President Obama gives his speech on education today and the White House released the text of the talk yesterday. I grabbed the words and put them into Wordle and created this image:
My aim is to show this to my students in context of the speech and talk about some of the themes that will emerge today. Of course, “school” is a theme but also responsibility, education, and knowing are there, too.
This speech actually is a perfect fit for my first project with my students called Dream Scenes, in which they must articulate an aspiration for themselves for the future, think about why it is important and explain how they will achieve it. We then move over to Photostory to create a digital story, with their voice and their own pictures (from Paint).
Here is a piece of this speech:
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn.
Thanks, Mr. President!
Peace (in speeches),
Kevin
Kevin,
Dream scenes. Love that. I’m going to use your idea with my Learning Strategies Class. Instead of simply talking about goals, we’ll talk about dreams- maybe bring in King’s dream speech too. I really like the idea of putting images and voice to their dream a well. I was thinking of using Voice Thread but I’ll take a look at Photostory. I’m not familiar with it yet. Thanks for the inspiration.
Oh by the way, what stood out for me in your Wordle of Obama’s speech was “Maybe”. Maybe we can live our dreams. First we need to have a dream before we can live it.
I hope to help my students find their dreams and articulate them. Just today in the hall at school a former student stopped me to tell me that he was living his dream of writing a chapter a week for a book he started writing last year when he was in my class. He was so excited that he was actually living his dream. He talked about setting more goals because goals gave him something to work for.
Thanks again for the inspiration.