 Good afternoon or good morning depending on where you're listening My name is Kyle Zumbar and I'm here to talk to you about authentic voices Which is a project that I set up a few years back And I really don't want to say too much before I start because I want my students to speak for themselves So I hope you'll enjoy this first call I'm nice as a clay. I used to fly all the time. Now I talk out to talk to nobody Now I use to think that life is, life isn't for, life is for everybody. I reach my goal Now as I'm coming up at like the sun My journey has just begun I hope you enjoyed listening to that as much as I do every time So proud of the student and proud that we have a place where she can share her beautiful poetry and her voice reading it To give you some quick background, my name is Kyle Zumbar. I'm a technology integration specialist in northern virginia Just outside of washington dc And I have the awesome job of getting to work with teachers to use more technology in their classrooms One of my passions is literacy and authentic literacy And so a number of teachers and I got together and read the book the digital writing workshop by trey hex And we were really inspired by the points he makes in this book about how to take the writing process and do and go digital with it And incorporate all those important digital literacy skills We've joined his name and participated there and brainstormed ideas and talked a lot about what we wanted to do In addition to that inspiration I also credit teachers teaching teachers a weekly podcast that I subscribe to that I love listening to that Talks a lot about a really powerful place called youth voices another website where students can upload their work To the world get comments get feedback and I became quite a lurker on youth voices And I was really interested in this The teachers I worked with were much more comfortable with a site that I kind of managed and controlled So we went ahead and set up our own wiki spaces and called it authentic voices The number of reasons why we went with wiki spaces One was that it was free And so we really wanted something that we knew we could maintain Second you can create student accounts without student email addresses, which was really important to us We have a number of students that didn't have email or didn't have school appropriate email And so we wanted that feature I also thought that authentic voices would work well with the idea of bringing in audio and The students work and to that end that's worked out really well It's been really easy for the students to get used to entering their work and really easy for them to upload their audio files Speaking of auto files. We use the free download Audacity as how we had that as the manner which students recorded themselves audacity If you don't already know it is a free program that Allows you to record your voice have multiple tracks going and do lots of editing And if you first look at it sometimes interface is intimidating But I found that the students very quickly found the record and the playback and the stop buttons And got comfortable with having different tracks and deleting them and starting them where they needed to And you can export these files as wave or mp3. So it worked great for us I want to stop and tell the story of the first student who actually Put something up on wiki spaces The teacher sent him to me and he said oh, I think um, d'andre is ready to record today So I told him about the project and he was pretty excited And um, he got some headphones on and he started to read his poem to record it And he stopped and he looked at me and he said can I change the poem? And I said, yeah And he went back and he changed a few things that he realized didn't sound right once he started reading So then he then he recorded again Still found some stuff that what didn't quite say the things the way he wanted to went back and revised again And if you're an english language arts teacher out there listening I know that you you know the value of this that it's so hard to get students to revise And in this case where he was listening to his own voice And he knew that it was something that was going to be published. He really got into the revision in a way that he hadn't previously Um, so this led to our first how-how with this with this project Which is that revising uh recording leads to revising And we saw time and time again with a student that you know said a piece was done But then when it came time to actually revive record it and publish it started to go back and Make more corrections and seem to really revise in a more authentic way So if you're thinking of doing any kind of project where the students are working on a piece and they um You want them to do more revision? I really encourage you to think about ways to have them record themselves and play it back Whether it's on their cell phones. It's using audacity Something that feels authentic to them besides just reading it quietly to themselves So I want you to hear um de andre's piece and so uh, here he is So I think you'll agree that all his revisions were worth it I've been lucky enough in this project to work with a fabulous english language arts teacher And most of the writing credit absolutely goes to her This next piece was an assignment where she had them create a metaphor and um This girl really was having a tough time with her life at this point And I love that she could get that out through this metaphor go back and read it on the website There's also a few essays there. Um, it's a personal narrative by a student who had his first running with the law Very powerful to read and to listen to his voice as he reads it We were able to do a few digital stories too. We had some middle schoolers post their digital stories up on Authentic voices and it was great that the kids could see their work published and watch each other's and give each other feedback In general the students love the project. They're really excited to post their work on authentic voices a few occasionally are pretty shy or hesitant and We make sure they get a private place to record Many students write down the website. They want to share it with friends or a family They post it on their own facebook or um, sometimes their parents post it In fact, I had one student who was really struggling with her mom at that point in her life But when she shared the poem with her mom, her mom was thrilled and posted it on her facebook and sure enough the next day We'd had 50 fresh hits. Um, mostly from this proud mama This next piece is written by a student who said to me he'd never thought of himself as an author before this I just love that piece. I'm that student's an english language learner And so I love that he had a chance to practice his Spoken word as well as his written word with this project We've had hits on the website from all over the world, which is really exciting. We've gotten 48 states I haven't figured out which two are missing yet. Um, and from countries around the world So it's been great for students to see that it really empowers them and allows themselves to see themselves as authors I tweet all the time and students have posted new work and try to get more hits from them But I'm especially looking for a collaborating classroom someone that will Also enroll their students in the wiki and will post their student's work So one place I've reached out for that is through the global classroom project that michael graffin and div ranger established Last year So I got to be a part of their founding document their manifesto And really looking for many ways to connect classrooms around the world But really hoping that authentic voices could find a collaborating school this way We had lots of fault starts lots of people that replied and Said they were interested and were checking out the page and joined the wiki as a teacher But as of yet we haven't had any hits on the project itself itself Which is to really have students writing on common themes, whether it's family or change or You know some of the other pieces that you've seen us write about already just names, you know sharing about different names I did have a friend who was teaching an adult esl class And so as a class they logged on and read some of the pieces and composed a response together So you can see here what one of the classrooms wrote back about one of the poems about a kid's birthday party More excitingly was that at one point. Finally a school in new york I set up accounts for their students and they got on one day and they started replying to our students work It was so exciting. I was getting flooded with emails from wiki spaces that someone had updated And this is a really a moving exchange between The girl who wrote the poem I played at the very beginning changes and a student in new york Where she really talks about how she connects with the message of the poem that she's been through changes And she's made some bad choices and our student wrote back and and shared with some more advice for her So I just this experience has really shown us that Authentic audiences help writers bloom In an effort to recreate more of the magic that happened with that new york classroom I decided that one thing I could do is be more specific in one theme that other classrooms could write about and could contribute to authentic voices So the english language arts teacher and I decided that family was a great topic that all teens around the world can relate to She had her students write essays about family interdependence And then we recorded those and posted those on authentic voices And the hope was that being more specific and being really targeted in a date and all of the rest of that that we would get Some classrooms out there that would also want to write about family interdependence or other themes about family And so we posted our work and here's one that you can listen to yourself They show each other how to handle problems and they support each other when help is needed They show each other how to set goals and make care for one another One time my family depended on me was when my stepmother went to the doctor and I needed to take care of the kids that she babysat The day before I babysat my stepmother asked me if I wanted to and if I had time I said yes the next morning I went to her house and waited for all the kids to get there My stepmother's appointment wasn't until 10 a.m So as I took the elementary kids to wait for the school bus My stepmother stayed inside with the younger kids that do not go to school yet So, um, we put our thoughts out there and we waited and we waited and we waited and no other classrooms did end up participating In that project and so that was another challenge that um, I met and I'm trying to work on So as I move forward, I'm continuing to think about how to be specific So that people get right away with the projects about and they know how to participate and that I'm clear with the teacher About what they need to do on their end and maybe what support they might need I think we'll also move to a blog format instead of the wiki spaces. I think people are more familiar with it They get have to comment and so forth But I'll definitely keep trying and keep experimenting with teachers so that the student voices can be here heard A couple other projects that I'd like to mention that are out there that I think are really worth checking out Um, one is quad blogging. It's quad blogging.net And you can also follow at deputy mitchell if you want to know more But basically four classrooms pair sort of partner up and take turns responding to each other's blogs This is a great way to have a built-in audience Where you know that your kids work is going to get read and your kids get the experience of reading work from another classroom Similarly, um, the writers club has started up Which is um, a lot like youth voices and what we're trying to get Accomplished with authentic voices You can see there that they've got participation from around the world with different classrooms Contributing and sharing their writing. So I think that's a really exciting project And I'm hoping I can get some teachers involved with that this year On our in my school division where I work they did purchase edgy blogs this year for teachers So that's been great. I've worked with a couple teachers already that have set up those blogs and are getting their students writing out there Here's one example and she and another English language arts teacher are partnering So they know their kids at least will have the other classrooms that are responding I have another teacher that i'm working with that is hoping to do some podcasting So i'm excited so that she'll have that audio piece on her blog as well Until then I will keep presenting and keep sharing and collaborating getting more ideas from people I just really believe that when students have the chance to publish to the world and to record themselves The writing transforms and it stops becoming an exercise that they're turning into the teacher Or is going to end up in the waste basket in a few years, but instead is something that they're contributing to the The wider work that's out there or as ellen november would say the learning legacy So I hope this listening to this gave you some ideas about how you might want to get your student voices out there I think It's so valuable to have that recorded piece and I hope this got you excited about thinking about that and not just having kids put text out there And I would really encourage you if you haven't already the the world is so flat now You know just jump on twitter and and find partners global classroom projects A great way to meet up with other teachers and just even launch your own projects through there And i'm also really open to feedback and ideas So I'd love if you connected with me through twitter or through the through my little baby blog that I've started Or through authentic voices because I'd love more ideas about how you might want to collaborate or How you think those two sites can be improved Thank you so much for letting me participate in kato online conference this year. It's been an honor and