Blogging the Summer Institute

By: Bonnie Kaplan
Date: November 17, 2008

Summary: The Technology Liaisons Network supported Bonnie Kaplan in exploring weblogs, which she then brought to the Hudson Valley Writing Project’s summer institute. Her site is just one of many that are beginning to learn from the process of blogging the summer institute.

A quick scan of the Hudson Valley Writing Project’s (HVWP) 2008 summer institute blog reveals a range of multimedia compositions: a digital story called “Remembering Our SI Roots,” photos of teachers at work and play, and writing.

Lots of writing.

Lilah, for instance, during an activity in which summer institute participants read and responded to a piece concerning technology and literacy, posted this comment to the blog about a New York Times story called So Young, So Gadgeted:

The article cautions parents that electronic devices should be used to “supplement rather than replace real experiences,” and encourages them to “make sure there’s an overall sense of balance” in activities during this stage of life. I agree. And now . . . I’m going to sit in this dark computer lab and spend some time looking into the new Pokémon Mystery Dungeon for the Nintendo DS because I’m interested in how it exercises reading skills.

The HVWP’s Summer Institute blog provides a window into the four weeks in which seventeen teachers worked and formed a community on the campus of State University of New York in New Paltz. It also provides a lasting chronicle of thoughts, musings, resources, and ethnographic records unique to that summer institute.

A Few Years of Experimentation

We at HVWP came to this place of blogging our summer institute after a few years of experimentation.

In 2006, after my attendance at the Technology Liaisons Network’s Tech Matters institute, I returned excited about blogging both as a way to keep our new teacher-consultants connected as writers and as a way to create classroom writing communities on the Web. On the winds of my enthusiasm, I helped our summer institute fellows create their first blogs. With only one week left during that institute, everyone took just a small bite into the blogosphere.

But in 2007 our HVWP blog took on a more central role in our summer institute as we introduced blogging along with a newly developed technology strand. We came to this place because, in the dynamic span of one year, our new group of summer institute participants were arriving with hopes for more than just a taste of the new technologies.

I now feel comfortabe with blogs, and appreciate the wonderful communal tool they can be in the classroom.

In the meantime, the HVWP tech team had been diving deeper into the Web with the support of the Technology Liaisons Network, bringing to our classrooms such Web tools as Edublogs, Flickr, Wikispaces and Delicious to enhance literacy while capitalizing on student skills and interests.

Each week we gave our fellows time to explore together: messing around on our blog’s homepage, responding to prompts, sharing photos, and writing pieces.

Summer Institute Blogs—A Communal Tool

In 2008, we decided to move the daily log to the summer institute blog, supporting our fellows in their initial blog posting, deepening the purpose for blogging, and going green in the process. During our summer institute orientation, we began unwrapping our 2008 blog with a presentation of a collaborative digital log, complete with photos.

We decided to use Edublogs, a free blog program meant especially for teachers and their students. Edublogs made it easy for us to get everyone set up with individual blogs and have them begin to write to a reflective prompt and post on our home page in the comments section.

Even though many in the group were not yet acquainted with blogging, they were open to the experience, and soon the group went beyond our original agenda.

As we dove into our institute, it made perfect sense to begin the day writing to a prompt (e.g., using a Billy Collins poem, The Names, to write from a phrase and then create a community poem) that would be posted on our blog along with all the artifacts from our morning rituals: digital photos, events of the day, and short previews of coming attractions for the E-Anthology.

As 2008 fellow Terri Colon wrote in her reflections, “Using the HVWP SI ’08 Blog each morning was such a nice, convenient way to reflect on the previous day and get us chuckling first thing each day!”

Susan Olsen, another 2008 fellow, added that she began to see the implications for teaching and learning as she herself blogged: “Realistically speaking, I now feel comfortable with blogs, and appreciate the wonderful communal tool they can be in the classroom.”

We continued to use our summer institute blog during weekly tech sessions for reflection and for the introduction of online tools. Fellows were often thrilled just to get the opportunity to click away on our homepage sidebar, which was filled with teacher and student blogs (many created by writing project teachers), online tools and tutorials, technology articles, and social networking opportunities.

The tech book group reading David Warlick’s Raw Materials of the Mind soon realized that they needed to get out of the book and use the lab—so they began posting articles of interest to our blog homepage, including the piece Lilah read and commented on so eloquently.

As the HVWP Summer Institute ended the last day of July, our blog already contained a page that held an anthology of writing by our summer institute fellows. The anthology, like everything else on the blog, will be available for our fellows to reference and use whenever they need it.

Related Resource Topics

• Professional Development – NWP Model – Summer Institute

As next week approaches and I have yet to create a piece of writing for either anthology, I feel the pressure to work on this digital story I have been playing with this week. Last night, exhausted, I got more serious, especially when I put myself on the line and announced that I would have it ready to be shared with the SI on Thursday, our last day. The RF are charged with sharing sentence descriptions of their writing group members…I should add them, I feelings about them…and for Mary…

So I am in the writing zone. I am now always writing it, in front of this screen, in the shower, riding in the car, in a conversation. I am writing a bit, moving to something else, coming back, looking/thinking about photos and video and recorded voice pieces I have and then back again. THat’s how I’ve become comfortable with this creating. I wanted to use Girl from Ipanema for the music or a piece by my Asad brothers and the crazy violinist they teamed up with a few years ago… Can’t decide yet. I won’t know until I have enough to put this on the computer. And I have a new mic to use for this one…

And I just found out my major computer has arrived. It’s waiting for me in the Dean’s Office. My hands are shaking. Two new computers, am I a tech pig???

Back to writing first hand. What fun!

Tuvia is joining me next Thursday for a sleep over at the Minnewaska Lodge and for the end of the celebratory reading at Rebecca’s.

I am writing my DS piece slowly and steadily. It’s now always with me and I am no longer uptight about not staying with it from start to finish. I take it in the rhythm that seems comfortable.

I have been buidling my piece, and finally as I near the end I read it aloud to Tuvia and to myself.  I like it.  He got it and I could hear where it needs to be tighter and clearer.

I can’t wait to begin the voice-over to see what I need to do with it and I selected lots of photos to choose from after I have the VO moving.  I know the music I want. I hope it works.

Zaddie
B. L. Kaplan
My Zaddie was very religious. I don’t ever remember seeing his head without his hat or a yarmulke or both, which made perfect sense to me, because I often watched him sitting in his lounge chair in the kitchen softly rocking and chanting prayers, as my Bubbie cooked her family-famous chicken fricassee for Rosh Hashonah or Passover, the two holidays we spent with my mom’s family in Toronto. I’m sure the separation from her parents was hard on her, but the trip from Ellenville took eight hours in a car with three kids who could get car sick one after the other,
Conversations were difficult with Zaddie. He prayed in Hebrew, and even though he understood English, at home, with his family, he was most comfortable speaking Yiddish with just a sprinkling of English. My mom could understand him, but my brothers and I were lost in any lengthy conversation or even when he told us a story. My mom would have to translate the climatic moment. Maybe that just added to his appeal, because my strongest memory of my Zaddie was our walks to his neighborhood synagogue, which was just a room in someone’s house where he and a group of men davined together.
They sat around a huge table or moved off by themselves for private communion with G_d. I sat next to Zaddie and was handed a sidur by one of his friends. I was glad that I was attending Hebrew School and Saturday services back home, but these prayer books had no English translation on the left side of the page. Zaddie would every so often gently turn a page if I fell behind and move his index finger right to the spot for me to follow, but it really didn’t matter, I was just there to enjoy his world of social prayer. It wasn’t enough for him to sit in the kitchen and pray alone, he needed his community to raise their voices together in celebration.
Of course, there were only men in his community. My Bubbie was home cooking with the other wives. I knew that I was there because even though I was his granddaughter and he was proud to have me with him, I was not yet a woman and when I would begin to flower I would not be welcome even to tag along as a visitor. But I loved watching my Zaddie with his congregation. Unlike our synagogue at home, this group of 25 men took turns leading the services without an official rabbi. In this room, without any spoken directions, everyone seemed to participate in the act of prayer
Maybe what I loved about this community, was what I strove for in the classrooms I created as a teacher, where my students could feel part of a community that respected their unique voices and even though I was the teacher in charge, we were all in the learning together. Maybe that’s what I took from my Zaddie.

Stan the Man
B.L. Kaplan
As a kid, music was handed to me. My mom set up piano lessons for me with a Kenny Berg, who played piano in the Nevele Hotel band about 5 minutes from our house. He was friendly, but uninspiring. I never moved too far beyond Row, Row, Row Your Boat with him and the piano my parents bought was old and ready to be put out to pasture, way before it was lugged into our den.
In the 4th grade, I was handed a clarinet by my new, cute music teacher, Mr. Stellato, who needed to fill up his woodwind section. I don’t remember being asked what I’d like to play but I did like a jazz tune that Mr. Stellato played for us as he explained that Benny Goodman called his clarinet a licorice stick. It did look like a licorice stick. I tried one out, took it home and learned the basics; I even took private lessons from Mr. Stellato in the summers, but I never practiced. I just whipped off the dust-layered case the morning of a lesson and blew through it to warm up the reed. When I played it, it always sounded muffled, like my notes were encased in cotton. I’m sure that Mr. Stellato knew I wasn’t practicing, but he was fun in the summer. He wore jeans and played tunes on his soprano sax that looked like a clarinet but sounded much better.
Ironically, even though I didn’t practice at home I was moving up in his band: first row, third chair. But I knew that no matter how far I got, I would NEVER enjoy playing the clarinet and even though I loved listening to Benny Goodman play his “licorice stick”, I would never work hard enough to come close to his clear sound.
But one summer at my grandfather’s bungalow colony, Oakwood Cottages, we met the Cherry Hill Hotel Band, at the top of our road, composed of four college guys majoring in music, who were looking for some experience and a vacation. Alan Ginsburg, not be confused with the poet, played clarinet and sax, as most woodwind players did in bands. He played tenor sax and I fell in love with Alan and with his sax. Sax players knew how to make their instruments wake up the sexual yearnings of their fans, but I really fell in love with the tenor and on my birthday, Alan had the best gift, an album featuring Stan Getz, an amazing tenor sax musician who had recently rocked the world with The Girl From Ipanema. I fell in love with Stan the Man and his sax. I still liked Alan.
I needed to get rid of the clarinet and when I got back to school Mr. Stellato was thrilled. He wanted a sax player for the band, but not a tenor sax player. He lugged down from the top shelf in the band room, a baritone sax. I could barely lift the case and when he assembled it for me, I couldn’t even reach all the keys. Thank God! I didn’t want to play the thing and now that I had a lover, I resolved not to rest until I could play like Stan the Man.
I did get a tenor. Its case was a suitcase as well, but a bit lighter and it housed my treasure and learning to play it was the highlight of my adolescence.
One morning my mom was downstairs housewifing as I practiced up in my room. She suddenly interrupted,” Bonnie, who’s up there with you?”
“What?” Oh, you mean Stan? He’s here. I went back to playing the Girl From Ipanema, thrilled.
A soft knock on the door as I continued, and my mom entered watching me play.
“Bonnie, you are playing along with a record and it sounds like you are playing with a person.”
Yeah, Stan Getz.”
“That’s fantastic! I was sure there was someone else up here.” She laughed.
“Really? She was proud.
“Mom,(pause) do you think that we could talk about maybe, one of these days, me getting my own sax and taking private lessons from someone really good?”
She smiled. “We should talk about this with your dad.”