California 2.0 Curriculum Connections

Images can be used for instruction or they can add humor, insight, or comment to tests, handouts, worksheets, and more. Many classes make their own magazine. This would be perfect! Example for covers: "Crusade Times," "Heading West," or "Genetics Today." Students could create a magazine cover and headlines for a famous person, historical event, or story character.

Idea #1: Use Flickr toys to make a magazine cover.

Idea #2: Create trading card sets. Liven up 5th grade mission projects, annual "animal" or "state" reports, and other topics that are ripe for change. Each student could create a card or student groups could design their own trading card pack. Trading the cards can be a fun game, but they can also be useful for recommended reading, books, illustrators, authors, and historical bios/dates. How would you use them? How about using them as Flash cards for vocabulary, periodical table, foreign language or ELL. FYI: Librarian Trading Cards.

Idea #3: Share and discuss issues related to technology such as Internet safety & ethics, censorship, plagiarism, copyright, and library collection development.

ADD or enhance a Curriculm Connection IDEA:

IDEA #4: Create an annual school photography contest. Theme could be library or literacy related. For example, the contest could build off the "Get Caught Reading" program developed by the American Association of Publishers at http://www.getcaughtreading.org/ Collaborate with school photography or art teacher, or local organization.

Idea #5: Create a magazine cover to introduce possible projects along the same lines as the articles indicated on the cover. Inside each student could expand on each theme as it related to him or her. This can be applied to almost any subject area. For a sample see: http://dejongsplace.blogspot.com/2007/06/week-3-thing-6-plus-curriculum.html

Idea #6:

CWilliams I just heard about a great new site from one of the 2.0 participants! This one can mix photos with voices. There are a MILLION things you could do with this in the classroom and library - Here's my first "out of the bag" thoughts:

1. oral history - post a photo and have people comment on what it means to them [ a photo of classmates, a building, an event, a family....]

2. Language Arts - reading poetry as in the example on the tutorial, book talking and showing the cover of the book, putting on an action video and describing the action.

3. a power point presentation - each slide could have the accompanying voice over.

Here's the site: http://www.voicethread.com

Idea #7: Make trading cards  for all the staff. Have the students interview the staff to get interesting details to put on the cards.

Idea #8: Demonstrate to your school PTA or PTO how you could create an image with a special message, and have it put on an item for a school or school library fundraiser.  Create your special image, go to smilestore.picturepeople.com , find a mug or other item, add your image and e-mail that to your PTA VP of School Spirit. Be sure your demonstrations are library-related! :)

Idea #9: Invite students to create posters using their "famous person" and a quote from that person. These could be used as table top signs in the library.

Idea #10 Have foreign language students create their own images to accompany new vocabulary.  Students can create a comic strip or storyboard with their images and vocabulary. 

Idea #11: Another fun 3rd party application from flickr toys....the slide show. I can think of some great uses. What a terrific intro to a reading list to have book covers be part of a slide show....kids creating slides that depict characters, scenes and events in a story.....and then writing about them...and on and on!

Idea #12: Create a CD cover.  When collaborating with your music teacher, go to Foxy Tunes Planet http://www.foxytunes.com/planet and select the criteria and widgets that you want students to use when researching a musician.  Students can read a biography, listen to music, watch a video, look at pictures, read song lyrics, etc.  Using information from this site, have students create a CD cover using Flickr Toys http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/ adding a picture and text.

Idea #13: Create the front page of a newspaper.  Using the newspaper generator at http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp, have each student create their own front page.  This would be a great activity for Back to School night.  Each student could write a brief article on the most important thing they have learned so far.  This would also be a good activity to use to have students summarize content covered.

Idea #14:  Create line drawings from photos that students can color and/or label. An app at http://www.dumpr.net allows you to turn photos into sketches. Iimmediately thought of a project our second graders did last year where they had to draw an animal they were researching because it was becoming too expensive to print the photos they found online in color (and also because we wanted them to learn even more about their animals by coloring them). This would be perfect for that assignment or other similar ones.

Idea #15:  Use the library trading cards to show what the students are reading.  Maybe the cover of the book in the reading area & the student's name & class in the text.  Or maybe a photo of the student with a list of books they are read.  Or an award for the student that has the most accelerated reader points per class.  I'd like to hang them on the wall outside the library and also make a copy for the student to take home to their parents.

Idea #16:  I can see how middle school students might use some of the Flickr tools to create posters and/or trading cards of their favorite books. Or they could use Flickr mashups for their school projects - especially my 6th graders on their biome reports. I imagine they could create trading cards for the animals found on their biome along with the links for the food chain.

 Idea #17 Make library trading cards or bookmarks from Newbery Award winners using Flickr.  Kid cans write a synopsis or a review on the card.

Idea #18 - Hi all...if you'd like to have some fun...try Blabberize http://www.blabberize.com/.  The alpaca demo on the home page is a hoot! 

Basically you upload a picture and record your voice.  The mouth on the picture moves according to your sound...what you say.  It may take a bit of adjustment, but nothing too difficult. 

We used this to invite our high school students to an after school event developed in response to a community Big Read celebration using Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Illych.  Tolstoy went on the morning announcements and invited the students and staff.  Much more interesting than my mug on the screen...  You are welcome to visit my blog and let me know if you enjoyed the site!  There From Here Library

Idea #19 I used the ALA mini poster generator and made mini posters for free to include on our school web page--it will be a "Look who's Reading" section and feature the teachers (hey, a teacher feature). I would also like to have a separate page for the students. What I think would be really cool is to make a montage after so many kids have participated and then buying the poster to put in the library.

Idea #20-Hi. This is a simple idea-use photos to illustrate a story they write.

Idea #21 - - Have kids make trading cards about school events to personally invite parents. Familys could keep an on-going poster of events they attended at the school by gluing them to the poster as they attend. Hang these in the library to show family participation and school pride!

Idea #22 -- Have students create original poetry and use image chef to illustrate it.

Idea #23--Students can create trading cards to highlight their biography book reports or highlight famous figures in Colonial America.

Idea #24  Have students use the Trading Cards (in BigHugeLabs) as the product for promoting cybersafety "rules" or "guidelines" or "tips" for other teens/peer groups.  The Title can be a slogan; the photo --whatever the students thinks relates to their message; the Sub-title can be the #1 Guideline, #2, etc. ; and, the Description can be the "rules" or "guidelines" or "tips" with examples written with the audience in mind.    What better way to promote cybersafety to teens than through their own thoughts and products!  

Idea #25 Use trading cards from BigHugeLabs for a book report assignment.  It's a great way for students to practice character analysis.

Idea #26 Have a Dewey Decimal System Poster contest in which students use Big Huge Lab Flickr toys to create classification signs for the library. Provide them with good, crisp images and make sure there are enough of a variety for each classification.  This would be a good project to teach about copyright, fair use and Creative Commons.