(set: $name to (prompt: "What should we call you while you read our report?"))
Howdy, $name!
Welcome to our final report for our Classroom Inquiry project sponsored by SET-BC
<div class="dia">
We chose to create our final report using Twine since we spent a whole year teaching it to our students.
Navigate using the options below:
[[1]] - Project Goals
[[2]] - Project Blog
[[3]] - Student work examples
[[4]] - Feedback and Reflections
[[5]] - Project Goals
</div><div class="dia">Our project is an inquiry into the effectiveness of coding as part of the English creative writing curriculum. Often coding is an "addition" to Math classes as there is a natural link between coding and the logic and reason goals of a math classroom
We are attempting to use coding as a means of enriching our English instruction by using a program called Twine. Twine has coding elements such as HTML, JAVA, CSS and other fundamental concepts such as logic operators, booleans, variables, etc. The program is great because it will create an environment where students with no coding background can begin by using fundamental concepts such as logic trees and flow charts to begin entering programming education, while the students with some experience or a keen interest wont be held back by a simplistic platform.
The goal is to enhance our English course offering through an interactive, technology based medium while supporting students with some learning challenges by allowing them to create creative writing pieces that include pictures and video. We also hope to create a clear increase in student engagement in the area of creative writing.</div>
Back to [[Start]]As part of our SETBC project we were tasked with creating, and updating, a project blog which contains the journey of our project.
You can access our project blog here: <a href="https://sites.google.com/mtsentinel.org/setbc/home-blog-posts" target="_new">Mount Sentinel SetBC Project Blog</a>
<div class="dia">Click for a note on our choice of platform: (link-reveal: "Platform Choice")[<p>We used the new Google Sites platform which was a pilot project for our school, as well. The experience of using Google Sites was very successful and it cannot be understated how much of an upgrade it was compared to the last iteration of the platform. It integrates into our schools GSuite domain and allows both teachers and students to collaboratively build web resources, pulling items directly from Google Drive and Google Classroom, as well as services like youtube, in a a drag and drop editor. It may not have the full functionality of something like Weebly or Wix, but it really was effective.]</div>
Ready to head back?
Go back to start [[Start]]
We have selected a few examples of student work that you can check out below. We have added additional information about the student work that will be revealed as you mouse over.
Please be aware that clicking links to student work may load inside this window, or a new tab, depending on your browser.
Student Examples:
<a href="http://philome.la/dleeming2/series-of-sarcastic-events/play"> A Series of Sarcastic Events</a>
<a href="http://philome.la/dleeming2/a-job-offer"> A Job Offer</a>We have broken our reflections and feedback into 3 sections
[[Victories]]
[[Challenges]]
[[Lessons]]
Not where you wanted to be? Back to [[Start]]
The goals for our project were as follows:
1. Determine what impact coding has on creative writing in an English classroom.
Dannys Q1:
(mouseover-replace: "Dannys Q1:")[<div class="dia">From conversations with students, my own observations, and work produced I think the potential for coding in the English classroom is huge. I also see the potential for Twine used in many other disciplines for certain projects - E.G. Interactive family trees in Social Studies, or writing historical events from multiple viewpoints. Students, at times, were show extremely high levels of engagement with this tool - staying in at break voluntarily, working through lunch, etc. At other times, it could be very frustrating if students failed to save their stories properly and lost a lot of work.
</div>]
Sarah Q1:
(mouseover-replace: "Sarah Q1:")[<div class="dia">Coding allows the students to critically think about what elements in their writing would benefit from a greater emphasis using specialized effects to add meaning. This helps improve overall tone/mood of story writing. The format for non-linear writing also opens up a writing to be more creative and potentially more fun to write and read. </div>]
Our team determined that this goal was a <b>{(live: 0.5s)[
(either: "Success", "with challenges")
]}</b>
2. Build on student interest and engagement in writing.
Dannys Q2:
(mouseover-replace: "Dannys Q2:")[<div class="dia">
It created an opportunity for struggling learners to incorporate things into their stories that gave them a greater investment (e.g. using youtube highlights of their favorite NBA player to animate parts of a story, and allowing the student to dive deep in an area of interest more readily.) Overall I would call most aspects of this goal a success, with some lessons learned on the way.</div>]
Sarah Q2:
(mouseover-replace: "Sarah Q2:")[<div class="dia">Reluctant writers can focus more on coding elements to engage in writing process. Students who love writing can challenge themselves and play with new forms. Overall this creates a situation where both reluctant and accomplished writers can find new and interesting ways, where they are at in their learning, to challenge themselves and their writing. </div>]
Our team determined that this goal was a <b>{(live: 0.5s)[
(either: "Success", "Victory", "Big Win")
]}</b>
3. Develop writing structure for students through the logical processes required for inputting
the story.
Dannys Q3:
(mouseover-replace: "Dannys Q3:")[<div class="dia">
Sarah is a far better judge of this element than I am, but from my observations the small, pieced out writing, of Twine allowed many students to focus and plan one part at a time. This seemed to reduce the daunting nature of a big, blank white page that needs to contain multiple paragraphs and allows the student to focus just on a singular element of composition. It also seems like we didnt fully capitalize on this and could have created structural assignments and templates for students to see things like the short story cycle, or 5x5 essays in a more visual organizer using Twine.</div>]
Sarah Q3:
(mouseover-replace: "Sarah Q3:")[<div class="dia">This project is an excellent way to highlight plot and teach techniques for advancing the story line. Students also have small chunks of writing to work with at a time, allowing for easy edits and enhancement of literary elements in small sections of writing. This makes the daunting task of story writing more manageable for some students </div>]
Our team determined that this goal was a <b>{(live: 0.5s)[
(either: "Success", "Victory", "Big Win")
]}</b>
4. (Teacher) Will give the teachers further experiences collaborating as a team on implementing technology so that there is a greater ability to work together and demonstrate working in the new curriculum with technology.
Dannys Q4:
(mouseover-replace: "Dannys Q4:")[<div class="dia">
The opportunity this project provided Sarah and I to work together was great. We had not worked together before this year - at all, she was a new hire to our district - and it is a credit to her personality that we made it work despite a lot of challenges.
The time table of a secondary school made for the biggest hurdle, the most student frustration, and the missed opportunities in student learning. That being said, given the constraints of our scheduling issues I am quite proud of the innovative lessons we were able to accomplish, though there is still plenty of room to grow</div>]
Sarah Q4::
(mouseover-replace: "Sarah Q4:")[<div class="dia">Great collaboration, skill building on my end. It also demonstrates to students that skills learned in one class can be applicable in different settings. </div>]
Our team determined that this goal was a <b>{(live: 0.5s)[
(either: "Challenge", "Room to Grow", "Work in Progress")
]}</b>
All done? Back to: [[Start]]<h1>Twine in the Classroom</h1><h4>Mount Sentinel Secondary 2017 SETBC Project</h4>
The project has been an overall success with a very high level of student engagement. Each English 11 student completed a full creative story using twine demonstrating multiple coding and English skills. These stories were published and shared with students and students even collaborated on stories to add new elements.
As instructors we also see even more potential than when we started for this platform. It is definitely something we will do regularly in senior english for the next few years, at least, and it adds a new dimension and spin to creative writing that really seems to work for kids. While there was challenges in our approach at times, these lessons only prove valuable learning steps for us and will inform the next attempt next year.
[[4]]
Done with this section altogether? Back to [[Start]]The challenges that came along with this project were based primarily on saving student work. Twine could be completed on the online resource or the installed program. Some student work was lost in the beginning due to computer changes and sorting out the correct place to store student files. However, this was quickly remedied by switching all students to the online Twine and showing step by step options for saving.
We also struggled from the outset from a teaching/scheduling standpoint in that both terms, Sarah and Danny were both teaching different classes. While workaround were found, it was no an ideal situation and sometimes frustrated both classes as sometimes by neccesity there was 45-50 students in one room doing completely different subjects and assignments to make it work.
In an ideal situation the schedule would provide one non enrolling block matched with the English class so the students could work at a more natural pace and the goals could be taught as a coherent unit, rather than an ongoing weekly project.
[[4]]
Done with this section altogether? Back to [[Start]]Here are some Lessons we have learned over the course of the year:
1) Approach matters. Balancing our instructional approach between self directed discovery style learning of the Twine platform and specific technological skill lessons is tricky but important. We found that when we did lots of skill specific instruction it was harder for the students to see purpose and engage with the learning. On the other hand, the free wheeling nature of constructivist type learning where students acquired skills as needed by their writing led to a lot more class wide confusion which made it hard to manage our time and help as teachers. This is a constant struggle with any class but because this was all new for both teachers involved there was a lot of learning and growing to be done combining these subjects. Next time we will try a more balanced approach mixing the methods of instruction.
2) The downside of open source. Twine is a fantastic program but because it is open source and constantly in development we had an issue halfway through where Twine updated and changed their entire coding language which through the lessons we had given out the window and set us back while we figured out how to go back to the previous iteration of the language Twine uses for programming. While it is heavily based on Java, HTML and CSS, because Twine is built to combine them all, many of the commands are unique to the platform. This caused a big delay and it is something to keep in mind when using the platform that COULD happen.
[[4]]
Done with this section altogether? Back to [[Start]]