Enhancing Student Creativity

As I sat in various presentations at the MACE conference last week, I envisioned how the various web sites and software tools being demonstrated could be utilized to enhance student projects. Capitalizing on the poetry the freshman recently wrote over the book, The Outsiders, I decided to experiment.

My first experiment was to use the Wordle. website to create a picture to illustrate one of the freshman poems. Wordle utilizes words to create a picture. The size of each word in the picture is determined by the number of times it is entered. Thus, if one wants a word to dominate the picture, that word is entered numerous times. Below is the resulting picture:

Behind A Wall – Poetry Cloud

The orientation of the words can be altered, but the positions of individual words within the cloud cannot be manipulated. The user can select from a variety of color combinations and font styles to personalize their cloud. Using a screen capture program such as Gadwin, the picture can be saved as an image and added to the word processed copy of the poem.

My next experiment centered around the use of voice. Ideally, this would involve a recording of the student reading his/her poem. With the Voice Thread web site, one can record the reading of the poem directly from the computer. A picture can be uploaded as a visual behind the poem. A very creative student could divide their poem into sections and record each section with its own picture backdrop.
http://voicethread.com/share/390368/

If a student wishes to enhance the visual presentation he/she could use PhotoStory or MovieMaker. With each program, individual pictures can be added to a timeline. The audio can be recorded with the handheld voice recorders. These recorders create a “.wma” file which can be added to the timeline. If desired, MovieMaker would allow for the addition of music behind the voice. PhotoStory saves the file in the “.wmv” format and MovieMaker creates a “.wp3″ , “*.avi” or “*.wmv” file. All can be viewed with Windows Media Player.

• Movie Maker Example
• Photo Story Example

The final experiment was with the Animoto web site. This site is a quick way to create 30 second clips utilizing pictures and music. In order to use the audio clip created with the digital recorder, it was necessary to convert it from the “.wma” format to “.mp3″ format. This was quickly done utilizing the ZamZar web site.  With this particular project, the length of the poem was longer than the 30 seconds allowed by the free version of Animoto. Thus, the audio fades away before the poem is finished. This site would be an easy way to visualize a shorter piece of student work.

http://animoto.com/play/QoECFl7Qo2INLERgHvg9tA

None of these projects were difficult to complete and each could be completed in a class period if students have a clear idea of what visual imagery they wish to use. Some of the projects could be shared via the web depending on the file formats required by the various web sites.

 

NCTE Proposing Shift in English Curriculum

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies Annotated

tags: information_literacy

Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
  cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
  purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
  information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

2008 NCTE Annual Convention Welcome Annotated

tags: information_literacy

These many shifts are enough to have our heads spinning, but I want to propose one more, one that is intimately tied to the social dynamic of our students’ lives. We’re teaching the Millennium generation, that group of kids who arrived at school as “digital natives” who have a new set of 3 Rs in mind: Relevance, Relationships, and Responsiveness. They live in a digital world in which they turn on, turn up, and tune out with a mere tap on a touch pad. These kids connect with people around the school, city, country, and world as they IM, “friend”, text, game, podcast, and blog. When it comes to preferred technology, they tend (to borrow from the song) to love the one they’re with, so if cell phone is in hand, text messaging is great; if they are online, IM is what counts. Their technology, like them, is mobile and is as much about connecting to people as it is connecting to information.

Weblogg-ed » Connective Reading Annotated

tags: no_tag

If nothing else, this goes to the heart of connective reading and connective writing that we’ve been talking about here and elsewhere now for years. Reading and writing is still about the ability to understand and to create texts of various types, but it’s increasingly more now about connecting to other ideas, other people, and other conversations.

The Fischbowl: NCTE – “Shifting” Toward a New Literacy Annotated

tags: no_tag

Now, I know some folks will cheer when they read these, and others will vehemently protest. I think it’s important to remember that they aren’t throwing away the “old” literacies, they are just expanding what it means to be literate. But what I think is most important about this is the fact that NCTE is apparently basing their convention around these ideas. I think this is a major shift. This is not ISTE promoting NETS, or a coalition of folks from corporations wanting better prepared employees, this is NCTE – perhaps fundamentally redefining literacy and how we teach our children. Perhaps I’m reading (pun intended) too much into this, but I think this is huge.