their comments.  To those of you who have put in your two cents here, I thank you greatly.  You have helped to develop many of the thoughts and beliefs I currently own.

Year One Archive

A couple of months ago, when I started to really reflect on what blogging has meant to me over the past year, I decided to create a different type of archive for the blog.  If you look up, you’ll notice that just to the right of the “About” page is a link to a new page entitled:  “Year One Archive.”  This page lists every post I have written over the course of the year by month-  with somewhat of an abstract-like summary.  I hope this provides yet another way to navigate the site.  It certainly isn’t a quick and efficient way, but it does provide a bit of a different approach.  The archive page also serves as an interesting chronological history of the past year.

Archaeo-blogology

In fact, after that first post in April…  I didn’t write another that month.  I didn’t even write one in May.  During that month I was working hard on both Virtual Southside as well as my first shot at social media for an actual course I teach.  June, my most prolific month, was the result of using the blog  to fulfill the requirements of a really lame online grad course on “educational technology.”  Truly the worst course I have ever experienced.  You can easily tell this by the lame posts and lame books and movies and edtech articles from five and ten years ago.  Jeeeez.  I wish I hadn’t looked back over those just now.

Things got much better when school started and I began to feel a true mission for the blog.  When November began, I followed along with Steve Dembo in his 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger adventure.  That experienced helped tremendously.  Also in November, I was actually even nominated for a 2008 Edublogs Award.  You can imagine my surprise as such a green little blogger, but that was no doubt extrinsically empowering.   I am certain to post several more reflective pieces on things I have experienced, learned and accomplished over the past year.  Stay tuned for those.  As soon as my grad program is completed in May…  I have a lot of things to explore yet.  Grad school, a new baby girl…  it’s a wonder I could pull off any of this at all.

To community

Most of all-  thank you.  Thanks for coming here.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for commenting.  Thanks for joining in the discussion.  Thank you for helping to steer my personal learning mission over the past year.  I cannot thank each and every one of you enough.  The thinking I do about the things you say… is worth a graduate course in something each time.  In reflection over this past year, I can for certain that the biggest thing I have gained from blogging is people.  I now have current and future collaborators on from all over the country.  We have and will collaborate on projects that will no doubt extend not only my learning, but that of my friends and colleagues in Saint Joseph.  I am humbled by the professionalism, creativity, and generosity of people in this newly-generated community.  Thanks isn’t enough.

Artwork:

On a day when the only thing bigger than the snowflakes is the deep gray loneliness of the sky, I bring you a minuscule chunk of one of my favorite Christmas gifts.

My wife, Erin, has a thing for finding the perfect book to send me off on my April exploration of the Bahamian backwoods.  Normally, when I unpack the mystery book from my jumbled bag on board a sailboat anchored on Andros Island, I delight in the pen-sloppy scribblings just inside the front cover.  Last year it was Pablo Neruda.  What will this Spring bring?  Someday perhaps I’ll do a post on those messages.  Though parts, to be sure, will stay private forever for me.

Today’s words for winter:  by Galway Kinnell.  You (and I) can thank some nifty old guy on the east coast for this book.  He knows who he is too.  I’m glad Erin reads his blog as well, for she is an excellent gift-giver.

This verse is from A New Selected Poems from Galway Kinnell.  I feel OK about posting the words to this poem here in hopes that it will gain a larger readership.  I will, of course, retract if ever asked.

We humans do create fires here on Earth.  We create warmth in a universe where, aside from stars, cold is the norm.

Amazing words here.  Poetry compared to language is the inverse of DNA compared to a tree frog.  While poetry can be seen as shiny distillation of our daily talk, biochemicals tell little of the quickness of life.

Artwork thanks:  Cemetery Angel from Adam Selwood on Flickr.

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You know you wanna

Before I roll out the details of this little mini-project, allow me to summarize.  This project was the first of many in an attempt to characterize the differences between online writing and more traditional formats.  Students in my Dual-Credit Biology course were divided into two groups upon culmination of a biochemistry unit.  Half of the class wrote a comprehensive unit summary in a traditional format which was turned in directly to the teacher.  The other half of the class composed a summary in an online forum for a much wider audience (Ning network).

Summaries were analyzed for word count, readability and effect on content-based exam scores.  Exam scores and readability were closely aligned.  However, strong differences were noted in average word count.  Students writing in online forums used significantly fewer words to achieve the same overall impact.  Implications of using online forums for future enhancement of student summarization are discussed.  My take?  Writing online is a potentially powerful tool for summarization of course content.

The set-up

A building-wide focus for instructional improvement in my high school this year, has been to launch and maintain an instructional technology integration initiative.  The school year began with a cohort of twenty teachers who were willing to engage in training above and beyond the professional development for all staff.  I began meeting with these teachers in mid-June for three-hour technology training sessions.  The first meeting consisted of a “care and feeding” session for the 15″ MacBook Pros, Olympus digital cameras and iPod nanos the cohort teachers received.  From that session forward, training sessions integrated this hardware, as well as emerging online technologies, with solid instructional best practices for classroom learning.  These twenty teachers have followed a prescription of immersion.  New technological tools were presented alongside potential uses in a classroom setting.  An online social network was set up to facilitate learning between face-to-face meetings.

I teach one course during the regular school day.  Principles of Biology is a course in which students earn 101-level college credit through Missouri Western State University.  This course is populated by students who enjoy learning.  Work conducted by these students formed the basis of comparison in this study.  Our course network is also based on the Ning platform.  Though this network features discussion forums as well as blogs, both are examples of online writing in some form or other. As you will see, in this class, I utilize the forum much more than the blog.  This will certainly have an effect on the results of this project.

The main event

What effects, if any, does a move toward online writing generate? Actually, little has been done to characterize the impact this new “genre” of writing is having on student achievement.  In fact, blogging has been said to be different enough as to warrant a new genre of writing called “connective writing.”  As Will Richardson has said:  it is

“…a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, that is done for a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed.”

In fact, I mentioned this idea earlier this year in this post on blogging.

How was this done?

This project began at the culmination of a biochemistry and nutrition unit.  Class sessions throughout were widely varied and ranged from cooperative work in small groups, guided webquests, lecture and discussion, and wet-lab investigations.  The final strategy prior to the unit exam was to have students engage in writing a comprehensive summary of their learning throughout the unit.  Students were randomly divided into two groups.  They were then informed that they would be doing one of two types of comprehensive summary.

The only difference between the two groups of students was writing “environment.”  The “odd” group was to compose the summary on a word processor, and then print as well as e-mail the final copy directly to the instructor only.  The “even” group was to write their summary online, as a blog post, to our classroom network.  Based on previous work with the online class network, these students knew that their work would be accessible online to virtually anyone.  This group of students knew that they were writing for a potentially wide audience, while the students of the first group were writing for me alone.  Since this class is largely an inquiry-based biology class, data was analyzed by the students themselves.  Students were asked to infer from the data and make conclusions online based on the findings.

So what happened?

Overall, 20 students participated in the study- out of a total of 20 enrolled in the class.  Each student in the table is listed only by initials in order to preserve anonymity.  (Table 1) Students who constructed a comprehensive summary of nutrition unit via online blog post for a wide and potentially global audience (even group):

(Table 2) Students who constructed comprehensive summary of nutrition unit via MS Word document handed in directly to teacher (odd group):

An examination of the data will show average exam scores differed less than one-half of a point across the two groups.  Average readability was also comparable, with the average score differing less than one Flesch-Kincaid grade level.  Easily the largest difference between the two groups was the average number of words used per summary.  Students writing online summaries used an average of 239 words less (399 opposed to 638) than those writing in Microsoft Word for me alone.  Variability in all data seemed fairly low for human studies.  Word counts were tightly clustered around the mean for online writers.  Though the results here seem fairly simple to interpret, there are many factors that must be considered in any analysis and subsequent application.

Jibba-Jabba

In this study, students were instructed to create a comprehensive summary of a unit on biochemistry.  The only instructions given were that the summary should provide an understandable context for the main topics of study, and that any source used should be cited.  It was also suggested to students that the mere creation of this summary would help to prepare for the upcoming exam.  Therefore, the only difference between the groups would truly be whether the summary was composed in an online forum or in a word processor.  Also- the online group knew their summary would gain a potentially global audience while the MS Word group knew that their summary would be read only by me.

Before extrapolating too far, it is important to note that when planning to implement any new teaching strategy, the first consideration should be to do no harm.  With that philosophy in mind, the data in this study immediately suggests that when students worked online, they certainly performed no worse than their counterparts who spent their time offline.

With that in mind, the fact that both groups showed no measurable difference in exam scores, is encouraging.  Therefore, even if an instructor wanted to use online writing as nothing more than a novel approach that might excite a few reluctant learners, they would likely do no harm toward content achievement.  I had initially hypothesized that due to the connective nature of this form of writing, students would better assimilate the content of the unit and show higher exam scores.  When considering this initial study alone, that hypothesis was not supported.  Though it is also important to note that the individual classroom climate and culture could impact these results heavily.  Not only would the feel of a classroom influence these results, it is easy to see how previous instruction could change things to a large degree.

To this point, few significant differences have been shown between the two study groups.  However, when looking at raw word count per summary, things quickly diverge.  It was anticipated that the group engaging in online writing would be stimulated to write a higher volume of words.  Hey-  it’s a novel approach.  Writing online is in contrast to a traditional approach where the work is done in isolation from start to finish.  In fact, this is the opposite result seen in the trial.  The group writing online submitted a much lower word count (avg. = 399) than the word processing group (avg. = 638).  This is no small difference and would certainly register as significant on any statistical test.

Why so many fewer words per summary when writing online?  Many of the participants had an idea about this when analyzing the results after the fact.  The following statement by student “RH” typifies a common student response:

“It appeared that the papers had a higher readability and word count, which I kind of expected because I think people tend to write more formally on papers, whereas the blog posts tend to be more opinion and informal writing.”

The aspect of formality is something that was not considered to be a factor prior to the study, and yet it makes solid sense.  The type of online writing these students had engaged in prior to this study was largely of a reflective nature.  Our work online has tended to center around written reflections that helped to synthesize classroom sessions.  A more formal approach to blogging has simply not been utilized as of yet with this class.  This is something that could certainly affect the results of this study.  Online writing has been approached in many ways for many different reasons in classrooms across our building this year.  It is very interesting to think about furthering this study to investigate the details of this interaction between instruction and writing.

First phase data is soon due in from three other participating teachers.  In contrast with the class in this study, several of the other participating classes feature some “reluctant” learners.  It will be interesting to see if the results of those trials differ from these in any way.  I would guess that they will.  The analysis of this new data, will certainly provide a jumping off point for the next round of research in our school.

Wheww… finally

To conclude, this brief study demonstrated several things.  For one, the mere act of writing of a comprehensive summary prior to a unit exam seems to be an effective strategy for a class of mature high school students.  Furthermore, the nature of this summary did little to affect scores in this study.  Students writing in online forums showed an average score almost exactly equal to that of students writing in a more traditional (printed) format.

The most signficant result of this study was the analysis of word count between the study groups.  Students writing online submitted significantly more concise summaries with smaller word counts.  The implications of this data are very interesting.  Furthermore, students who wrote less (when writing online) performed equal to those students who wrote many more words.  This could directly point to the power of online writing in helping students to summarize effectively.  This is no small feat considering the difficulty many of today’s students tend to have with summarization.  Hotshot ASCD guru, Robert Marzano, makes the case that “summarization has a robust and long history of research,” and is one of the “nine most effective instructional strategies a teacher can employ.”  These final results will likely have implications for not only future research trials at our high school, but for immediate classroom action in the area of content summary writing.

You?

What do you think about writing online?  You obviously read online.  You likely even write online.  We would love feedback about what goes on in your mind when you write online in different settings.  What happens when you blog?  How are discussion forums different?  What difference does a global audience make- if any?  Weigh in.  What does change when you write online?

Artwork thanks:

*Remainder:  me.  

Snow falls.  My fireplace coats one half of me in cozy radiance.  Across the room, Erin animates a book for my curious babe.  School is still a solid day and a half away.  As I sit here inspired by the art of Vladislav Gerasimov’s studio, I ponder physical space.

I catch myself in full muse about the spaces in which I usually write and how they might influence tone, mood, volume, and mission.  Of course, I am sometimes sitting in my office at 3:00pm pecking keys that reflect the day.  Other times still, I am stuck to a conference hall wall -hugging an outlet- allowing my laptop to drink while I scribble electronically.

Though given my choice, it would look much like today.  The mission-inspired rocker where my butt is planted-  was meant for a nursing mother just two years ago.  Since this chair didn’t seem to inspire her “mission” after all, it has lately become my writing chair.  Her lack of love for this spot has become my pirate’s loot.  Here I sit feet up -gliding in the golden glow of flames- tapping on letters for fun.

The more serious posts in waiting:  our school’s use of the Ning platform, tech strategies for increasing writing fluency, etc…  well, they’ll just have to wait.

Actually, there is a plenty about our artistic stick blogger friend that doesn’t concretely resemble me.  My head isn’t that big, I’m not a big fan of Digg, and far more than letters fill my head.  A conversation with my Communication Arts department the other day revealed a multitude of mental strategies for writing.  Most seemed to rely heavily on a stepped-draft approach.  I thought it interesting that my pal Kelly Lock and I both tend to compose in mental spaces before encoding onto the page.  You can thus imagine the stress we felt while fabricating those incremental “rough draft” assignments in high school.  I bet the little fella above would create his “outline” assignment after-the-fact as well.

Come to think of it, there might be many similarities between he and I.  He does have a slender build.  He does lean intently into his superthin laptop.  He does love dim lighting, and his silly feet seem to be less than planted on terra firma at times.  Hey, you can’t always be practical, right?

So where do you write?  Not when you have to…  but when you can.  What is there with you?  Where does it take place when you get to choose?  Tell it.  Draw it.  Photograph it.  Blog it.  Come back and share it.  You know you want to.

ps- If you care that your screen is beautiful and creative, then check out the art at Vlad Studio.  With the Holiday season fast approaching, I think Christmas Volcano is my current fave.  Wow.  No one on Earth would care enough to pay for an ad on this site, so consider this merely a nod in a cool direction.  Image above is entitled:  Blogger (digg it digg it digg it).

History was the talk of the day today.  It all started with Barack Obama’s inspirational late-night victory.  It evolved into a lunchtime chat with the Apple folks about an educational technology revival in our district.  The icing arrived in a conversation about writing and publishing in the aisles of a local grocery store.  I don’t know… if yet another dose of motivation comes my way, I might just just pinch myself for a bit of reality check.

I don’t know when I’ve seen so many Americans so happy on so many television stations.  I didn’t realize what a breath of fresh air this would really be.  There is power in inspiration.  There is power in promise.  There was a snap in the step of a real majority of Americans today.

Lunchtime brought conversations of revival.  However, this was a revival of purpose surrounding the implementation of rigorous technology-integration standards within our school system.  I attended an Apple “21st Century Learning Leadership Institute” in Omaha.  I was a member of a team of three.

Our technology curriculum specialist, building principal and I spent two days learning about Omaha Westside High School’s journey into a 1:1 computing environment over the past five years.  We could have certainly used a few more members in our study group, but the trip was an overall success in learning.

I capped the evening in a conversation while grocery shopping at the local HyVee.  Near the frozen foods section, I ran into a retired communication arts instructor who worked for years in my building.  I never did get the opportunity to be a true colleague of Donna Jean Boyer.  Her career in education ended at about the time mine was beginning.  She is a beloved teacher and was a well respected member of the Benton High School faculty for 38 years.  Donna Jean has since been a St. Joseph Councilmember since 1998.  She is now the senior member on the current city council.

Donna and I know one another, but mostly from afar since there was no real overlap in our careers in education.  So, you can imagine my surprise when shortly after “hello,” she greeted me with, “I have been reading your blog.”  Wow.  I have to tell you, that was weird.  I know my current colleagues at Benton read these entries.  I know folks in states and countries afar read them as well.  I have electronic data and warm commentaries to document those interactions.

However, running into someone local who “accidentally ran across” this blog and started to read, is not something that has happened to me.  How fun is that?

We chatted for some time about writing, teaching and technology integration.  It was a fun conversation.  Not only did I get to share the new technology staff development network at my school, we talked about the value of publishing.  In fact, Ms. Boyer related the past impact of simple computer-based word processing on writing education.  She explained how she saw a huge increase in student engagement when -all of a sudden- student writing could look instantly-professional.  The very act of seeing their own words and ideas in an instantly glossy format was empowering at a point in history.

Of course, there would never be a substitute for substance, but never discount the power of a nice sheen of gloss on a rigorous piece of work.  Paying $100 for a fresh coat of wax on a ‘76 Maverick might be a waste, but it certainly looks compelling on a Ferrari.  There has been some discussion of these ideas in my community as of late.

Towards the end of our conversation, I explained to Ms. Boyer about how I believe I am seeing a very similar reaction to my students given the still-recent phenomenon of instant publishing.  The fact that web 2.0 features are now being used to leverage student empowerment via publishing is exciting.  The novelty of on-screen writing has likely worn away long ago, but this next edge is always just around the corner.  I ended our chat by relating my enthusiasm toward professional writing on this blog.

I starkly remember the stinging feeling of the rejection letter I received in response to the first poem I ever submitted for print publication.  I can be a pretty stubborn person, but that hurt.  I am a biologist.  I am a teacher.  I am a colleague.  But that experience pointed toward the fact that I was not a writer.  Rejection was tough.  I didn’t feel any less of a person, but I certainly didn’t feel like a writer.

Driving home from the store, it hit me:  post it, Sean.  You tell people every day about the virtues of today’s instant web publishing.  Yep.  I’ve been writing here since April and this one never occurred to me.  I think I will post it after all.  Who cares about its merit?  It meant something to me.

So here’s to healing.  Here’s to healing myself as a creative writer-for-fun.  Here’s to a potentially nation-healing election.  Here’s to the birth of true technological pedagogy in our school district.  Here’s to swallowing your pride and giving a nod to the century of the everyman…

AND YOU ARE SO SMALL

I bathe in the pale silver moonlight

I smile as it looks

Down upon me

The moon feels my mood

Tomorrow I celebrate the burning of the sun

As it casts its radiant glance

Down upon me

Largest of all things

And you, you are so small

Yet when your smile burns

Its way into my heart

You seem larger than the heavens.

So take that, 20th Century.  You hold us all back less and less as the days go by.

Artwork thanks:

If the act of web surfing might keep dementia at bay, then blogging might just allow your brain to outlive your body.

The Context

I found this brief, but intriguing article from MSNBC interesting enough to engage a read-aloud with my Dual-Credit Biology class this past week.  This classroom of curious minds is full of nascent bloggers.  We have begun our journey into the blogosphere within the relatively safe confines (if the global web can be seen as “confined” in any way) of a classroom network on the Ning platform.  Here we have recently dabbled with  online discussion forums, mini-project publishing and blogging as it relates to the dynamic nature of science in general.

One must also be aware that these forms of learning are quite novel at my school of around 900 students in Saint Joseph, Missouri.  I, along with a small cohort of teachers at Benton High, have taken a step into the world of online interactivity and publishing within the standard curriculum of our courses.  After just a month and a half, we have realized the fact that the doors of our classrooms no longer lock tight at 3:00pm.  During even late nights throughout the week, many of our classrooms are still abuzz with content discourse while the mice come out to frolic in the hallways of our aging school.

I have to say, my students have bought in.  I have tried to deeply embed the daily work we do in class with the digital tendrils that run throughout the global web.  It is fun to think of these conversations happening invisibly about our heads as radio signals.  For years I have peppered my classroom mission with this ideal, but this year I have taken a full windward tack toward digital conversation.  The experimental nature of it all tends to dovetail well into the two science classes I teach (Dual-Credit Biology and Marine Biology).  Students seem to come to these classes fully prepared to confront ideas and phenomena they have yet encountered.  I have never taken that mindset lightly in what I do on a day-to-day basis.

The Article

So it is within this framework that a little article like this can get some serious play.  The suggestion that web surfing itself could prolong the cranial excitement that leads to long brain life is powerful.  The main detail that stuck out to me is the fact that fMRI scans of subjects surfing the web were more diverse than a control group who were merely reading books.  In this study, the book-reading participants showed significant brain activity in the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes of the brain.  As the article states, these regions are involved in controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.  This surely comes as no surprise to any reading expert as many of our current comprehension strategies are designed to take advantage of this.

However, the brains of those participants who were web surfing showed the same activity.  What is more is the fact that they also excited the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of their noggins.  These areas of the brain control decision-making and complex reasoning.  More still is the fact that this effect was only noted in those subjects who had prior Internet experience.

“Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading.”

If ever there was a solid suggestion that a non-webbite should get on the Internet…  and now…  this could be it.  The fact that a discussion of these ideas can take place for fifteen minutes in the lives of open-minded teenagers is pretty stimulating.  To know that what you do now can effect the neural wiring of your future brain is pretty compelling.

Going Beyond

If mere web surfing can be such rich exercise for gray matter, then the act of blogging just might build the kind of active brains we strive for in education-  for blogging, is not your garden variety writing exercise.  My first experiences with blogging last March were personally empowering for many reasons.  Not the least of which was the fact that I soon felt like I was engaging in a type of writing that went way beyond anything I had done to date.

After authoring a few trial pieces to see what the phenomenon was all about, it occurred to me that I was engaged in far more than I had ever been while solely journaling.  I remember talking this out with several of my closest educator friends.  I remember making a comment that what I was doing felt like some type of “connective” writing-  perhaps even a different genre.  Of course, what felt like a shiny new endeavor to me was already a published entity.  In fact, in Will Richardson’s 2006 book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, “connective writing” is mentioned as somewhat of a new genre starting on page 30.  Finding this little gem made me feel a little less of an explorer, but was certainly validating.

Richardson describes this type of writing as being, “a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, that is done for a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed.” He goes on to drive home the point that good blogging requires far more critical reading than might be immediately noticed by the casual reader of a blog.  There is far more rich goodness in this chapter than can be related in this post, and I highly recommend the book to anyone looking to engage students in the pedagogy of blogging.

Bottom Line

Academic blogging is rigorous synthesis.  It is an activity than can certainly enhance your classroom, and potentially extend the life of your brain.  As I finish up this post, my wife @erinNLY just chimed onto the Twitterverse with a somewhat-related line from a Flobots song:  “There is a war going on for your mind.  If you are thinking, you are winning.”

Perhaps this is a better mission statement for our school than the one we last authored.

Artwork thanks:

Mao, Isaac. “Brain.” Flickr. 13 June 2005. 18 Oct 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/isaacmao/19245594/>.

“tmcnamee”, “Old World Brain.” Flickr. 03 APR 2007. 18 Oct 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/mcnamee/445793409/>.

I am such a sucker for anything that even slightly tickles the visual and verbal parts of my brain simultaneously. To start, I love this lesson plan that deals with defining poetry. I would love to take part in a discussion like this… shoot… any discussion like this. I need my fix of a good, solid social science or literature debate. Anyone feel like inviting me in for one?

In fact, a nice little set of lesson plans concerning poetry are found on the site. As you look through, you will see that the self-label of “advanced” might just fit. But I think many of these are more than feasible in our school. We have students at Benton who are more than capable of learning from this.

The main website is called “PicLits.” The tagline for PicLits is “inspired picture writing.” To me, this is an interesting little site that appears to be a weird mashup: part visual literacy, part refrigerator poetry, part… fun. The main site itself, doesn’t come across as allowing much heavy-lifting relating to typical communication arts instruction. However, it isn’t the site, but what you do with it that counts. Right? To me, this site is about greasing the wheels of inspiration. I can almost guarantee that an approach like this would have gone a long way toward allowing me to feel empowered to connect to poetic verse at a younger age. I was too cool for this in high school. In college, I became enthralled. Don’t you ever wonder what would have happened if you had learned something really amazing… but a year or two earlier?

Perhaps I connected to this site because it reminds me of some of the goofy things I used to do with Photoshop years ago. To me, so many of my photos just begged for words. I had fun slapping them onto images from time to time.

Perhaps this is a fun little site that would work (as Michael Gier mentioned in a discussion here) in a CA classroom to enhance a lesson that ends with “time to spare.”

Just trolling through the site a bit, I found an image that stood out to me as interesting. It seemed to beg for a poetic caption. There are two ways in which this text can be added. There is a link to add words to the image via “drag & drop” (the refrigerator poetry way), or via the “freestyle” method, which simply allows you to type onto the image as you wish.

My little sixty-second creation is here:

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Click to go to the site and check it out, and hey… feedback is powerful. Throw in a comment. Make me feel like a poet. If I like the experience, perhaps I will be inspired to publish again in perhaps even another way. Get it? If you do get it, then you are already beginning the feel the power of the interactive web. Feels good, doesn’t it?

***Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I had to make just one more before getting on with the four other things I am currently juggling:

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Anyone else feel like playing along?