Technology Giving Wide Wings to Creativity

As long as I keep seeing transformative and exciting examples of how technology can help the next generation of professionals acquire new skills in different areas, I'll advocate its use.

That's exactly what happened with me some days ago. I was at the Apple Store with my kids, looking for the present my husband had asked for his 40th birthday, his first Mac. In fact, his first computer! Up to that point he'd just use all the gadgets I would put aside or my kids' computers or mine. Anyway, I was there talking to the salesman while my kids had fun with an iPad Mini. They were giggling, whispering, having real fun. So much fun indeed that I thought that they were certainly playing a cool game.

To my surprise, when I closed the deal and invited them to eat something. They asked me to come closer, for they had something to show me. I had a blast! In just some minutes, all by themselves, they figured out how to use the app iMovie and were, in fact, enjoying themselves as movie producers. The result? Check for yourself how far kids' creativity can travel if they have the means and freedom to go beyond the regular, the ordinary:




I guess that this video is what I've been always trying to show teachers. Technology empowers, decentralizes learning in ways that we should really reconsider our roles as educators not because everyone else is telling us so, but because our kids, our students need guidance, expertise and wisdom to move forward and succeed now and beyond when they become professionals.

One thing they were having trouble doing? Transferring the video to youtube. I also showed them how important it was to delete the video from the public iPad Mini and from the app due to digital safety issues.

Learners' creativity harnessed by technology and guided by an educator's wisdom is certainly an explosive combination. That's why I'll make sure that I help more and more educators get there in their digital literacies. I'll make sure that I give them support to let their learners express themselves and fly even higher.

What have you been doing to encourage your students' creative juices to emerge?

Post-itING - Make Post-Its a Living Learning Object in your Classroom

Think of three ways of using post-its in your classroom to enhance learning.

Write them down in three different post-its. Then, try to come up with two more ideas based on the first three ones and add them just below the three first ideas.

Do you feel how they can come alive for learning?

So, how about starting a post-itING movement. Adding the idea of action and movement to very special, gluing pieces of paper?

What if you took this idea to the teachers' room and shared it with your colleagues, challenging them to keep adding more ideas to the three original ones? Endless possibilities, right? And if you try it, how about adding in the comment area your ideas or an image with your post-its coming to life?

For inspiration, check these 7 ideas to transform Post-Its into learning centers.

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Cool Writing Tool of the Week - OhLife

http://ohlife.com

Do you want a simple tool to invite your students to write more and keep a journal?

It can be a journal about their learning experience, or their daily lives.

OhLife! sends them a reminder everyday and they simply have to reply to the message by mail to have their thoughts neatly posted. If they add a photo as attachment, OhLife does the job of neatly embedding it. This tool makes writing practice simple and exciting. Plus, the students can export their writings as text and share them with the teachers and friends.

Superlame for the Classroom

Students as creators. We still duel over the institutional, syllabus demands and our willingness to test new approaches to our classrooms. Nothing better than starting really small, baby steps, micro-projects. So, here's a very, very simple one. It can be used on a computer lab or even in class with a single computer. It works with any topic, any subject-area.

Grab a photo from the computer, download a Creative Commons one, or take the photo with your group.

Upload it to http://www.superlame.com/ . Add speech bubbles to practice grammar, to explore vocabulary, to practice a dialogue. No logins required!

Then, just send it to an email or save it to a computer. Easy, practical, simple, doable. That's what it takes to start giving control to students, to let become producers of content and to make them owners of the language they are learning.

I'd love to see some examples of classroom production using superlame!