On the Ed Tech Radar - A Collection of Digital Posters Platforms for Educators

I have been part of an exciting teacher training program in the state of Rio and this week I´m exploring with teachers the possibilities of Digital Posters in the classroom. I´ve created this Padlet with some digital posters platforms that let teachers and students create wonderful digital artifacts. I thought educators might profit from it:

To view this Wall in full http://padlet.com/wall/digitalposters

How do you envision using those posters in your classroom?

Images in the Classroom - Now and Then

I've always had this natural inclination to add images to whatever lesson I was teaching, and now even more so when I see the neuroscientific reason for doing it. James Zull, in his book "the Art of Changing the Brain", mentions that

"Our concrete experience contains much of the information we need for understanding, because it produces images for our brains to analyze, rearrange, manipulate, and turn into action. We have maps of our experience in our brains, and we can run through these maps like the frames of a moving picture."

He goes on to say that the images in our brains come from the experience itself and that's why

"teachers could make extensive use of images to help people learn. If we can convert an idea into an image, we should do so. And whenever possible, we should require our students to show us their images. It should go both ways"

Having the power of images in mind, our classroom should be visual-rich and empowering. It should help our learners enhance their language skills through their sensory brains. In this sense, today I just came across a Facebook post by Ben Goldstein where he mentioned a blog called Dear Photograph  in which the audience shares images of a past original setting and taking a photo holding a film photo of people in the same place.

http://dearphotograph.com/image/52871635425 

Now, imagine having the same kind of project with your group of students after they've explored some of the images in the Dear Photograph blog. You can ask them to talk to their parents and relatives, to find nice photos of places that they could go and take the same kind of picture, holding the film-developed photo. Plus, you can explore the use of the past in the images contrasted with the present. The teacher would have the perfect timing to talk about "USED TO", for example, and then use students' own images to explore language in a totally contextualized way.

Then, in the same Facebook thread, Paul Driver suggested the use of the Zefrank's blog project Young Me/Now Me for the same kind of activity in which students take their own photos, explore the blog's photos and use language to compare and talk about the differences between now and then.

http://www.zefrank.com/youngmenowme/permalink.html?469

Thanks to Ben Goldstein and Paul Driver in my FB network for the visual inspiration!

Twisting Homework Work - A tool, A thousand Ways to Engage students

She was meant to be a star. Her photos were all over, Vogue magazine, among all renowned international magazines you can think of. One day, though, ...

How about a bit of homework revolution for a change?

Add this sentence to the board, send the photo to your students and tell them to access http://photofunia.com, upload the photo you sent or students can upload their own to continue the story.

This idea can be used for storytelling, vocabulary practice or any grammar point reinforcement activity.

Students, then, share in class their stories and the photos they edited and added to the story.

I can bet here that you'll be surprised by students' creativity!

Other possibilities:
Every end of class, you add an edited photo of one of the students and they have to come up with a creative sentence about it as homework assignment.

email an edited photo to students with a reminder about the homework assignment they have. (the photo is, then, just a motivational sparkler for the assignment)

Ask students to choose three people in their family, edit the photos in photofunia and talk about family members in class.

Can you think of other classroom activities to use the editions in Photofunia?

Images in the Classroom Series - Emotions

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21204781@N07/2501994750/

My husband calls me a tourist or gadget girl. I always have a device which can help me capture the moment. First, because of my interest in photography, in getting that moment that in nanoseconds will be simply past. However, my most preement reason for being a gadget girl is that I am an educator. I always feel that I can explore the world with my students through the eyes of a lens. Those captured moments are an invaluable teaching tool. I go beyond, though. It is not only my photos, but all the photos I come across in Flickr Creative Commons. Flickr is just so powerful that words wouldn't be able to reach its strength for pedagogical purposes. Here's just one example of how it can be used by educators interested in developing students' critical thinking, critical literacies and so on.

Take for example this photo I came across in Alan Levine's slideshare presentation.

Looking Through The Lens (Northern Voice 2011)

View more presentations from Alan Levine

We could have a wonderful "Emotion" class just by exploring it.

Ideas? Many! Here are some:

• Start by asking your students to draw how they feel today. Or you can even ask them to fold the paper in four and give them specific times of the day (today at school, yesterday evening, today during lunch time, right now). They draw their four different moods in the paper and share them with friends giving reasons why they felt that way. You could ask them to find people who shared two similar kinds of moods during specific times of the day, or someone who had quite the opposite emotions. That should be fun!

• Write the word CRYING on the board. Why do people cry? Let the students speak out.
• If the teacher feels it won't hurt anybody's feelings or cause any embarassment to a student, ask the group when the last time they cried was and see if someone wants to share his story. This can be highly emotional, I know. But it can also build group trust, a sense of community. If you feel it is a too-touchy subject, change it for "the last time you had a really great, loud laugh"
• Show the photo to the group to explore the context:
  

  

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/21204781@N07/2501994750/

  
  
  
  - Why was this boy crying?
  - Who was holding him?
  - Where are they?
  - What time of the day was it?
  - How long do you think he kept crying? Why?
  - What would the person holding him do or say to make him smile again?
  - Do you remember a similar scene in your house?
• After the group discussion, you can ask students:
  - to write a text as if the boy was reporting what happened and why he was crying.
  - to write a text from the perspective of the person holding him and his feelings towards the boy crying
  - to build up a dialogue based on the scene
  - to include a third person in the room (students choose the person they would include and what this person would do to make the boy stop crying)
  - to make a drawing as if they were the boy at the exact moment he stopped crying

Any other ideas for this very emotional class?

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!

Google Swirl

I was just playing with Google's swirl, a nice way to visualize images. It goes after the trend of more dynamic ways of visualization. Not that it is tremendously innovative, but it certainly adds a swirl fun to it.

Have you tried it? What are your impressions?

When Will the Visual Revolution Get to Our Classrooms?

More and more we see the power of graphics, visualization, images, videos to convey a message, to touch our souls, to sell. Visual representations have been part of society much before we started using written code to communicate. In fact, images were used to record historical facts and communicate ideas in a group of people long before words in written form became common place.




However, visual power has much been a passive one for the last centuries for the majority of people who were not into any visually-enhanced profession, or were not talented artists. Things are changing now. The way we communicate through digital media is giving another dimension to the interactivity and manipulation of visuals by amateurs, you and me. The power of communicating visually is in our hands, at our fingertips, one click away. No need for technicalities. Just a wish and you can communicate and interact with others in online photosharing spaces (just check the tons of possibilities at Mashable's 90+ photography resources and tools) and you're there, visually engaged and engaging others. How about the possibilities for videos? Exactly. This is a promising area. No need to be simply a mere spectator of great Hollywood productions. We have the power, you and me, to mix, remix, reshape ideas and share with the world, interact, and learn in the process in totally appalling ways with very little technical knowledge.

The visual revolution is here. But when will it reach not just some lucky schools with inspired educators? When will the educational system empower learners to work together with teachers to create a new and potent form of expression that might lead to creative, innovative ways to find solution to problems, to encourage critical thinking, to give a boost to learners self-esteem and motivation, to enhance meaningful interactions and cultural awareness?

How long will schools wait to be part of the vernacular video revolution (via Judy O'Connell)? How long will educators wait?





Related post:
Flickr Educational Power

Nik Peachey has compiled some interesting blog posts on the topic of videos.

Flickr Educational Power

As a group of wonderful, inspired educators - Alice Barr, Ana Maria Menezes, Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, Daniela Munca, Jane Petring, João Alves, Mary Hillis, Nina Liyulkun, Ronaldo Júnior, and Susan Burg - get ready to co-moderate a free six-week online session, Images4Education, through the Electronic Village Online, I've been totally immersed in Flickrverse. My main focus has been the potential of Flickr in the Classroom.

It's been a journey of discoveries. True pearls. Starting with Mike Coghlan's tweet and enjoying his very straightforward wiki which he's been using to train educators.



I'm lucky to be in Twitter and connect so easily to others...

Back to Flickr, would you like to see even more? The wiki http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Flickr is a very comprehensive resource if you plan to work with Flickr4Education.

By the way, a Diigo group called Flickr in Education was also a place that I looked for good references. Though it is still a small library of bookmarks, it has provided me with great tools and blog posts. Our own Diigo space to share bookmarks during the Images4Education session is starting to take shape and soon will be a resources-rich hub for educators when the group starts to add their contribution.

Talking about Flickr posts that are worth exploring and considering in an educational setting, here are some true gems worth spending time with, even if they are not all directly connected to education, they can give you wonderful ideas:

My Own Interesting Snippets
Why Flickr and Alan Levine Rock
Telling Tales with Flickr
Classroom Uses of Flickr
The Davey's: Best of Flickr
Embed Flickr Notes in Other Websites
Motivating Language Learners with Flickr

These are just some of the finest pearls I've bumped into recently, or have bookmarked them some time ago.

By the way, an idea that comes to my mind. What if we all bookmarked in Diigo Flickr resources we found in cyberspace related to education, Flickr4Education? Not only that, what if we tagged Flickr4Education our Flickr photos that might be of interest to the educators community? What if we started the #flickr4education in Twitter? I'm sure Flickr would be even more powerful for our community with a collective action to bring together loose pearls out there in cyberworld into consistent tagging.

Let's start right now the flickr4education movement and show the educational power of Flickr.

Tag it: flickr4education