Stockton Writing Institute Goals Report

Hi everyone! Sorry I could not make it to our session...I am the only one available to take my son Finn to his weekly appointment today. My wife and I have four kids, so the appointment schedule is pretty ridiculous. Actually, EVERYTHING about life with four kids is pretty ridiculous.

Here's living proof of my gaggle. Finn's the one on my head. I always keep one on my head, cause, you know, I only have two hands. Duh.

Back to class...I hope everyone did their homework. I know I would NEVER be caught without my homework, right Professor DiGiorgio?

So here's a quick summation of how I fulfilled (or almost fulfilled) my goals. Please click on the links where applicable for examples of my findings or my work.

W.I. Goal #1: I will update my start-of-term, student learning assessments by switching to a more comprehensive, digital model. 

I did some research on ready-made digital learning inventories that would help me (and you?) start the year with some good information about my students' learning capacities.

For EOF this summer, I used a test from "The Personality Lab" (click on the link and check it out). It has lots of cool quizzes worth looking at. I used the "Which Hogwarts House are You" (I couldn't resist). The experience was "just ok." It was easier for me to distribute because all I had to do was drop a link on my blog and the students filled out the survey. The results were tallied, and most of personality lab's results can get e-mailed right to you. Definitely saves trees and class time. However, I thought the results were a bit too narrow for my needs.

In the Fall, I plan to try "The Big Five Personality Traits" (thank you, Sara) to see if that fits my needs any better.  

W.I. Goal #2: I will research ways to enhance my smaller written assignments through the use of social media by creating an exclusive Twitter account for my Stockton courses, designing and implementing a FB group for discussions and researching other social media methods for complementing my blog.

Ok, so I started with Twitter. I went to all the trouble of creating an AVATAR account (a fake identity to use the networking site for a specific purpose) so my students could "follow" me without actually "following" ME. I even found an Osprey dripping with awesome to use as a persona. See?

But then I quickly realized that I didn't need all that jazz. I got my students to communicate reactions and analysis via twitter feeds by using a common hash tag for each assignment. (i.e. #eofco) This made it super easy for me to check and grade. It also made it super easy for them because they didn't need to follow me or each other. And they didn't need to direct their comments at anyone in particular. They just attach the given hashtag to their comment and BOOM! Twitter class discussion time! 

I didn't need a separate account. I didn't need to get the kids to follow me. It was easy and effective. I pasted a screen shot below of one such assignment (just in case you guys don't want to bother logging into Twitter). If you'd like to check the feeds out live (one assignment was due today!) Feel free to log on to Twitter and search the following hashtags: #EOFCo or #EOFCo2...and go ahead...leave a post. It's fun for everyone.

W.I Goal #3: I want to find an application and learn how to more effectively use voice recordings as not only a feedback tool, but also for presentation purposes (i.e. record sound and post podcast supplements to my blog).

Ok, so I did not master podcasting this summer, BUT in the pursuit of podcasting, I realized that my blogging software (Shhhh! We're using it right now, but I'm gonna talk garbage about it, and I don't want it to turn all HAL 9000 on me, "I can't let you disconnect me, Joe.") is not equipped to handle the upload of audio files. Before I can integrate podcasting onto my blog, I need to change blogs. So...I set my sights on the much more capable, but much more complicated WordPress software.

My wife has wanted to start a blog about autism (our son Finn is on the spectrum), so I talked her into using WordPress instead of Blogger (it's just better...graphically, functionally, etc). Over the past week, we have been teaching ourselves WordPress (and it's haaaaaahrd, wicked haaaahrd as Marky Mark or Wade Boggs might say). The hope is, once I master designing my wife's blog, I'll move this blog to WordPress (Shhh). Then my Stockton courses will be podcast-ready. Word.

Feel free to check out my wife's blog, our maiden voyage into WordPress, here.

Thanks for your time, everyone. Happy Summer. Sorry I missed all your great work!