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In our new Longfellow Ten episode, Doc and Mandy fly to Massachusetts in a helicopter to try to find and STOP the Northern Contingent. The Northern Contingent is an outlaw renegade group of 6th graders making LF10 films. The group is rumored to have links to the Electronic Pencil. However, this has not been substantiated. If you have any information for Doc and Mandy about the Northern Contingent, please leave a comment below. Otherwise, stay tuned for the next episode. There’s no telling what trouble Doc and Mandy may get themselves into while in Massachusetts.

In my 7th grade Reading class, each student is required to read an independent novel (or two) each quarter. Although they get some class time to accomplish this, most of the reading is done outside of class. Over the last couple of weeks, students have been recording and posting short podcasts about the books they are reading.

For the most recent podcast, I gave them the option of imagining they were recording a commercial for their book, after it was turned into a movie. They could also bypass the podcast all together, and instead write a book report on their weblogs. A few students opted to do this. It’s nice have as many options as possible when asking them to respond to the books they are reading.

You can listen to all the podcasts on our class homepage. The students also embedded their podcasts into their blogs and wrote reflections about the whole process. Check out Binyam’s excellent post outlining all the steps involved in making a podcast. Binyam choose to read the Hobbit for his independent reading novel.

I hope to continue podcasting with students throughout the year, so stay tuned for more. The podcast used at the top of this post was recorded by Johana.

For my Cable in the Classroom application, I am highlighting three projects that exemplify how my students and I have used new Web 2.0 tools. These represent a small fraction of the dozens of projects my students and I have created using Cable Internet.

1. Many Voices for Darfur
2. Original Hip-Hop albums by J.R  / (download both albums here)
3. The Longfellow Ten

The Tryouts (Episode 2)

My 7th grade film literacy class recently completed their productions of the second scenes in their ongoing short films. Watch all five new episodes over on Watch Out! Short films by middle schoolers.

These productions are 100% student created from start to finish. Students brainstorm scene ideas, create storyboards and shot sheets, film, act and edit their productions in their small groups. Tiny Tot Productions actually broke out their electric guitars and drums for their scene. Crybaby Productions shot part of their scene in the gym after school with 20 or so extras. (Thanks to the gym teachers for their help!) All the production groups are doing an amazing job of combining literary, dramatic, and cinematic elements into their films.

They are also moving their plots along in an understandable and coherent way. We’re using a script writing structure designed by Marilyn Horowitz in her book, How to Write a Screenplay Using The Horowitz System™— The Middle School Edition. At the end of Episode Two, students added a new and tougher challenge to their plots. Stay tuned for Episode Three!

“Poetry has an interesting function. It helps people be where they are.” Gary Snyder

This past week, my 7th grade Reading students wrote one-word “being here” poems. Students first wrote in their journals about how their day was going, and how they were feeling at that particular moment. We turned the lights off and took a few minutes to think. I told the students that they should try to capture this moment in their journal entries.

After the students finished their freewrites, they boiled their journal entries down to one word. I then asked them to look their words up in a thesaurus to come up with one-word poems. We had a nice discussion about new words, and the students talked about finding the perfect word for their poems.

Students illustrated their words on small index cards. We created this short film combining all of their one-word poems. The students will embed this film in their weblogs tomorrow. Our short film will also double as our digital word wall.

I got inspiration for this exercise after reading a book called Poemcrazy, by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge and seeing the work of Kevin Hodgson’s ongoing “Day in a Sentence” project.

The Longfellow Ten is a loose confederation of unknown middle school students in undisclosed locations in cyberspace looking to promote awareness of important literary terms through absurd stop-motion films.

Doc and Mandy are out to DESTROY the LF10, and put a stop to this madness before it gets completely out of control. There’s a rumor some new stop-motion films are currently in production by a group of outlaw middle school students somewhere in Massachusetts. Another worrisome sign is the ClustrMap on the LF10 Homepage showing a few hits from Europe! Doc and Mandy must work quickly to put an end to this LF10 insanity before it spreads across the globe like a virus.

Stay tuned. In Episode Two Doc and Mandy plan to parachute down into the woods of Massachusetts in search of this new unidentified LF10 group. They hope to destroy these new films before they are released into the world via the World Wide Web.

Here are my nominations for the 2008 Edublog Awards:

Best Teacher Blog: Songhai Concepts. H Songhai is a high school media teacher at an alternative school in Philadelphia. He has been quietly blogging for years showcasing the many ways he uses new technology to engage his students.

Best Educational Use of a Social Networking Service: YouthVoices.net. Paul Allison and friends, with support from the National Writing Project, have created a new home for the Youth Voices project.

Best Educational Use of Audio: Teachers Teaching Teachers is a webcast run by Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim. They invite classroom teachers and students to talk about ways they’re using technology in the classroom. They also do a great job of archiving each weeks’ show and making the audio available as podcasts.

Best Individual Blog: One of the founders of the Students 2.0 movement, Arthus, blogged through much of 2008 on his blog, Newly Ancient. He has since stopped blogging there, but I think the work he did over that time is worthy of an Edublogs Award because of his unique perspective as a student writing about education technology.

Best Resource Sharing Blog: Silvia Tolisano’s blog, Langwitches, is a great resource blog for teachers looking to integrate technology and new media.

Best Educational Wiki: Digitally Speaking is a wiki created by Bill Ferriter that offers a roadmap for using Web 2.0 in the classroom. It’s a great resource for any teacher whose looking to use blogs, wiki’s and other Web 2.0 tools with their students.

Best New Blog: Jabiz Raisdana is the author of The Intrepid Classroom, where he writes passionately about technology and teaching.

This post is a slight deviation from what I usually write about: student work. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize a few of the many voices on the web who have influenced me in some way. Thanks.

This past week, my 7th grade Reading class produced short videos on how to make terrariums. (Watch all four videos HERE.) The point of the lesson was to have students practice following a set of directions. Before we started the project we had to brainstorm a list of materials, and students each volunteered to bring in various items. Here’s a list of the required materials for the project:

• 8 clear plastic 2-liter bottles
• 1 bag of unopened potting soil
• 1 bag of gravel
• grass and assorted flower seeds
• small dropper and a few plastic cups

The students worked in small groups to create their terrariums and videos. They did a great job! I posted all four of their videos on the homepage of our Class Weblogs. Students will embed their videos into their blogs this week and write short reflections about the project.

The Tryouts / Episode One

This year, I’m fortunate to be teaching a new class called Lights, Camera, Literacy! (LCL!) The curriculum helps build students’ literacy skills through film study.

My second year LCL! students are creating their own movies in small production groups. They just completed the first episodes of their movies and they are terrific. Students work in small production groups brainstorming, storyboarding, filming, and editing their productions. It’s very much a collaborative process that mimics real film making. The best part about this course is that it assumes middle school students can actually pull it off. Another powerful aspect of the course is that it gives students the tools and the time they need to get the job done.

As the production groups create each episode of their films we will be posting them on our new website called watCH OUT!. It’s important to note that these short films are 100% student created from start to finish. Each group also picked out the soundtrack music using copyright free music licensed under Creative Commons copyright. We started a class wiki as a resource for useful links to free sounds and music we can use in our ongoing projects. Please check back soon to see what they come up with for Episode 2. I can hardly wait.

Production Groups:
Cookie Muncher Productions
Crybaby Productions
Purple Marble Productions
Tiny Tot Productions
Z\E/N Productions

Who are the Longfellow Ten?