Tag Archives: desktop publishing

The History of Books, Libraries, and Getting Kids to Write

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My final project for the COETAIL course in which I am currently enrolled consists of supporting a group of 4th graders as we attempt to create a digital book on the expansive topic of… The History of Books and Libraries. I work at an international school as the elementary division librarian, and the project began as a frustrated attempt to find readable and understandable material on the subject for my 3rd grade class as part of the library curriculum. I had one decent picture book to start with and had developed the curriculum from that point. After searching online for more kid-friendly information, I finally came to the conclusion that we would somehow have to create our own material. And that is why last year’s 3rd graders are now creating material that will be used by this year’s 3rd graders.

From an authentic need and an authentic audience comes an authentic use of technology.  The SAMR model helps to identify and analyze the uses of technology to determine whether technology is being used for its own sake or for accomplishing something original that technology finally makes possible.

Although academic instruction can be enhanced by the use of technology, the transformative use is the most valuable in pedagogy. The task which the 4th graders at our school are now tackling would not be possible without the use of technology.

Each student was given a subject within the span of the “History of Books and Libraries.” They were given a folder which contained a copy of one relevant page of a book on their subject  along with a few other resources. They began to work on the “who, when, where, what, why and how” or their topic and were shown how to search for additional information on the web relating to their topic.

Some of their sources were over their heads and a teacher or helper had to sit next to the student translating into age-appropriate vocabulary what their source material was trying to communicate. Then the student would write down what they understood from the material. A few students were tempted to copy the source material word-for-word into their own document, but were quickly found out when they could not explain the vocabulary words that they had typed. The content was explained and they rewrote their page in their own words. This was essential since students who were at their grade level or lower would be the audience for this book.

As the students researched more deeply and wrote in greater detail about their topic, they became more confident in their abilities. Merely learning that your first draft is rarely your best draft was worth the process as students self-edited, peer-edited and received many successive corrections back from the teachers. It was amazing to see how well the students persisted in their editing. They knew that it had to be polished and presentable as it would be published in the final book. They also understood that the content was more important than the form. They were not given the option of choosing their own font as this tends to sidetrack many for hours. They were not even given the option of finding graphics or illustrations for their page until their final text had been approved.

Students who finished editing the text of their page more quickly than others, were challenged to take their research and creation to the next level. Some wrote emails to experts on their subjects and some created models or paintings or pictures that would enhance their page in the book. A few are even creating movies to embed into their page.

One of the drawbacks of using iBooks Author was that the software is not designed to accommodate many creators or contributors at the same time. One person needs to compile the data; it is not a multi-user, magazine or newspaper publishing type of tool where copy editors and writers can all submit material in real time to a work in progress. Actually, my husband works for a company called Woodwing that sells just such a tool. It works very well and is used by Time magazine and other large companies. It has recently been adopted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mainichi Newspaper in Japan who used it first with their image-rich publication, Tap-i, which incorporates interactivity and embedded video into their weekly digital news magazine.

But for our purposes, the tech tools that we have chosen have served us well. We did run into some problems as the students attempted to drop their pages into my teacher Drop Box folder which has “Write-Only” capabilities and the folder did not show up. The tech department is fixing the link so that the next attempt will be successful. Students in 4th grade do not have their own email accounts so for some purposes, we had to use memory sticks to transfer data. The students could not access their student folders from home and so some could not work on their content at home. Many did not have Apple computers at home, so they had difficulty transferring some of the files. We are working around these issues, however, and the students are getting closer and closer to being ready to publish.

If this project is successful, we may make this publishing unit a regular fixture in the 4th grade curriculum. It gives the students a jump on the research and writing skills that they will need to tackle the more in-depth Independent Study Project, or ISP, that they all must deal with in 5th grade. As it is, they are getting lots of practice in editing, online research, proper image attribution and digital publishing. Many students will be embedding links into their pages that will take readers to museums, universities and other sites where further studies can undertaken. The students can’t wait to see where in the world their book may be downloaded.

 

Eye-Brain Coordination

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Reading articles on the web can be very stressful. Pop-up ads, blinking advertisements, related and unrelated articles, sidebar widgets all vie for the coveted focus of my eye and brain. Although I make a conscious effort to ignore the extraneous rubble, I find myself pulling at the corner of the screen to make the viewing area smaller and hopefully block out the circus performing around the periphery. The “Reader” function on a Mac sometimes works, allowing you to just see the article, but not always. I find that getting information off of the internet is an exercise in eye and brain control as I try to force my eyes to stay on the topic. Here is an example:

Article Distractions – Cellular

In the article “Lazy Eyes” by Michael Agger, even as I read about how one should make online information easier for the reader to consume by presenting information in bulleted lists and small blocks of text, smack dab in the middle of his article is a distracting ad wanting me to click on it. Can you stick to the article content below? See how it spills outside the neat little reading rectangle… that’s even more distracting.

And surrounding this article are oodles of other distractions. It’s no wonder that online reading is “25% slower than reading on paper.” Our eyes are constantly dragged away from the text.

I can see what Michael Agger means by “Moby Dick” being a modern spa. Pure print on white paper. No extraneous distractions. Just give me a book and leave me in peace, and don’t you ever interrupt me while I’m reading a book, as Julian Smith so deftly admonishes his distractors.

From my own eye-tracking experiments, I have found that my eyes do go first to the main title but then, if there is an image or a moving gif on the page, that is the next stop for my attention. If those images have nothing to do with the information that I am seeking, then I am distracted by a feeling of annoyance that my time has been wasted and I attempt to find a way to eliminate the distraction so that I can get back on track.

I understand that advertisers and designers of commercial websites are very intentional in how they create these distractions, hoping that it will eventually end in us being distracted out of our money. If they know what our habits are, then we should know what their habits are and we should be teaching our students to be savvy internet viewers. More than that, our students should be savvy creators of content.

I think that George Lucas got it right when he said that students need to learn how to tell a story. They must acquire visual literacy. (Life on the Screen; Visual Literacy in Education) They can look up any kind of information that they want, but they now need to know how to interpret it and use it in a way that advances civilization and knowledge. “The human race survives on its educational system,” says Lucas. “The society that has a great educational system becomes the prominent society because that’s the way the human race survives.” Evolve and adapt or perish.

One of the greatest skills that we can teach our students, along with visual literacy, is the ability to quickly learn new ways of interacting with technology and making use of the new applications and ways of communicating that are continually evolving.

I recently rented “PressPausePlay” and watched this documentary which explores the democratization of content creation as anyone can now create and publish. The question is raised, “Does this water down and drown true talent or does the cream rise to the top?” One message that consistently comes through is that artists are constantly being presented with new technologies and ways to communicate, and the ones that learn quickly and play with those technologies are the ones who produce relevant, cutting edge creative content.

In order to survive and thrive in the modern world, our students need to learn how to creatively adapt and use technologies for their own purposes. While their eyes may be drawn to the flashiest new uses of digital tech, their brains must always be creating new and useful applications for these technologies.