I might be late to the party, but I’ve just discovered Learnist. It looks a lot like Pinterest so I was excited from the start. It combines a few bests, including images, easy collaboration and sharing and educational content. And, as always, what I really like about it is finding people who take the time to curate quality resources. The excitement is in the lucky dip aspect; I like to search specific things but the unexpected joy of discovering something you didn’t set out to find is what makes this addictive for me.
Once you start browsing the categories, you’ll realise how open-ended these are. It’s interesting to see what interests people. I’d like to experiment with Learnist as ‘wider reading’ for students. Wouldn’t it be nice to give them time to browse within a general theme or topic to find something that catches their interest instead of prescribing their focus?
Learnist is very user-friendly. As with many social networks, it allows you to browse, rate and comment, as well as find out a little about people and follow them or their boards. Learnist has enough statistics at a glance to give you an idea of whether the board has attracted many viewers or commenters. You can add a suggested site to a board or a tag – very similar to Pinterest and Scoop.it. It’s also easy to share a link with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn or email the link. It would be valuable to create a shared Learnist board with your faculty, or even create a cross-faculty board, or better still, one for the learning literacies we should be embedding across the curriculum, for example, digital citizenship or critical literacies.
Basically, Learnist allows people to learn with and from each other. That’s the way I like to learn. And the mix of text, image, video and audio is a great way to engage learners.
This morning I read Will Houghteling’s announcement in the Google Certified Teacher Group -
This morning we launched YouTube.com/Teachers as a resource for educators everywhere to learn how to use YouTube as an educational tool. There are lesson plan suggestions, highlights of great educational content on YouTube, and training on how teachers can film their own educational videos. This site was designed/written by teachers for teachers and we hope it’s the first step in really kick-starting a community of YouTube-using educators (sign up for the new YouTube Teachers email list on the right hand side here)
Read the launch blog post here, co-authored by James Sanders and the launch tweet is here if you want to RT it.
There are many reasons why we should make more use of videos in our teaching: to increase student engagement; to cater for the visual learner (most learners will appreciate a visual means of learning); to introduce a new topic to students before the class; to provide a visual tutorial which students can revisit as many times as they wish and at their own pace; to provide an alternative style of instruction – to mention just a few. Flipping the classroom is something I think should happen more often – provide the video as homework to precede the class, and that way students are already familiar with the content and classroom time can be used effectively for discussion, collaboration and creation.
You can search and browse educational categories of YouTube videos here. The Khan Academy alone has 2.676 videos to choose from.
It really is just sensible to be aware of best quality resources available instead of reinventing the wheel. Unless, of course, you are creating an original alternative to the wheel!
Browsing through the different curricular areas of various tertiary institutions, I am aware that there is a wealth of resources for students requiring more sophistocated content and thought, and that applies to all students at my school, Melbourne High School. For me, as teacher librarian, this wealth of resources is begging for curation. I’m thinking about YouTube.com/Teachers from my role – it’s there, it’s fantastic, how do I promote it to the whole school, and how do I embed it into a space where teachers will find and use it.
I welcome feedback and thoughts about this excellent resource. As always, I will be sharing this resource and my thoughts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
My art wiki is growing fat in places. I thought I’d point to the areas which have expanded the most in the hope of reaching Visual Arts teachers and students.
The blogs pagein Blogs and Nings has really expanded. Blogs are my favourite way of finding art resources since they often represent specialised interest areas. It’s a very personal and rich way of discovering art. Blogs are a labour of love, expressing the unique personality of the author. I can’t think of a more inspiring way to learn.
Here are some examples:
Roberto Bernardi, La Tavolozza , 2010, oil on canvas, 22 x 30″
100 best art blogs Massive list here divided into useful sections (you might have to give up your day job for this) Art Studio Secrets Some very practical video demonstrations (under ‘Demonstrations’) Art in the real world “In The Real Art World” alerts you to the best exhibitions of representational “realism” which are on at the moment anywhere in the world. Sketchcrawl A communal blog for compulsive sketchers Ephemera assemblyman A beautiful blog of many different examples of art, illustration, design and more. Urban sketchers This blog features sketches and often equally colorful stories behind the scenes by invited artists correspondents in more than 30 countries around the world. Some are architects and illustrators, others are graphic designers, web developers, painters or educators, all sharing the same passion for drawing on location. Samuel Michlap Concept artist, illustrator, fine artist and more. Painting perceptions Perceptual painting is painting life from a personal vision and experience not just recording appearance. As Cézanne said, “Painting is nature seen through a temperament.” Lines and colorsLines and Colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. Paper forest showcasing great paper stuff, 2D, 3D and animation.
The Image/Flickrpage is bursting with links to wonderful sharing people on Flickr – a cornucopia of imagery to inspire students looking for ideas in different media and styles.
TheImages/Design page is another rich resource; here are only some of the links:
Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Nature
Blickfang – the eye-catching covers of Weimar Berlin. Thirty book covers from Poland (from A Journey From My Skull) Kunstformen der Natur (art forms of nature) by Ernst Haeckel (flickr set saved by Eric Gjerde) The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. Eric Gjerde has scanned this book and shared it on Flickr. Styles of Ornament by Alexander Speltz. Tessellation related photo plates from Alexander Speltz’s 1906 book, “Styles of Ornament”. Eric Gjerde has scanned this book and shared it on Flickr. Digital library for the decorative arts and material culture Great style illustrations by Iv Orlov Typographic art Design Online: Design Online is an electronic library from the University of the Arts, London, containing a digitised record of Design magazine for the years 1965 to 1974. There are around 100 pages in each magazine, which are available as full screen size black-and-white or colour images.
There’s so much animation out there, I love collecting examples. Amazing creativity to be discovered in this section, and fun to watch.
Phosphoro – is an award-winning student 2D animation (Read about it here. )
Of course, the wiki contains much, much more than this. Some sections are more comprehensive than others, but you can be sure that I’m always on the lookout for new resources to support the teaching and learning of Art-related studies.
This year I decided to take up the challenge of posting at least one photo a day as part of a Flickr group challenge. I ended up creating the blog, threesixtyfivephotos, so that the daily photos and small amount of written description would have somewhere to live. Now that I’ve almost finished, I realise that this exercise has proved to be surprisingly more than I expected.
The photoblog has been a surprisingly rich journey without even trying to be. It’s like a time capsule of sorts. And best of all, it’s connected me in a personal way with people I would otherwise not communicate with.
This could work as an individual student or collaborative class project. Definitely. Just one photo and minimal written description a day.
Today the world was saddened by the news of the two celebrity deaths – Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Celebrity popularity is a fact of life, and in this instance Michael Jackson stole the limelight, if you can call it that. Sometimes the best way to remember a life and career is through pictures. LIFE Magazine is a good place to revisit Michael Jackson’s life.
Given the recent interest in all things Vampire at a time when books like Twilightare more popular than sliced bread, I think it’s time to revisit Thriller.
I was reading Allanah King’s blog, and she had posted a slideshow about ‘Teaching well’ which had been created collaboratively by some of our PLP people. Darren Kuropatwa initiated and coordinated the project in Google Docs. Here is how he explained it:
WANNA PLAY?
I’m thinking of something that has legs to grow but has a low participation threshold. Something along the lines of Presentation Tennis. I’ll serve the first ball in the next couple of days. Would anyone be willing to be part of my “seed team” to get the ball rolling? I’m looking for a few good people to help me get the ball rolling. Your commitment to this is very small: 1 slide. Details below …
WHAT WE’LL DO
We will collaboratively create a 20 slide presentation (not counting the title slide) called “Teaching Well”. 20 slides in 10 pairs of contrasts: “Teaching well is more like < slide 1 > than it is like < slide 2 >.” or however else you want to create contrast.
Each day one slide is added to the deck that builds on those that came before. The final 4-6 slides must bring the presentation to some sort of close.
For me, it was a truly satisfying experience which demonstrated the richness of collaboration. The end result is much greater than each person’s individual contribution. Here is my slide
Have a look at the slideshow here. This would be a great collaborative project for both students and teachers, used as a slideshow or even printed off as posters.
I discovered Wallwisher when I came across Wallwishers created by Nik Peachey and Ackygirl through Ackygirl’s link.
Looking through the FAQs, I discovered the following information about Wallwisher:
Wallwisher is an Internet application that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily.
A wall is basically the ‘web page’ where people actually post messages.
You don’t need to sign up to use the Wallwisher, but you do need to provide an email address. A temporary account will be created for you using your email address so that you can come back and make changes to the wall.
Have a look at FAQs for more information about how to use Wallwisher.
You can also share the Wall, embed it in a website or organise an RSS feed for Wallwisher.
I like the collaborative aspect the best, the fact that it looks better than a list, it links to things easily, and you can even embed a video.
It would be an excellent way to brainstorm ideas and collaborate for students and teachers alike.
What are your ideas on the potential of Wallwisher?
Have you noticed that the world is becoming increasingly visual? Well, that’s OK with me because I actually understand things better when text is accompanied with images. I’m sure I’m not the only one. In the learning realm, images – either still or moving – aid and enhance textual presentation: photos, maps, film, video clip, images on websites, visual search engines – and now a visual dictionary: Shahi.
Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images, and more!
What I like about Shahi is the different perspectives you get from the same word. Let’s take the example ‘racism’. Here is one of the results; I like the humour and originality:
The word ‘dangerous’ yielded these results amongst others:
and this:
Definitely not what I expected!
Thought I’d try a verb – collaborate:
Never know what you’ll find.
As a teacher librarian I’m thinking of collecting images to go with fiction genres. Here’s fantasy:
What about crime?
A metaphorical meaning: photography is not a crime
Classroom possibilities beg to be discovered! Comparison of different interpretations of the same picture, guessing games, inspiration for students’ own images to accompany words, springboard for creative writing, collaborative slide presentations on a theme or message, and so on.
Capzles is a new way to combine videos, photos and mp3s into rich, multimedia storytelling.
Until I’m successful in embedding the widget, here’s the link to a capzle on Obama.
Capzles promises to ‘claim your memories; tell your stories; travel through time’, and they do that eloquently. The Obama capzle traces Obama’s life sequentially, and includes photos, and video and transcripts of speeches. I can definitely see the value of capzles for teaching subject matter, but more than that, kids would enjoy creating capzles to present research. This application really does have the potential to capture what’s essential and interesting, and package it neatly for viewing.
It’s free and simple to join. You can browse capzles created in popular categories, eg. history, art and design, film and movies, people and life, vacation and travel, etc. Under history, for example, you’ll find ‘history of Apple computer’ and ’75 years of the popemobile’. It’s a great way to share travel experiences, or present biographies in an engaging format. Or encapzlate your old photographs. Oh, and of course, it’s another great sharing tool. Although there isn’t a huge amount there at the moment, I expect it will expand its archive very quickly.
An example of how text can become more powerful in film. Simplicity, careful choice of words, sequencing, effect on viewer. How much more effective than traditional linear text. What do you think?
Roberto Bernardi, La Tavolozza , 2010, oil on canvas, 22 x 30″
