feedback
In this month's Hinesburg Record is a wonderful story by several kids at the Hinesburg Community School about their experience with the online writing classroom we built for them. We have one team and about 55 kids testing it out and plan to expand it to much of the school next year.
The article was written by Autumn Eastman and Mackenzie Tobrocke -- two seventh graders. Let me unashamedly quote some of their writing:
"The opportunity which the Young Writers Project has provided to HCS students has changed the way we use our writing skills and abilities. ... The website allows students and teachers to free write and express their opinions. ... Students on the Infinity Team are also allowed to comment and give each other what's called "1+1" comments -- you give the author one piece of postiive feedback and then give them one thing they could improve on."
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Submitted by ggevalt on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 20:58
The other night, after five hours of painting at our new offices at Champlain Mill, I headed to my car and saw a young man waiting for a bus. It was cold and, given the hour, I figured it would be a while before the bus arrived. John Canning, our board chair was with me, we said our goodbyes and then I walked over to the young man.
"Where you headed?"
"Downtown, Burlington."
"Want a ride?"
Turns out the young man was returning from his job at a Thai restaurant and was a senior at Champlain College in its Professional Writing Program. Turns out he's quite a poet -- was named the college's student poet and edits the school's wonderful anthology "Willard and Maple." I've asked him to mentor and he's interested in interning.... All from an offer of a ride. Here, by the way, is part of a note he sent me:
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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 02/19/2009 - 09:53
We just received a wonderful note from Amie Desautels who is using our Online Writing Classroom at Lamoille Union Middle School. Amie signed up for our Digital Learning class that is being accredited through St. Michael's College. This is a practicum -- We build a site for the teachers, provide basic training and then have the teachers, during the year, make use of the site with blogging, commenting, podcasting and digital storytelling. We provide support online, through email and through occasional visits to the classroom.
Amie's experience was so exciting to her colleagues at the school, we've brought them into the site as well and they are now all getting up to speed.
Amie sent us a letter of feedback. Here's a small excerpt of what she said:
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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 02/19/2009 - 09:29
I never have liked Monday mornings that much. I'm not alone, I know. I guess by most Sundays I am realizing that there is another side of me than work and am starting to "chill out" as my kids say (though they might dispute that.) Monday mornings I'm usually foggy -- I've caught up on sleep -- and a bit stressed as I think about all the things I need to get done in the week ahead.
So, it's really really really nice when we get an email like this from a user of our main student site, youngwritersproject.org:
"Hi Mr. Gevalt!
"I don't know if this is going to be considered wierd and stalker-like, but I wanted to tell you something. My name is (name removed because she didn't know I was going publish this) and I'm sunshinedaisy on youngwritersproject.org.
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Submitted by ggevalt on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 14:12
We were up at Lamoille Middle School this week where one teacher, Amie Desautels, has gotten several colleagues to joint the site we built for her class. One of the teachers, Nicole Burke, got her kids onto the site right away.
She said that one of her students has terrible penmanship and had always struggled with writing. The first day the student was on the site, she wrote and wrote and wrote. "She told me she'd never written so much," Burke said.
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Submitted by ggevalt on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 01:07
In 2007 we began to build Web sites for after-school groups and teachers. The aim was to get students to write to each other, to expand beyond an audience of one -- the teacher. Many studies show that this type of peer-to-peer learning is very powerful.
And indeed that has proven the case. We have 18 sites up and running right now and have done another five pilots. We survey the kids at the beginning and end of the year to gauge changes in their attitudes about writing and themselves. We also have discovered from these surveys that a side benefit is that the students gain a deeper appreciation of each other because of these online classrooms.
We also ask teachers to suggest improvements and give feedback. Our argument is that not only is this helpful to us but it can also help in discussion at the school about whether to go more deeply into digital learning or to buy more computers.
Here's a piece of feedback we received today from a 7/8 grade teacher using one of our online classrooms:
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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 16:13
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