Slice of Life Day 2. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
My students worked hard all week and finished the week’s assignments, so on Friday we had some free time. We usually celebrate with Game Day. And some students did play games, but I worked with Vannisa on a different project.
For Chalk-a-bration Day, Vannisa wrote a poem using a series of color words. When you look at the poem, it really just looks like a list of words, but when I talked to Vannisa about it, she said, “Close your eyes and imagine each color as it changes to the next one.”
Her comment made me think. What about using Paint on the Promethian board and creating a video of a single flower changing color? Vannisa liked the idea and set to work.
This whole process took an hour for her to do. Most teachers don’t have this kind of time to allow a student to “play.” I have the luxury of working with small groups of gifted students. Putting the images into a Moviemaker movie was fairly quick. One thing, for sure, Vannisa had a good time putting it all together. My question is this: Was this experience just fun or was there learning involved? And what learning may lead to further learning? Will my other students want to illustrate a poem and make a movie? Is this a valuable use of class time?
If you have written a blog post about Digital Literacy, please post a link. And consider following the Digital Literacy group on Facebook.
Reflections on the Teche 
How incredible! I love the poem and the opportunities you are giving your students to think “outside” the box. We all should to do this. Every day.
I will check out your other sites – I will have to ponder adding some technology blogs. I love thinglink. With thinglink you can embed pictures and information into a picture. When your cursor goes over the picture they pop up. I took the map of the Nez Perce Historical Trail and used thing link http://ropinthewind.weebly.com/following-the-trail.html
This time of “play” was filled with learning. Thanks for sharing both products. They are great! We all need this kind of time and these kinds of experiences!
It’s fun and learning, Margaret. As she worked, she was learning the ‘how-to’, but wasn’t she also beginning to realize the application for other projects? Love that you followed through on this.
I think I will see more development of visual tools. I often have my students for multiple years which is an advantage.
This is lovely.
How about a poem for her, from a line stealer like me.
Close your eyes
imagine each color
it changes to the next one
as my words unfold here
on this page, my eyes
seeking the flower shifting
across the screen, colors
drenched in taste, colors
dancing like pixels as some gift
from you to me
and right back again
-Kevin
What an awesome gift for Vannisa. I can’t wait to show her!
Love this idea of digital learning posting on Sundays and the time you give your students to explore. I’m trying to learn, and there is so much out there. My students have genius hour time and I try to share digital possibilities. Last week I had two students share their finds. One was a stopmotion movie app that he spent time with at home and showed his movie. The other was a storyboarding app. Have to get the name and share it.
As to your question of is it valuable? Yes. It is inspirational and that is valuable.
Thanks for your comment. Yes, inspiration is a powerful thing! I hope you will join next Sunday.
I love this and want to share it with my students. It’s so important that we give kids the freedom to share their learning in creative ways. I definitely think that there is a lot of learning going on here and now Vanessa can teach others how to do it. Thanks for beginning a DL link up. I’m off to write my post now.
Love this, and want to share it with my kids, too. Digital tools give our kids so many opportunities to explore ideas and express themselves.
Vanissa learned, she can use a new tool, and she can probably teach others. Time well spent.
Vanissa’s poem and movie are inspiring. I love how the technology helped her publish her poem the way she visualized it, which in this case would have been almost impossible with pencil and paper. Thanks for sharing!
Learning is always a valuable experience. Technology resources add to the toolbox of possibilities.