Eisenhower Hall. Kansas State University. Late 1980s. Advanced Composition. Donald Stewart sits cross-legged at a student desk—near the door, as if blocking our departure. He attempts to explain a chapter from the textbook, a chapter on Grammar B. (Though the term “Grammar B” has stuck in my memory and shaped my tastes for nearly thirty years, I could not have defined it for you until I pulled the textbook—The Versatile Writer, written by Stewart—from the shelf after starting this reflection.)

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Romano, Tom. “Breaking the Rules in Style.” Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1995. 74-92.

—–. “Evolving Voice Through the Alternate Style.” Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1995. 93-108.

Stewart, Donald C. The Versatile Writer. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1986.

Weathers, Winston. An Alternate Style: Options in Composition. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden Book Company, 1980.

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Like most days, I sit on the left side of the classroom, along the bank of windows. Three of my classmates write “Dear John/Jane” letters on the chalkboard. It’s not you. It’s me. There is no good way to say it. There are plenty of bad ways, however. We laugh a lot, and I don’t nod off once.

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A crot (crots, plural) is an obsolete word meaning “bit” or “fragment.” […] A basic element in the alternate grammar of style, and comparable somewhat to the “stanza” in poetry, the crot may range in length from one sentence to twenty or thirty sentences. It is fundamentally an autonomous unit, characterized by the absence of any transitional devices that might relate it to preceding or subsequent crots and because of this independent and discrete nature of crots, they create a general effect of metastasis—using that term from classical rhetoric to label, as Fritz Senn recently suggested in the James Joyce Quarterly, any “rapid transition from one point of view to another” (Weathers).

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I write an essay using lines from a Langston Hughes poem as an organizing structure. (Having just dug the paper out of a file, I find Stewart’s end comments have been lost. Having read roughly a thousand essays in first-year composition courses, I see that the organization was the only distinguishing feature of the essay. ) It was the first time I felt like a writer.

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In Caney, Kansas, I sit behind the teacher’s desk as the high school students in my advanced composition class work on a meditation essay. The assignment is pulled straight from Stewart’s The Versatile Writer. (Most of us teach like we were taught, after all.) A year later, after teaching junior high for a year, I submit my resignation and return to graduate school, where I will discover that I learned nothing about writing pedagogy when I was an undergrad. Sitting along the bank of windows, I saw everything through the lens of a student. Sometimes the lens of a writer. Never a teacher of writing.

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A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

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A new graduate student, I walk into the office of Gay Lynn Crossley, whose comments during the practicum sessions for graduate teaching assistants consistently strike me as insightful and generous. Opening up possibilities in student papers that I did not perceive. Having no vocabulary for talking about writing in ways similar to Gay Lynn, I can only ask her what I should be reading. She hands me a five-page bibliography that continues to occupy a prominent space in my desk drawer.

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Berthoff, Ann. Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden, 1978.

Elbow, Peter. “Closing My Eyes As I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience.” College English 49 (1987): 50-69.

Gass, William. “On Talking to Oneself.” Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. 206-216.

Macrorie, Ken. Telling Writing. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden, 1970.

Murray, Donald. A Writer Teaches Writing. 2nd Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

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From a letter of recommendation written last week, for a recent graduate seeking a position in a nearby high school:

As a writer, RecentGradA is the best with whom I have worked. Her versatility, her work ethic and her voice are distinct and unique. She sets her standards high, but is willing to take risks in order to grow as a writer, a thinker, and a person. Many of us who teach writing have heard ourselves assert that a writer “needs to know the rules before breaking them.” Seldom, however, do we gain the opportunity to work with writers who have reached that point in their development. RecentGradA is one who provided me that opportunity. I truly believe she could have a career as a writer, and I have—selfishly, I admit—often desired to see her undertake that pursuit.

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I’d like to encourage everyone who reads this reflection to do two things:

First, I invite you to use the commenting function connected with this post to share a crot or two from your own development as a teacher, a scholar, a writer.

Second, given that most methods courses at the undergraduate level can allot little more than a week to the teaching of writing, I hope you’ll look around your school and invite new teachers to apply to the Dakota Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institute. If the 2008 deadline has passed by the time you read this piece, start lobbying for the 2009 summer institute. While I’m exceedingly grateful to be teaching at a university, I can’t help but wonder how much more rewarding—how much more effective—my teaching in Caney, Kansas, might have been if Mrs. Faulkenberry or Mrs. Sullivan had been able to welcome me into a community of “teachers teaching teachers.”

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For over twenty years I’ve been reading professional educational journals with admiration—admiration for the authors’ work and for their writing. I have gleaned many lessons and in part, shaped my teaching philosophy through these articles. It never occurred to me, however, that I should also be writing professionally. That is, writing about my profession, teaching. Now two professional writing retreats later, I finally understand the importance of teachers using their writing voices to share their expertise.

My professional writing journey began at a quaint bed and breakfast in the charming rural town of Stickney, SD. Six participants, representing various South Dakota school districts, and two facilitators descended on this writer’s paradise on a chilly March afternoon for the first DWP Professional Writers Retreat. Paradise and chilly may seem like contradictory terms, but when your sole responsibility is to write and you’re being fed gourmet meals, well, I’ll let you decide.

The agenda for the retreat was simply to write and write and write. We were to write about our passions in education or about our best practices in the classroom. For over two and a half days the goal was to develop the first draft of a professional article.

I was ready to capture on paper the genre unit I had experienced with my junior American Literature and Composition class earlier that school year. In our long stretches of writing, I was able to draft an introduction explaining why I had created the unit and then launch into the step-by-step process of exploring genre and creating quilts that would serve as metaphors for American literature.

I grew my article from a shell of an idea to a detailed narrative. But it took awhile to get beyond the nagging questions. How much is too much detail? How much rationale should I share? Is my introduction so long that I lose my readers before I get to the details of the unit?

Fortunately, expert coaching from the facilitators and the writing group helped me answer these questions. Their coaching affirmed that I was writing about something teachers would want to know about. And, my coaches showed me where they wanted to hear more about what my students had done and how the unit had progressed from day to day. Their feedback was the road map I needed to help me develop my ideas. I continued my writing confident that I was taking my article in the right direction. Although I had a long way to go to the final product, by the time we met for our last session, I was ready to share my writing.

On Saturday afternoon, the eight of us gathered for our read around—an opportunity to showcase our professional writing and to end the retreat feeling a sense of accomplishment. Each one of us was given three minutes to read any section from our article we wanted to share. It was fascinating to hear these pieces that had gone from jotted ideas to fluent narrative. Once again my admiration surfaced. There, in the living room of this historical B & B, were those same professional voices I had been admiring in professional journals for years. But this time the voices were my colleagues from across South Dakota sharing their expertise in using technology in the writing classroom, directing a literary project, mentoring young teachers. I marveled at the writing taking shape, writing that needed to be shared with the world. It was a privilege to sit among them.

I left the DWP retreat with most of my first draft written, a promise to finish it within five weeks, and the new found confidence that I had something worth saying to the education world. Actually, I experienced more than confidence, although a pinch of that never hurts. I experienced a resolve to continue honing my professional writing skills.

This resolve to write professionally led me to the next step–putting myself “out there” and hoping the National Writing Project would deem me worthy to attend one of its professional writing retreats. I completed the necessary steps of the application for Writing Retreat A—a retreat for educators who want to start developing an article—sent it in and then held my breath.

I continued to work on my genre article while I impatiently waited for a reply from NWP. About a month later, I opened my e-mail to read these words: Dear Jeannette, The facilitation team of the NWP Professional Writing Retreats would like to extend an invitation to you to attend Writing Retreat B, Editing for Publication, August 2-5, in Santa Fe. We had an overwhelming number of applicants across both retreats this year, and we noted that you seem far enough along in your work to make good use of retreat B. I exhaled. To say that I was ecstatic would be an understatement. What an honor to be included in a list of fifteen participants from around the country who would attend the NWP Professional Writing Retreat B in Santa Fe, NM. I only needed to read the invitation once to know where I would be spending the first week of August.

The NWP retreat was similar to what I had experienced in Stickney complete with its own charming setting at a peaceful resort in the high desert country just fifteen minutes from downtown Santa Fe. Sunrise Springs Resort and Spa would be home for three and a half days with all the creature comforts I needed: a comfortable bed, lots of good food and coffee and a roommate from Dubuque, Iowa whose upbeat personality and endless energy kept me going when I didn’t think I had it in me to write one more word.

During our first meeting with the NWP facilitators, we discussed what it means to write professionally and the need for teachers’ voices to be heard in our schools, our communities and our country. I knew I was in the right place. I was inspired to continue the arduous journey of finding my professional writing voice.

Settling into a secluded space, I continued developing my genre article. Although I had a “complete” first draft, I knew I had much revising to do, especially in the conclusion, before an editor would consider the piece. And, I wanted to make good use of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with “the big guns” of the National Writing Project. Easy enough I thought. I’m at a writing retreat.

During the first twenty-four hours of the retreat, however, I felt like an ancient turtle slowly trudging across a perilous highway to reach a few tasty morsels on the other side, wondering if I would ever get to them. Whether it was the dramatic change in altitude—from 1,430 feet above sea level to 6,200 feet above sea level—or the intense intimidation I was experiencing in the company of this incredibly scholarly group, the morsels seemed unattainable. I kept revisiting the same sections of my article and avoiding the more challenging part—that pesky conclusion. Writing that conclusion seemed like work and I just didn’t have the grit.

So I went to my writing group for help. They were more interested in my genre unit than in my actual writing. One teacher was ready to try the lesson with her students. Those encouraging words told me my description of the unit was clear and complete. But, I still didn’t know what I was going to do with my conclusion.

From my writing group, I went to one of the NWP facilitators for help. He suggested that I focus on teaching literature by genre since he didn’t think much had been written on that topic. He gave me a few suggestions about where I might present more detail, but he didn’t have time to help me with my conclusion because our conferences were limited to thirty minutes.

At that point, I had several ideas to work with and I knew that when I was ready, I could have another conference with a facilitator. But I still lacked the grit to tackle my conclusion. So I decided to go for a dark, robust coffee to give me a good jolt. At least it was a good excuse to put off the inevitable.

Eventually, I settled back into working on my article to discover that conferencing and caffeine truly did help me get back to writing. I was able to eliminate the wordiness and get a better sense of the organizational flow. The tasty morsels seemed closer, yet the article’s conclusion still loomed before me as an unobtainable goal.

Then English Journal Editor, Louann Reid, joined our group on Friday night. Louann a warm and genuine person, spent a day and half with us, discussing query letters, describing the process an article goes through to be published and encouraging all of us to pursue publication. In addition, Louann devoted an entire day to conferencing with us one-on-one. There she was in the flesh. I could hardly wait to have my conference.

Sitting with Louann to discuss my article was like sitting with a long-time friend and sharing what we love, teaching and writing. The intimidation that had been overwhelming my thoughts washed away as Louann gave me sage advice about what I needed to change in my article, especially sharing more detail about some of the steps of the project. Louann also confirmed that I was writing about something teachers would be interested in using in their classrooms. But most importantly, she helped me focus on what I needed to do with my conclusion. With her expert editorial experience, Louann showed me how to synthesize my main points and gave me some fresh ideas about how to organize the final paragraphs. Finally, I had the direction I was looking for. I was encouraged and reenergized. Perhaps I would make it across the road after all.

I hurried back to my laptop. My thoughts came quickly and easily. The article began to take on more defined shape and meaning. The conclusion no longer loomed before me but started to feel like a natural extension of all that I had described in the body of the article. I was on my way to tasting the choice morsels.

Later that same day, we met for a large group check-in so everybody could briefly tell how their writing was progressing. After each person spoke, we could write affirmation notes if we chose to do so. At the end of that session, I truly reached the choicest morsel, a note from Louann that read: I look forward to seeing that article when you’re ready. Honest.

At the end of the retreat, we each presented a three-minute reading from our articles just as we had in Stickney. Among the voices I heard the middle school drama teacher, the retired teacher who is conducting professional development workshops, the high school creative writing teacher, and the technical college writing teacher. Every person confirmed that we teachers are the true voice of education. Our professional writing is the writing that will help to move education forward in the twenty-first century.

Now after these two rewarding writing retreats, I continue to feel the need to write. I have continued to refine my genre article working toward the day when it is ready to send to Louann. But I have an idea that my professional writing won’t stop there. I am looking carefully at my classroom practices and thinking about what else I can share with you—my colleagues. I have come to understand that I too have knowledge and expertise about teaching that can help other educators shape their philosophy and add lessons to their files. I have become a professional writer.

In this article, Greg highlights the importance of experienced, knowledgeable teachers sharing their expertise, with a special invitation to current DWP teacher-consultants near the end. —Editor

Last week, I was sitting in a meeting where a well meaning colleague was talking about the writing ability of our students: “They can’t use commas, or semicolons, or document their sources. They just can’t write.”

I suspect many of us have heard these comments, or made them ourselves from time to time. (I know I have.) To be sure, conventions such as punctuation, usage, and documentation of sources are important facets of effective writing, especially for an academic audience. But I cringe every time I hear conventions equated with writing. On such occasions, I know I’m going to have about five seconds to figure out whether to let the comments pass, to affirm them by citing my own similar frustrations, or to broaden the discussion by explaining why writing is so much more than a person’s ability to handle the conventions of Standard Edited American English.

As most of us recognize, writing is thinking. Donald Murray notes, “Writing is the most disciplined form of thinking; writing is the fundamental tool of the intellectual life” (9). And the intellectual life getting more difficult—or, at the very least, it is changing. In his introduction to The Best American Essays: 2007, David Foster Wallace describes the challenges of living thoughtfully and purposefully in a U. S. culture that he labels “Total Noise”: “a culture and volume of info and spin and rhetoric and context that I know I’m not alone in finding too much to even absorb, much less to try to make sense of or organize into any kind of triage of saliency or value” (xiii – xiv).

Wallace, satirizing a line from President Bush, describes our increasing dependence on “Deciders,” those to whom we are “subcontracting and outsourcing and submitting” our intellectual lives (xvi). He goes so far as to note that “It may possibly be that acuity and taste in choosing which Deciders one submits to is now the real measure of informed adulthood” (xvi).

Pursuing “Informed Adulthood”

In order to live well and teach well in such a culture, we must find ways to revise the wide-spread and persistent view of writing as a matter of correctness, of conventions. Within a culture of “Total Noise,” we must pursue a pedagogy that instills in our students (and their parents, and our colleagues, and our administrators, and our public officials) a recognition of the fundamental role writing plays in developing information literacy, in developing the dispositions and skills necessary to choose one’s Deciders well, and perhaps even to serve effectively as a Decider for others.

We must undertake efforts to reach beyond the walls of our classroom and engage in an interdisciplinary fashion with our colleagues. Information has no disciplinary boundaries; it doesn’t fit neatly into any curriculum map. Teachers of writing, influenced by more than three decades of writing across the curriculum and the National Writing Project [1], are uniquely equipped to foster a more sustained interdisciplinarity with our colleagues. We may even find that an interdisciplinary pursuit of information literacy generates opportunities to advocate more effectively for writing across the curriculum. The American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy describes information literate people as “those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information, and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them” (American Library Association). Such goals simply cannot be reached without inquiry-based writing, or without an understanding of rhetoric and technology that enables one to evaluate information wisely and employ information well.

DWP Teacher-Consultants and the Next Step

As teachers of writing—at whatever level—we possess a vision and a pedagogy vital for cultivating an informed adulthood within our culture’s “Total Noise.” But we have some growing to do, as well. Our traditional boundaries are comfortable, and crossing those boundaries means overcoming social, professional, and institutional challenges. David Foster Wallace describes informed adulthood as “not just the intelligence to discern one’s own error or stupidity, but the humility to address it, absorb it, and move on and out therefrom, bravely, toward the next revealed error” (xxiv). Stated less severely, informed adulthood within the culture of “Total Noise” requires the intelligence, humility, and persistence necessary to continue taking the next step forward.

For those willing to take the next step, please give careful consideration to attending the Dakota Writing Project’s “Weekend Warrior” Professional Development Retreat to be held on the USD campus on April 18-20. This retreat is designed to equip DWP teacher-consultants to share their knowledge with other educators in the pursuit of a more holistic definition of writing and a more effective pedagogy. We recognize that providing professional development for one’s colleagues can be a formidable notion, but we also recognize the potential for “teachers teaching teachers” to transform education in our state. We’ve had the pleasure of witnessing your intelligence, humility, and persistence, and we hope you’ll consider joining us as we take this step in an exciting new direction for the DWP.

American Library Association. “Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report.” 10 January 1989. Association of College and Research Libraries. 1 February 2008.

McLeod, Susan. “The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum.” A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 149-164.

Murray, Donald M. The Craft of Revision. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1991.

Wallace, David Foster. “Introduction: Deciderization 2007 — A Special Report.” The Best American Essays: 2007. Ed. David Foster Wallace. Series Ed. Robert Atwan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. xii-xxiv.

http://www.artchive.com/index.html
This site allows students to see, literally, the connections between story and artwork. For example, students might look at various artistic renderings of the Greek myth of Icarus, and compare those to the poems and to the legend. The possibilities are endless. It is free (right now, at least), and it has a wide variety of material.

http://www.short-stories.co.uk/
An excellent resource for all kinds of stories – fiction and non-fiction. This site allows students to do online reading, shared reading inquiries, and searches for particular genres.

http://drama.eserver.org/plays
Need a different translation of a classic work? Want students to examine the format of a play? Here’s a great online resource for scripts available in the public domain.

http://ise.uvic.ca/index.html
Internet Shakespeare Editions provides access to a wide variety of Shakespeare text, including plays and poems, links to information about the playwright and his times, and other excellent resources.

http://wilearns.state.wi.us/apps/default.asp?cid=18
The Wisconsin Literary Association and Reading Network Source is a good resource for teachers of all content areas. There are links to strategies, home-school connections, and other valuable teaching resources.

http://www.literacymatters.org/about.htm
This site addresses teachers, parents and students concerned about improving literacy skills for middle school and secondary students who are struggling to succeed. Like the WiLearns site above, it provides ideas about strategies that may work with readers who struggle to make sense of fiction and nonfiction text, or who are not motivated to read.

http://en.openphoto.net/
The Open Photo site offers free images – non-copyrighted material. Students can use these to enhance their projects in a variety of ways.

http://www.edutopia.org/
Edutopia is the site associated with the George Lucas Educational Foundation. It’s a great source of creative ideas. The articles feature projects and programs that will not only blow apart your idea of what it is possible to teach and to learn, but will also inspire you with innovative educational strategies. Super professional reading site!

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
As long as you do not alter these handouts and aids, you are free to use them for classroom instruction. They are excellent! Why reinvent the wheel?

http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/tools.htm
This is an excellent, all-purpose site with many links to relevant resources for students and teachers alike. Consult it before you begin a digital storytelling assignment.

http://thisibelieve.org/index.php
My curriculum includes the teaching of essays, of course. To help students to understand how necessary it is to have passion about a topic, I have them link to this NPR site and listen to several of the 3-5 minute essays. The text of the essays is also included with the audio version, thus providing the ability to analyze structure. These become the models for my students to record their own “This I Believe” essays.

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/omag_ocut.jhtml
I discovered this by accident, but it’s an excellent resource to spark student interest in a topic or in an author. This woman talks to lots of important people. You can listen in on this site to her “cuts” from live interviews. I used it first to help students see and hear Elie Wiesel, the author of Night.

http://www.oscars.org/teachersguide/index.html
This is an invaluable site for teaching media/film literacy. Downloadable PDF documents provide guides to screenplays and script writing, animation, lighting and sound effects, etc.

http://english.uiowa.edu/nonfiction/readinglist.html
So, I went looking for a resource to help my students think about non-fiction reading. Sue William Silverman’s Contemporary Creative Nonfiction Reading List is comprehensive and intriguing. I’m handing it off to my senior College English students for their final research project.

http://www.liu.edu/cwis/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm
This is an MLA citation source. I like the colorful approach used by these site designers because they help students differentiate the pieces of the bibliographic entries.

http://www.oslis.org/secondary/
The Oregon School Library Information System contains both student- and teacher-friendly information, including scoring guides and rubrics for various kinds of written and oral projects, research strategies, a link to “Citation Maker,” and an evaluation of internet sites page.

http://www.scholarshiphelp.org/scholarship_essay.htm
This site is a must for teachers of seniors. It includes advice for getting recommendations, assessing skills and keeping a log of accomplishments, preparing applications, and writing scholarship essays.

DownloadDWP Writing Retreat

Four and a half days of intense writing. Four and a half days at Lied Lodge, in the heat and humidity of Nebraska. The building itself was air conditioned, but like the heat, all of the participants were relentless in producing pieces for publication, or at least the dream of having them published.

At the meet-and-greet online in Tapped In, we met each other two weeks prior to attending the Technology and Writing Retreat sponsored by the National Writing Project. On Wednesday evening on July 26, we were able to put those names in Tapped In to actual faces while we learned a little more (some strange facts, some intriguing) about one another. Dakota Writing Project was well-represented with three participants: Anne Moege of Mitchell Middle School, Jane Overmoe of Watertown High School, and Lindsay Sorben of Ellis Middle School in Austin, MN.

Each writer came with at particular topic in mind to write about. Everyone had a different vision, but all came with the common theme of using technology to write and teach writing. In that first night, response groups were set up, consisting of three or four members that had some common thread of interest with their topic. And that’s where things took off.

In between the writing, we had the opportunity to receive feedback from actual editors of different publications. They told us of the publishing process and an editor’s perspective when they receive pieces of writing. One of NWP’s editors was in attendance for the entire retreat to assist with our writing questions and needs. What an opportunity!

Thursday night, we all took a break from the exercise of writing to show off a few of our uses of technology in our classrooms with a smorgasbord of showcases. The displays fueled the teacher-brains, gathering new ideas to take home. These progressions in technology and writing bring even more evidence for the case of the effectiveness of their uses for learning.

In our final night at Lied Lodge, each participant had the opportunity to share a portion, a three-minute reading, of the writing that they had been working on. Creatively enough, one of the facilitators created a timer that would “gong” the reader’s time limit. Intimidating! Each reading left everyone wanting to hear more. Powerful!

Writing, writing, and more writing. Oh, and, dare I say, eating were all a part of the experience. With so much time set aside in the beautiful setting, one couldn’t help but be inspired to put words to paper. But, if any of the participants were like me, my piece took on a metamorphosis. I had a clear vision of what I wanted the focus of my article to be before arriving. By the end of the retreat, however, that focus took a slightly different direction.

This is writing, I suppose. It is a journey of thousands of words muddled together that either do or do not make sense. It’s the playing around of thoughts and questions and answering those uncertainties that leave holes in what we are trying to say. After this experience at the WAT Retreat, I’d have to say that writing is also a community. It is a community that is willing to share what they have (so far) and assist when those visions of the writing become blurred. To celebrate what is accomplished and to support those that need cheers from the sidelines. It is community that reminds us that we are indeed writers!

A challenge to all Writing Project teachers who read this: set your sights on an NWP retreat! Every teacher’s experiences are worth hearing about and worth writing about. Before the school year begins, find a focus for the year. What do you want to improve? What is something new that you’re going to try with your students? Journal about it and document your experience. Then . . . write about it. Even without the intension of publication, you’ll learn more about your teaching and ways to improve student learning.

by Anne Moege, Mitchell Middle School
NWP Professional Writing and Technology Retreat ‘06

“Thank you for calling the WWLI (Wonderful World of Laptop Initiatives) hotline. If your idea of technology integration means showing students PowerPoint presentations of your class notes, press 1. If you’ve never heard of the terms ‘wiki,’ ‘blog,’ or ‘discussion board,’ press 2. If you have lost your Internet connection, have no idea where your students’ ‘X:’ or ‘H:’ drives disappeared to, or need other technical assistance, press 3. If your students inappropriately use or abuse their computers in and/or out of class, press 4. If you’re harboring anger because you wanted a Mac and ended up with a Dell, press 5. If you refuse to support your colleagues in their technology endeavors, stay on the line until a customer service representative is available.” And then begins the encouraging music: Wilson Philips’ “Hold On.”

Holding on . . . that’s precisely the decision several of my colleagues and I made as educators a year and a half ago when my middle school, one of the lucky few, was awarded a 1:1 grant in early June of 2005. This grant provided each of our seventh-grade students with his or her own laptop computer. I may make light now of the early challenges we faced, but most days, an 800 number to a technology hotline would definitely have come in handy.

At some point during the ’05-’06 school year, I’d heard through the middle-school grapevine that our superintendent had written a 1:1 grant, but I, quite frankly, hadn’t given much thought about the implications. By spring of ’05 the “word on the street” was that our district intended to drop entirely our twelve-week computer exploratory classes for both seventhth and eighth grades. One computer teacher was moving, and the other decided to retired, but with the news of not filling those positions, my ears perked up. Finally, within the last month of school, we began the planning process in the event of grant approval, and two technology committees (one at the middle school—mainly PC users—and one at the high school—mainly Mac users) were put into place to visit with the assistant director for technology from the local technical school to discuss the platform we would adopt and how the technical school would provide our tech support. By then, I definitely wanted to know more and volunteered to serve on the middle-school committee.

Because the committees met separately, I can relate only what the middle school’s committee voiced concerns about; for example, how would we proceed with laptop distribution, what types of restrictions would students’ computers receive, and what specifics would be included in our computer policy? However, the major outcome of our separate meetings was the decision to adopt a Dell platform, mainly due to the technical institute’s recommendation based on the skills of their network systems people and the structure of the existing network. Adopting an alternate platform would take time, technical tweaking, and training, and time was something that was not on our side. The ultimate vision became this, though I don’t really think the committees’ input had much to do with this goal: our incoming seventh graders would keep the laptops from seventh through ninth grade; then in tenth grade, they would receive new computer (most likely a Mac) so that by the time they graduated from high school, they would have experienced both platforms. A column in the local paper by our superintendent in mid-May confirmed the exciting grant prospects; all we had to do next was wait.

During a curriculum mapping workshop in early June 2005, our principal announced officially that our district had been awarded the grant, bestowing upon each of our seventh-grade students a Dell Latitude D510 to be used, well, basically like a textbook—to be hauled from class to class and then home and utilized for assignments and homework. By now, I was hearing a good deal of skepticism over the probability of immature 7th graders being able to handle respectfully a $1,000+ laptop. Then there was the reality that, although we would have tech support, all staff would be responsible for teaching students basic computer skills and integrating technology into our curriculum without any computer teachers or integrationists around for guidance. In order to do that effectively, we’d need some training, which would most likely cut into our precious, limited summer schedules.

Still, my enthusiasm for computer accessibility and creative ways of using the laptops far outweighed my doubts. I was tired of fighting for the computer lab (and not winning), and I knew enough about technology to handle teaching students some basic computer skills while we worked on language arts-specific assignments. Fairly new to the district but not to teaching, I was ready to take on a type of leadership role, using my students as “guinea pigs” to try some fresh, innovative strategies and then share successes and failures with other colleagues. I definitely knew I didn’t want to do what everyone else would be doing. Sure, I could do this. Wait . . . innovative things? Not just word processing and PowerPoint?

To meet the challenges that lay ahead, approximately ten other colleagues and I answered the call to be trained to help train the rest of the staff. Here was my opportunity to learn some new ideas and then, a step out of my comfort zone, to teach teachers for the first time (even more daunting when they might be a tad hostile as we were strongly “encouraged” but not “required” to give up eight days of July to be trained). Unfortunately, the first few days of our five-day training led by a Dell representative from Texas started roughly. We muddled through online lessons via the Dell Co-nect site—lessons like “Introduction to Laptops,” “How to Use Office XP,” and “Top Ten Internet Resources.” There was absolutely nothing wrong with reviewing these topics, but the bigger question wasn’t being addressed. Exactly how were we supposed to use the computers with our students? Finally, frustrated by lack of direction and knowing we needed to fill the expected two eight-day sessions with something relevant, we told the Dell rep what we thought our staff would need. We trainers, of course, really had no idea where to start, but it seemed logical to begin with the basics. The trainers, for the most part, knew about the Office XP products (Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Excel) that students and staff would utilize, but would all of our staff have practiced them enough to be able to teach students how to use them? With this question in mind, our training group then developed two four-day training segments based on the Dell Co-nect site’s lessons for using Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Excel, digital images, and our district’s intentions for using shared folders. We breathed a sigh of relief and hoped for the best.

Our “blind leading the blind” training ended in July. School started the third week of August, and students received their computers the final week of August during two evening information sessions, which parents and students were required to attend in order to learn policy information, sign policy forms, and, of course, receive the prized laptop. Thus, our laptop experience began.

Numerous issues arose early on to emphasize our inadequate preparation, including server issues, security issues, break-down issues (the Dells were the ones eventually recalled due to faulty batteries), and tech-support issues (one poor guy for our whole middle school). One concern stood out above all of these, at least for me: students voiced that if they were never going to use their computers, why did they have them? We could fix server problems and computers and implement policy changes eventually, but there was no convenient here’s-how-to-integrate-technology 800-number for us to call.

In retrospect, we probably did the best that we could, given the implementation time frame, but with the laptop initiatives becoming more and more prevalent across the United States (in my state of South Dakota, for example, twenty high schools are piloting laptop programs during the 2006-2007 school year based on the Governor’s South Dakota Classroom Connections laptop initiative), it’s important to examine and share the successes and failures of the laptop experience in order to reevaluate how to go about effectively implementing a 1:1 initiative, training teachers for their new roles, and understanding technology integration.

This year my school district, in a sense, has been given a “second chance” to “get things right.” In May ’06, our high school was named one of the Governor’s pilot schools, so our laptop initiative, which has now shifted to a Gateway platform, extends from grades seven to twelve. And during our frustrations, triumphs, and self-examinations of the past year and a half, I’m absolutely certain the high school and middle school staffs have learned a great deal. Thus, although I am but a novice in this whole “wonderful 1:1 world,” I consider the following assortment of comments—based on my students’ and my 1:1 journey—to be a rudimentary “help line” for those about to give the 1:1 a whirl.

1) Teacher training for technology integration means more than reviewing Office products. We can encourage teachers to start small and integrate gradually. We can suggest that they take a look at what they already do and find areas for technology integration. But what if they don’t know where to start, what to try, or what technology integration is? I recently read a newspaper article where Georgia teachers were struggling with how to go about technology integration after two years of 1:1 implementation. Once teachers were given laptops and told basically to “go with it,” one wondered what “go with it” meant; was there a website she could go to?

In my middle school’s case, eliminating the computer exploratory placed our teachers in the unique position of having to teach computer skills. I believe that’s one reason we felt it was important to review the Office products during our first teacher-training sessions; we needed to be able to teach skills our seventh graders might not have been exposed to during their sixth-grade computer exploratory to ensure computer basics were covered prior to their entering high school. Still, during my initial computer training experience, a small voice nagged me to dig deeper. The only Office product most of my fellow trainers and I hadn’t been familiar with was Movie Maker (software that allows one to create and edit movies using images, narration, and music), though I’d had minimal exposure to digital storytelling (stories combined with a visual multimedia element) during my Masters coursework and could immediately see the possibilities for this more “sophisticated” software within my classroom. What else was out there? Where could educators go to find promising educational products, preferably free or at least inexpensive?

Coincidentally, the Dakota Writing Project, based at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, and affiliated with the National Writing Project, sponsored an electronic writing marathon during the time of our computer training. The opportunity, which involved exploring a variety of online writing spaces, lasted three weeks in July and three weeks in January. The experience proved so helpful that I signed up again for the summer ’06 session. My eyes have been opened not only to more about digital storytelling but also to Nicenet (an Internet classroom assistant), weblogs (online journals), del.icio.us (an online tool for collecting and sharing favorite websites), Tapped In (an online space for educational professionals to share with and learn from each other), and wikis (collaborative websites that users add to and edit). The great thing about these spaces is that they do not apply solely to my content area of language arts. Teachers and students of all content areas and levels can benefit by exploring these and other online spaces.

Since our laptop experience broadened to include our high school this school year, the district brought in David Warlick—an educator, author, computer programmer, and owner/consultant for The Landmark Project (a professional development, web design, and innovations firm in Raleigh, North Carolina)—to speak to us at our all-staff in-service prior to the start of this school year. His presentation opened the eyes of many as he shared what literacy and learning mean in the 21st Century: in short, students will need to be able to research effectively (expose the truth); use that information effectively (employ information); share their ideas in writing effectively (express ideas compellingly); and use information ethically (ethics). The Landmark Project site alone includes scores of technology ideas and resources, but had I not been introduced to David Warlick, I might not have ever stumbled upon his site. Just as Warlick encouraged us to guide our students to becoming effective researchers, we, too, need help in filtering through everything the Internet offers. Districts need to give teachers the time to search for and to develop ideas and should also determine ways of sharing “what’s out there” with their staffs. However, regardless of whether or not a district is able to hire integrationists or consultants, teachers must be willing to learn on their own. Overall, training should be ongoing; teachers should always be seeking, experimenting, and evaluating.

2) Create a learning community with staff. One way to share “what’s out there” is to get teachers actively involved with training, in-services, and so on. I applaud my district’s willingness to allow its teachers to plan and facilitate the past two summers of teacher technology training. Who better to explore, discover, implement, and share ideas than those who are using the technology? Granted, our first training summer sessions weren’t all they could have been. But by our second “go-around” of teacher training sessions, our technology committee and staff had a much clearer vision about what our computer training could or should include.

For example, as a result of my technology exploration through the electronic writing marathon, this past summer, I was able to pass on what I’d learned about Nicenet and del.icio.us. Other colleagues who’d explored on their own presented what they’d discovered about interactive websites, Quia (a “create-your-own” educational materials website), and Inspiration (graphic organizing software).

In addition, though our district hired a technology integrationist this year, several staff members have continued to take active roles in sharing technology information. These colleagues often email our staff links to interesting sites (such as a live webcam of an African watering hole, a blogging article from USA Today) or technology “toys” (i.e. a cordless, optical-air mouse). We’ve held before- and after-school mini-sessions covering areas the staff wants more information about, for instance, reviewing how to use shared folders or certain Quia elements. After my students and I dabbled with blogging this fall and winter, I passed along our experiment to English department colleagues, who are eager to try blogs with their students.

Although our middle-school staff continues to face challenges, we have, in a way, established our own “hotline.” Yes, we have a technology support individual, but his hands are often full.

One colleague down the hall requested and wrote down the directions for “fixing” when a student’s “X:” drive seems to have disappeared. I, of course, asked for a copy! A colleague next door inquired about synchronizing issues that plagued her students early in the year; again, she shared what she learned with the staff. An eighth-grade language arts teacher hosting a high school foreign exchange student asked me for advice about setting up a Nicenet class with the purpose of discussing topics with freshmen at the exchange student’s school in Norway. Because our staff has been working and learning together, how convenient it has been to be able to call on a teacher down the hall to answer questions when they crop up!

3) Learn from your students. Let’s face it; when it comes to technology, the kids often know more than we do. Still, it’s difficult to “let go” of our teacher control and allow the students to teach each other and their teachers. When my “first-year laptop seventh graders” and I tried Nicenet, a few students were unable to log in, and their frustrations and mine grew. Finally, one boy checked into the Internet security settings (nope, I didn’t know much about that at the time), determined the appropriate setting, and then the students were good to go. Later in the year, a student wrote his Nicenet response in Word, explaining to me that he wanted to check his mistakes first and then copy and paste his response into Nicenet. Why didn’t I think of that? This, too, eliminated the panic that ensues on the rare occasions when students post a response only to be faced with the ominous words “this page cannot be displayed.”

In addition, during our digital storytelling experiences with Movie Maker, students helped each other add time to specific portions of their projects or work through the steps of saving the project as a movie, giving me, essentially, several aides in the classroom. When we were exploring “tracking changes” in each other’s writing, a student showed me how to “Tile Windows Vertically” or “Horizontally” so that students could see the edited rough draft and work on the final draft at the same time.

This year I’ve given more responsibility to and learned even more from my kids. Before attempting blogging with my students, I showed one or two students out of each of my classes how to post writing and upload images during their student-responsibility block (SRB) so that when we got to those points during class, they’d be ready to help. Now when hands fly up during an activity, I often have students stepping in saying, “I can help him” or “I’ll show her how.” When I didn’t know how to go about a blogging task, I passed the quests on to interested students: “figure this out and let me know how to do it.” My bloggers have taught me how to compress a “too-large” image so that it can be uploaded to one’s blog and how to adjust settings so that a blog’s comments will not be “off.”

Finally, I often ask my students for feedback. Last year I was curious if using Nicenet would improve my students’ attitude toward writing. I discovered that although nearly all of my students expressed that they enjoyed using Nicenet and the majority felt that their response writing improved in quality, attitudes toward writing didn’t change much. One student pointed out that “writing is writing no matter what.” Recently, students finished a research unit that involved more aspects of Nicenet: following a class schedule, conferencing, adding documents, and link sharing. Once the unit wrapped up, I asked students for input so that I could better prepare for my next attempts. I learned that some students liked that they were asked to work more “independently” and enjoyed sharing links with classmates to “cut down on” the amount of time it took to find websites relating to their research topics. Some would have preferred discussing the topics face to face while others liked conferencing with students from my other language arts sections. Next year when I tackle the research unit, I know I need to carve out more time for explaining how to add a document, thanks to students’ suggestions.

4) Be flexible, patient, and prepared. Just because my students now have daily access to laptops, we do not always have it “made in the shade.” Example A: Two or three (or four) students per class are without computers because the laptops are being repaired (which can require as little as an hour or as much as several weeks’ time, depending on the computer’s “injury”). What do I do with those students? Example B: Students diligently working at a website are suddenly “kicked out.” What then? Example C: Students can’t access their work on a certain drive (“It was there at home, but now I can’t find it”). Now what? (No, you don’t need to remind me that “technology is great . . . when it works”.)

The fact is, we have to be flexible, we have to be patient, and we have to be prepared. Ideally, each of my students would have a computer every day of school, but unfortunately, that is not the case. My school did have some extra laptops to be loaned out, but they’re all—well—loaned out. So I do try to have a “Plan B” for my “computer-less” scholars, such as providing a hard copy of an assignment, letting them work with a partner, allowing a trip to the library’s lab, or even letting them move on to another activity. If the Internet “acts up,” I can always divide my class into groups, one using a website while the others read independently or work on another activity, and then switch the groups after a certain amount of time. To avoid wasting precious class time, I quickly learned that if I could troubleshoot some of the common computer issues (i.e. a student’s computer not synchronizing or reconnecting a student to our school’s wireless network), I wouldn’t need to send a student to the “tech guy.” However, I also learned that I did need to give students time within class to use the technology, not dump it on them as homework only to be greeted the next day with “I just didn’t get how to do this, so can you show us again?”

Even during our second year, we still are getting used to how the technology works and how we should work with it. Each day carries a variety of challenges that try our patience, and it’s not uncommon for a teacher to bring up a problem we’ve never before encountered. When my patience runs thin (symptoms my students easily recognize, such as my jaw tightening, fists clenching, and comments about another gray hair), I force myself to refocus and praise my kids for their patience. We don’t give up. Instead, we move on. We try again later. We stay positive, and, eventually, we figure things out.

5) Separate “skinny rabbits” from “fat rabbits.” A few years back, an educator from Iowa spoke to our staff at an in-service; one point she made was not to waste energy on small issues (which she eloquently called “skinny rabbits”) and to be able to tell the difference between the “skinny rabbits” and “fat rabbits” (matters of true importance).

Often, the laptops were, and still are, the hot topic of conversation at lunch or team meetings. Staff members grumbled that students weren’t caring for their computers and their computers were often “in the shop.” A few kids were bypassing security barriers, getting to sites they weren’t supposed to be on; thus, they’d lose computer privileges. One teacher stated she was about ready to give up because three or four students were computer-less each day. In addition, the server, at times, didn’t cooperate when students were using the Internet for research or posting discussion responses, or it took forever for students to log on. Some of the rooms’ LCDs projected slightly off the screen; when could that be fixed? The most common complaint, though, was displeasure in students’ computer settings: wobbly arrows, a hidden start menu, funky fonts everywhere, and background pictures changed multiple times a day.

As I listened to and participated in these conversations, the Iowa educators’ message resurfaced in my mind, and I began to categorize my own “skinny rabbit” laptop issues and “fat rabbit” laptop issues. I asked myself, despite their irritating nature, which “skinny rabbits” could I handle in order to focus on the bigger picture? Surprisingly, I came up with quite a few, including wobbly arrows, funky fonts, and all of the other “cosmetic” experimenting middle-school kids do; my LCD being projected a couple of inches off both sides of the screen (like the tech guy didn’t have enough on his plate); and computer-less students (if three didn’t have them, that means 20-some still did). Yes, these were skinny rabbits, a little annoying, but skinny.

But, shortly after I had shared Nicenet with the English department at my middle school, one colleague emailed me concerns. Her students had discovered the personal messaging element. Was I aware that students could send messages that the teacher couldn’t see? And how would Nicenet know if the person creating a class was really a teacher? Some of her students might create their own class as a space for discussions with friends. Oh no, this was a “fat rabbit” issue! Immediately, I voiced my concerns on the Dakota Writing Project’s E-writing discussion board at Tapped In. The project’s co-director soon responded with far less emotion than I had expected, stating, “Personally, I don’t see that as a bad thing,” and provided the link to an article called “Letting Go: Online Collaboration and Communication in the Classroom.” Okay, my students would experiment in ways I hadn’t anticipated; I wouldn’t be able to “control” that part of their learning. Eventually, I managed to place that concern on the “skinny rabbit” side.

Though there are still times I question the “control” issue (remember my students are blogging this year?), I remind myself that technology experimentation is all part of the process, for teachers and students. Plus, I have “fatter rabbits” to fry—like continuing to explore with my students’ blogs, planning a digital story for second semester, and getting a discussion set up for our Gathering Blue novel.

For the past year and a half, my district has embarked on an extraordinary roller coaster ride into a world that, honestly, hasn’t always been all that “wonderful.” We implemented quickly, only to find out just as quickly how much we didn’t know. Thankfully, much of our staff has “held on” and continues to explore and experiment, evaluate and share. And in many ways, being involved in a laptop initiative has rejuvenated my love for and excitement about teaching. I have been challenged to rethink what I do in the classroom, to discover new ways of doing things, to grow personally and professionally. There will be no answer-all 800-number in this laptop world, but because many of my colleagues have pulled together, I can always check with a colleague down the hall.

by Lindsay Sorben, Ellis Middle School , Austin, Minnesota (formerly at Bennett County in South Dakota); DWP Regional Liaison

“Miss Sorben, what button do I push?” —Internet Explorer.
“Miss Sorben, my computer doesn’t work” —I’ll be right there!
“Miss Sorben, my computer just locked up.” —You’ll need to force-quit.
“My password won’t work!” –It’s case-sensitive. You need to type everything exactly.
“What’s case-sensitive mean?” —Grrrr!
“Where’s the internet?” —On the task bar on the bottom. The “E” or the compass icons.
“What’s an icon?” —A little picture.
“Miss Sorben, I need your help!” –I’ll be right there!
“How do I force-quit?” —Open Apple Q.
“Huh?” —These two buttons.
“Miss Sorben, a new student just came in! Does he get a password, too?”

Meanwhile ( back at the ranch), your fellow teachers stand in front of their classes, smiling and enjoying the great lesson they have planned for their classes. Your scream, though only heard in the magical subconscious of every teacher in your building, produces unseen smiles as they thank the goddess of teaching that they are not in that computer lab with you.

Taking risks is often a scary thing. It holds the uncertainty of success and the inevitable mistakes made along the way. Onlookers watch in awe the forerunner traveling to defeat and, possibly, wonder if they should be taking that leap themselves. But for the pioneer, the walk is sometimes painful as he visualizes his goal, sees the obstacles, and wonders: why am I doing this?

In the electronic age of instant information and video games, it is often challenging to engage our students in the lessons and activities that we prepare for their learning. Students want visuals. They want pizzazz. They want us to dance around and do cartwheels (although this may not always work). They want to be entertained without having to leave their cushioned couches. How do we answer to their cries? How do we answer to our own cries for help in teaching hi-tech kids?

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” We can be creative with how we present our information to our students, but we can’t always make them apply what they’ve learned. We’ve got standards to reach. We’ve got deadlines to meet. And we better make sure that no child is left behind in the battle.

While participating in an online writing marathon with the Dakota Writing Project, a branch of the National Writing Project (a professional organization that promotes teachers teaching teachers how to write and teach writing), I began brainstorming ways to integrate today’s technology into my classroom curriculum. As part of an inquiry project with it, I used Nicenet.org as an instructional tool for science.

I taught science to both classrooms of fifth graders, with about fifteen students in each section. The site has a message center for the students to correspond to one another. Initially, introduction into the program was gradual, but the ever-present demon of time became a huge factor in the success of our usage of the Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA). It was going to be a learn-as-we-go kind of project, but availability of computers and computer lab times became crucial. Not only that, the amount of time allotted to the teaching of science (shamefully) was sacrificed in order to accommodate for schedule changes and to allow for math and reading to have their necessary time. (Social Studies was another loser in the game of scheduling).

In the midst of my excitement of getting students to see the internet and science in two different, merging lights, other teachers watched, smiled and nodded, and carried on with their regularly scheduled classroom programs. “You’ve gotta try it!” I would say to my colleagues. “Yes, Lindsay, that’s nice,” would be their reply. How could I convince them that they should be integrating technology into their classrooms? How could I show them that it really isn’t so intimidating or that it really doesn’t take any more time than what is already needed in the classroom?

With only thirty minutes of technology being taught a week, I knew that there had to be something done so as to not cheat my students out of possible experiences. Seeing the varying possibilities through our DWP E-Writing Marathon, I didn’t want my students (or teachers) to lose out on what was out there. Nicenet became my medium to write with technology, a baby step. But even more so, the journey that I took in using it became more valuable as I continue to integrate technology and writing into my classroom.

My adventure began in September with the setting up of the Nicenet online classroom. I thought it would ease the students’ usage of the new learning tool by already having student logins and passwords assigned and ready for use when the time came to sign in for the first time. I typed them out and saved them, knowing that the day would come with someone (and probably more than one) forgetting a password.

Other loopholes that I had to get through were permission for the students from their parents to use the internet and the arrival of new students to the fifth grade. It took weeks to collect all of the permission slips. By the time we started using Nicenet, there were still a handful of students who couldn’t even be in the lab with us. Finding alternative assignments and keeping them on task during my introduction to Nicenet was a challenge.

New arrivals often came unexpectedly and sometimes on days when Nicenet was in the plans. It caused two problems: 1.) Did they have their internet-use permission slip?; 2.) Could I get them a login and password by class time? I did as any teacher does in those situations, I “punted.” No permission slip meant an alternative assignment, and a login and password would either have to wait or be assigned during a planning period (or lunch period) before class.

In order to set up my science classroom as a classroom that uses writing to learn, I begin my year with Thinkbooks. They are basically journals the students use to write down thoughts and questions pertaining to what is being studied. I often post a question or statement on the board for the students to respond to, and they spend the brief minutes at the beginning of class and write down their thoughts. It’s a tool that I use to assess understanding and to give them a chance to think about what they are studying.

A month of using Thinkbooks passed before trying Nicenet. Science was scheduled in the afternoon. Fortunately, at the time of my introduction, the computer lab in my upper elementary wing was available for use. In it was an LCD projector and enough computers to accommodate both sections of students.

The first issue to arise was the use of software. We are a Macintosh school with both Internet Explorer and Safari software. Students began opening Internet Explorer. Soon after running, however, the computers began locking up, causing the students to have to shut down their computers and start them up again to open Safari.

With the chaos of software somewhat out of the way, we had just enough time for the students to log onto the website. Students were exposed to case-sensitive “hiccups.” Voices of “it won’t work,” “what’s this” or physical frustrations were heard in the lab. With patience and perseverance, we marched onward toward our goal until all were finally logged on.

The LCD projector proved to be an almost necessary piece in introducing the students to Nicenet and in giving them a visual “walk-through” of what the site contained. Our first stop was the Messaging center. I had posted a question to the students, asking for their thoughts about science so far. I demonstrated how to respond to my message. All followed well. Whew! The fruits of my labor!

The first day’s plans were almost too much for my fifth graders to handle with the stress of actually logging onto the site. Once the students were onto the website, they were a little apprehensive at first but got excited at the thought of getting to “e-mail” each other messages. Ha-ha! Motivation for learning! It was at this time that I gave them the disclaimer that the Messaging feature was only to be used for “scientific” things, not for personal messages; and I had access to all of their accounts and would know if they were using it inappropriately.

The first few trials of Nicenet left me exhausted! I was troubleshooting. The students were impatient. Computers were locking up or passwords were lost. Students had difficulty typing or typing well. Not until later in the year, thank goodness, did the students start abusing the Messaging feature. In the early stages of its use, when most of the problems emerged, the computer lab was vacant at the times I needed it, but, as the semester progressed, the computer lab became less and less available and was given precedence to reading classes over my science class.

I was able to establish the use of Nicenet through our Ecosystems and Astronomy units in the first semester. I exposed them to the Conferencing feature and the Assignments feature. Students had a difficult time following the written directions in Assignments. They either didn’t want to take the time to read it or they wanted me to talk them through their assignment. It was a feature that I had used only a couple of times. In retrospect, fewer, smaller steps should have been built onto larger steps to promote their independence.

Conferencing was supposed to be the magical tool that brought our great minds together, with open discussions about science and what we were doing in class. It became a carnival of writing, some thoughtful, some just haphazard words typed out. Few students read what their classmates wrote, and even fewer actually responded to their classmates’ postings. What I did get, though, was a collection of students’ understandings of science. It became another assessment tool.

Link Sharing became most valuable during our Astronomy unit. Students were expected to perform investigations about an astronomy-related topic or concept. During those investigations, the class researched their topics on the internet. The Link Sharing feature was a tool for them to use. I posted links on the site that they could explore that may or may not have led them to other sites for their research. The Link Sharing also provided an easier way for me to get the students to navigate to certain websites instead of expecting them to type URLs that were long and cumbersome.

We finally got most of the wrinkles ironed out with software and computers halfway through our experience. That’s when I saw results of using Nicenet for thought processing. It could have been student maturity, or it could have been the habit of processing their learning in writing. The students’ replies to my Conferencing topic about Astronomy were deeper than their short responses to their feelings about science at the beginning of the year. Some were metacognizant. Some were analytical of their efforts. Overall, their writings were beginning to become just that: writing!

In my investigations i have had a lot of fun.I have got a lot of experience about astronomy now.While i was researching i had a lot of fun.I got to roam around on the internet it was really cool.The construction of my or our final project turned out pretty well, we made a model of crab nebula.My classmates projects were really cool i liked jeremy and patricks the best. —Fifth Grade Student (1)

And their writings were improving! Early Writings of a Fifth Grade Student:

I liked the experiment that we did today.It was really fun. I hope we get to do more fun experiments this year. —Fifth Grade Student (2)

Later writings of same fifth-grade student:

I had a really fun time learning about astronomy and making projects. It was easy researching.The resource I used most was the internet. It was kind of hard and kind of easy to make our project.It was better than I thought it would be. I thought my classmates projecst were cool and they took their time. —Fifth-Grade Student (2)

And then it happened (ominous chord). Just after completing the students’ reflections about Astronomy and their investigations, a new schedule for the computer lab emerged, throwing yet another wrench in to my trial of using technology. At the time of the schedule change, science was from 1:45-2:45. The computer lab was going to be occupied until 2:20, leaving less time to devote to Nicenet. We visited the lab when we could. My topics were simplified for the time.

A light bulb came on after a month of playing cat and mouse with the computer lab. Through a grant (for reading), the school purchased a mobile lab unit with Mac labtops. Aha! I had my answer. With only a couple of months left of school, we began using the laptops instead of the computer lab. By this time of the year, we were in a time crunch and were only able to log onto Nicenet a couple more times.

Curious to know how the student felt about using Nicenet, I asked them their thoughts on getting to use computers and using the website. The majority of students agreed that they enjoyed it. They recommended its use for future fifth graders. The classes liked the idea of not always having to do “real work.”

I don’t look back on this trial as a failure. I think that this “experiment” was very much a success. 1.) It integrated technology into the classroom; 2.) The students were writing(!); 3.) The students were writing in science(!); 4.) Very few, if any, complained about having to perform the tasks set up for them while in Nicenet; 5.) It became a tool for assessing the students’ understanding of the subject matter; 6.) Students were having conversations through writing; 7.) The science classroom was self-motivated; 8.) By the end of the year, I had a couple teachers inquire about Nicenet and one teacher who told me, “You know, I really should be doing something like this with my students.” I got as far as showing her the website and how to set it up!

This adventure is not over. This is only the first leg. In my nine months of obstacles and challenges and mini successes, I began something. I jumped over a road block in my teaching that will only get smaller and smaller the more I take on these new battles. And when I meet a new road block, I won’t sweat it. I’ll take in stride. Keep my patience, and trudge onward toward my goal. Isn’t that part of what we try to teach our students? Perseverance?

My students thought, reflected, wrote, typed, studied, discovered, communicated, listened, and learned. A student reflects, “What I think about science is that we write a lot about science and that we do a lot of hard work!” They hadn’t been exposed to something like this before. This was their beginning, too. I gave them a taste. Just a taste of what’s out there. It may springboard into their own adventure, or just may make things easier for the next teacher who attempts the unheard of.

My challenge to those apprehensive teachers watching that pioneer face her doom? Take some chances. At least a few little ones at a time. Take the risks to make you better and to make your students better, accepting mistakes as part of the beauty of learning.

Attack! A Poem for Two Voices

by Lindsay Sorben, Ellis Middle School , Austin, Minnesota (formerly at Bennett County in South Dakota); DWP Regional Liaison

This experience certainly rewrote my definition of what it means to be rural. For me, rural has always been the vast West River prairie and the seemingly endless fields of corn and beans that cover East River, South Dakota. At this conference, I was introduced to other areas of this country that are just as rural as my sacred South Dakota. The mountains of West Virginia; the peninsula in Washington State; the farmlands of Ohio; the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Montana; Maine; and even the state of New York can claim rural status. Writing projects in these areas face many of the same issues that we deal with in South Dakota.

The issue of distance and time that is required of teachers to attend summer institutes. In South Dakota, some teachers have been required to travel distances of over 400 miles to attend an institute. Teachers that have families have found this to be difficult, if not at time impossible for them to accomplish. Other states also acknowledge this problem. In West Virginia, teachers would travel over two hours one way twice a month to attend a writing project function. This issue and others were addresses at one of the breakout sessions that I attended. The session was presented by members of the West Virginia Writing Project and Santee Wateree Project from South Carolina. Their solutions including combining student writing retreats along with teacher writing retreats. The teacher strand would include demonstrations. The South Carolina Project does a series of two-hour sessions monthly, beginning in January and ending in May. Their focus was on teacher inquiry.

Along with enlarging my sense of ruralness (new word: not yet in any dictionary but mine), I learned that the issue of poverty is characteristic of many of the areas represented at the Rural Sites Conference. The Puget Sound Writing Project in Washington state presented their annotated bibliography for teaching and working with students who live in some level of poverty. Given that two of the three highest poverty-level counties in the country are located in South Dakota, I feel that this annotated bibliography has a wealth of resources for educators throughout our state.

Other aspects of the journey to New Mexico included a trip to see the Acoma Pueblo and visit with a tour guide of the Pueblo who had attended Haskell Indian School with a friend of mine from Pine Ridge. We also took a tour of Sky City Elementary School, where the native language is integrated completely into a third-grade classroom. I also participated in a “walk, shop, and talk” trip through Old Town, where a sidewalk vendor told me the story of the day that he made a turquois cross that I purchased from him. It was a Palm Sunday, and he was watching parishioners entering and exiting the San Felipe Mission.

All-in-all, I was completely enchanted by the “land of enchantment” that is Arizona.