Digital+Play+Home

=Structuring Play for Learning in Digital Environments=

toc As you may have picked up on from discussions in class or my E-mails, my current research and experience has led me to focus my study on three strands of instruction that I believe are interconnected and work effectively, together, to lead to authentic student learning, especially learning aimed at improving reading and writing skills. These strands include **(1) the use of PLAY to encourage authentic engagement and trial-and-error and choice that allows for exploration and discovery**; **(2) the PUBLICATION or CREATION OF A FINAL PRODUCT AIMED AT ACHIEVING AN ACTUAL COMMUNICATIVE GOAL OR PURPOSE (I know there must be a word or phrase that better sums up what I mean, here) to make student work feel more purposeful and to give students an authentic reason to polish up their product in order to make it as effective as possible as an actual means of communication**; and **(3) the use of DIGITAL TOOLS (or 21st Century Literacies or Modern Technology, or just plain ol' Technology) to give students a** **wider variety of ways to create, collaborate, and publish their work as well as to give them practice learning new, digital skills and to show them how ever-developing digital technology can and should be used to give them more power as communicators and citizens**. I feel like these three strands are each weaker if used in isolation and somehow play off of each other if developed into a loose, writing-workshop-type system: students are playing with PURPOSE and STRUCTURE because they are aware of the publication that is coming and have become familiar with the digital tools that are most effective; students publish with POLISH and CONFIDENCE because they have spent time playing with the possibilities and using digital tools to collaborate with peers and get their work looking as professionally as. . . well, as professional as an actual professional would get it to look; and students use digital tools for AUTHENTIC COLLABORATION and with AUTHORITY because they have spent time exploring them through play and are motivated by the chosen publication to do whatever they can to get their final composition to be as solid as possible.

I am drawn to these strands because of the experience I have had (and that I would imagine many of us have had) trying to motivate my students to put the energy, creativity, and thinking power into their school work that I KNOW is there. I KNOW from talking with my students, from getting to know them, and from seeing how they go about doing things in other aspects of their lives how much more they have to bring to bear on their reading and writing, and I KNOW how much more confident, knowledgeable, powerful, and accomplished they could be in both their professional and personal lives as they get older if they were somehow helped to become more aware of how relevant reading and writing is to their lives. In particular, I have spent a couple years integrating more student choice, inquiry, and discussion, and creativity into my classroom without seeing as much improvement in my students' writing as I would have hoped. I have come to believe that this is largely because (1) students ultimately knew they were working, ultimately, toward fairly traditional English work such as essays and papers that are only for the teacher and cover only things they have already gone over in class many times and are thus not truly communicative; (2) I have not given my students enough reason, space, and structure to play with the topics and language we cover in class and have thus not given them an opportunity to truly think critically, take ownership, and create meaningful solutions of their own; and (3) I have not connected our work enough with my students' lives and integrated it into the digital worlds many of them inhabit and wish to succeed within even if they do not often truly understand how to use such technology to empower themselves.

This workshop is meant to spark some discussion of my thoughts on these topics and to give you all an experience trying to complete, share, and reflect on an assignment that attempts to combine all three strands. You will be asked to publish a particular product on the topic of your choice using particular digital tools (a Wiki and Glogster). I do not require the use of these particular tools to say that these are the best or that you need to know these tools to become better teachers and should immediately integrate them into your classrooms. We use these tools to have the experience and practice playing within a brand new environment in which we may bring our critical thinking capabilities into play to solve problems we run into and create as we try to get the final product looking how we want it to look. Using a new tool (whatever the tool) can also provide a new lens through which to explore and think about a problem or topic. Seeing things from a new perspective is an increasingly valuable skill that our students are not familiar with, which leads them to so frequently get stuck in the familiar.

In this workshop I hope to also inspire some "play" as I currently image it is most effective in the classroom, meaning you will be given (required) freedom of choice and creation within a particular STRUCTURE (the same digital medium) toward a particular GOAL (the same published assignment) and accompanied by plenty of REFLECTION (analyzing and evaluating how one went about finding and solving problems and comparing this with how others performed).

Agenda //(all times are tentative)//

 * Introduce Workshop and **Workshop Wiki** //(10 minutes)//
 * View and Discuss **"Play to Publication" Video** //(60 minutes)//
 * Decide and Discuss **Topics/Inquiries** Individuals will Explore during Assignment //(10 minutes)//
 * Introduce **Assignment** and **Assignment Structure** as well as **Glogster** //(10 minutes)//
 * Workshop Time Beginning, Discussing, Completing, and Presenting Assignments //(110 minutes)//
 * **Reflection** on Workshop Process //(10 minutes)//
 * **Discussion** of Exploration, Learning, and Thoughts Related to the Day's Work //(20 minutes)//
 * Take a brief look at other **Resources** for Play and Publication Online //(5 minutes)//



"Play to Publication" Video
The video below is a presentation I put together in a class this past semester and includes my thoughts at that time about combining the three strands of PLAY, PUBLICATION (as I was calling it at the time), and DIGITAL TOOLS. I have also reproduces some of the main assertions below the video. I am curious to discuss, either as we watch this presentation or afterward, **what your thoughts are on these three strands of instructional practice**, **how your experiences in any have compared to mine**, **what other questions you might have**, **what other language and connections related to these strands I could be developing**, and **any other thoughts in general**. I would hope to use the space below the assertions to type in some of our main discussion points and areas of exploration as we talk.

media type="custom" key="6462701" width="575" height="575"

Puzzlements:

 * **Why, despite strategies such as student choice, collaboration, and authentic activities, do so many students turn in such terrible writing?**
 * Why would students write less clearly than when they just speak regularly?
 * Why would students feel everything they write is set in stone?

Assertions:

 * We need to create conditions for actual communication (real-world publication).**
 * Students abilities to write to an academic or professional audience will not develop without explicit instruction and practice.
 * Publication works best if students intrinsically care about the outcome (if it is real to them).
 * Refining compositions for publication requires many models.


 * We need to create conditions for learning through play (once a real-world publication task has been set as the guiding goal).**
 * Play encourages students to study, practice, and compose with depth and clarity.
 * Play gives students more ownership over what they learn.
 * Play works best when directly related to the real world outside of school.
 * Play must be explicitly taught and guided.


 * Digital tools greatly enhance communication, collaboration, and play.**
 * Digital tools invite play.
 * Digital tools can connect students to discourse communities for collaboration and models.
 * Digital tools make it easier to monitor student work (provide formative assessment).

Discussion Area:

 * How difficult to edit multimedia texts such as this presentation? Requires alligning many things at once.
 * A presentation such as this would require a lot of effort to change meaningfully.
 * This includes serious argument in complex fashion.
 * Not used to seeing such a presentation making academic argument, not focusing on telling a story. We're not conditioned (?) to see such thins such ways. Needed to watch it multiple times for understanding because it defies expectations. Digital stories sometimes taught in "5-paragraph essay" style?
 * It's not neat, bullet format, such as PowerPoint?
 * Our brains are not used to watching something like this.
 * A good model of how a teacher's mind works, even if we do not usually present it in such a manner. Can be very revealling.
 * Some similar reactions to Patti's play places TIW . . . getting it better the 2nd time, appreciating it more later?
 * This is a digital ESSAY, not a digital STORY.
 * Felt more like presentation showed writing process rather than teaching process.
 * Rather watch this then read journal article?



Decide and Discuss Topics of Study
Although the nature of your exploration and publication today will be structured a particular way, what you study is more-or-less open. Since I know many of you have particular areas of interest coming into the class, it is up to you what learning topic or area of study you wish to cover during the workshop.

To make sure we are all as clear as possible on what we will be exploring (at least as we begin), take **2 MINUTES** to jot down your area of study today as specifically as you can (You may think of yourself as taking a couple minutes to complete the following thought: "//**I would like to explore . . .**//"). Once you are done, we will jot down each participant's initial area of study below:

Sarah: Catharine: Kashra: Thor:** //I would like to explore the metaphor of my experience researching & writing with students during my recent trip to Mono Lake.I am very interested using digital storytelling as a form of narrative inquiry.// Kathleen:**
 * Patti:
 * Lisa:



Assignment //(and Glogster)//
You will spend roughly the next hour-and-a-half playing within a digital environment, discussing/collaborating in a small group, completing a product, and presenting and discussing your product related to the following assignment:


 * Use Glogster to create a multi-media poster for the rest of the class Illustrating your current Explorations, Thoughts, and Findings related to the Area of Study you have chosen. Once your poster is complete, display it on a new page on this Wiki.**

//Sample:// media type="custom" key="6463531" width="662" height="662"

At the outset of this assignment, what things do you think you are going to need to find out?



Assignment Structure //(Steps)//
We will complete the assignment outlined above by working through the following steps:

First:
Visit the following link to REGISTER at Glogster so that you will be able to save and publish your poster (@http://www.glogster.com/). Then, click on any link that will allow you to begin creating your own poster and begin exploring what you may want to say/show and what sorts of tools the program gives you to use. Begin making your poster any way you wish. //(20 minutes)//

Second:
Pause the work for a few minutes to meet in a small group (or groups) to briefly share how things are going, discuss what you have decided to do so far, and give/get advice and encouragement. //(20 minutes)//

Third:
Continue working (in whatever fashion and with whatever help from your peers you need) to complete your poster, refining it to impart the most information in the most effective way to your audience (the rest of us). //(40 minutes)//

Fourth:
Publish your saved and completed poster to a new page on this Wiki by completing the following: //(10 minutes)//
 * Click the "Save and Publish" button at the top of your poster.
 * Enter your poster name (if you haven't already), check "school" and "public," and click "Save."
 * Copy the "embed code" at the bottom of the "Share Your Glog" box that appears.
 * Return to the class Wiki and click the "New Page" link at the very top, left corner of the screen.
 * Name the page whatever you want and type "play" as the tag before clicking "Create."
 * Click the "Edit" button on the upper right side of the page to bring up the editing screen.
 * When the editing screen comes up, delete the sample text and click the "Widget" button on the "Editor" bar at the top of your screen.
 * Click "Other HTML" at the bottom of the box that appears and then paste the poster embed code into the large box that this brings up.
 * Click "Save" on the Widgets box and then "Save" on the "Editor" bar to see your poster displayed on your new Wiki page.
 * You may click "Edit" again to play with the size of your poster and try to add anything else to your page.

Fifth:
Present your work to the rest of us by allowing us, as a group, to visit, explore, and discuss each participant's poster one-at-a-time for approximately 5 minutes each. This allows us to explore the poster in our own fashion and discuss what we take away from it without relying on too much overt narration from the creator (this is a "poster" after all, not a presentation). //(30 minutes)//



Reflection
Now that we have taken a look at and discussed your poster as well as the posters of everyone else in the class, spend a few minutes giving a quick reflection on how you went about the process of creating your poster and how successful it ended up being by returning to your page, clicking on the "Edit" button, and typing in your thoughts below your poster. Some suggested topics of reflection include the following:


 * **How did you figure out how to use the technology and what you wanted to say about your topic? //(Did you use any paper, look at samples, ask a lot of questions, change your mind a lot, mess up, explore, etc.?)//**
 * **What process did you follow in creating your poster? //(How begin? What tried? How changed?)//**
 * **Now that you have seen others interpret your work, how successful do you think your poster was, and why?**



Discussion
What thoughts came to mind as we created our posters, shared our work, and reflected on what we accomplished? What, if anything, do any of these experiences have to tell us about play, publication, digital tools, and learning?

Discussion Area:

 * Can be relatively easy to create if know what saying and exploring already. It does lead to a very different product.
 * Thought easy to move around and use technology. For elementary students, figuring out timeframe would take some work. Figuring out how to use school hardware efficiently to make it work? Break down into pieces or agenda or a "flow" of lessons?
 * Need assistance to work with larger groups of kids?
 * Lots of fun.
 * Expressing ideas on larger canvas is alligned with how really think, but not a process I'm used to. Like going from linear to non-linear.
 * Found self "playing" with graphics and what could do. Liked the freedom.
 * I look it as "exploration."
 * Kids can "play" their way into the problem/conflict/rules. There has got to be playtime. Had ideas going in, but play led to other ideas. How fit in "play" in modern school climate/classroom? Spend more time on more essential indicators to allow time for play?
 * Summer student writing camps and other extra-curricular activities might be sustained time to allow such play and learning.
 * Liked encouragement to seek help from peers first.
 * Can seem more accesible than providing all the materials for physical posters (if you have computer access).
 * Can take advantage of other media/narration for older levels--ability to record/add reflection/explanation of decisions. Ability to judge thoughtfulness?
 * Lots of dicussion about choices you can make (graphics/images/etc.) and if and why they would make sense for certain posters or to convey certain ideas.
 * A way to continue to expand on and illustrate continued learning through the year?
 * An effective/powerful portfolio?
 * Requires a lot more embeded acts of mind than physical poster.



Other Resources
These are a handful of useful digital tools and texts about the use of such tools as well as the utility of play and publication in learning I have found useful. Many more resources (and, certainly, more explanation) will be coming in the near future.


 * Glogster
 * Wikispaces
 * Prezi
 * Storybird
 * VoiceThread
 * PhotoStory
 * Audacity
 * Ahead