Identity Logs - Students' Empowerment, Passions and Micro-revolution

Ever since I listened to George Couros talking about Identity Day in the Reform Symposium, I’ve been pondering about the importance of helping our students develop a deeper sense of belonging, of finding their own passions and drives. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to make our learners’ inner voices bloom into more understanding of what truly makes them go beyond, do their best and look for ways to face their own personal challenges?


As I kept mulling over, I came up with a very simple classroom idea: to create an identity log throughout a period of time. Then use this log to create a digital artifact to represent who we are.
Transformative? Empowering, to say the least.


Every beginning or end of classes, the teacher would come up with a prompt. Students would use that prompt to freely write, doodle, draw for, let’s say, two or three minutes. After a certain period of time, students would look back at their identity logs and synthesize them on a digital artifact to represent themselves. It could be a video, a comic strip, an image, a mosaic, a slideshow to share with the other students.


Some prompt ideas for the Identity Log project:
What I like most about myself...
Every time I see...it makes me...because...
I daydream when...
My most special moment of the day is...
....is someone whom I cherish because...
No one could ever imagine that I...
Three things about my favorite hobby...
I am someone who can’t stand...
I am someone that loves...


Some of the digital tools the students could use for their digital production:
Prezi
Animoto
Glogster
Voicethread
Makebeliefscomix



And here’s an example of a “Who I am” series with some educators to inspire you to get started by trying out yourself and transforming your students’ perspectives about themselves, about who they are, what they are capable of with a very simple Identity Log activity.

About Carla on Prezi

by Luiz Cláudio

DNA Rescue - Part 2: Skills are Cheap. Passion is Priceless

Still on Gary Vaynerchuk's book, "Crush it", I can't help it, but keep exploring the world of passion and our double-helice (DNA) historical perspective and bring it all together into our professional realm. Because of my last post's comments, I was taken into the recordings of the Reform Symposium(Thanks, Mrs Tenkely!). If it were in the past, I'd be able to have listened to it live, but due to some time constraints and options, I couldn't be there, but had the chance to download it via iTunes. Amazing, thrilling stuff, though, simple again. It is crushing true and there's no way out that the simplest, most caring ideas are the ones who are truly powerful.

George Couros hit it hard! His presentation about Identity Day at his school in Canada is just a brilliant way to shape and channel the undoubtful hard-hitting effectiveness of giving voice to our passions. How many of us know what are co-workers' passions really are? Yesterday, I asked this plain question, "What's your true passion?" Some could spit it out in nanoseconds, others had to think a bit hard, but just the fact that we were talking about it gave a boost of optimism and happiness to our spirits. Imagine what we could do to our lives, our classrooms, our work places? We could really crush it as a group if we let those passionate and vigorous voices bloom. A spark in the eye, words that are generally not mentioned, getting to know the other...All our passions, all possible connections to one another.

So, let's keep our movement toward our DNA rescue spiced up with passion. It can be amazingly transformative.
Get to know what your true passions are
Never forget your historical background as it could give you big clues of dormant passions
Share your passsions with others
Encourage others to find their own
With all that in mind, let us remix ourselves to become better people

If you asked about my passions, I could tell you about some. However, the one that moves me, makes me a believer, an optimist, an explorer? My passion for PEOPLE.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elvire-r

What are your ingrained passions?