Surfing the Google Wave

Have you heard about Google Wave? Maybe you might remember my post, Goggling over Google Wave, when I mentioned being really excited about its advent? Well, it's here and I've been playing with it.

Google Wave is the latest Google invention. It's a web application and a computing platform. It's also a realtime conversation and a document. To me so far, it's like a morph of IM and email, with bling. The bling is all sorts of things you can embed in your communication, like "bots" that will translate into other languages, maps, games, polls, videos etc. There's a heap of stuff on Youtube about it if you'd like to discover more, and Google themselves have lots of information about it.

This is early stages for Google Wave, and some things have been unstable, or confusing. However, it's been a lot of fun trying it out, and I'm thrilled by its potential. I believe it will be so useful for anyone who needs to collaborate over documents. After you invite people to join your wave, and they're there, you can see each other typing in real time, edit each other's work, add in links and other documents instantly.

I think kids will enjoy the application of new technologies in Google Wave. It makes a cool way to communicate over a social engagement (writing for an authentic audience!), and will really benefit teens who need to work on an assignment together, but are physically apart (writing for an authentic audience AND impressing the teacher!)

If you'd like to preview Google Wave for yourself, but don't have an invitation, email me via the tab up near my banner. Send me your email address, and I'll start an invitation to participate in the GWave preview wending its way toward you (via the Google Wave site.) If you'd rather wait until all the kinks are out, that makes good sense too. Me? I'm like a kid in a candy store!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tk_five_0/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Reader's Theatre (2)

In Reader's Theatre (1), I described my version of Reader's Theatre, and said that it's a great way to have kids interact with a story, and to develop their imaginations. I also love the fact that it allows kids who NEED to move the opportunity to link reading with movement. It's a fun activity for emergent readers when the script is kept simple, and they have enough chance to rehearse their part. And it's a wonderful chance for readers and audience to interact with literature.

If I'm creating a Reader's Theatre script, I usually write parts for narrator(s), characters, and a chorus. That's because my scripts are written with the classroom teacher in mind, and teachers usually need to find parts for thirty kids. If there is a lot of narration, I divide it as evenly as possible, with narrators taking turns.

So my script might look like this:

Script Snippet, based on The Three Bears

Narrator 1: Once upon a time, there were three bears who lived in a little cottage in the woods.

Narrator 2: Each morning, Mama Bear would put their porridge into three bowls.

Papa: A great big bowl for me, because I'm a great big bear! Grrrr!

Chorus: Oooh!

Mama: A middle-sized bowl for me, because I'm a middle-sized bear. And proud of it!

Chorus: Aaah!

Baby: And a tiny bowl for me because I'm a teeny tiny bear. Goo-goo!

Chorus: Awww!

If I base the script on a picture book, I don't use every word in the book, but try to choose the most important elements. I also use a mixture of my own words, and keywords from the story. If there is a special repeated phrase, like "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin", I make sure to include it. In the script above, I've used my imagination to begin to develop personalities for each of the bears.

Some writers include a part for speech tags in dialogue eg

Baby: And a tiny bowl for me because I'm a teeny tiny bear. Goo-goo!

Chorus: said Baby Bear.

However, I think it gets old quickly. Like everything I describe here, play with it, and see what works best for you and your children.

Here is the method I use when devising a script. First, read the work it's based on several times. Then close it, and try to set out the main ideas in script form. Once you have a rough draft, go back to the story and check whether you've included the most important elements of it.

Next, check you have as many parts as you want, and that the script is divided approximately evenly between parts. See whether you can relieve the narrator load by giving a small part to a character, or check if there's an opportunity for the chorus to introduce some sound effects to enhance the story.

Finally, read the script aloud. Make changes as needed. Does it work as a story? Does it work as a piece of theatre? Is it true to the original? If not, maybe the original served as inspiration for a totally new story you've created. I don't think that matters at all. The main idea is to encourage kids to interact with literature, and create something of their own, while developing literacy skills.

In Reader's Theatre (3), I'll describe how I introduce a script to a group of children who will perform it for an audience.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xiaming/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Scrap Coloring

Terry Doherty from Scrub-a-Dub Tub is always on the lookout for sites that contribute in some way to children's literacy. (Terry and I are part of a committee working toward another Blog Literacy Tour, scheduled for March 2010, and Terry is building a huge database of literacy links which will be of great benefit to parents.)

At her blog today, Terry mentioned Scrap Coloring, and of course I had to take a look. I couldn't resist a little play, and coloured-in the chameleon template you see at left.

The site works well (best in Firefox). Basically, once you've found and clicked on an image, you chose from a palette of designs and colours, click on part of your template, and the site fills it in. I loved the variety, vivid colours and patterns, and ease of use. You can save your creation (make sure you have pop-ups enabled - I discovered that after about five minutes of hurling insults!) as a png file, or you can print out a blank template and colour with crayons.

The menu bar at the top guides you to themes like Fairy Tales and Vehicles, great to print out for one of those times when kids want to colour.

But what has all this fun and frivvle got to do with literacy? Personally, I think writing and images go together like Desi and Lucy, but if you want something less tenuous, try the First Name Coloring page. This enables you to input text on two lines, readily lending itself to use in greeting cards or posters. I think kids will enjoy choosing a template, colouring it, and then maybe writing a story or a description snippet to go with it. I know I did!

Other accessible visual editors and art creation sites I've posted about recently are Crayola's drawing tablet, Spell with Flickr, and Curious Corner, or you might like to go one step further and make a whole cartoon with Creaza's Cartoonist.

Book Review, outside IN

One of our strongest human needs is to fit in. This drives so much behaviour, particularly in our teenage years. Do you remember feeling that everyone else was cool, confident and charismatic, while you didn’t even fit inside your own skin? I don’t think things are any different for Generation X, Y or Z:

Feels like everyone else’s got the answers
You got shadows, they got light
You just got a heap of questions
While they got everything right

Written by Chrissie Keighery, and published by Hardie Grant Egmont (2009), outside IN is definitely a YA novella worth reading. I think girls will love this book, but don’t dismiss it as girly. It’s not gritty either. It’s a realistic novel about teens and the problems they deal with. Jordan, Jack, Meredith, Lee, Cecilia, Sam … and the watcher, Renee. Each one copes or doesn’t cope in their own way, concealing or sharing their secrets, and exploring the nature of growing up.

Friendship is an important theme in the book. These kids are real – we hear their thoughts and share their impatience, their loyalty and their drive to belong. Keighery has the knack of speaking in both an authentic boy voice and an authentic girl voice. I love the way she shows us the action, and commentary on the action, from each different character’s perspective. If this isn’t done well, it can result in a novel feeling fragmented or disjointed. Keighery weaves the different threads into a satisfying tapestry. She also tailors vocabulary and sentence structure to suit each character, strengthening their point of view, increasing our emotional involvement with them.

outside IN would make a great text for high school students to read. There are many discussion opportunities, and teens will relate to themes of body image, divorce, and friendship. Keighery’s writing expertise also makes it an excellent model for young writers. I am sure they will enjoy the fragments of poetry, the lyrical text and the three-dimensional, likable characters as much as I did.

Resource Roundup (November 09)

Here are some sites I've discovered recently that support parents and kids toward literacy, creativity and education generally.

Design Squad

PBS have done it again! There is a TV show called Design Squad, and this is the companion site. I love the great challenges for kids to solve , like "build a tower that can support a tennis ball at least 18 inches off the ground while withstanding the wind from a fan." The site provides a list of materials, as well as questions to help guide the process. There's lots for kids to read, as well as prompts to get them thinking creatively, or as the site says, "like engineers". This looks like a wonderful site for homeschooling parents looking for science projects that will enthuse kids. You can watch episodes of the show, access the projects, or find information about the activities for parents and educators. Read more about what PBS has to offer in my Plundering PBS post from September. (Thanks to Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, for the Design Squad link.)

BBC Synonym Game

Need a child-friendly webspace where kids can practise finding synonyms? This game doesn't have many bells and whistles, but it might suit your purpose. Check out the BBC's other literacy resources for younger kids or older kids while you're there. (Thanks to Joy Simpson at Literacy Resources for the link.)

Learn Direct

At this site, there are two books to read, interact with and make changes to, The Journey to Darkest Somewhere, and The House of Scary Words. The site prompts kids to make changes to the text if they wish, and there are activities to complete inside the story such as matching homonyms, and finding small words inside larger ones. When you've read the book, you can elect to save it with your changes as a pdf, so you can read it later. There's also a pretty slick game, The Legula Adventure, which enables kids to read and listen, make choices and do word-related activities. If you want to save the progress of your game, you need to register.

Signed Stories

Here's a wonderful place to read stories online for those who are hearing-impaired, and those who are not. Kids can practise their reading by listening and following the subtitles, and there's sign language for kids who need it. Stories are themed, like Toddler, Funny, Adventure. Each one is a little video, some with the screen showing the illustration and text for the page, plus the person signing the text for that page, and the audio running concurrently. Here's one called Mr Majeika for you to try. Others, like Owl Babies, have the illustration animated. There's also some great advice on reading to kids.

More?

If you're looking for more collections of online resources that impressed the Book Chook, try September's Resource Roundup, Useful Sites for Parents and Teachers (1), Useful Sites for Parents and Teachers (2) or Useful Sites for Parents and Teachers (3). If you'd like more ideas about encouraging children's literacy, why not download the latest issue of Literacy Lava, or browse other posts via the blog archive at the right.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladouseur/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0