This is for Slice of Life. (You can view it differently here.) <Here is a letter received from #slice2013 this morning. Please take it under advisement.> Dear Twitter, I’ve decided to retire. I know, I know, I’ve been a faithful bit of byte every Tuesday, as I dutifully connect the Slice of Life community together […]
Search Results for: identity
When Teachers Make Comics
I brought a group of teachers at a recent Professional Development session into Bitstrips to show them what a comic space looks like and to work around the idea of digital identity and avatar creation. Yeah, lots of laughter and giggling, and then thoughtful reflections at the end. That’s how PD should work, right? Peace […]
Teacher Perceptions: the Pros and Cons of Kids and Technology
At the start of a professional development session the other night, I asked the participants to take a short survey (which served two goals — gather information to guide the session and show them how to use a Google Form to gather information to guide teaching) about the perceptions we have about our students and […]
Nurturing Teacher Voice
I had the pleasure of being a guest on a recent Teachers Teaching Teachers show with host Paul Allison, where the discussion centered on nurturing teacher voice. (On a related note, I am also a guest for this week’s show on Wednesday night, as we talk about the summer’s Making Learning Connected MOOC project. Come […]
Thinking Deeper about DS106
This weekend, a video conversation was posted in which the main facilitators/organizers of DS016 (Martha Burtis, Alan Levine, and Jim Groom) were being interviewed for an award DS016 is receiving around open learning. I was curious because I actually don’t know much about the history or intent of DS106, other than it is a wonderful […]
Starting the School Year: We’re All Comics Now
This is one of my opening day traditions with my homeroom class and it is a lot of fun. I have my students on the first day of school get up into our Bitstrips for Schools webcomic site to create avatars of themselves (first, we have a discussion about avatars and identity — a topic […]
Graphic Novel Review: Boxers & Saints
If you have not had the opportunity to read Gene Leun Yang’s graphic novels, you really should. His eye for detail and for bringing the mystical into a story is interesting to experience. American Born Chinese is becoming a fixture in many classroom, and it should be. That graphic novel is storytelling at its best. […]
Making Avatars in a Webcomic Classroom
In the summer workshop for high school English Language Learners, we’ve been talking a lot about digital literacy and online identity, particularly about avatars. This concept of representing oneself will come back around as we move into video game design, too, and yesterday, after viewing a fascinating New York Times slideshow that features portraits of […]
Close Reading: The Story of Electronics
We wrapped up our discussions about Digital Lives yesterday by moving our topic from issues like identity and privacy and behaviors in online spaces to something more concrete: the lifespan of electronics and the environment. It also gave me a chance to guide my sixth graders to be critical close readers of a video as […]
A Collection of Avatar Creators
Last week, we were talking about online identity and avatars, and my students are now working on creating a visual representation of themselves for our Glogster space. Here is the list of avatar creation sites that I shared with them (the Lego one was the most popular). Portrait Illustration Maker Picassohead Portait Creator Lego Mini-Mizer […]