The more I interact with people online, the more I realize what great ideas can evolve from these conversations. Jamie Greenway is a new Grade 6 teacher at a neighbourhood school, and I’ve been fortunate enough to talk with him both online and in person. Sharing ideas has certainly benefitted both of us.
Yesterday, I met with Jamie (@6greenway) to help him set-up a new blog, and during our meeting, he shared an idea that he had to have his students rotate taking a daily photograph to showcase what they’re learning in class. Jamie’s idea got me thinking. Last night, I emailed my teaching partner, Gina Bucciacchio (@_missginab), and we spoke about how we might be able to manage a daily photo blog.
Gina and I both believe strongly that expectations have to come first, and we wanted curriculum to be at the forefront here. We both thought that this blog would be a wonderful way for the students to create a media text: taking a photograph and then using a caption to highlight their learning. We also thought that students could consider different audiences when writing their caption: be it their parents, other teachers, or even their peers. Not only will students now be able to reflect on their learning, but also meet other curriculum expectations when doing so.
Since our class will be using Twitter as a learning tool, we thought that the students could tweet out their photograph and caption, either using the Twitter app or using Instagram. Then we could capture these tweets in the blog: giving people multiple ways to view and comment on the photographs.
Now that we had a plan, we contacted Jared Bennett (@mrjarbenne) to create the blog. When talking to Jared though, the idea evolved even more, and now we have an area where we can share our photographs, but other schools in the Board can share theirs too. Thank you, Jared, for making this work and giving us a chance to collaborate with others and help our students showcase their learning as well.
A Screenshot Of The Blog And The Test Post
If you’re part of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, I hope that you’ll follow along and contribute to our Daily Shoot Photo Blog. To think that this blog all started with a single conversation. Oh, the power of connecting! 🙂
What do you think of this new blog? What suggestions do you have for what we share and how we share? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Aviva
Hi Aviva,
A daily photo blog is a terrific idea and I think it will help students think creatively. It will probably motivate them to keep an eye out for interesting shots just so they can participate. Good luck to you and Gina with getting this going! Plus that’s great that Mr. Jared Bennett (@mrjarbenne) helped facilitate to get it available board wide. I am with a Private school and not with the HWDSB so you won’t see any photo’s and captions from any of my students, unfortunately – for two reasons…I’m a supply teacher for now, without a set classroom so unless I get the opportunity to set up some kind of club I won’t have regular interaction with the same students; secondly, we might have the technology but your blog isn’t set up world wide yet…look at what you can achieve! I hope you have an amazing time with it – it sounds like a lot of fun and I would love to see some results! Best of luck!
Karen (@karenteach)
Thanks so much, Karen! I think that this will be a great project as well, and I’m very excited to see where it goes. I’m so glad that Jared set it up so quickly for us too. Can’t wait to see what this year brings!
Aviva