It's Been Two Months?

More than two months, even. Ouch! I need to get back on my blogging horse.

What have I been up to?

Well, first was Winter Break, which was a solid two weeks. And then a January and February filled with missed days due to snow and ice and cold. Not my favorite weather.

In that time, I had two cavities filled, released the Android version of Trading Cards, launched the new Video Library section on ReadWriteThink, and finished Haiku, both the interactive and app versions. I know, crazy. Two cavities? I brush everyday--electric toothbrush and everything!--and use mouth wash. It's the flossing, really. I'm bad at it, and I know it, and I'm trying to do better.

A haiku about my dentist visit!

With the new year underway, I tallied the traffic from 2013, and we found we had a record year: over 20 million visitors to ReadWriteThink.org! Thank you so much! It really helps us push forward, knowing we are reaching so many educators and students.

So what's coming up?

I have one more interactive on the redesign block: Crossword. Specs are in, I've had multiple discussions with the designer, and the coding is underway. It is a massive undertaking, even after all the other app work we've done. We always seem to have some new idea to push the envelope on what our apps can do.

Lisa has a few interactives in redesign: Fact Fragment Frenzy, Hero's Journey, and Word Matrix. I'll keep you post on those as they move in to testing; I think we are more likely to see those before Crossword.

International Reading Association's 2014 annual conference is fast approaching. New Orleans! The Big Easy! I am looking forward to that. Becky, Lisa, Shannon, and I will be there--or at least they will. I assume I will; they usually like to have me around to move heavy boxes at the very least. As we get closer, and our schedules get firmed up, I'll share with you what we will be doing and where you can catch up with us.

I'm sure I'll have more inside information for you soon, and if we're lucky the weather will stop getting in the way of my working. At the very least, I want discuss project-based learning. So many topics. Just need to keep on it.

Have a great day,

Wes

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

Last Post for the Year

Today is my last day in the office for the year, and I'm getting out early!

It's a busy day, and I have a few announcements to make because we had a bunch of projects wrap up recently.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd have something fun and cool to show off. Turns out I have a couple.  First is a quick video about our Trading Card app:

I hope that works, embedded in there like that. Seems like it should.

Second, Printing Press is now live and looks awesome! That was a big project for Lisa and Christy, and they  really knocked it out of the park. Maybe next post I'll make part of the post in the printing press and paste it up here. I should have done that with this post. Alas, my creativity comes to me too late!

I've talked about one of the projects for next year being a potential mobile-friendly version of ReadWriteThink. We made a survey about what our users want to see on such a site, and we've just pushed it live. Please take a moment to answer the questions and help us make the best possible site we can for our tablet, smart phone, and mobile device users. Which can include the students, if we see that that is the trend among the responders.

That's it for me for 2012! Catch you in the new year. Have a safe and happy holiday session.

Wes

Not a Millionaire

Despite a weekend Vegas and $550 million dollar lottery, I am not a millionaire. Ah well, maybe next time.

So what am I going to talk about this week?

I'm at a loss, actually. I've had a catch-up week, coming back from a trip to Vegas (productive and fun!) and then a major US holiday last week. I spent the beginning of November prepping for the NCTE convention and the Doug Buehl webinar (which went extremely well--we have the archive up for free is you missed it). I came back and am kind of in a holding pattern. I'm waiting for Venn Diagram and the Android version of Trading Cards to be available for testing. I've been doing a lot of small, uninteresting-to-write-about job maintenance projects: follow-up on emails, researching traffic projections, designing banners for the homepage.


That last one is a new thing for me--my coworker Becky usually handles that for the IRA side, along with Christy on the NCTE side. But alas, Becky is no longer in the office having given birth to her third child this past weekend.

The last few weeks have been kind of boring for me, I guess! So let's look ahead: What does December have in store for the RWT team?

The already mentioned testing of apps is a big one. We have a 2013 work plan to draft out (which will give me more to talk about as we figure out what we are looking to do in 2013). The survey for the mobile site should be out next month as well.

One of my goals in December is to get out in to our social media platter and figure out how we can be more interactive with users. Fix up the areas that we aren't really representing ourselves. We have a Pinterest account, for instance, and I've not really familiarized myself with using Pinterest.

I know one area we will be adding something in the next couple weeks is YouTube. But I'll save that post for next time, when I have something to show you rather than just talk about. The showing is important for this one.

Wes

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

Guess what the topic of this post is about?

"Gee, maybe how you can't even keep up with an every-other-week posting schedule?"

....... No.

"Really, Wes? Really?"

...... Sorry.

It's about mobile technology!

First, I'm going to wow you with a couple links to a couple blog posts that are all kinds of awesome. A huge Thank You to Julie Ramsay who featured the Trading Card app as part of her post in her blog over the weekend. And even bigger THANK YOU (yes, I actually made it bigger) to her students, who used the Trading Card app in class and then posted about it in their class blog! They included their samples, which was really awesome, being able to see students using something I worked on.

Second, the Android version is nearly in our hands for testing. I'm going to guess that is still a couple weeks at least before it is downloadable.

Third, Word Mover went through beta with flying colors and is well on its way to being out there. I did a poem or two for testing. I suppose I can share one of the masterpieces.

The assignment was to right a poem about a book. I picked my favorite, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Does it make sense even if you've read the book Neverwhere? Maybe. But it was a fun exercise, using the limited words to try to write about the book!

Fourth, RedWriteThink is investigating making a mobile site, an abbreviated, mobile-optimized version to make browsing on a phone or tablet much easier, faster, and cheaper on your data plan. This idea is only just being to be floated around the ground, and we have a lot of research to do about what sort of content to put on it, how will it look, and even is this something teachers want?

Which is why I'm writing about it here--is this something you might want? Do you browse for lessons and classroom ideas on a mobile device? Would you if it was made easier and faster? Or is this something that will likely remain a desktop job for a while longer and making new apps and interactives would be a better use of our time?

We want to know what you want! How else would we know what to get you?*

Fifth, I have another 5k run coming up this weekend. I did one earlier in the month, and am looking to beat my previous time (and this time I'm running with friends; the hope is to beat all of them, too!). It's also a costume run. Fun fun! I'll update next time with pictures from that.

Wes

*This argument never flies with my wife when it is gift-giving time. She insists that I should be able to figure something out on my own. Apparently the surprise is part of the fun. I'd rather know I was getting something I wanted than be surprised by something I didn't.

We Have an App!

I shall keep this one short and sweet. Or perhaps it is sweet because it is short?

I'm thinking of the Muppet's Christmas Carol when Fozzywigg makes his Christmas speech and Statler and Waldorf (as Jacob and Robert Marley) heckle him "That's it?" "It was dumb!" "It was pointless!" "It was obvious!" "It was...short...." "We LOVED it!"

<crickets>

No? Just me? Okaaaaay, moving on.

We have an app! We aren't officially marketing it yet, and we've only had one successful download from the iTunes store as far as I know. So here it is, another Wes-is-posting-something-without-clearing-it-first exclusive: the Trading Card App in iTunes!

Hope you like it!

Even more, I hope you can download and install it....

And for all the Android OS users out there, we have the Android version in the works, and we hope to be testing it soon, and have it released at the end of the month. We might need some beta testers for that...any volunteers?

Wes

Poems and QRs

 

In honor of national poetry month, I shall recite (um, link to) a few of my favorite poems:

The Jabberwocky by Carrol Lewis
Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

And since I can't find a link to the specific section of Fox in Sock, I shall simply list one of the my favorite lines from the Dr. Sues book:

"When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...

...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle."

I have tried to keep this line memorized, but I often screw it up in the quoting. It's tough.

And now I shall ramble about what I am currently working on.

Have I talked about QR Codes yet?

Hmmm, seems like I mentioned them two months ago and never mentioned it again. Bad, Wes! Bad!

QR Codes are funky looking little blocks of black pixels that can be scanned with most smart phones and tablet devices if you have the right software/app. If you look up QR Reader or something similar in iTunes or Google Play or what have you, you'll likely find several for free. You scan the code with the app and then are magically whisked away to a website.

Go on, give it a try, I'll wait.

Yeah, right from your monitor--it should work!

Pretty neat, right?

Anyway, at IRA's Convention in Chicago this year (this month!), ReadWriteThink is hosting a little scavenger hunt. We've got 5 different QR Codes printed on posters scattered around the Convention Center. While some of the QR Codes are repeated, they are color coded as well; each of the different colors will reveal a code word that completes a sentence.

Find all the words, complete the phrase, and send it to us for a chance to win!

"What if I don't have a smart phone?"

Excellent question! Each of the posters also lists the URL of the clue word--just copy that down and go that that webpage, you will see the clue.

Being the generous guy that I am, I'll even give you a heads up as to where you can find all the clues--you just need to get there and scan the code (or write down the URL).

The Green clue is at the International Reading Association's Bookstore in the exhibit hall.

The Red clue is located at the two ReadWriteThink.org sessions.

The Blue clue is located at the the National Council of Teachers of English's booth in the exibit hall.

The Grey clue is located at the entrance to the exhibit halls.

The White clue is located in your IRA Convention program.

Other than the white, none of those colors are even remotely close to the correct shade, but you get the idea.

If you are going to be at IRA's Convention this year, keep your eyes open and your phone at the ready.

And all of the RWT editors will be there too, at our sessions or our organization's booth/bookstore. Stop by and chat! We love to hear from our users.

Wes

And away we go!

I know what you're thinking:

ZOMG! There is a ReadWriteThink blog?!?! How could this be? I had no idea! I would have been following this from the beginning!!! How did I MISS this?


Whoah now! Hold up. No need to worry. Your internet skills have not disappeared on you.

This blog is new. Kind of.

I ported it over from where it lived before.There, it was my blog, and I used it to feature both IRA and ReadWriteThink.org stuff. Now, it is our blog--and by our, I mean mine and the other editors of ReadWriteThink.org should they decide to use it--and it will focus much more on ReadWriteThink and less about what's going on in IRA.

But IRA and NCTE will get their mentions. After all, we are a part of both organizations, and we end up hearing about or helping projects in both organizations. That's just the way it rolls.

I, Wes Ford, Associate Editor for ReadWriteThink.org at the International Reading Association, will likely remain your host for most of the time; however, I will try to get some of the other editors to jump on and blog a little bit.

I guess I should properly introduce my coworkers:

On NCTE's side:
Lisa Fink, Project Manager
Christy Simon, Publications Developer

On IRA's side:
Bridget Hilferty, Project Manager
Becky Fetterolf, Senior Editor
Wes Ford, Associate Editor

I'm not my own coworker, I suppose, but it felt odd not to include myself in the list of ReadWriteThink editors.

Anyway, that's all I really have time for today. I need to get back to the RWT Super Secret Project of the Summer!

I'll give you a hint: RWT is going mobile. We're designing a couple apps for tablets that not only can teachers use in the classroom, but that will be fun enough for students to want to use them outside of the classroom.

That's the goal, anyway. Fingers crossed!

Next time, I'll talk a little bit about the dreaded Summer Slide and what RWT is doing for parents to keep kids from academic slip students sometimes experience over summer break. Or maybe I'll have Becky tell you about that--I don't know!

Wes, RWT Editor