Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Mapping Media, Cantilevers, and Remixing Lego Movie Tunes in Bethany, Oklahoma

These are slides from my presentation on May 23, 2014, for teachers in Bethany Public Schools, Oklahoma. The session description was: Digital literacy today means much more than searching the Internet and using Microsoft Office. To be digitally literate, teachers as well as students need to be able to create and share online a variety of different multimedia products. These media products can be “mapped” to your curriculum and to the Common Core State Standards. Interactive Writing, Narrated Art, 5 Photo Stories, Radio Shows, Visual Notes, and Narrated Slideshows/Screencasts are a few of the media products learners should be able to create and safely share online. In this session, we’ll view different examples of student media products and learn about tools and strategies for helping teachers become digitally literate as “media mappers.” We’ll also explore how librarians and instructional coaches can use the “Mapping Media to the Curriculum” website as a roadmap to help teachers and students create media products as assignments for class and as artifacts in digital portfolios. Learn more and access session resources http://maps.playingwithmedia.com. High school teachers also participated in the Cantilver Span STEM lesson activity, detailed on http://stem.wesfryer.com/home/cantilever-spans and originally shared by Nevada STEM educator Brian Crosby.

Mapping Media to the Common Core (May 2014) from Wesley Fryer
Building Cantilever Spans in a PD Worksh by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  Wesley Fryer 

Our Oklahoma legislature is getting close to the end of its 2014 session, and today they are expected to vote on a bill that would repeal Common Core State Standards. Yesterday they voted to override our governor’s veto of legislation that will provide more flexibility to schools, parents and teachers regarding 3rd grade retention. Although I used the video “Everything is Awesome” in my presentation to kick things off, everything is NOT awesome today with respect to public schools and education policy in Oklahoma.

I sang one “remixed verse” a cappella at the start of the presentation to reflect some of my current feelings about this. It starts, “Everything’s a nightmare…” I used this humorous remix to make some serious points today about why we CAN’T quit in the face of misdirected education legislation, because our students are counting on us and need us in the classroom. See slides 5-11 for more of those ideas. Later this summer I may write additional verses to this and even try and record it using GarageBand. 🙂

Everything’s a Nightmare... by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  Wesley Fryer 

Interestingly, when I gave both elementary and secondary teachers opportunities to “vote” using the website Poll Everywhere about what to do next in the workshop, both groups voted NOT to start a hands-on activity or NOT start it right away.

What shall we do?  Morning Poll Results by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  Wesley Fryer 

There are several ways to interpret these results. After a long school year, it’s can be more appealing to “sit and get” than “get up and do.” I also think the vote results reflect our traditional expectations and even desires (when measured en masse) in mandated professional development workshops like today’s session.

Regardless of those results and how they can be interpreted, I hope participants had fun and learned a few new things. Yesterday was my last day teaching students for this school year, and I’m looking forward to a busy summer schedule of four iPad Media Camps (in Texas, Illinois, Kansas and Alabama) as well as other conferences and professional development events. Check out other handouts from all my presentations on wiki.wesfryer.com. In 2 weeks I’ll be co-leading a “STEM Seeds PD Camp” 2 day event with Amy Loeffelholz.

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