Happy Poetry Friday! Write your own Lingo Poem--and then sing it to your cat!

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Howdy, Campers!

Today's poem and writing prompt/Writing Workout is below.

My fellow bloggers have covered the topic of Digital Learning fabulously (scroll below).

Today, I want to list some of the ways I use these new tools...

~ Every day I use an online thesaurus and rhyming dictionary to write my poetry.

~ I decided which version of Ashoken Farewell I wanted to play at a recent tribute to the journalist Daniel Pearl by watching different versions on YouTube; then Freda Sideroff posted a snippet she'd filmed of me and hammer dulcimer player, Phee Sherline at the tribute concert (what goes around comes around!...)



I learned how to pronounce author Jon Scieszka's name (and lots of other authors and illustrators names) by listening here.(hint: it rhymes with the soda, Fresca)

Raise your hand if you get overwhelmed.  Do you?  Whew!  And I thought I was the only one.  Well, JoAnn is right. I just need to try one new thing. And I'm going to change the adjective: try one small thing.

So...here's my poem, based on an old song. But just one verse, not all of them. That's my one small thing!

(listen to the song on this video first, so you know the tune, then read the new words...)

THE BLOGGER BEARS' POETRY FRIDAY

by April Halprin Wayland

with apologies to Jimmy Kennedy and John W. Bratton 

If you go onto the internet

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go onto the internet

You'd better go in disguise.

For every bear who hopes to express

Will gather there to write on Wordpress

Today's Fri-day, when every bear posts a poem!

Poem time for blogging bears

The Kidlit blogging bears are having a lovely time today.

Watch them, catch them unawares,

And hear them rhyming on their holiday.

See them tweet their permalink

They love to click in sync

And never have any cares.

At night they share on Mister Linky

now they can go to bed

Because they're tired little blogging bears.

If you go onto the internet

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go onto the internet

You'd better go in disguise.

For every bear chewing sunflower seeds

Will gather there to read RSS feeds

Today's Fri-day--when every bear posts a poem!

poem (c) 2012 April Halprin Wayland

Writing Workout: Sing a Lingo Poem!
What's a Lingo?  A Lingo is a poem based on the lexicon of a particular field of interest. Period.

1) Pick a song you love to sing (I used my favorite song book for ideas, Rise Up Singing--in folk music circles it's known as The Song Book)

2) Daydream about a profession or hobby that fascinates you.Weaving? Blackjack? Riding horses? Gymnastics?  Plumbing?  I chose blogging.

3) Search for a glossary of words for that profession or hobby.

4) Pick out the most interesting words and put them at the top of your page.  In the poem above, I picked these words:
feeds, link, pingback, internet, blogging, podcast, post, rss, search engine, URL, spam, subscribe, entry, sidebar, tags, ping,permalink, Mister Linky, Poetry Friday, Kidlitosphere, dashboard, Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, blogiversary, reciprocal link, link love, navbar, bookmark, tweet, facebook, draft, schedule

5) Find ways to fit some of these words to the beat of your song. You probably won't use more than a few words, but it's nice to have a big selection.  You can see that I only used a handful of my words.

6) Make liberal use of a rhyming dictionary.

7) Make sure you've installed AdBlock Plus (which is free) or the ads on this site (and most sites!) will drive you crazy (at least they drove me crazy!)

5) Sing your song to your cat.

6) Sing it to a friend.

7) Sing it with your friend!

The end.

Poetry Friday is hosted at Check It Out today.  Thanks, Jone!

...and for heaven's sake, write with joy!

poem and drawing (c) 2012 April Halprin Wayland

Digital Learning Every Day

In response to the celebration of the first Digital Learning Day on February 1, we've been doing a series of posts on how the digital age is affecting us as writers, readers, and teachers. Mary Ann wrote about "learning to love the e-book," not only as an author, but as the mother of a child with dyslexia. Jeanne Marie shared how she's trying to incorporate technology into her lesson plans to appeal to today's "digital natives" (aka our students). Esther blogged about her courage and determination (my words, not hers) in learning new classroom technologies despite her own learning disabilities. And JoAnn shared her approach to facing the deluge of digital-age opportunities: focusing on trying "one new thing" at a time.

I'm intrigued by the unique relationship each of the TeachingAuthors has with computer technology, especially because my own undergraduate degree is in Mathematics and Computer Science. Unfortunately, that education predates personal computers and the widespread use of the Internet. (I know, I'm dating myself here.) However, although the programming languages I studied in school are virtually obsolete (Ever hear of COBOL?), the basic principles I learned back then still come in handy. Plus, I'm not intimidated by having to tweak HTML code once in a while to get around some of Blogger's quirks. :-)

In an interesting bit of Synchronicity, I'm preparing to teach a brand new class this Saturday that is very technology oriented: "Get Started Blogging." Not only is this a new subject for me, but it's also the first time I'll be teaching a class in a computer lab. (And I keep imagining all the things that could go wrong with the computers!) Of course, as always happens when I teach, I'm learning, too. For example, I learned that the word "blog" has it's origin in the word "weblog," which itself was coined back in 1997 by combining the terms web + log. I'm also learning new software. I decided to use Wordpress.com as the blogging platform for the sample blogs my students will be creating, instead of Google Blogger, which is the platform for our TeachingAuthors blog. That way, I can better share what I see as the pros and cons of the two platforms. If any of you have used both, I'd love to know which you prefer and why.

But back to the topic of how the digital age is affecting me, personally:

As a teacher:

• I'm exploring new teaching topics, such as blogging.
• I'm able to share resources easily and in an environmentally-friendly (paperless) way online, via links on this blog (such as the page of links to markets for young writers), on my website (which includes links to resources for writers of all ages), and on the special demo blog I'm creating for Saturday's class.
• I'm taking advantage of online lesson planning resources, such as ReadWriteThink.

As a reader:

• I recently bought my first e-reader, a NookColor. It allows me to borrow e-books from both my public library and other Nook owners, as well as own books I have no room to store in my home.
• One of the features I especially love about my NookColor is the ability to highlight sections of text and email them to myself, making it easy to accurately quote material in my class lectures.
• I've also downloaded apps that allow me to access and update my Word documents anywhere I have wi-fi connection.

As a writer:

• The Internet is an incredible research tool, and it's getting better all the time. While researching my young adult historical novel set in 18th-century Milan, I was able to find and read original source documents online with only a few clicks--in some cases these documents physically exist in fewer than five libraries in the whole world!
• A dynamic online presence via blogging and/or social media (as opposed to a static website), is now considered essential to a writer's career, for better or worse. The Internet is a great marketing tool, but a time-consuming one. I sometimes struggle with finding a balance between writing and keeping up with social media. There's currently a great discussion of this topic going on over at Greg Pincus's The Happy Accident blog.  

When we first launched this blog nearly three years ago, I wrote:

While part of our goal is to discuss what we've learned about writing and the teaching of writing, we also hope to accomplish something here that we can't do on our websites: facilitate conversations between writers, teachers, and librarians about the subjects we love best--writing, teaching writing, and reading.

I had no idea when I wrote those words what a welcoming and far-reaching community we were joining. The digital age has allowed me to form personal relationships with people I may never meet in person, including young readers, writers, teachers, librarians, editors, agents, and booksellers. And I'm happy to consider many of those people my friends. :-)

I'd love to know how the digital age is affecting you, our readers. I hope you'll share some of those ways in the comments.
And happy writing!
Carmela 

Digital Natives, Digital Texts, Digital World

I was in seventh grade when we got our first personal computer.  It was a behemoth IBM, in its first year of production.  My crafty dad made me read the word processor manual and write a cheat sheet for family use.  (I still remember -- ^KD = save in WordStar circa 1984.) 

By the time I started high school, I composed all of my papers on the computer.  The ability to type quickly and edit instantly has greatly affected my writing process.

I don't think I had an email account until I was grown and out of college.  I am still a very reluctant texter.  I waste too much time on facebook, but I never tweet.
My kids learned how to use a mouse at two.  They are now four and six.  They play Angry Birds on my cell phone and DS in restaurants with slow service.

The college students I teach were mostly born in the 1990s.  One thing I quickly realized was that, thanks to texting and email and facebook and twitter, most of them actually spend a significant portion of their day WRITING -- willingly, for pleasure.  Perhaps texting is going to make punctuation obsolete, but on the other hand... surely there's some good to be harnessed from this situation.

I started teaching at a new school last semester, and my classroom now has a dedicated computer lab.  I've always had students write frequently in class, of course, but incorporating the computers has presented both an opportunity and a challenge.

The ability to do library research from the classroom is the most obvious advantage to having classroom computers.  Grammar quizzes can be given online, of course; but I am looking for ways to excite students, not bore them to death.

I have thus been experimenting with a variety of technologies and new assignments.  Last semester I used a status update exercise to get students thinking about topic selection and audience.  I am just starting to learn how to get students working on collaborative written projects -- wikis and blogs through Blackboard, as well as group responses through google docs.   Using youtube to find examples of commercials exhibiting logical fallacies has also been entertaining.

Today's digital natives grow up in a world completely different from ours.  As ebooks change the experience of reading (but not as drastically as one might think), so the new technologies present many more options for effectively engaging students.

If any teachers have advice or expertise in this area to share, we are all ears.

In the meantime, don't forget to enter our latest Teaching Authors Book Giveaway. 

Have a great week! --Jeanne Marie