Great deal from Plasq

Plasq, makers of ComicLife, continues to make strong statements in education. Recently, they offered a 25% discount on their already incredibly low priced products when partnering with the My Hero project. My Hero is a wonderful organization well worth exploring, as is Comic Life. I use Comic Life in the classroom to teach digital citizenship, and will be expanding my use into other projects. Here are links to these two fantastic groups: http://plasq.com/

Curriculum design in the 21st century continues to be a moving target. As we combine best pedagogical practices with ever more amazing and powerful tools in a media drenched age, it becomes increasingly more challenging to focus on student learning in specific and focused ways.

This image is inspired by the thought of one of my digital super villains creating a virus that is personified on the net by dragon iconography. I am finding that the digital citizenship/comics creation unit I am growing is the most satisfying work of my teaching career. Its combination of personal passion and deep teaching opportunities inspires me every day I get to work with it.

Writing on the Wall

I teach a digital citizenship unit inspired by my work in collaboration with Common Sense Media. In this unit, I posit a near future time where my students are transformed (sometimes I say how, for instance, a nanobiology accident…) into superheroes to combat digital villainy taken to an extraordinary level. Here is my vision of a virus attacking raw code in the virtual environment of software language. I call it "Writing on the Wall".

Deep into the New Year

Deep into the New Year
February finds us over the 100 day mark in the school year, a time when potential doldrums hit both teacher and student. How are we fighting off the mid-year "blahs"?

I make sure that my classroom is working on their most exciting project to date, and throw more multimedia into the mix, video teases, podcast nuggets, etc. It is never too early to consider what one is going to showcase for parent visitations (Open House) and how one will display student learning.

I've been inspired by my students at SFSU and my colleagues to continue to risk new ideas and curriculum, even as I approach the twilight of my career. Shout out to you folks.

The "360" project is a prime example. Inspired by the work of San Francisco artist, Pep Ventosa, I asked students to take at least 30 digital photos using themselves as the subject, and layer them in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The results were spectacular: