National Writing Project Michigan Retreat- Day 2

Today was an incredible and exhausting day, and having a conference where sessions are heavy on discussion and light on the presentation was amazing! After stopping with the roommates at Starbucks (of course), we arrived at the Education building at Central Michigan just in time for the coffee and doughnuts. I'll have to take pictures of the building- I've never seen anything like it. It was just completed, and is a state-of-the-art facility that is a "green" building, in construction, materials, and design. It's also the most technologically advanced building I've ever seen. (Even the light switches in the room are interactive touch screen displays)

Summer Institute
I started the day in a session discussing what the Summer Institute looks like at different sites. We spent almost two hours just sharing details such as scheduling, digital copies vs. paper copies, orientation, dinners and luncheons, writing requirements, text selection and reflection, credit options, and so much more. It was really interesting to see how differently so many sites approach the summer institute.

WIDE PATHS
After the first session, I moved to the discussion of the WIDE PATHS institute that was hosted last summer at RCWP. Through the discussion that formed, it was reiterated that digital literacy is not about the tool. It's the thinking and skills necessary to navigate digital environments and media. After discussion the three strands of Visual Literacy, Collaborative Writing, and Social Networking, Andrea Zellner asked us to think about what strands might be of interest if there were to be another WIDE PATHS. A few of us had an interest in game-based learning, which opened up a whole new discussion: When kids are playing video games, they are willing to try and fail multiple times in order to successfully navigate a game. What's more, the genre of video games is interesting as well. So many video games today have a narrative structure. Take, for example, the PBS Kids website. The games have (hilarious) story lines. Kids enjoy these games because they have the opportunity to choose which game to play, and they like the challenge.

When it comes to school, failure takes on a whole different meaning. If kids are failing, they often give up. Andrea brought up the example of Google. It was just announced that Google Wave is being terminated. Google isn't making excuses, because in the eyes of Google, failure just represents an effort to innovate, and innovation is key. It becomes incredibly difficult to have this stance in a school where, "What's on the test is what we teach." Innovation and failure are generally not acceptable within school, and certainly not within No Child Left Behind, where schools are expected to draw from research-based programming (i.e. DO NOT INNOVATE). We need an opportunity to innovate, and give students an opportunity for self-selected problem-based learning.

Oral History
My next session was incredible! The city of Rodchester, Michigan along with Meadow Brook Writing Project, have created an Oral History Project. Through this project, students are interviewing and collecting oral histories from the older population in their community, then posting the interviews as either podcasts in an archive, or creating digital stories to accompany the audio. (http://www.oakland.edu/?id=12627&sid=333 and http://www.youtube.com/user/ROHAProject) I thought this would be an amazing opportunity for my students, since many of the families in my school have immigrated from a different country. There is so much rich history available!

Writing Marathon
At the end of the day, we ended with a mini Writing Marathon in downtown Mount Pleasant. All in all, a good day.

Writing Marathon site: Island Park in Mount Pleasant