Monday, July 8, 2013

Poetry, Memoirs, and Tablet Computing....





If you have been following me you know it has been awhile since I entered a post. As always I have been busy in the actual world. Previously I was leading poetry writing workshops at the Waterfront School in Buffalo with Young Audiences-WNY. My program Memoirs: Creatively Writing your Story, was funded in part by a grant from the Community Foundation of Buffalo, to Young Audiences to engage middle-school students in writing and public speaking. Our end product for the residency was a

School-wide presentation of the students reading their original work and a published booklet of selected writings.

We were all very proud of what they accomplished and students were even more proud of the book then I had imagined. Afterwards during a reflection meeting with the classroom teacher, Ms. DeWolfe, I was told that students read quietly from the memoir booklet for the entire period, they also discussed each others writing asking each other for page numbers of friends poems.
I learned so much during this residency, the mission of my workshops and residencies if to get kids to write their stories, to have them consider the event that happen in their lives and retell those events as creative stories or to use certain moments to engage the reader toward a revealing interesting conclusion.
 It is often challenging in the beginning and I try to spend time entertaining them with some of my own poems and stories mixed in with more famous classic or contemporary poets and poems. This was also the first residency where I introduced mobile technology in to my curriculum. I started bringing my Motorola Xoom tablet into class under the guise of using it instead of bringing in paper copies of poems and other notes that I use during workshops. 

I often carry a couple of notebooks and poetry collections to read from. When I got the Motorola Xoom I began to transfer my lesson plans, notes, WebPages, and poetry collections (mine and others), directly to the tablet, My bags got much lighter, and finding things seemed much easier. The Buffalo Public school system has available WIFI to everyone with a device who visits the schools so I had even more access to material. I also have many poetry apps and other tools to help me tell stories and lead discussions. I also had the added bonus of using the Xoom's cameras for documenting and assessments. Plus some kids love to be photographed!


             One of the most useful apps in my tablet happened to be Google Earth and Street view.The Waterfront School has a very large population of English Second Language students; several times we were not able to communicate verbally. During one lesson, Where I’m From, students are asked to write a poem about where they feel they are from. 

I had ESL students draw pictures of their former homes or villages and before that I asked where everyone was from, when we came to an area that the majority of students were unfamiliar with like, Iraq, or Yemen, or Thailand, I would show everyone on Google Earth and on Street view. Later Ms. DeWolfe told me that this experience gave the ESL students so much pride; it made them feel special that I was able to take the time to share their world with the other students.

          Some times with teaching and learning many things can happen that we didn’t plan, good things, and that is so very cool!   During the celebration/presentation I gave out certificates to all students for completing the residency and I got the most overwhelming display of emotional gratitude from English and non-english speaking students alike.
   
     For the coming semester I’m planning on sharing with students how to create literary content with tablet computers and share that content with others.