It's a Wrap! the 1st 1st grade movie

Woo! Our first class production, just in time for Back to School Night. The kids bonded over this experience. We have two more stories in production. I hope each student can make a personal story this year as well. Onward!

Jack Johnson's song "We Are Going to Be Friends" was a natural for the soundtrack.

I love my class!

Altered Books

OK, for me it is sometimes appropriate to say "Altared" Books. I love books--reading them, writing them, making them, buying them, giving them, and now--hacking them up and re-creating them. Once you get over your inner librarian, it's a blast. I can't remember where I got the idea, but there are great examples and communities online. Now, my kids are doing their own books, and every time a friend comes over, we get out the books. Most of the kids' books live at our house (I tolerate/encourage creative messes more than most). I love that our home is a safe haven for art.

These photos are of my altered book, "What Happened: The Stories Behind the Science Stories in the News". (That was the original title of the book. See, even science is just our stories). It's about my experience with breast cancer. If you click on photos, you can see them enlarged and scroll around. The book has many pages that have not been photographed yet.

Here's one of my favorite altered books artists: Modern Gypsy

flip.com

Oh oh. I may have a new obsession--flip books. It's collage, but online. Another form of scrapbooking gone wild.

I love cutting and pasting--probably the reason I teach little kids. I still don't like virtual cutting and pasting as much as the real thing, and I confess I usually do it in reality, then scan or take digital photos. I'll probably continue with my backwards methods, but I may flip for flip books anyway.

Digital Storytelling?

I've been lucky to be able to learn from the folks at the Center For Digital Storytelling.


In brief, digital storytelling is creating a short personal narrative, sharing and helping improve the story in a story circle, and adding a voice over, soundtrack, and images in a movie making program.

Digital stories are cool, because the storyteller's voice is literally heard in the story. Plus, each is unique as the author chooses sound and images to go with the text, or script.

It's not that different from storytelling around a fire, at the local watering hole, or anywhere else. Except it can be preserved and shared in a new way.

Here's the digital storytelling wiki I've been working on.

Poet Muriel Rukeyser said "Say it! Say it! The universe is made up of stories, not atoms." Amen.