Here are some of the best resources / stories I came across:
Three Digital Story Telling Options.
I have wanted to do more of this for a couple years now. But you know how it is when adding new stuff to your curriculum: much easier said than done. What sounds inspiring during an inservice day in November or curriculum mapping meeting in June, just doesn't find its way into your teaching life when there are dozens of papers to grade, lessons to update, standards to meet, and copies to be made (there are always copies to be made).
I wish we could extend the school year by ten days. And in those ten extra days allow teachers to put off all standards, test prep, and regular curriculum. Give us two weeks to try things totally new to us. Let us use our classrooms as labs to explore new features and practices. Then when those two weeks are up, let us go back to the regular grind.
I honestly think that would do more for inspiring teachers to try new things out than any PD ever would.
I really like all three of these digital story telling options -
1. Creating a parody
2. Choosing your own adventure
3. Creating a Game / Story Hybrid
But I'm intrigued most by the last option. In fact, I was just talking yesterday with Casey about a game he received from his father for Christmas: Assassin's Creed 3.
I joke with Casey that because he is both a history and gaming nerd, he was sure to spot the historical inaccuracies while he was playing it. (from what I can gather, Assassin's Creed follows - shocker - an assassin who takes out selected targets during some of history's biggest events (the Crusades, the Rennaissance, and now the Revolutionairy War).
He said that actually the game was pretty spot-on historically.
This got me to thinking about using the game as a way to teach aspects of history. If students were asked to be game creators, what other major historical events would they choose to develop for an Assassin's Creed 4 or 5 or 6? Also, what historical factors would the creators of the existing AC have to take into account as they devised the game?
The more I thought about it, the more interested I became.
Now, it seems that allowing students to use digital story telling to create a game / story hybrid might be a useful tool in the English classroom as well.
*****
27 Ways to Publish Student Thinking
Gotta love that title.
The list is mighty impressive, even if it doesn't include Blogger (it does, though, list Kid Blogger). I'd love to have an assignment where students create a blog and then use several of these 27 ways to share their thinking.
*****
For those Pinterest fans out there, here is a post on 20 Innovative Technology Pinterest Boards.
And guess what, Pinterest was one of the 27 ways for students to publish their thinking.
If some of these Pinterest boards don't inspire you, you're in the wrong profession (but I am sure I didn't need to tell you that. You knew it deep down in your soul)!
Pins like these alone are worth checking out the above link -
*****
Humility Matters
This is a great post - I included the first half here. There's a ton of truth below -
The death of any great idea is when its inventor falls in love with it.
The death of any great student is when they decide they are smarter than all their classmates and therefore have nothing to learn from them.
The death of any great teacher is when they fall in love with the sound of their own voice and stop hearing the voices of the students who would do more than parrot the teacher’s voice back at them.
The death of any great principal is when they think they are the only one who can move the school forward and stops listening to the students, teachers and parents s/he serves.
Humility matters.
*****
I could use all five of these. Every day.
****
Now I don't think there are many teachers that won't at least grin at this headline:
Student Wins Restraining Order Against Helicopter Parents
Lord knows we deal with them (and some of us are guilty of being them!), but it's rare to see a student go so far to rebel against their parents.
But after reading the article, I don't blame her. I just hope they aren't footing the bill for any of her education.
*****
And finally, now this is how to get revenge on a bully!
No comments:
Post a Comment