Of Audiences and Ebooks

As a writing instructor and a rhetoric scholar, audience is something I think about on a regular basis. When I talk about the rhetorical triangle with my students, I try to convince them that to be persuasive, they need to think deeply about their audience -- their values, communities, knowledge, emotions, etc. And they need to let what they know about their audience shape what and how they write. I ask them to imagine an audience who needs to hear what they have to say and write to them.

This is the Rhetorical Triangle if you don't remember it from your first year composition course.

The trouble with this approach, however, is that I know and my students know that I am the actual audience for most of what they write. It's not a terribly far logical leap to go from "Write to your audience" to "Write what your teacher wants to hear," even though that is the last thing I want my students to learn.

Some teachers try to overcome this obstacle by asking students to write letters to some authority figure about a problem the class has researched, but few such letter-writing campaigns have resulted in policy changes (I don't know of any, personally), which means that students still tend to view this as a school genre with no significant audience. Others try to at least have students publish their work to a blog or YouTube so that they have an authentic audience, though I fear that too often teachers are just asking students to complete the same old school genres (essay, report, argument, etc.), just posted online.

I like Jon Smith's approach to this problem using ebooks. He describes how his fifth grade Special Education students hated writing for just him, their teacher, and especially hated all of the prompts for writing that he provided. When he gave them an actual audience in the form of an ebook available on iTunes, however, they came up with their own prompt, their own motivation for writing. As other teachers in his school district adopted his approach, I noticed a common theme among what students produced: they created books that would teach others what they were currently learning. Now on the one hand, these books still represent a school genre in the form of a textbook, but rather than being what students passively consume, it is something they actively create.

Does this mean that my first year college writing students will be producing ebooks from now on? I don't know. But my 11-year-old daughter has been enthusiastically writing a book for the past week, and I love the idea of her using this software for school purposes as well. Creating an ebook to demonstrate what she has learned at the end of a unit rather than taking a test sounds particularly appealing to me. I'm not convinced that what she produces will necessarily be worthy of the 24,000+ readers that Smith's students have gained, but I am sure that her belief that she could have such an audience will motivate her to create better work than she would otherwise have made. 

Copyright or Copywrong?

As an English Composition instructor, I'm usually way more concerned with plagiarism than I am with copyright infringement. In the past, I have typically asked my students to create documents or presentations that only I or their classmates would see, so even if they used images or music that was not their own, I assumed it was okay because it was for noncommercial, nonpublic, educational purposes. I would like to have my students share their work in more public venues to possibly address some of the problems they write about and try to solve, but doing so creates a new problem in that it means I have to teach them how to avoid breaking copyright laws.

I have every intention of using the creative commons curriculum for teaching copyright that is offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as I start to navigate this new area of teaching, but I am a little concerned about teaching something that I still find so bewildering myself. On the one hand, I could just require my students to only use images and music that they find on the Creative Commons website for my assignments, but doing so dodges my responsibility for teaching them how to engage ethically with other people's work as a digital citizen.

It's just a sticky situation, though. I'm not much for downloading or remixing music, so the intricacies of that are a little lost on me, but when I think about patterns for crafts like knitting and crocheting, all of the potential problems become clear. On the one hand, ideas and processes aren't supposed to be protected by copyright, and what are patterns if not processes for achieving a particular idea? The actual photographs and written instructions seem like they would be protected, so that if I printed off copies of a pattern I found online and started selling them as if they were my own, that would be copyright infringement. But following the instructions to create something and then selling that product is less clear. (See this blog post for a more in-depth discussion of this issue). Then again, if I use sheet music written and copyrighted by someone else to play a song on my French Horn (and let's be honest, it's been so long since I played it that it likely won't sound exactly as intended), and I record that song without permission and share it widely, possibly for profit, I would be violating copyright, wouldn't I? Because that is also a procedure for creating art, but a procedure that requires an awful lot of knowledge, talent, and creativity to come up with. See, I'm even more confused as I continue to write.

I feel like the only safe bet is to just create all of my own content. Except then I have to worry about other people stealing my stuff without permission. Even if I do a Creative Commons license for my things, there's still a good chance that people will, knowingly or otherwise, use my creations in ways I did not intend. Suddenly I hear a member of a royal family singing something about not holding onto things (wink, wink). In other words, the ideal sharing environment would come with a lot of letting go: of expectations for financial gain, of control over what we are willing to share, but also of greed to profit off of what others have made. 

See. Still complicated.

How to How-to: My Journey to Internet Fame #1

I mentioned in a previous post that people have repeatedly asked me to start a YouTube channel devoted to the fancy braids I do in my daughter's hair, but that I always resist because I don't know how and feel like it would take too much time and effort to figure it out. Given our option in this instructional technology course to document learning something new as our major assignment, however, I've decided to go ahead and attempt to figure it out.

In that spirit, I went out last week and purchased my first selfie stick, rearranged the furniture in my dining room to create a semi-well-lit "studio," and rigged up that selfie stick to film my first braid.

If you're wondering, yes, that is my son's highchair standing in as camera crew. I expected filming to be challenging, and it definitely lived up to that expectation. In fact, I was originally planning to record a more complicated braid, but ended up settling for a headband braid for the sake of the continued sanity of all parties involved.

See how pretty! I was going to recreate this one, but then the forces of the universe conspired against me...

So what made it challenging?
1. The presence of my other two children, particularly the 10-month-old. One of the important features I worked with in Splice was how to mute the original video so no one could hear her alternating between singing and crying in the background. Where she was confined to her highchair after crawling in and out of the shot repeatedly in the first take.
2. Trying to get the selfie stick rigged up at the correct angle to capture what I was doing without resorting to duct tape or dark magic.
3. Realizing just before finishing the first take that I didn't have enough storage on my phone to finish filming, so I had to stop, delete 350 photos, take out the braid, and start all over again.

Despite my frustration, however, I'm pretty pleased with my first ever how-to video, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much better my videos will get over the next few weeks.

Cool Tools Review #3 - Splice is Nice!

This week I reviewed Splice, which is a video editing app for iPhone and iPad made by GoPro. Finally, I managed to choose a truly free app, and it's frankly pretty sweet. I used it on my phone and was able to add both music and voiceovers to a video of me braiding my daughter's hair. It was relatively easy to pick up and has some handy features, like a library of songs that are free to use or the ability to pull music from an iTunes library (assuming that one obeys the dictates of copyright and fair use). I found the Help section of the app particularly detailed and, well, helpful.

I could see this being a really useful tool in the classroom for assignments when I want my students to produce a video essay. Without any special equipment beyond an iPhone, students would be able to do some pretty sophisticated editing. I focused just on the audio tools this week because my video wasn't terribly long and I prefer to tackle just one flaming hoop (aka new skill) at a time, but the app also has tools for cutting, cropping, filtering, etc. that would allow for cooler, more streamlined videos as well.

The only downsides I can see are that there doesn't appear to be an Android or Windows version of the app (which means not all students can use the same tool) and that the app requires A LOT of storage space to function well. If students are working in groups, however, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to ensure that there is at least one iPhone user per group. The storage issue isn't a deal breaker either, if students are willing to use an app like Google Photos to store their pics and videos off of their devices.

Overall, I was very pleased with this app and plan on continuing to use it for my braiding tutorial project. I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up!

Leaving a Legacy as a Digital Citizen

Prior to this week's readings, I hadn't thought much about digital citizenship, as such. I thought about being smart about what I shared online and how I set my privacy settings, about treating people online with the same respect I would show them in person, but I had never attached a specific name to it. I really appreciated Garth Holman's framing of the topic as leaving an online legacy rather than focusing so much on the Internet as a dangerous place. Of course, there are predators and frauds out there who would love to take advantage of the unsuspecting web surfer, but they tend to target those who engage in activities that wouldn't fall under the definition of a legacy, so teaching students to construct a positive digital footprint is likely to also protect them, without drawing on the vivid picture of Internet Bogeymen to scare them straight.

See what happens when you talk to someone you don't know online!

My own negative experiences online have been fairly mild. The worst instance was when someone I would have preferred to shut out of my personal business created a MySpace account posing as someone I trusted so that I would accept the friend request and she would be able to see what I was posting on my account. I don't know if she expected to find me saying terrible things about her online, which I guess would have made her feel better about things she had done to me, but she was certainly disappointed if she did. I'm not one to call names in private, let alone in the forever world of the inter webs, regardless of what my privacy settings might be. The result was that the situation de-escalated. I quickly realized what was going on and quietly unfriended her, with basically no damage done. My commitment to keeping drama offline meant that even when someone tried to attack me, she had no ammunition. Basically, I was building a legacy, and it turns out legacies are pretty safe.

MySpace. Remember when that was a thing?

What I like best about this approach is that it seems like it could work even with students at the height of their invincibility complexes, by which I mean, it's easy for any of us, but especially young students, to think that Internet dangers will never happen to me. Other people might get cat-fished, but not me; someone else might get a virus from illegally downloading music, but not me; that person's ex shared intimate photos after they broke up, but my significant other would never do that to me. If fear of getting caught/hurt is what we're trying to use to motivate student behavior, then we need them to believe that getting caught/hurt is something that could realistically happen to them, but human nature says they probably won't. Legacy, on the other hand, just requires us to get students to buy in to the notion that they can have an actual impact on the world through their online presence and should therefore curate an overall positive image. That's still not an easy task, but if we craft assignments that focus on solving real world problems and share what we find in public spaces, we just might get the kind of feedback Holman describes, with famous people commenting on student videos, for instance, showing them in a positive way that the world is, in fact, watching. And student egos may prove easier to fan than their fears.

What could possibly go wrong?

When our focus is completely on protect, protect, protect, by limiting student access to the Internet or leaving technology out of our teaching equation entirely, then we are failing to model for our students how they ought to behave online. This "positive is better than negative" approach holds true in parenting, as well: I get much better responses from my children when I tell or show them what I want them to do, rather than just giving them a long list of what not to do. Legacy is about showing students what they can do, and do really well, online, which makes so much more sense to me and seems so much easier to introduce to younger kids than outlining all of the specific, often awkward-to -discuss dangers of an online environment.

Turns out if you use Creative Commons to search for "Chester the Molester," all you get is a picture of beloved comedian, Jim Gaffigan, so here's a stand-in for awkwardness.

I tested it out with my composition classes this week since we were discussing social media's impact on culture anyway, and my students seemed taken with the idea, either latching onto the term as describing what they are trying to do online, or nodding and commenting that they really ought to start doing that before they find themselves on the job market (Although some were still committed to stirring up drama online because, and I quote, "I just love gossip!" I guess we can't save them all.). At any rate, legacy is a tool I will definitely employ again in the future, so thank you Garth Holman! (I really wanted to link to his video, but Flash Player is being uncooperative so here's a link to his blog instead!)

Cool Tools Review #2 - Slatebox

For week two of my Cool Tools Reviews I looked at Slatebox.com, which is an infographic/mind mapping tool. For the second week in a row I've stumbled onto one that comes with a cost, but it is not as prohibitive as last weeks. Slatebox is free for an individual and $8/month for a classroom with up to 30 students, and the free account allows slates to be easily shared across multiple platforms. I could see this tool as being useful for presenting complex ideas or for getting students involved in mapping out ideas in a more entertaining way than just creating an outline or writing on a whiteboard.
It was easy to use, requiring perhaps five minutes of effort after the tutorial to feel pretty confident in how to do the basic functions. This ease of use would certainly improve the chances of students being able to pick it up and use it successfully in a single class period. The downside to its simplicity is that it is somewhat limited in what I could actually do with it. I kept wanting it to be Prezi, but it wasn't. This isn't necessarily a shortcoming, just something to consider before committing to a paid subscription.

This is more or less an outline of Digital Citizenship's "Nine Elements"

As you can see (I hope) in the image of the slate I created, this tool has bright colors and access to many publicly available images that can make creating an infographic fun as well as easy. And it was useful to me in visualizing the material in one of the articles I read for class this week that I felt was particularly important and I wanted to retain. I would probably only spend the money on this, however, if I was planning on having students map most of their reading assignments or do them as pre-writing activities before turning in essays. Given the current structure of my composition classes, I don't think it would be worth it for my purposes.

TPaCK, Venn Diagrams for the Win

By the time we finished watching the "TPACK in 2 Minutes" video in class last week, I understood the argument that, as educators, we need to bring our knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology to bear on every lesson if we want to fully engage our students and give them the best opportunity to learn. It's a simple concept, but it's not so simple to implement.



The trickiest circle of the Venn diagram to work with is the one dealing with technology. At this stage in the game, I know what I want my students to learn in my classroom (writing as a process, critical thinking, arguing toward common ground rather than "winning," etc.), and I know how I want them to get there (pre-write/write/rewrite, follow the money, listen deeply to the other side, etc.), but I'm not sure I always know the best technologies to use to help them get there.

My temptation is to use technologies I am comfortable with. Pen and paper, word-processing software, Springboard, library databases, doodle for scheduling, Google Drive for group work, email, texting, PowerPoint, screen casting, YouTube: these are my go-to tools and they can accomplish quite a bit. But, when I want to do multi-modal projects, I'm less comfortable with video-editing software; when I want students to conduct primary research, I have to pray that Survey Monkey or Google Forms will cooperate during my demonstration; and when I want to conduct grade conferences remotely, I have to overcome my discomfort with video conferencing.

The reason I tend toward the comfortable is that I know I have to be able to model the technology for my students if I want them to use it successfully and trust that I know what I'm doing. Even with word-processing software, which seems like it would be a cinch for digital natives, I always spend time going over it with students ("Do you know how to add page numbers or page breaks? No? Well let me introduce you to your new friend, Insert menu.") I walk students step-by-step through turning in items on Springboard and have them turn in a low-stakes assignment with it first, but I still always get a few frantic emails just after the drop box closes for their first major assignment from students who couldn't quite get the software to work for them. I talk about key words, and expanding and limiting searches in databases, because most of my students have never considered doing anything beyond typing a question into Google, maybe Google Scholar.

The take-away for me, then, with the idea of TPaCK, is a reminder that technology in the classroom always needs to be introduced in a thoughtful and thorough manner, seriously considering the theory that supports its use and clearly modeling and providing the opportunity for students to use the technology successfully. We need to avoid becoming stagnant in our use of particular tools, but we shouldn't just introduce some new bell or whistle every week just to try to show the kids how hip and with it we are (my students have never been deceived about this, and frankly, neither have I. I knew me in middle school <shudder>). It strikes me as flexibility, but with purpose. I will remain open to adding new tools into my toolbox, but I will only introduce them into my classroom when I have a clear view of how they might enhance learning and am fluent enough in them to help students troubleshoot and find solutions when things don't go exactly as planned.

Cool Tool Review #1 - GoAnimateforSchools

I'm not gonna lie, this website was not nearly as fun to play with as I had hoped. I mean, making cool little animations, adding voices and text, and bringing a lesson to life sounds like a fun way to do class prep, but I'm not convinced this is the right tool for doing it.

On the one hand, GoAnimateforSchools seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about the safety of K12 students with intense privacy settings and PG content for animations, which I'm sure would be reassuring for many educators. That security comes at a cost, however, with teacher accounts (meaning the teacher can make videos to show students but students don't get to make their own videos) running $79/year. If I were to subscribe for both myself and enough logins for all of the 125 students I typically teach in a year, it would cost me $447/year for the Higher Ed version or $298/year for the K-12 version. In other words, teachers better bring their grant-writing skills to the table. They do offer a two week free trial for a teacher and 50 students, so an instructor could test it out with students to see if there is any merit to it, but videos made during the trial can't be shared beyond the closed group.

You know, unless you know how to make a screencast on screencast-o-matic.

I worked way too hard, for way too long, to create this ridiculously short video. I had thought I would make multiple videos using the three different types they offer (Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animations, and Video Infographics), but life is too short to keep messing with a software that doesn't automatically save changes and wouldn't let me return directly to the edit page after previewing my video. 

With enough time spent reading the sites blogs, doing tutorials, and exploring samples of what others have made and used the program to teach, it could be an okay tool, but I am not prepared to invest that much time into something that may not be worthwhile. I'm hoping some of the video and animation tools that others in this class are reviewing will prove to be more user friendly at a lower cost, both of time and money.