Flickr offers many wonderful avenues for social networking through photography. In researching how Flickr could be used in my 6th grade English/ Language Arts classroom, I found a wonderful lesson posted on the professional blog of teacher, Becky Spies.
As writing is the emphasis of middle school language education, it is an important element for students to develop a personal style of writing. Poetry education is one of them many avenues that we teach personalizing your writing though. Spies' idea is for students to take pictures with a digital camera and choose ones that they could write about. Then she has them post their arts to Flickr and add text within the picture that reflects the poem. My personal extension to the assignment would be for students to take pictures that tell a story or relate to a central topic. Then when posting text with them, make them be the lines of their poem. Finally, students would turn their album into a slideshow of poetic expression.
Another idea would be for the class as a whole to create a Flickr group and collaborate for one large slideshow representing topic given from the teacher. Students would create Flickr accounts then the teacher would invite them to join the group. The teacher would give the central topic, such as "a day in the life of a 6th grader", and students would each submit 1 picture with a brief caption. Then the slideshow would be reviewed and discussed as a group in the classroom. Out of that discussion, the class would write 1 collaborative poem based on all of the feelings and images expressed.
After 6 years in middle school education, I can see that Flickr would be of positive use to the arts and language classroom. Students would ultimately see that poems (like other writings) build from one line to the next, that in order to compose a lengthy and/ or comprehensive piece, you go at it one step at a time with constant revision, and most importantly that writing can be fun and doesn't have to be difficult!
References
Spies, B. (2007, January 30) Lesson plan using Flickr. Retrieved from http://edtp504spiesb.blogspot.com/2007/01/lesson-plan-using-flickrcom.html
Sunday, October 11, 2009
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I love this. "Out of that discussion, the class would write 1 collaborative poem based on all of the feelings and images expressed." If you add posting it to school tube and up the bar by having it viewed by others, you will get incredible things from them. You could also split them into four groups so they can compare and contrast the results and post them all. Fantastic:)
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