Slice of Life: A visitor

(This is part of the Slice of Life project)

I was delighted to have a visitor to class yesterday — Maureen T., a friend from my Twitter network who works just west of me, came to my school to hang out for a bit and see what was happening in the classroom (and then she went down the hall to hang out in Gail P.’s kindergarten class). Maureen came at a good time, as we were working on our digital story projects. She got a good glimpse of some of the work now unfolding at a pretty good pace.

It’s nice to know that the virtual connections can sometimes evolve into something richer and we had some excellent conversations about teaching at our schools, about how difficult it can be to get teachers to integrate technology into the classroom, and how much students stand to gain from using digital tools to express themselves. It’s true — we were a two-person choir singing to ourselves, but still …

And here is a little gift: some of the memory objects that my students have brought in and are using for the core of their digital stories.

Peace (in connections),
Kevin

6 Comments
  1. This really is a cool project. What would you say are the tricky parts someone else might want to avoid? I konw my class could do the writing and come up with the special object. It’s the other stuff that might get in our way!

  2. Can I just say I’m jealous that a virtual buddy turned into a real buddy? I feel so isolated here where I teach–adjunct professors are kind of like the grad students of a school, only they’re paid worse and hang around less. I do have one teacher that we say hi to–we teach across from each other during one period–but other than that, I don’t really have a place.

    Okay, now on to your students’ memory objects–just seeing some of them made me curious about how they are a memory object (like the row of rubber duckies) while some of them are easy-to-spot memory objects. It’ll be interesting to see how it all comes out.

    Elizabeth
    http://peninkpaper.blogspot.com/

  3. How cool that you got to meet a teacher friend you’d been talking with online! I love the slideshow of memory objects. I’m wondering if I could make this work in my night class. I’ll have to think about that one a little, try to imagine all the ramifications … I like the idea so much, though. Maybe I’ll try it with my morning students first and see how it works.

  4. Hey Kevin,
    Thanks for sharing. Is the memory object ANY object that will elicit a strong memory from them? Are there any other criteria for the object they bring in? Does it have to be x amount of years old, or could it be something from last year? I’d love to know a bit more, just because you produce such cool stuff with your kids.
    Thanks,
    Janice

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