Thursday, May 10, 2007

Technical Difficulties

Ugh! Today I went to fast forward the tape I used to recorded my class conversation about writing workshops. Sadness. It didn't record. Yet, I'm not that upset by it. I'm guessing this is an abnormal t-r response? :) Even when I discovered the error, I felt no disappointment. Weird. What does that mean?

I wasn't really sure if the conversation had any brilliant quotes anyhow--and now I'll never know. However, by having the conversation, I feel students provided me with honest answers and left me wanting to interview one student -- which I did today.

The conversation was fascinating! Eye-opening, intriguing, puzzling, amazing! Honestly! It left me rejuvenated -- something difficult to do with less than two weeks of school left. Brandon was honest and insightful. The interview lead to a truly philosophical conversation over lunch about writing with two of the social studies teachers. I have some really great ideas on how to change things for next year.

Technical difficulties be damned! :) I used pen and paper to document the interview!

P.S. My book study just finished Strategic Writing by Deborah Dean. The last chapter strictly focused on revision! And she included several resources that I requested from the library. Two arrived today!

5 comments:

Jason Clarke said...

How awesome to do a student interview like that. I'm going to steal that idea (Cindy has taught me how to be a professional thief, and I think I'm getting pretty good at). I think it's interesting that you weren't worried about losing your tape. Data lost or lesson learned, or just plain "whatever"--any way you look at it it is what it is.

Anonymous said...

Stacey, I'm glad you're not beating yourself up for the lost tape. I guess I'm assuming you were sat in on the discussion so you heard it first hand. Sometimes it's more important to live in the moment (hmm, I think my writing group taught me that). I do, however, feel VERY frustrated that you've given us this tantalizing little tidbit about the individual interview. At least give us a hint as you what you learned.

Bud Hunt said...

I'm with Natalie. Share, share. Not only will writing about the experience be useful and interesting to us -- but it'll also be quite helpful to you -- it'll serve as a record of the event and will actually be data.
Crazy cool how this stuff intersects/overlaps, huh?

respo said...

I am with Natalie - we need more about the interview. Also, way to go with it! I am impressed with your calm attitude (the same thing happened to me, except I figured out it wasn't going to record about 2 minutes before the converstaion was starting.)

camdaram said...

I think it's awesome you weren't disappointed. It means you know one thing change the great stuff you're doing or going to be the deciding factor.
Thanks for the book title. I just got some Amazon bucks I need to use. Score!