An old camp counselor of mine, Robert Goodman, is singing the same tune. Joyce Valenza just wrote this blog post on the very same topic. And having attended the recent CAIS 2009 Regional Meeting, I must say that there were far fewer “death by PowerPoint” presentations to sit through.

Hopefully our students will take the new thinking around designing electronic slides to heart. I promise to post examples here when projects are finished!

Lately I’ve been reading Girls Like Us, a biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. The book is laden with references to specific songs, regions in Canada, neighborhoods in NYC, musicians I’d never heard of, historical events, etc. What I’m finding is that it’s impossible to simply curl up with this book unless I have my laptop right next to me. As I read, I’m listening to snippets of songs in iTunes, looking up locations in Google Earth, searching for photos, reading articles, watching obscure vintage YouTube videos of these performers and listening to a custom-made Pandora station as the soundtrack as I read. I usually read as a way to “unplug” at the end of the day, but with this type of book I’m finding it virtually impossible.

Clearly, it’s time to switch to fiction for my next bedtime reading!

I’m sitting in a meeting in an 8th Grade English classroom right now. I grabbed Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier off the shelf, which I haven’t read. Here goes:

“And I wiggled my sack onto my back and walked on.”

• Read Richard’s account of our meeting here
• See the list of Voicethread examples I provided here
• See the list of Voicethread examples from Caitlin Gabel here

Sometimes the simplest ideas in teaching truly do produce the most glorious results. Our Director of Diversity approached me in August with an idea — she was bringing the marvelous “In Our Family” portrait exhibit to our school for a month, and for the opening evening she was hoping to include a family storytelling component where participants could have the opportunity to tell a family story, record it, and burn it onto a CD. She was picturing stories along the lines of the amazing StoryCorps project so many of us have grown to love during our morning commutes with NPR on the radio. Better yet, I suggested, why not open the storytelling opportunity up to teachers, staff, students, parents, anyone in our community and put all of the stories on our own blog/podcast?

The results? We’ve been working on the project for a little less than a month, the opening of the Exhibit was this past Friday, and you can click right here to hear the unbelievable, poignant, funny, touching stories our MCDS Community Members have shared. We now plan to continue the story recording process during Grandparents Day and throughout the year.

I decided to use an image from my own school. This photo came from a project one of our Art Teachers did with 6th Graders last Spring. They took a series of photographs that represented who they are. They then used art class to experiment with Photoshop and manipulated their photos in several ways. They also had an opportunity to comment on each other’s work. I love how this photo captures art and tech.

Learning Together, Everywhere

3 Simple Meme Rules:

• Post a picture from a source like Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce. (What is Pownce?)

Tag. Your turn — what are you passionate about sharing with the kids you teach?

• Barbara Bray from Rethinking Learning
• Richard Kassisieh from Kassblog
• Anie from MCDS Book Blog
• Brian S. from Loose Parts
  
• Janice Friessen from Texas Malahini