Digital Storytelling Tools

The following is a "glog" about potential tools for a DST trial at a local elementary school in the fall.
Click each tool for details.

Book Trailers: Moving toward the Future of Digital Publishing

Have you ever seen a book trailer? Nowadays, the traditional book selling activities such as book talks in multiple cities are not very attractive. Instead, with the advances in technology and the belt-tightening economy, publishers and authors are actively looking for web alternatives to promote their books.

Especially in the world of children's literature, things are changing fast.

Award-winning storyteller Dianne de Las Casas has created a Ning community for sharing and discussing kidlit book trailers. Authors can post their trailers and other videos (such as activities with children during school visits). Bibliophiles can discover great reads by watching those videos.

Here’s a gorgeous one from the site: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by author/illustrator Grace Lin.

Newly Issued Pearson Film Series: Visionaries in 21st-Century Education

The film series newly issued by the Person Foundation, named "A 21st Century Education," highlights twelve innovative and compelling school-reform leaders from around the world and cases they presented in the field of education. The series was produced by the Mobile Learning Institute, a co-funded effort by Nokia and the Pearson Foundation.

All movie series are black and white. They are downloadable, each lasting for 10-15 minutes.

The first set of films profile and explore the following:
· Steve Barr and the Takeover of Locke High School in Watts
· James Dierke and Leadership Models for Urban Middle Schools
· David “T.C.” Ellis and Essential Learning at Hip Hop High
· Randall Fielding and Designing Schools for 21st Century Learning
· Stephen Heppell and Empowering Young Learners
· Jean Johnson, Notschool.net and Online Learning for Disaffected Youth
· Doug McCurry and the Success of Achievement First
· George McKenna and Personalizing Public Education
· Alan November and the Myths and Opportunities of Technology
· Larry Rosenstock and Project-based Learning at High Tech High
· Elliot Soloway/Cathie Norris and Educating the Mobile Generation
· Yong Zhao: No Child Left Behind and Global Competitiveness

I just had a brief look at two of them and got very impressed:

Disaffected youth’s experiences with multimedia
NCLB and global competition from a Chinese professor’s perspective

Textbooks Go Digital in California

As reported by eSchool News, California State has approved a new initiative on digital textbooks, which aims at encouraging all public schools in California to use free, open digital textbooks.

The recent state report tells that the main subjects covered in this initiative are math and science (e.g., geometry, biology, chemistry, earth science, etc.) for high school students. The main publishers selected include CK-12 Foundation, Pearson Education, Curriki, Connexions, Dr. H. Jerome Keisler, etc.

The report doesn’t mention how the state will apply those textbooks in public classrooms, in the aspects of available devices, technologies or web resources involved, teaching methods, and curriculum development. In my opinion, this initiative will first of all demand “one desktop/laptop per child” in the classroom, which will definitely cost a lot.

I also wonder how the state will expect teachers to use “static” digital textbooks in various grades. I have a few questions in mind:

• Can students manage the readings on a computer screen?
• Is it appropriate to demand teachers use textbooks to teach math and science instead of showing students hands-on examples/experiments in classroom teaching?
• Will those textbooks be accessible to other states?
• How can teachers track students’ readings of digital textbooks?
• How can students make notes of their readings?
• Will the digital textbooks bring a radical change (see the picture above) to the physical environment of classroom?
• ...
  

The books will be issued in the coming months and the state officials are also going to review potential digital textbooks in other subjects (e.g., English literacy?) as reported.

Under the current information age, it is a good strategy for schools to keep updated with technology. However, as for digital textbooks, is the current technology mature enough to bring the engaging literacy experience, activities, and processes of thinking that teachers and educators expect?

About Chinese Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is the Chinese Valentine’s Day which is also called Qi Xi or Qi Qiao Jie. It happens on the seventh day of the seventh month in the Chinese lunar calendar. So the date varies every year in the lunar time zone:

Year 2010 is on August 16, 2010
Year 2011 is on August 6, 2011
Year 2012 is on August 23, 2012

According to Chinese folklore, when you look up in the sky on this special day, you can see the Vega Star crossing the Milky Way to meet the Altair Star. Chinese believe that the girl (weaver) will cross the Heavenly River to meet her lover (cowherd) over a bridge physically built up by magpies on this Valentine's Day once a year.

There are two legends around the origin of this day.

The first legend is about the freedom of love.

It is a love story about the seventh daughter of the Heavenly Father and an orphaned cowherd. The Father separated them. She was forced to move to the star Vega and the cowherd moved to the star Altair. They are allowed to meet only once a year on the day of seventh day of seventh lunar month. The story began from the good-looking poor orphaned boy living with his elder brother and sister-in-law. After his parents past away, his brother inherited the house and the land. The boy only owned an old ox. He needed to work on the farm's field with the ox everyday. So he was called a cowherd. His daily life was just like in a Cinderella story…

The second legend is about love and responsibility.

On the east bank of the Heavenly River lived a weaving maiden. The Heavenly Mother made her work day and night weaving cloth for gods and goddesses. Since the weaver lived all alone, the Heavenly Mother took pity on her and allowed her to marry a cowherd boy who lived on the west bank of the Heavenly River. The weaver enjoyed her marriage so much that she stopped weaving. This angered the Heavenly Mother, so she kidnapped the weaver, took her back across the river, and allowed her to see the cowherd only once a year over a bridge formed by magpies.

One of the most famous poems about the legend was written by Qin Guan in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

FAIRY OF THE MAGPIE BRIDGE

Translation by Kylie Hsu

Among the beautiful clouds,

Over the heavenly river,

Crosses the weaving maiden.

A night of rendezvous,

Across the autumn sky,

Surpasses joy on earth.

Moments of tender love and dream,

So sad to leave the magpie bridge.

Eternal love between us two,

Shall withstand the time apart.

Compared with love stories in Western stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, the story of this Chinese couple seems not as intense and passionate. Love doesn't kill or end up by breaking up the barrier between them. They just wait patiently on each side of the Milky Way, believing that their love can fight against their time apart. It is faith and emotional liaison instead of physical attraction and desire that are emphasized and appreciated in the story as well as in many other Chinese folk stories about love.

Both unmarried and married lovers can celebrate this Qi Qiao Jie. It is a great occasion to show love and care to your beloved or your significant other. Traditionally, for unmarried girls, they will gather together and pray for a better personal skill and good luck in finding their lovers. A noble lady’s praying words usually would look like: 1) wish her country great prosperity, 2) wish her parents good heath, and finally 3) wish herself a good husband. The last is the most important.

Wish everyone a happy happy Qi Qiao Jie tomorrow!

New Development of "Green Programs" in the U.S.

As reported by Technical Education, five states -- Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and Oregon-- have committed to developing green career and technical education initiatives. In collaboration with the United States Department of Education, the states will create secondary and post-secondary programs that will lead to certificates and associate and bachelor degrees.

"Green means healthier learning environments for students and adults, plus lower energy costs and a stronger economy," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, also in a statement released this week. "Green programs of study support the administration's goal of expanding a green workforce by preparing students for high-skill, high-wage jobs in a clean energy economy.

Among the five, Oregon has been pioneering in its industrial construction and development in this field. It has developed a pilot solar-powered high way, the first of its kind in the nation, installed with a 104kW system comprised of 594 panels.

Its annual production is about 128 megawatt-hours – enough to power about 10 typical homes for a year. However, The Oregon Dept of Transportation (ODOT) is using it to power the lights at the I-5 & I-205 exchange.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Austin announced its pilot program called Sunflowers, An Electric Garden.

Designed by public art team Harries/Heder, the installation consists of 15 flower-like solar photovoltaic panels located on a pedestrian and bike path between the village of Mueller and Austin’s highway I-35.

Global warming and decreased non-renewable energy resources have become the most crucial issues faced by human beings. While, secondary and post-secondary schools have started to pay attention to bring "green" to their program design, mainly focusing on cultivating future "green" engineers/technologists, however, "green" ideas are missed in most of the K-12 curricula. Additional content orientations in arts and aesthetics are mentioned a lot in the educational field, but the idea of applying "green" in daily life are not integrated into K-12 curricula as well as most teacher education programs. While we want our children to be knowledgeable, artistic, creative, critical, and thoughtful as individuals, we also want them to be aware of global and social issues: we really need to work hard to make our living places better, for ourselves and for the next generations.

July School Visit

I got a chance to visit a school in New Jersey with my colleagues at the EdLab in July. The school was reconstructed from a chocolate factory. The new space is featured with a roof garden and its "green" utilization of the old resources. How to work "greenly", eat "greenly", and design "greenly" is one of main focuses of the school curriculum.









An Integrated School Curriculum on History, Ecology, and Space

One of the main questions we brought with us during the visit was: How do environments/spaces influence teaching and learning at St. Philip's? As introduced by Ralph, the main designer and member of the school board, the school believes in a school curriculum built on student-centered real-life experiences. The redesigned space and the “green roof” extend the school’s options in its curricular development. It integrates the following curricular focuses (from space redesign) into teaching and learning:

History

The display of new interior design and elements of old building (i.e., an old chocolate factory) gives teachers a curricular focus on the history of Newark as a major industrial zone in the East Coast. Students will be able to reflect on the history through their daily hands-on experiences in the space.

Ecology and Sustainability
The new space lets students learn about how to utilize old buildings and how to work “green”. The design utilizes as many old resources as possible, including ceilings, walls (of the stairways), and old desks and chairs. It also pays attention to energy saving devices. Every classroom is installed with sensored lights and there is a solar-energy panel on top of the school which provides a small portion of energy for the building.

“Green Roof” Integration
“Green roof”, the school’s roof garden, is integrated to most of the academic subjects, including math, science, literacy, and social studies. Every class has got a spot on the roof and they do seeding, planting, and harvesting there. Lower-grade students use the garden to learn counting and recording numbers, while higher-grade students can learn and write about biological life cycles and geographical origins of the plants.

Nutrition
Meals served by the school’s dinning room are connected to the “green roof”, too. During the harvest season, students eat food from the garden and learn about nutrition as well as how to eat “green”. The nutrition program has a big impact on students’ lives, as told by Charity, students take “green” ideas home and “teach” their parents how to eat healthy.

Aesthetics, Design and Engineering
The color scheme of the school is “From Earth to Sky”, with each floor assigned with a main different color ranging from light yellow (earth) to light blue (sky). The redesigned space (with all the details in colors, interior display, and ecological devices) gives students a great opportunity to learn about aesthetics, design, as well as engineering from the angel of how to work “green” -- How to design a new space from an old building, how to do “green” interior design, how to match colors, how to design and put energy saving devices within the building?

***********

More School Information

History of Newark Schools
As introduced by Ralph, Newark is a traditional industrial zone. Almost 85% of the products of the East Coast are produced from this city. However, the public school system failed in the last 40 years, thus a huge number of private and charter schools have been established. The neighborhood of St. Philips is close to Hispanic town. The neighborhood is also one of the roughest areas in western New Jersey. It gets high racial attention and a high need for new schools. The new St. Philips is located close to three higher education institutions (e.g., Rutgers and NJIT) for the purpose of getting the resources of those institutions’ secondary-school support. The location of St. Philips housed a chocolate factory and the school design started about three years ago.

School Information
St. Philips was established in 1988 with a first-grade class. In the recent 20 years, it has relocated three times from downtown area to a small piece of land close to Newark Museum before moving to the current “warehouse”. “It has tripled the size where we came from”, as introduced by Ralph. Currently it is a private k-8 school, with two classes per grade and 18 students per class. Though as a private school, it grants scholarships/financial aid to about 60% of its student population. The school’s ethnic information shows that 96% of the students are African American students, while Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian American students constitute the rest of the student group. Most students are from lower or lower-middle socioeconomic classes.

Admission
The admissions are considered for families in need, as given by Ralph, the school believes that the admissions should consider more about students who can take the ability to learn rather than students with parents have the ability to pay. Besides, potential students need to go through a testing process. For younger students, the test is relatively subjective, while for older students, there are entrance tests prepared for them. As further introduced, most of the St. Philip’s graduates have been doing well in their high schools. For example, 80% of them take advanced math courses in the first year of high school.

School Redesign
The process of school redesign has involved Ralph and the main administrators of the school since January 2007.

Technology
Every classroom has a projector, a desktop computer, a SmartBoard, and a stereo radio/CD player. However, there is no separate media lab or computer lab at the school.

A Tour with a Group of High School Students
We were touring around the school with a group of 11 local high school students. We noticed that though students asked limited questions, but the garden and the gym were the places where students frequently talked to each other and raised the most questions (to Ralph). The following may reflect the part of school redesign that interests them most:

• “Did you get a good pay as a designer?”
• “How much is the project?”
• “Can the building be fully solar powered?”
• “What is the cost for electronic coil?”
• “Does every floor have a restroom?”
• “What is the cost of the grass?”
• …

Students seemed very interested in Ralph’s job, they asked several repeated questions about it at different places. However, when Ralph asked them about their future job plans, most students said they were not certain and only 1-2 of them answered that they would be interested in getting a job related to sustainability and environment. This observation indicates that students are interested/concerned about getting jobs, and education of design, sustainability and ecology at local high schools is to a large degree ignored.

First National Study on American Elementary Classrooms after NCLB

In today's keynote, Stephanie also introduced this article published in Science about the quantity and quality of instruction and the relationship between teachers and students in American elementary classrooms. It is the first national study of its kind after the implementation of NCLB.


Here are a few highlights important to look at:

• The study is based on direct observations of first, third, and fifth grades in 1000 elementary schools and 400 school districts.
• In fifth grade, children spent most of their time (91.2%) working in whole-group or individual-seatwork settings. Students spent little time (7%) in small-group instruction (two to five students).
• In fifth grade, 37% of instruction was in literacy and 25% was in math; in first and third grade, more than 50% of instruction was in literacy and less than 10% was in math.
• Very little instruction or classroom activity was given in technology.
• Few opportunities were provided to learn in small groups, to improve analytic cal skills, or to interact extensively with teachers.
• Typically, over the course of a 20-minute period, instruction involved only one method or mode (e.g., vocabulary worksheet or watching the teacher do math problems).
• Teachers most of the time gave generic feedback on correctness rather than encouraging extension of student performance or discussing alternative solutions.
• Classroom dynamics were not related to teachers’ degree status or experience.

The most surprising finding for me is the ineffective elementary-level teacher education in the U.S. Being at an educational institution as prestigious and progressive as TC let me ignore an important fact that not only that no child should be left behind but also no teacher should be left behind. On one hand, the national DOE and a number of professors in higher educational institutions keep proposing that all K-12 teachers should have master's degrees. However, on the other hand, the quality of teacher education programs is doubtful. The spread of higher educational degrees doesn't mean a spread of high-quality teaching. The findings of this article imply that the quality of teaching, the allocation of instructional periods across subjects, and the classroom climates created by the U.S. teachers are not satisfactory at all.

The unbalanced instructional periods across subjects imply that our elementary teachers either ignore or are lack of confidence in teaching subjects such as science, math, and technology. Even within the relatively larger trunk of literacy instructional, teachers spend too much time in drill and basic teaching such as asking students to fill in blanks and doing multiple choices instead of helping students look for meanings within texts.

Prof. Calkins mentioned in the first-day keynote: "the access to a good teacher is the most likelihood that can increase children’s success." It seems that our teacher education and professional development are not influential and in-depth enough. I wonder how many schools are actually applying TC's literacy teaching approaches? what are the percentages in NYC and the nation at large? How to make this project be more widely accessed and how to revolutionize the teacher education programs in a large number of universities?

Furthermore, under this new digital age, to cater to students' needs for 21st-century skills, our literacy teaching should not be limited to traditional static texts. As Prof. Calkins argued, today's children are growing up in an age of blogs, wikis, videos, games, etc. We as teachers should keep ourselves updated to the changing outside world. Literacy teaching can happen with comic books (e.g., The Comic Book Project), Twitter (e.g., community writing contributed by thousands of children around the world), videos (e.g., use video conversation tool VoiceThread to make textual/video/audio/visual comments to a video story), classroom blogs and wikis, etc. We should know how to appropriately use technologies to bridge children's literacy learning and their 21st-century skills.

The Importance of Active Thinking in Reading

In today’s keynote, Ms. Stephanie Harvey talked about the importance of active thinking in reading. It reminds me of the keynote given by Prof. Calkins on the first day. She mentioned as teachers we need to explore our self-consciousness and be aware of our own reading preferences as well as when and why our learning levels reached sky high. The process of “pushing” students to have higher-level thinking is stressed in the teaching of reading. “Comprehension is an on-going process of involving thinking. It is the thinking that happens…all readers are developing readers,” Stephanie further mentioned.

A teacher at the beginning of the reading institute told me that she would prefer to ask students just read without putting down their ideas in the middle. She argued that when students started to write while reading, the writing would take for ever. Is that true? I wonder what questions the teacher might ask students before and after their reading, and what she might expect students to learn from their reading. Like Stephanie said today, even we as professional readers are often running our eyes across pages and often times need to go back to the previous pages. So, it is important to keep our young reader conscious and active in the reading process. After they learn envision (visualizing the texts in mind), prediction (predicting the incoming plots), connection (looking for the relationships among characters and chapters as well the connections between the book being read and books read before), interpretation (explaining their findings in the book, e.g., relationships, hidden plots behind conversations, features of characters, etc.), and critical thinking (recognizing the pressures around characters, social stigma on characters, marginalized aspects of the main story, etc.), they will be constantly thinking. The process of thinking while reading will further help improve their comprehension skills.

Keeping different strategies in mind and putting down ideas in the middle of reading, like the teacher said, may hinder students’ reading speed. However, as teachers, we need to think about the ultimate goals of teaching reading. Are we teaching students to merely understand the story plots? Are we teaching students to be speedy readers? Are we teaching students to be thinkers?

Students in China are used to filling blanks and doing multiple choices for reading comprehension after reading articles/books. The nationalized test-oriented instruction has caused many children losing the joys of reading. Furthermore, if a teacher wanted to punish a student, he/she would ask the students to read/write more. What a bad method that extra reading and writing has become painful punishment, instead of something fun and motivating! For teaching upper graders, one feasible way to adapt TC approaches to classrooms in China is, based on the nationally scripted curriculum, to develop topics related to the textbook. Maybe I can connect students’ book-club reading to the national curriculum. For example, when teaching a unit on traveling in foreign countries, we can gather books on foods, sceneries, festivals, people, etc. in other countries, and ask groups to read these books and come back to act as a tour guide to introduce the features they learned from the books… Meanwhile, reading strategies of envision, prediction, connection, critical thinking, etc. can be introduced regardless of the content we will be teaching.

Philosophically speaking, what is the essence of teaching? Teaching for interest? Teaching for motivation? Teaching for “proximal development”? Teaching for lifelong learning? All the strategies will serve for eventual realization of the essence(s) of teaching and learning that we believe in.

Book Club, Book Leveling System, and the Application in China

One of the methods to help children grow interests in reading is to set up book clubs. As introduced by the TC Reading and Writing Project, we can match students at about the same reading levels and with similar interested genres together. Members within the same book club can “monitor” and motivate each other’s reading. Book club members meet several times a week, discuss moments in the book that make them excited, touched, and passionate, and decide how many pages they will be reading in the next a couple of days. They also talk about their findings and understandings after applying certain strategies towards the book they are reading. Book club members are selected and matched first according to their reading levels. Reading levels, according to both Fountas & Pinnell and TC standards, ranges from A to Z which is mainly aiming at students from kindergarten to the 8^th grade. 8^th grader is expected to reach adult-level reading proficiency. To my knowledge based on a previous TC course in children’s literature and experiences in a number of public school classrooms in NYC, most teachers are familiar with the Fountas & Pinnell leveling system and their classroom books are leveled by this system. While many books are published with a labeled F&P level, TC’s book leveling standards are not in conflict with the F&P. TC’s standards further complement the F&P system with specific guidance about features of each level in vocabularies, sentence patterns, punctuations, grammar, story flow, picture flow, etc.

While I love the structure and strategies given by the Reading and Writing Project, I have been thinking that how I can apply these good methods to classrooms in China, a place without a recognized leveling system in teaching English. Textbook so far is the main formal resource in K-12 schools in China. Students learn English through reciting vocabularies and practicing pronunciations and textual conversations. Students in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai are fortunate to have more after-school resources, including after-school English drama club, CDs and software in English stories and plays, English movies, and TV and audio broadcasting devices. Given the facts that there is no leveling system so far, English/bilingual picture books in China are insufficient, and there is no custom of having a classroom library, what can I do there? Can I develop a leveling system for learners who are learning English as a second language in China? Can I promote the idea of having a national English leveling system in China and connecting it to all the English picture book in the market and to be developed in the future? Students in China now start to learn English from 1^st grade (while fifteen years ago students in my generation started to learn English from middle school), with at least one-hour instructional time per day. One possible and feasible way to apply the book-club idea in upper-grade classroom is that: first, establish a classroom library by utilizing English books at school and local university libraries; second, ask several students to manage the classroom library, collecting students’ requests for books and returning books to the libraries; third, match students with similar English reading levels (based on evaluation) and interested genres to book clubs; fourth, ask students take turns to lead their book clubs and produce weekly report to the teacher reporting their reading progresses, questions, and problems encountered; fifth, ask each book club to present what they have learned from their books to the class on a monthly basis; the last but not the least, ask parents to attend students’ monthly book-club presentations, or videotape students’ presentations and post the clips onto classroom web log on a monthly basis.

The process of teaching should be creative and differentiated. Even with limited resources, we can still make a difference. I am enthusiastic about applying and adapting the literacy teaching approaches I learned here to students in China in the near future.

The TC Structure of Teaching of Reading

The following map may give you an overview of the TC method of teaching of reading in upper grades (3rd-8th grade). More details are provided towards the language used with students. For example, students are addressed as "reader" in reading workshops, while they are addressed as "writer" in writing workshops. Teachers are required to use specific language to start a conference with students, for example, "what are you doing as a reader?", "what have you learned from this book so far as a reader?", etc.

You can move any part around on the map to view details.

Smilebox: A Tool for Online Publishing

I want to introduce Smilebox, which is a terrific tool for personalized online publishing. Compared with Sophie which I blogged about before, Smilebox has several differences: (1) the system can "intelligently" display the photos/videos within the electronic "book". You can upload all the photos and videos at a time, select the background, and then the system will generate a designed book for you. You can further adjust the design and add texts; (2) While Smilebox doesn't have the function of getting feedback from readers, it offers more publishing formats (e.g., online book, online album, e-card, etc.) with various background choices. It can also be sent out via email or posted onto blog.

You can take a tour by clicking the yellow bar on this page.



The website says that over six million people have downloaded the software. The software is free. The process of uploading/inserting videos, audios, and texts as well as linking to the web space makes personal publishing become more creative and promising.

Self-Consciousness in the Teaching of Reading

In today’s keynote, Prof. Lucy Calkins asked the audience (who are about 760 teachers/graduate students from 38 states and 11 countries) a question -- “When was your learning curve sky high?” In addition to this question, we were also asked to think about our own journeys as readers. The process of recalling our own journeys as learners and readers is important to make our teaching better. Being self-conscious about my own learning curve can help re-affirm myself what good teaching might look like. Being self-conscious about my own favorite English books can help recognize my preferred genres, which further ensure me to make a better decision in selecting literature across genres to teach.

Looking back on my learning journey during my formative years in China, I started to learn English as a second language from middle school. At that time, mathematics, rather than English literacy, was my favorite subject. My passion in mathematics never reached such a high level that math was my first choice in doing homework and I often couldn’t help discussing math problems with boys in my class, although at a sensitive teen age that boys and girls didn’t talk much to each other in class in the early 1990s in China. I set up a high expectation in math for myself and I was the top one female student in the subject who won district math prizes together with all other boys for our school. Why? There was a secret behind. I adored my math teacher Ms. Tang. She was a smart, artistic, humorous, but also rigorous middle-aged lady. I never saw a female math teacher as smart as her. The instruction she gave was succinct. She had the “magic” ability which could change complex problems into simple and clear interpretations…As Prof. Calkins mentioned in the keynote that U.S. DOE’s recent report showed that the access to a good teacher is the most likelihood that can increase children’s success, I was fortunate enough to enjoy the “sunshine” from Ms. Tang through my middle-school years, however, I was unfortunate to experience an ignorant math teacher in my high-school years who most of the time tried hard to “feed” students with textbook knowledge, like most teachers in China did/are still doing today. The big contrast directly caused my decreased interest in math which eventually influenced my choice of future career. Coming back to the discussion at the beginning of this reflection, what is good teaching about? Good teaching should come from the facilitator of the classroom, the teacher. Good teaching should be succinct, guiding, motivating, and involving. Good teaching should be interesting and creative in a predictable way (Calkins, 2001, The Art of Teaching Reading) so students can be self prepared. Good teaching should be constructive and social. Good teaching should be collaborative, differentiated, and open to new possibilities…

I read limited English literature before coming to the U.S. My favorite ones in mind include Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. Jane Austin is always my favorite author whose writing style influenced me a lot. The conversations she wrote were models of succinct but powerful writings. I noticed that my favorite books were all fictions and all feminine. As an individual, I admired some glittering points of the female characters within the books: Scarlett’s undefeated spirit and persistence, Elizabeth’s intelligence, confidence, and courage, and Jo’s independence and pursuit of personal life goals. All of them conversed with me and created a beautiful world, full of imagination, colors, and lights, during the later stage of my formative years. I realized that I tended to use the limited flexibility (under a national curriculum) to do storytelling about fictions and fantasies with elementary students I taught in China. Being aware of my own preferences, as a teacher/educator, I need to pay more attention to other book genres and make sure that students will be able to read across genres in their English class. I need to develop more passions in other genres to facilitate students’ learning.

Ten Transformative Ideas to Create a Richly Literate Classroom Culture

By Mary Ehrenworth

1. Talking passionately about books (example book described: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)

Instead of saying the book is good, make specific recommendation/introduction of the book (e.g., personal connection, etc.) Try to reach genres and authors when talking about the book. Further suggestions for teachers: A need to develop passions across genres.

2. Being visible as a reader

Physically carry the books when they are running around.

[Ting's comment: How does this happen? Can we allow students to bring classroom books with them to the dinning room and recess?]

3. Create communities around books (another way to keep readers visible)

Fox can be read with every grade.

4. Create an online experience: goodreads.com, which can help to make a book club and keep track of books they read.

[Ting's comment: An online book club is a great way to involve parents and students. Students can see what books other peers are reading/ have read. The options of leaving comments and keeping track of the books they are reading will be very motivating. It would be interesting to have a comprehensive investigation of the users on the website and specifically see how students interact with their peers through these digital literacy activities.]

5. Seek books (in classroom; another classroom; school libraries; public libaries) – the capability to search for books

[Ting's comment: This will cultivate students' research skills: How to search for information they need and how to utilize potential resources.]

6. Reading across the day – out of school

"We are going to try reading at different places: on the train, sitting in an art museum, in a park, etc."

This will help students to get a sense about carrying books and reading across the day.

[Ting's comment: This approach will definitely benefit students' life-long learning experience -- Reading can happen anywhere and reading is a joyful experience.]

7. Form book clubs

E.g., every adult at the school leads a book club.

[Ting's comment: How much time and energy does each teacher need to devote for the book clubs?]

8. Parent workshops/book clubs

Most parents don’t know that most of the children in the country drop two levels in the summer because they don’t read.

[Ting's comment: This is a good approach to get parents involved in classroom literacy activities and let them be aware of the literacy approaches applied by teachers.]

9. Book clubs that test “hot literature”

A mixture of parents and students who will test that “who will be appropriate to read the books”.

[Ting's comment: It will be very motivating to be part of the "test" group.]

10. Read, read, read and read

If you read, your students will be reading too.

Three essential elements in teaching of reading: Visibility, Passion, Integrity

Thoughts on Digital Literacy

Today's August Reading Institute mentioned a popular website called Goodreads which is used by a great number of young students and adults today. I had a trial on the website and found many students use it to keep track of their own readings and let their friends on the site to monitor their readings. They also comment on and rate books and post book-related videos. I was told that some schools use the Goodreads as a collaborative online book club for students, parents, and teachers to leave comments to books they read or have been reading.

Students can limit their group discussion to their friends. One interesting thing happened recently was about a book named The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. A group of students were discussing the book on the site and opened the access to their classmates, teachers, and the author. One day, they surprisingly found the author left a passionate comment to a student who wrote a poem for the book...

Digital Literacy Project Design

This online book club drove me to think further about my potential digital story telling project with a class of 5^th graders in P.S. 199 in the fall. The classroom teacher has given me great flexibility in co-creating and co-working on this digital story telling project. Our original idea was about teaching children basic movie editing skills and guiding them to convert photos and pictures into a video story/book with different texts inserted. So students will, based on the books they will be reading in the fall, make reflective video works or create books in their interested topics. They will in the process additionally learn design skills and 21^st-century media skills. However, this original idea has potential uncontrolled challenges: (1) potential difficulties of managing Windows Movie Maker as 5^th graders; (2) limited space and time to show texts within a video story/book; and (3) a potential website to house these digital stories.

Goodreads is a great “online book club” to share, monitor, and keep track of books. But how can I connect it to the digital storytelling project? How many students in the class have internet access at home? Is the website allowed within the school? Since videos can be uploaded to personal profiles, how many videos can be uploaded for each individual and what is the upper limit?

Idea Two is, instead of trying a fancy video project, to let students publish their works/reflections and make comments to others’ entries through a classroom blog. Small-scale videos, images, and mind maps can be posted on the blog.

Idea Three is about Twitter. Twitter is a place we can use for collaborative writing and also individual publishing.

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Before making a final decision, I need to think more about the classroom facilities, students’ internet access, and the main publishing activities students will be involved in the fall.

August Writing Animoto Clip

August Writing IE Group Photos

Final Piece of Adult Writing

Thanks to Josh for proofreading my piece. And thanks to Sandi for listening to my rehearsal.

I was asked to read my adult writing piece to the audience at the closing ceremony of the Teaching of Writing Institute this afternoon. The following is the final version for this afternoon:

This is a story about my grandma, happend in the 1940s in a small village in southern China.

“What happened, Mom?” Lin asked as she walked to her Mother.

“Oh, my little sweetheart,” her mother couldn't help crying before her daughter. “Your father will have you marry into the Wu family next month.”

“M...Mom,” she stammered with her black eyes opened wide, "which…which Wu family?"

“My poor girl, my baby, you will marry the oldest son of the Wu family in the Kim Village...He is ten years older than you. How could I live without you?” Lin's Mother looked at Lin as her heart was breaking.

“Mom, I don't want to get married. I don't want to leave you! Let me go to talk to father,” as Lin was about to walk out of her room.

“My silly girl, are you crazy? You will be beaten to death. Oh, my poor little girl.” Her mother held Lin in her arms and kept sobbing.

Lin rushed back to her room and cried hard in her bed. “I hate him. I hate this suffocating family!” The hatred and pain soared in her heart, “I hate the fact that I have to follow and accept everything arranged by others. Why do I have to follow father and why do women have to always follow men's decisions? Why could a woman as kind and noble as Mom never be well treated by father? Why? Why?!!!”

“No, this is not what I wanted.” Lin wiped the tears on her face.

Suddenly, there was something glittering in her eyes. “Why not run away from this family and never be controlled by father or any other man in the world?” She recalled, “Lu mentioned that there were jobs for women in the nearby city Yichun...Yes! I should go to Yichun.”

“But I can't leave Mom...” Lin hesitated.

Lin walked to the window and stared at the light from her mother’s room. Everything around seemed frozen and there was no other sound heard except for her own heartbeat.

Finally, Lin walked back to her bed with the decision made.

The next morning, before dawn, a girl sneaked out of a big house and walked towards the mountains faced by the village. On the other side of the mountains, there was a city called Yichun. The girl started to climb the first mountain. The sun was rising. Bright sunshine started to cover the peaks. The girl’s face became as rosy as the dawn. She continued climbing, without stopping or even glancing at the house which was becoming farther and farther away.

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