Showing Off the Apps

Every other week at least? Really, Wes? Really? (My coworkers will get that joke....)

Yeah, it seems that the blog I had planned to write last week should have been written and posted last week to keep up with my goal of posting AT LEAST every other week.

Alas, alack!

I'll make up for it this week with pretty pictures and cool announcements.

Announcement 1: Trading Cards: The App is going live for iPads! The exact date is not known, but I am submitting the interactive to iTunes today for review. We're guessing it should be up and out there for download in a couple weeks <fingers crossed>.

And now for a pretty picture:

Sample of the Trading Card App printout

This is a final print out of a Fictional Person card from our interactive. I made this during testing, so it is a bit quick and dirty, but I thought it was pretty cool, so I decided to use it here.

The App allows used to add in their own pictures to the top area--I grabbed this one online. I believe it was one of the promotional posters for the movie Sucker Punch.

Note that me mentioning this movie here in how way reflects ReadWriteThink's view of the movie nor the views of any of the other editors or our parent organizations. I thought the movie was AMAZING! I was expecting a shallow, action-packed thrill-ride and found something that blew my mind. Haunted me for days! I'm not going in to any of my theories here in this post, but I did enjoy the movie so much that I made a couple cards based on the it, hence the Rocket card you see.

The App also allows for users to pick from a variety of styles for the card. I liked this one for Rocket because it is less stylized--which leans more focus on to action-packed image!--and does have a little softness and femininity in the way the purple fades, but is still a bold and vibrant color.

OK, that is image and announcement 1. Onto number 2.

RWT's second app, spear-headed by the NCTE team, was released to us last week for our first round of testing and it wicked cool! It is based on our Word Movie interactive but goes well beyond that in functionality and shear awesome. Similar to the interactive, you have a passage from a famous work from which you can select words to make into found poetry.

Unlike the interactive, it looks sleek, makes the words from the passage look like magnetic poetry strips, and has text from a few famous works preloaded, and has a large word bank that can be used instead of famous works. Users can also add their own words in case they have a particular list they need/want to use.

I have absolutely and totally NO permission from the NCTE team to post this picture, so I hope they won't get mad at me for doing so, but the initial testing  went so well and the app looks great; I wanted to show it off.

I call this poem Play on Words. Get it?

I didn't do much of a poem; some of my other works were longer. You can see the word bank is on the bottom, pops up and down into the work space. There are different background options as well. The words can be resized (I made them large since I was only using 2), rotated, and colored. The fonts can also be switched. Lots of options.

Again, this is alpha build stuff here, so things might change before it is finished and released.

For next time, maybe I'll see if Lisa or Christy want to chat about the latest interactive they have been working on, a redesign of the Print Press.We were testing that recently, too, and I'm excited to have that one released on the site. Very useful, very full-featured, and it looks great! I think the final release is scheduled for early September--but if I can get either of them to take a turn at posting here, they can probably give an actual date.

That's it for now. I'm out!

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

Back from Vacation

I was out last week, and the week before that was massively shortened by the US holiday right in the middle--the International Reading Association offices are closed on Fridays through Summer, so with Wednesday off for the 4th of July, we also got Thursday the 5th off.

It's been a while since I've been in the office!

I've been digging out from the email barrage, much relieved to see it isn't that bad, and I'll be sorting through the work load.

So basically, what I'm saying here is, I'll be back with a more substantial update later this week, but I wanted to get something down here, just so I wasn't missed too much.

Wes

After Trading Cards: What's Next for Wes?

Summer, you move too fast! Already 18 days into June? When did that happen?

Probably in the last two weeks....

During which we finally wrapped up Trading Card Creator! This new interactive was pushed live last week, and we even included a sample card collection to show teachers how this might be used in class. (Click Save As and save the .rwt file down to your computer, then start the Trading Card interactive, click the Open tab at the top right, and open that .rwt file: instant Wes-created Shakespeare collection!)

This post will be the last time I'm going to mention Trading Card. For a few weeks, anyway.

Why for a few weeks? Because we're only mostly done with it. Not only is the online interactive version getting a Create Your Own Card feature (just like the Create Your Own Cube in the Cube Creator), which is not yet implemented, but we are still working on the tablet app version of the Trading Cards, and that's going in to beta testing in the next few weeks.

Exciting--and mystifying. App development is not easy work, and I am very thankful to have a great team to work with throughout the process.

So now what? What's next after Trading Cards (beyond more Trading Cards, that is)?

I've been looking at some of our interactive traffic to see which interactives are used, but I also looked at which interactives are just...old and "dingy" and in need of repair. After all, just because there is little traffic  to an interactive does not mean that interactive is bad or  not useful--it just might not be useful in that form. It might not be appealing or intuitive or catchy.

So right now, I have my eye on Venn Diagram. I have always felt this was a great interactive--a useful one!--that suffers in delivery (there are separate interactives for the 2- and 3-circle diagrams, for instance) and design. We can make this better. It's a great tool for literature. For math. For science. For every subject.

And I think we can update it quickly, easily, and as both an interactive and an app. So that's one thing on Wes's plate currently (and there are many more, but most of those projects aren't as interesting so I don't talk about them here).

But that's already in the works; that's Wes's after Trading Cards. What is Wes's after Venn Diagrams?

Maybe you should tell me.

We have 59 student interactives on ReadWriteThink.org. Fourteen of them are updated or completely new in the past couple years. Printing Press, Comic Creator, Word Mover, and the Venn Diagram are already in some way in the works (if you want to give feedback as we start planning the new Comic Creator, we are open to it).

So what I want to know is, what interactive do you use? Is it fine as is, or should we be looking to update it? Does the work saver functionality make sense for that interactive?s What do you or your students/kids really like about that interactive? What can be improved?

The better feedback we get, the more we can do to improve ReadWriteThink.org's offerings and to get you the tools and resources you want!

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

Wes's Highlights From IRA Convention

I only got to see two sessions at the Convention this year, but they were both awesome! I'm a little bias in my opinion, though, being that both sessions where the ReadWriteThink sessions and I'm a ReadWriteThink editor. But hey, there it is!

I spent a good chunk of the rest of my time at IRA's Bookstore. If you were there, I was the one happily scampering about saying, "Can I help anyone find anything? Answer any questions for you? Make up completely false facts about Chicago?" Towards the end, that last one became, "Recite some poetry?"

Yes, that options was picked a couple times.

Yes, I did actually recite poetry for attendees.

I also got to visit with some of IRA's authors! Jan Miller Burkins and Valerie Ellery both had book signing sessions in the Bookstore this year while I was there.


Jan is the author of IRA's Prevented Misguided Reading, Coaching for Balance, and Practical Literacy Coaching, and she's one of ReadWriteThink's authors too, having done a few strategy guides for our site.


Valerie is the author of IRA's Creating Strategic Readers, which I had the pleasure of copyediting back when I was a Production Editor in the books department at IRA.

In case it wasn't completely obvious, I'm the one who appears both pics.

I also got a chance to chat with Doug Buehl (Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines, Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning), Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Lapp (Text Complexity, In a Reading State of Mind--which I also worked on), but no one conveniently walked by with a camera to snap a shot with me with them.

I do enjoy being able to catch up with authors at convention--wonderful people full of energy and a true passion to educate. Always striving to do more to help teachers help their students.

Wes

Getting back to work

And now we are back! What a busy-fun week that was. I had hoped to get a couple blogs posted from convention, but I didn't have time during the day and didn't have a computer with me at night. I could have done it from my phone, I suppose, but I don't care for writing anything long that way.

Maybe next year I'll have some sort of tablet device with me.

I thought the IRA Convention was a smashing success. I got to talk a bit to Kenny and Riley from Page Turner Adventures -- always fun to see them. Didn't get a chance to get in any shoots with them this year, though. Drats! Another missed opportunity to saturate the the 'net with more of me!

[Collective sign of relief heard from all other RWT Editors--and every other coworker around me]

Our two sessions were packed this year, standing room only. That was pretty cool. Big thanks to our presenters for making the sessions a success. The sessions were taped, and the links will be shared online soon, so if you missed it, you'll be able to catch them.

And now that I'm thinking back to it, I should have taken some pictures of people scanning out QR code! I heard from a few attendees that they had a lot of fun looking for the RWT QR codes we had scattered around the convention. We're still tallying entries, and should be alerting winners soon.

A lot of things were left in the works while we were gone, and now that we're back, they are ready for review and further processing. The redesign of the old Character Trading Card interactive, for one. I've already been playing with the new card creator this morning, and I am thoroughly liking it! I hope to share that link out with you later this week, once we've had an internal review. I'm excited about this one!

There's always more to talk about, but that would put me in to more long-winded than usual, so I'll stop now. More convention and post-convention updates later this week or possibly next week.

'Cause it is going to be a busy week!

Wes