Category: Literacy

Paraphernalia – a short animation to use in Literacy

Curriculum, LiteracyPublished onUpdated on10 Comments on Paraphernalia – a short animation to use in Literacy

The other night I had a little whirlwind session exploring content on Vimeo and discovered some fantastic pieces of work, including this lovely short animation called Paraphernalia. It is a 3rd year film made by Sabrina Cotungo who is studying at The California Institute of the Arts – however her film was made at Gobelins, l’école de l’image in Paris.

Sabrina Cotungo describes her film as

The story of an anemic little recluse of a girl who makes a friend at the expense of her ceiling.

 

Paraphernalia from Sabrina Cotugno on Vimeo.

What strikes me about the little story is the openings it presents for a class to explore in terms of their narrative literacy unit, the questions that could be asked about the plot and the characters.

  • Why is she all alone?
  • Where are her family?
  • Where was the gentleman heading?
  • Why did he crash?
  • Why had he invented such a wonderful flying machine?

Also a class could spend time working on the dialogue that takes place between our characters. It is conveniently silent and we might encourage our pupils to explain the emotions we see on their faces, to play these scenes out in some drama and then to perhaps develop the written dialogue.

What do you like about the film and how do you see it being used with your classes?

Oil’d – How Could Our Pupils Make an Animation Like This?

Curriculum, Literacy, SciencePublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Oil’d – How Could Our Pupils Make an Animation Like This?

I’m fascinated by the representation of data using infographics. I like their bold visual approach and how the style and composition signals the content it is communicating.

Chris Harmon a designer and animator from the Greater New York City area created this beautiful and thought provoking animation called Oil’d. It explores how dependent we are to oil and how much was lost into the ocean from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Oil’d from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Just from the presentation of information about the oil spill we could go in many different directions with our classes.

  • Exploring he sources of information used
  • Verifying the accuracy of the data included in the film

However if we unpick the animation layer by layer we get a much better idea of the great skill with which Chris used to complete it. Wouldn’t it be great to have Chris in front of a class of students explaining how he went about creating the animation, the stages of planning and execution.

For me there are many elements and skills that would on their own make excellent projects for children to explore and be engaged in:

Data
The maths involved in comparing and cross referencing the data, and what so many good infographic do the data-metaphor, juxtaposing information against something we find easy to refer to. For example the number of plastic bottles inside the Empire State Building, which we know is big!

Authentic information and research
Finding accurate information and data would be another important skill that would challenge a student to create something equally authentic and meaningful. We have the tools with which to find huge amounts of information and data but we need to know how to filter it. I don’t think teaching children how to search is enough, that is the first step, it is how we then process that information that needs time to be demonstrated and improved.

Persuasion
With my literacy hat on this animation pushes us to consider the impact of oil on our lives and has a strong persuasive message. The art of persuasive writing and in this case the careful scripting would be great to develop in this sort of medium, perhaps about a local issue.

Animation
The artwork and animation are obviously professional, but there is much to explore about the use of colour to convey meaning and an overall message. The colour schemes remind me of the Breathing Earth which also depicts an environmental message. It would be good for children to explore symbols and how we might convey a message in a visual way – a comparison type task would fit well here.

I think this animation is a great example of the sort of cross-curricular, multi-skill outcome that should be challenging our pupils in our schools. Making an animated infographic film about a local issue would cover so much. Furthermore if you had the opportunity to involve expertise, like Chris Harmon’s, it would provide that spark that would spur such a project onwards even further.

My 2010

Blogging, Interesting Ways, QR, Shared Search, SuperheroesPublished on6 Comments on My 2010

I have been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. It has already been one of those books that seems to speak to you directly, one that for whatever reasons strongly resonates with you at exactly the right moment. On his blog he reviewed his year, what he shipped or completed.

Here is mine:

  • Instigated Google Teacher Academy London
  • Organised and ran TeachMeet BETT 2011 [with the amazing help of Stuart Ridout]
  • Presented Google Maps session at Google London HQ for GTA
  • Launched and took part in TeachMeet Takeover
  • Launched Curriculum Catalyst
  • Launched Shared Search
  • Interesting Ways gets it’s first presentation with 50 ideas
  • Google Forms Interesting Ways hits 50 ideas in less than 24 hours
  • Planned and completed a great Superheroes topic
  • Australia topic also a success
  • Started the #classblogs hashtag raising the profile of class blogs
  • Contributed to the Vodaphone Parenting magazine about digital life
  • Got a new job
  • Moved house
  • Got through my first 2 terms as a Deputy Head
  • Installed a new netbook resource at school
  • Found a simple and practical use for QR codes in the classroom
  • Helped teachers in my new school understand the value of class blogging
  • Every class in school has a Posterous blog

It really is amazing to write everything down so simply – I am already looking forward to what 2011 has to offer.

Australian Postcards Please!

Australia, BloggingPublished on24 Comments on Australian Postcards Please!

1923704675 7f1aab4c0cWe are hoping to connect with lots of different schools right across Australia for our topic work this term.

This will help our children to really understand what life is like today for their peers throughout Australia.

But for an old fashioned pen-pal style idea we welcome your postcards, because after all there is still something special about receiving mail – the physical kind!

If you are an Australian teacher or educator we would love to have you and your class send us a card. The postcard could be about your town, city or state or even a famous landmark you are close to.

We have two classes doing the Australia topic so if you could please send 2 cards one addressed to Mr Barrett’s Class and the other to Mrs Bartholomew’s Class.

John Davies Primary School
Barker Street,
Huthwaite,
Sutton-in-Ashfield,
Nottinghamshire,
England.
NG17 2LH

As we gather your cards we will photograph them and update your location on a Google Map. Don’t forget to add your class blog address if you have one – our Year 5/6 classes will be starting their own soon.

Please let us know if you can help and we look forward to seeing your cards in the post!

__

Pic: Wish You Were Here by H4NUM4N


Seeing Ripples

Blogging, Curriculum, Literacy, Mapping, Networks, Twitter, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on5 Comments on Seeing Ripples

When you share your classroom experiences and ideas, one thing you hope for is that they are transferable to other classrooms. This week I was delighted to see three examples of my ideas being successfully applied elsewhere.

The first is from Peter Richardson a primary school teacher in Preston who took my idea for using Voicethread for peer assessment of writing and used it for work in their Egyptian work. Here is the Voicethread he shared.

Kevin McLaughlin is a Year 4 teacher in Leicester and after reading my blog post about using Twitter and Google Forms for a data handling lesson, has applied the same ideas himself. His class compared music tastes from Kevin’s Twitter network (via a Google Form) with their own. I am pleased it worked well for his Year 4 class too, as Kevin explains,

The data that we now have will be used next week in further Maths lessons and the children added that they will continue to use the survey over the weekend at home and with friends. Real data from real people. This is what makes this type of investigation so very useful and brings an added dimension to data collection activities.

The final ripple I caused comes from Jan Webb another Year 4 teacher in Cheshire. Jan took up the challenge of using my Maths Maps idea with her class and developed a series of activities in a Google Map of Berlin for her class to use.

View Berlin in a larger map

Jan explains on her blog how they enjoyed using the resource in her class.

…a great deal of discussion arose from finding the shapes in some of the buildings and finding how many rectangles we could see in a building!  We all really enjoyed these tasks and they not only let us discuss aspects of shape, but also provoked discussions about aspects of life in Germany.

These ripples are very encouraging as you are able to clearly see the effect sharing your own practice has on other teachers and subsequently other children’s learning.

If you have always thought about starting a blog but never got round to it, why not give it a go. The more pebbles in the pond causing ripples the better.