Do You Haiku?

A few weeks back I posted a little teaser about an up-coming product from ReadWriteThink.org:

Poetry trio
Needs a new companion app
Details forthcoming

I'll note that no one took a stab at guessing what the product might be, so no one gets the really cool prize for guessing it correctly.

"But you never said anything about a prize!" you might say.

"I'm whimsical like that," I would reply.

The poetry trio mentioned in my little poem are the current interactives already available on ReadWriteThink--and soon to be available on your iPad or Android tablet:

1. Acrostic
2. Diamante
3. Theme

The new companion app, that would be Haiku.

Maybe I shouldn't be showing off the concept art...but I'm going to show you the current concept art for the load screen! Cause I'm excited about it and that's what this blog is for, revealing cool things like that. Please note that as concept art, the final app design might look nothing like this, and we cannot vouch for the correctness of the characters used in the image--though we are pretty sure they say "haiku." Anyone out there who can officially vouch that for us?

The real difficulty of the project is teaching the haiku writing process. We want to make sure that the app provides solid haiku writing instruction, not to take it out of the teacher's hands but to make sure students have all the scaffolding they need when it comes time to do the writing. A refresher on what the teacher modeled in the classroom couldn't hurt, right?

But how do you teach haiku writing? That sounds rhetorical, but it isn't. I'm asking: If you have ever taught haiku writing, what did you do? What did you teach? How did you frame the lesson? I've been doing research, and I found fun little inconsistencies like the follow:

• Traditional haiku are themed around nature or philosophy...but that's not a requirement.
• Traditional haiku have a juxtaposition statement...but not always.
• American haiku have three lines...but they don't need to.
• American haiku follow a 5-7-5 syllable count for the lines...but not all of them.

From my research, haiku writing is fairly free form--not at all what I was expecting when I first delved into the project.

I don't want to write How to Haiku instructions in the app and find them counter to what teachers are teaching in the classroom. I don't want to create an interactive and app that promote a rigid conformity to a three line, 5-7-5 syllable paradigm if that isn't what teachers are modeling.

Just to note, our Haiku app won't force the writer to use three lines (though it will only have three lines available), nor will it enforce a syllable count--in fact, it won't count syllables at all. We leave such checking and correction up to the user. The app can be used to write free-form poetry. But what should the instruction model?

If you have any information about how haiku writing is currently taught in the classroom or how you'd like to see it presented in this product, let me know.

Or to put it another way:

Seeking opinions
On proper haiku techniques
--Wes doesn't have a clue

Wes

Summer Vacation

I would love to say I haven't written on this blog cause I've been on vacation. That would be two months of vacation! I think I could handle that.

Alas, that's not how that went down.

I usually update the blog Friday afternoons. At IRA, the office is closed Friday--we work Monday to Thursday.  Which means I'm not here on Friday afternoons.

Worse excuse ever, I know, but alas, it is also the Truth.

And rather sad 'cause it means I haven't updated anyone on all the cool stuff I've been working on. And yeah, it is cool stuff. Things or user base is likely interested in.

For instance, I'd previous mentioned our Alphabet Organizer interactive and our Venn Diagram interactive. I never got around to tell you these are now available as mobile apps on Google Play and iTunes store.

I don't know that I even mentioned the changes being made to Timeline. App version releasing soon.

The tomato example. Relevant for RWT Editors: Most of us grow tomatoes! 

Even cooler, we have more apps coming soon. Some of our favorite and most popular interactives are being app-dapted (get it?) right now.

What can you expect? RWT's poetry suite: Acrostic, Diamante, and Theme Poem will all have app versions releasing in September*.

I've got even more apps and interactives in the works. I'll hold off on releasing details of those until next time, which should be in a week or two. Cause this is the last Friday I have offer before non-summer hours kick back in. That will help me keep on my schedule of hope-to-post-once-every-two-weeks.

Though really, with all the neat stuff we are pushing, I might need to post more often

OK, so one little teaser about the project I was working on today:

Poetry trio
Needs a new companion app
Details forthcoming

Wes


*Said with confidence, but not with a solid promise. I'm 100% sure they will, so there is a 95% chance it will happen.

A Is for Alligator

B is for Bayou. C is for Cypress Trees. D is the Dew.

Anyone recognize this? It's from an old Sesame Street song--one that to this day I still have in my memory. Did it help me learn my alphabet? I don't know, but there is something about the way it was done that has always lingered in my mind. The way Kermit breaks up his sentences with the letters.

"U is the Universe that's V vast and W wide." I've always loved that line

My writing it here does the clip little justice, so I shall link to it as well:

This is a perfect example of what students can do with the newly improved ReadWriteThink.org Alphabet Organizer. Now with the ability to save and import pictures, students can write their own ABCs story.

Sesame Street has a few examples if you feel like looking through the youtube channel or their child-friendly website. For adults who grew up watching Sesame Street, a trip through their channel is an amazing blast from the past--and I imagine a fun way to share good, wholesome, educational videos with kids.

So this was me reliving my childhood through our interactive:

All the words in chart form.

All my notes, which make up the lyrics to Kermit's song.

I really should have put Kermit's name in there instead of my own--this was not my song, just a slice of my childhood that lives on.

Wes

What Happened to April?

Wow. I lost a whole month!

Usually in April I am blogging about the International Reading Association's annual conference, and how ReadWriteThink is hosting sessions there. And where I'll be so you can come see me.

Alas, I failed. We went to San Antonio, we spoke to the teachers, we had an in-person team meeting. And I got a cowboy hat. And Becky laughed at me.

Here's a way to show this in a graphic representation:

I'm not the only one who fits in the center, though.

Whoa! Look at that! A Venn diagram!

Yes, that's right, after talking about it for a few months now, we have our new Venn Diagram interactive live on the site.

The iPad and Android versions are in production and (fingers crossed!) will be out by the end of May, maybe June.

We have a list of our interactives we are trying to turn in to apps for tablets (to avoid the whole Flash-does-not-run-on-iOS-systems issue) as well as list of interactives to be updated with the work saver. I'll get into more detail with those once we have deadlines and designer approval for our ideas and workplan.

If it all comes together, it will be very exciting.

Next time, I'm going to go in to our summer plans for this year. It's pretty cool, and we are very excited by the partnership we were able to strike up for this project.

But for now, all you get--other than the handy link to the new Venn Diagram interactive--is a picture of me photo-bombing some poor conference attendees. Don't worry, they totally got another picture without me in it.

Wes

Welcome to 2013

Welcome to 2013! We've been here a while now, but still, welcome.

Here at the RWT collective (since we don't have a specific headquarters), we are trying to sort out the year's projects. We have a lot of cool stuff in the works, but its always a puzzle to figure out what we will work on and what might not make it.

For instance, we recently had a survey about making a mobile version of the site. The survey was pretty informative and, I think, will help us make improvements to the main site--but it wasn't overall convincing that we should do the remote site. At least not yet.

Instead, we're going to try to make more of our interactives mobile friendly. That seems to be the direction we need to go.

That's a change we hadn't anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Other times, things just pop up unexpected. Just today, I got asked if I would like to attend the SoMIRAC Conference in Maryland in April--not just attend, but to do a session. Pretty cool getting the request, but it adds something on to my list of projects, and it's right before the IRA annual convention. Time Crunch!

I'm also on interactive/app duty (whichever direction we decide to go), which means coming up with an idea and writing specs.

Anyone out there have any ideas for me?

Next week, I'm going to go more into what sort of content and lessons we are seeking to add to the site to help bulk up some areas we see need improvement...or I'll get someone else to do it. I keep saying this is a joint blag thing, and then doing all the blogging myself.

Wes

Hello, October

First, I need to say PUMPKIN!

It's my favorite flavor. I particularly love pumpkin-flavored coffee or coffee creamer. I drink much more coffee this time of year not because of the temperature, but the flavor. Love it!

And now to ReadWriteThink-related topics.

The Android version of the Trading Card app is still in the works--I received a couple emails about that previously, and if I told you that it would be out by the end of September, I apologize. I think we will be closer to mid-October. Sorry. At least we have pumpkin-flavored coffee to hold us over, right?

Word Mover has moved to beta testing, so that is crushing right along. I'll share another Wes original with you after I do my test run.

I will down at the Diamond State Reading Association (DSRA) meeting tomorrow in Dover, DE. They are one of IRA's affiliate councils. This gives a chance to interact face-to-face with teachers and talk about ReadWriteThink.

And speaking of face-to-face, last week...no, two weeks ago...the editors of RWT had one of our face-to-face meetings between the NCTE team and the IRA team. I always love our in-person team meetings. I feel like it fosters a better work environment and improves communication. It's always fun, and I do enjoy getting to see Lisa and Christy and to catch up.

We went over site traffic (up 16% overall!) and where RWT is getting hit, what the trends show as areas to improve. We've come up with some interesting ideas for future fixes. We plan on revamping some older lessons, and we'll of course keep fixing the old interactives (Venn Diagram is already in the works).

The Professional Development side received a lot of traffic this year, which we like to see. We're now discussing how best to improve this section: what's work? What isn't? What's there that shouldn't be? What are teachers looking for when they go to that page?

If you've gone to the Profession Development section of ReadWriteThink, what did you think? Did you find what you were looking for? If you have any thoughts on what RWT can and should be providing, let us know!

More big things to come as we design the work plan for 2013. I'll keep listing out the cool things as they come up. It's an exciting time of year.

Because pumpkin flavor is back in season!

Wes

Venn Diagram Away!

I expected the Venn diagram app/interactive specs to be easy. I expected a quick write up, a few pages, and fairly simplistic functionality.

I was wrong.

Part of my wrongness was an unexpected functionality Becky and I came up with in a meeting--one which we don't even know is possible, but will be pretty cool if it is. I go in to details in case it isn't possible--cause then it's just a huge let down! I'll let you know what the designers say.

The first round of beta testing for the Card Creator app has come and gone. Many thanks to our testers for all their hard work. The feedback was helpful and informative. We're waiting on all the changes from that round of testing to come back in--and then we'll send it out for another round to make sure the changes work.

And then...we'll be done!

I think the most dramatic change to the app is the switch of one of the cards. Upon tester feedback, we removed the Abstract Concept card and added in a Vocabulary Word card. While it is still available I should write up a card for Disappointment and use that change as an example.

Don't get me wrong--I agree with the change. Abstract Concept was a difficult card from the beginning. It is tough to write guiding questions to help a student fill in a card about a concept. It's so...conceptual!

But I liked the idea behind it. Not only getting students to think about concepts such as honor or love or fear, but to guide them to create these cards by helping them deeply analyze the concept. I also really liked the idea of a collection that might comprise Katniss (fictional person), Peta (fictional person), Bow (object), District 12 (fictional place), The Reaping (event), and Courage (Abstract concept)--the idea of having a card to reflect the important aspects of a character was appealing to me.

Alas, it is not to be.

The Vocab Card works so much better. The questions were tough, but the end result is much smoother, and we think more useful. I came up with a couple fun group activities for students even as we brainstormed the questions. No doubt teachers will come up with many more. And eventually we'll have a lesson or two that use the Vocab Card.

I think it was a good decision. I just will miss the Abstract Concept card.

I did spend a lot of time working on the questions for it.

Wes

It's been crazy around here!

It's been Trading Cards, Trading Cards, Trading cards all the time around here! This last week has been a flood of writing and rewriting the guiding questions for the trading card interactive. I've taken several stabs to start us off, and the team has been very good at trimming the questions down. I tend to be verbose--it's my curse. As an editor, I'm pretty good at trimming stuff down to concise phrasing (though, admittedly, not as good as Becky!), but as a writer I am very long-winded.

"We know, Wes. We've seen it on your blog."

Ah, yes. First hand experience. Well...let us continue on then, knowing what we are all in store for.

The Trading Card interactive is in its final stage of revision, and the then the last step--once all the functionality is properly placed--is to fill in the test. We're getting close. My hope is to have the questions finished by the end of the week, and the interactive live by the beginning of next week. I'm behind schedule, but we'll be close.

I do have a preview, though, of the final card:

From this snippet of the final (beta) product (and yes, there are some errors there: Wes is not actually a fictional person, despite how much he might sound like one from time to time), you can see one of the cool new features: the ability to add images!

That is a picture of me grilling on my  patio. I think this was taken in response to "How does the steak look?" I was able to upload this picture into the card and save it there. A much-asked-for feature now included!

This is only one of the many new features introduced in the new card creator. The card type is Fictional Person. As you might guess, this means there is a Real Person card as well. There is also a Real Place card and a Fictional Place card. Also, Object, Event, and Abstract Concept.

We've added a way to group up to 8 cards as a collection and save them all as a single set. For example, I could make the Wes card (Real Person), a Grill card (Object), a Patio card (Real Place), a Hunger card (Abstract Concept), and a BBQ card (Event), and save them all as a Memorial Day Weekend collection. In place of writing an essay "What I did for Memorial Day," I could make a collection of cards and turn that in instead!

I think it's a really great improvement over the old interactive. We hope teachers and parents find some interesting and creative uses for the cards--and if so, let us know!

Wes

Character Trading Cards on the redesign block

I was sure I had posted a blog entry at the end of Jan. Like REALLY sure. And yet I don't see it. So I can only assume I didn't...or the Internet ate it.

I'm pretty sure the Internet gets hungry from time to time. Usually it snacks on emails, I think, but sometimes it gets blog posts, too.

And when it is really hungry, whole webpages.

Anyway, I'm posting now, and I'm going to just run with what I had planned rather than worry about what I previously said.

I'm working on the redesign for Character Trading Cards. This one gets a lot of usage, and we really want kids to be able to save their work and keep their cards. Of course, once we start brainstorming, we don't stop with just the save functionality. The project has bloomed!

First, we wanted different graphic options. The current design is really neat and looks great if you print it in color...and only sort of cool if you print in black and white. And of course both methods use a ton of ink! So we wanted a colored design, a black and white design, and a minimalist/economy design. I'd love to have even more options, but there are timeline and budget considerations.

We want to make a Create-Your-Own Card option for teachers to design cards with their own questions, similar to the new Create-Your-Own Cube.

But wait! There's more!

We thought about these cards, and there are a lot more options out there than just characters. The questions are geared towards fictitious characters from stories...but what if I wanted to make a Mom card? Or a Dad card? Or a card for my teacher? (Cause if there is anyone who should be featured on these cards like a hero, it is parents and teachers!) So let's see if we can make a card for Fictional and Real people!

But then it hit me. My 7th and 8th grade English came back in a rush of spectacular knowledge--and for those who know Mrs. Gibbons (Corpus Christi school, Elsmere, DE), you know what that means.

You see, many kids were taught that a noun is a person, place, or thing. I was told that freshman year of high school, and my friend Dave and I looked at each other, laughed, and said "No. A noun is an essential part of speech whose function it is to state person, place, thing, idea, event, or emotion" (I think it was emotion...that last one always got me in English class.)

And verbs aren't action words. "Verbs are essential parts of speech whose function it is to state action, being, or state of being in reference to it's subject. There are three kinds: transitive, intransitive complete, and intransitive link." We would then have to go on to define three, give a sample sentence of each, and diagram the sentence. And that was 1 question on a test, worth 10 points, and woe be you should you miss something in the definition.

Why, yes, I do believe Mrs. Gibbons is part of the reason I became an editor. Why do you ask?

Anyway, back to trading cards. Why limit the cards to people? Why simply have a Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley card when you can also make a Hogwarts card (place), a Quidditch card (event), a Wand card (thing), a Friendship card (idea), and a Love cad (emotion)? Wouldn't that be awesome? To have students make a collection of cards from a single book about setting and plot and themes rather than just characters?

We're working on ways to allow students to save these cards as collections, too, rather just individually, so that students could make a Harry Potter collection with all of their Harry Potter cards. Or maybe a collection for every book, which would show how the characters changed through the series.

Or to give it a real-world bend, students taking a field trip to Washington, D.C. can make cards about some of the monuments they see as well as cards about the historical figures and events those monuments honor.

So that is my current project. Beefing up the old Character Trading Cards interactive and making it simply a Trading Card interactive.

The change in direction on the questions has been the major hold-up. I have design ideas in mind for the new interface, but I need to rewrite all the questions on the card...and that is going to take some time and pondering.

Though I hope when I write my next blog (in two weeks at most!) I will be reporting to you that I have already done it.

Drat! I spent all my time talking about trading cards and didn't mention my other news.

Ah well. I'll just leave this here, and talk about it next time (hopefully next week).



Wes

I'm out for the year

Last blog of the year. Whew--new year resolution: be better at blogging. I'll seriously try for once a week and really hope for once every other week!

December is a crazy time for us in RWT because we have year-end goals and stats we need to meet., and somehow we are always well above our goals until about Oct, and suddenly we have a lot of catching up and finishing up to do through Nov. I think we fall behind during that time because we start envisioning our work plan for next year and get a little wrapped too up in new projects.

What falls behind, you ask? Well, Lesson Plans for one. We added a load in the first few quarters, but new ones trickled down in Q3, so we had to rush to get the latest ones up in December. We have some going live tonight.

Our latest interactive, too. I had hoped to have K-W-L Creator up and out in Nov at the latest, but alas, it went live just this week! This one was my interactive, design through to posting, so I hope you like it and enjoy it and find it useful. Interesting learning process, and I look forward to putting what I learned to good use next year as we look for new interactives and--dare I say it?--mobile apps!

And some projects, well, we just don't get them out in time! We are so very close to have the new Cube Collection read to post, but we had a few hiccups and glitches and design slow-downs, and we won't make it. Though I am confident enough that I will share it with you, and if you want to take it for a test drive, feel free! And give us some feedback.

So here it is Cube Collection Beta!

As you can see, it is an update on our old Bio-Cube and Mystery Cube with the addition of the Story Cube and the Create-Your-Own Cube, a much-asked-for upgrade now made possible with the Work Saver. This was a fun revision to work on, and I'm excited to see it go live and be used. I think teachers and students are going to love it, and that is the most important part.

So that is a little look at some of the projects I did this year. I would be remiss if I didn't highlight the interactive efforts of my team members: Becky got the stellar Resume Generator out a few months ago, and soon after that, Bridget's Puzzle Me Words game got released.

As a whole, I don't even know how many lessons, strategy guides, printouts, and videos were added--a lot, I know that much!

What's coming for next year? All kinds of fun stuff. We're gearing up for IRA Convention in April/May...but I won't tell you what we have in store yet. Two sessions, I'll tell you that. RWT is sponsoring two sessions and the convention, but we have a plan for something even more fun. But I'll hold off on spilling the beans.

Yeah, I think I'll wait for January to fill you in on what RWT is looking to do in 2012. But needless to say, it's going to be awesome!

Have a Merry Chirstmas, a Happy Holiday, and a Great Winter Break, and I'll be back and blogging (I hope with more regularity!) in 2012.

Wes

And We're Back!

Minor computer issues have prevented me from updating this before now.

Last time, I think I mentioned my up-coming 5K run. It went well--better than expected even--and I have since done a second 5K which went even better. I'm thinking there might be a third in my future, some time in November perhaps.

What's going on in the IRA offices?

This week, we did a shoot for the next Convention Insider, due out in November. I dropped in on another coworker to ask who she wanted to celebrate as a educator during IRA's Celebrating Teaching initiative for the 2012 convention.

I was also at the Diamond State Reading Associating (DSRA) conference a few weeks back to promote IRA, ReadWriteThink.org, and Thinkfinity (who sponsors ReadWriteThink through grants). I find it fun to get out to the smaller, local conferences and meet with teachers, our users, to see what they like about the site and what theyw ould like to see.

I was surprised by the number of teachers who said they loved and used ReadWriteThink but that they didn't know some of our interactives had a save capability. Why, yes! Yes, they do!

Acrostic Poems
Letter Generator
Essay Map
Persuasion Map
Compare and Contrast Map
Diamante Poem
Resume Generator
Puzzle Me Words

We're still rolling it out on other interactives as the time goes on.

We are also working on what  we want to be working on next year. (Follow that?) So if you have any suggestions for us, let me know!

That's it for now. I'll try to find out something really interesting for new week!

Wes

RWT secrets revealed: K-W-L chart creator!

It's been a month--a month!--since my last blog. That just won't do!  Though I have a good excuse and a couple doctor notes.

What to talk about now that it is July?

Hmmm.

Maybe I should unveil my big ReadWriteThink project of the year....

Sure, let's go with that.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have been working on redesigns of RWT interactives: giving them a new luck, adding new features, and updating them with the Work Saver functionality. What I did not mention is that we are also working on three new interactives for the site. We hope to have them up for the new school year, but we don't have a set-in-stone timeline yet.

I won't reveal them all (yet) but I will talk about the one that I spearheaded, the interactive K-W-L chart creator.

I assume you know what a K-W-L chart is, but in case you don't, here is the gist. The name stands for what I Know, what I Want to know, and what I Learned. It begins as a pre-reading exercise in which students list what they know about a topic and what they want to learn about the topic before reading about the topic, filling in the K column and W column respectively. After the reading is finished, the students then list what they learned in the L column.

If it is just a chart that students fill in, then why make it an interactive? After all, RWT already has a printout.

This is where the Work Saver feature comes in handy--it allows us to think about interactives as something teachers and students can go back to rather than just use once and immediately print out a final result. It gives us the ability to consider whole-classroom uses.

The idea with the K-W-L chart creator is that a teacher could start a whole-class discussion about the topic the students are going to read--ideal if the classroom is fortunate to have an interactive whiteboard, but that's not necessary. The class collectively discusses what everyone knows about the topic, and the teacher fills out one K column for the class, maybe the W column as well. The teacher can then save the file and send it to all the students so they can fill in the L column as an individual assignment.

So there is a sneak peek of what we have in the works for this year. And there are two other new inteactives coming. I'll reveal those in the upcoming months, along with screenshots when I can manage.

And that does it for this week. See you back here later for more behind the scenes at IRA! Maybe I'll sneak into some meetings and see what other people are working on in the building.

Wes