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

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

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