Month: January 2010
Making Superheroes to Represent the Planets
We returned to our information Voicethreads today that we created yesterday about the different planets in our solar system. I wanted the children to consolidate some of the information that they had learned about the planets.
To do this we asked the children to create a superhero that represented a planet and some of it’s characteristics. Clearly this ties in well with the topic we are running, and provided the children some rehearsal for when they create their own original hero. But I think works well whether you are doing this topic or not, as a superhero is ideal for personifying the different physical characteristics of the planets.
We had a look at two different free online superhero creators: from Marvel Kids and HeroMachine from UGO. Both are very good but we decided that the HeroMachine had more choice in terms of customising the hero. This would of course provide better choice for the children when creating their own. (We used HeroMachine version 2.5 rather than the Alpha version 3.0) Both creators give you a massive palette of masks, skins, tails, accessories, wings, auras and insignias (plus much more) these can all be coloured, layered and customised.
The children were working in pairs on laptops in the classroom. I gave each pair a planet to work on and directed them to three things for information:
- The Voicethread we made that gathered everyone’s information in one place, a good starting point.
- Websites tagged with “planets” from our Delicious account.
- Any other web based resources they can find.
Before they set off I opened HeroMachine and demonstrated making a character representing Earth and highlighted the choices I was making and the reasons I made them – like a modelled writing session. For example the colours green and blue and why I used more blue to show the ratio of water to land. I emphasised the need to understand the planet they were representing and asked them to think of colour, size and atmosphere. This kept it simple and achievable as some planetary facts are too complex to represent.
You can see the start of a Jupiter based superhero here in which children have chosen the largest hero body to show it’s size and also a red belt which they explained represents the red spot on Jupiter.
Venus is represented here and is shown with the colours of heat as it is close to the Sun with surface temperatures over 460 degrees Celsius.
One pair spent some time looking at a Wikipedia article on Saturn and decided that they would make a male superhero because Saturn was a God, which is great – they went on to explore ways they could represent the rings with either superhero clothes or objects he would carry.
I am looking forward to finishing these off with the children, it has been a great way to personify the facts about the planets and has really helped to consolidate their understanding of the solar system.
What Planet Are You From?
We used Voicethread today for some work about planets in our solar system as part of our Superheroes work. Generally we have used it to support speaking and listening prior to a fiction writing task, but it is equally effective in gathering and sharing research and factual information.
The children worked in pairs on a laptop – opened up the Voicethread we had created and used Planet 10 from the Planet Science website as the main source of information. Not only is this a great interactive model of the solar system but it has information about each planet presented in different ways.
Children also gathered information from other information websites tagged with “planets” on our Delicious account. They then added that information in written or voice form to the Voicethread. A simple way to create a pooled information resource which is presented and created in different forms. As I said in my Teachmeet Takeover talk at BETT last Friday, Voicethread allows children to work together in an open way. They can see everyone’s comments and contributions updating in real time – they can tap into the information others find as well as share their own.
Our next step will be to personify the different planets as Superheroes and link the physical features we learn about with some superhero powers or special abilities.
I like to use Google Earth when talking about the rotation of the Earth and the sunlight layer, shown in the image below helps to model this even further. “What happens in between the dark part and the light part?” a question from one of the children was a good discussion starter.
Another feature of Google Earth, that is often unexplored, is the different things you can view apart from the Earth. These are Sky, Mars and The Moon. Looking closely at The Moon there is an abundant set of information about the various lunar missions, landings and physical features.
We discussed the size and scale of the craters we could see (we found one that was 115km across!) and also tracked the route the Appollo 15 Rover took on the surface.
High resolution panoramic imagery is also available dotted around these landing sites and is a fascinating glimpse into the lunar landscape.
It made me think about combining some of the digital storytelling ideas that we have done using Google Earth and use Google Moon or Mars as a science fiction bachdrop. The incredible imagery would certainly be a great starting point for descriptive writing about a setting.
My Reflections on TeachMeet Takeover
Try something different. If it turns out to be a mistake then you’ve learned something, so it isn’t really a mistake.
The TeachMeet community tried something different this year at BETT. We mobilised, we tookover vendors’ stands and talked about free ideas teachers could use on Monday. We made an attempt to pass on the inspiring ideas that are regularly presented at the face to face TeachMeet events, to those who may have never attended one. Teachmeet Takeover made a small step out of the echo chamber that the community often gets caught speaking to.
Yes we made mistakes, we stumbled, but the idea I think is sound enough – here are a few things I have learned, observed and thought about from the last few days of TeachMeet Takeover
- Teachers get very excited about free tools.
- The majority of free web based tools that are familiar to some are completely unknown to others.
- Some companies understand the need for teachers to be talking directly to other teachers about real practice.
- There are so many passionate and inspiring teachers willing to stand up and present about their ideas.
- A handful of companies genuinely believe in the same things as we do.
- It can be hard to make the FREE message authentic amongst all of the SELL, SELL, SELL. But what started as a whisper…
- Many, many more vendors want their stands involved at BETT 2011.
- Next year we will stipulate requirements for the stands. Internet access, big projection facilities and a PA system.
- A simple competition gives people who are unsure a clear direction and encourages them to see multiple TeachMeet Takeover talks.
- Publicity is important, so people know about it before arriving.
- Maybe Takeover should only take place on Thursday and Friday.
- It exceeded all of my expectations.
- I now know the idea works in reality, with more planning for 2011 we can be more ambitious – perhaps.
- We could try a mass Takeover, four stands all close together in much more of a flash mob style.
- Certain companies are happy to volunteer time, money and resources (including their stands) to support TeachMeet Takeover.
- Keeping talks under 15 minutes is best.
- Having two people on a stand talking consecutively works really well.
- It has never been more important for teachers to be sharing free resources, tools and ideas with other teachers.
I have been thinking deeply over the last 3 days about the relationship between sales driven companies and the teachers sharing free ideas. For some of the talks there were 30-40 people on the stands – we were bringing them in. That is obviously good for the vendor but it also good for teachers sharing ideas with other teachers. Maybe 3 or 4 people stop and look at some of the vendor’s fliers or products, similarly maybe 15-20 people go away and find out about the free idea they heard from a presentation.
Perhaps we need to bridge the often gaping chasm between these two communities if we are to properly amplify some of the messages, ideas and ideologies to the majority of teachers which are so intrinsic to the TeachMeet community. There has been plenty of reference to the disconnect between teachers and those who sell products, but I am more convinced that we need to build partnerships to effect large scale change in schools. The interesting thing is that companies at BETT are desperate to find ways to engage with their users on a more authentic level. I think TeachMeet Takeover has provided a viable option and it works. Importantly the teacher community has acted first on this, it is on our terms, we have defined how this engagement happens and so can keep the right intentions at the heart of what happens in the future.
None of the vendors involved deliberately hijacked an audience to peddle their own wares – they really did just let us takeover. I think that turning people on their stands into real sales is harder then encouraging teachers to look further into a free idea that is presented. Also a person’s subsequent research into how they might use a free tool will inevitably lead to teachers’ blogs and maybe the domino effect is that they start to find out more and more free tools and ideas. We must be aware of the knock on effect a single 10 minute Takeover talk could have in the weeks ahead.
I heard about one teacher attending TeachMeet Takeover who had never heard of Twitter or any of the online tools that were being presented. After his first talk he spent his day at BETT attending most of the other Takeover talks collecting the 8 ideas he needed to win the goody bag prize. Hopefully his head is buzzing with that bunch of new, free ideas and is thinking about how he can best use them to support learning with his class.
A BIG thankyou to all of the vendors and teachers who contributed to TeachMeet Takeover this year.
We were able to apply some of the feedback from Thursday to improve things for the following days – I would be grateful to hear more of your thoughts and reactions from the Takeover events. What should we consider changing or improving for next year? What stories from Takeover have you to tell?
Spiderman Digital Comic – Exploring the Front Cover
Today we began reading Spiderman #1 which is the main text for our Superheroes unit. It is a free digital comic from the Marvel Kids site. I have chosen it because it covers the process of change for Peter Parker’s character and the development into a superhero. Some of the other free comics deal with the heroes in well established storylines. The origins of the superhero outlined in this first issue allow us more learning opportunities, and of course more opportunity to explore the storytelling.
The comic opens in the Marvel Digital Comics Reader (Java) which is a lovely way to view this sort of text. It gives you a variety of different options for viewing. We found the SMART PANELS option was the best to zoom into the details, parts of speech and narration.
The first thing we did was to spend time looking at the front cover (see image above) so much is going on. I told the children to take everything they knew about Spiderman, gather it all up and put it in a box in their minds. And then to push that box away. I wanted them to focus on what we can find out from the front cover about Spiderman. We talked about the striking imagery and how it showed movement. We delved further into the background and unpicked the details too. You can see the notes we made together on the screenshot above.
It was a good challenge for the children to try and explain what they can learn from the image, back it up with reference to the “text” without referring to something they already knew. Someone said Spiderman can shoot the web/rope out from his hands. We discussed this carefully as I contested there was no evidence in the image – we did all still have a go at doing Spidey fingers and shouting “Go Web!”