Peace Posters: A Short Movie

My students have just completed a big art project around the theme of Celebrating Peace and their work is now hanging all around the hallways of my school. We also have them writing about why peace should be important to young people and to explain the symbolism of their art. It is very interesting to see sixth-graders tussle with the idea of a peaceful world in a time of war.

I thought I would capture some of that work through video and so I am sharing that video with parents at another Weblog site but I figured it would be nice to share it here, too.

[googlevideo]4263936435492206329[/googlevideo]

Peace (in every way possible),
Kevin

Family Portraits

The other day, my eight-year-old son drew a picture with portaits of everyone in our immediate family: himself, his two younger brothers, his mom, our dog and cat, and, of course, me. The details are quite good (even if the video here is grainy), although we all wonder why some of us look mad or sad. He won’t say. 🙂

Plus, I want to test out embedding Google Video.

[googlevideo]-6369706576342130754[/googlevideo]

Peace,
Kevin

Making Movies

One of my own personal goals this year was to learn more about making documentary movies so that I could capture some of the work being done at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, where I am the techology liaison for our network of teachers.

Here are two movie projects that I have been working on:

We are in the midst of making a DVD documentary of our 2006 Summer Institute and I have been sharing the work with our participants through a web-based site. The movie will center on our three main strands: teacher writing; inquiry research; and workshop presentations.
You can head to the Summer Institute movies here.

Meanwhile, I have also been working on a documentary for a Weblog project called Making Connections, which connects middle school students through technology. This project is funded through the NWP Technology Seed Grant Initiative.

Head to the Making Connections movie.

Peace
Kevin

Blink: A Multimodal Poem

As noted down below in this Weblog, I have been working on a multi-media poem that seeks to utilize some of the emerging technologies as a canvas for creative expression. My idea was to try to write something that could be reflected in a Read/Write Web format and see what happens with it. And so, my writing — can we call it that? — is a mix of words, images, and sound.
Are you interested in experiencing Blink Blink Blink?

This link will take you to my poem.

As part of the process, I also recorded an off-the-cuff audio reflection that is embedded in the poem page but which can also be listened to independent of that piece.

microphone Listen to an audio reflection about the poem

I would love to get any feedback on the poem — does it work for you as a creative piece? Does the technology get in the way or does it complement the writing? — and you can use the comment feature on this item to do so, if you would like.

Peace
Kevin