As I have mentioned in the past, I keep track of a bunch of sewing and crafting blogs.  Boy, John Naisbett in Megatrends 2000 was right — we are becoming a high-tech, high-touch society.  It’s fascinating to watch how so many women — who practice handicrafts rooted in historical traditions — connect via Web 2.0 tools.  As an example, Amy Karol, who blogs the Angry Chicken blog, wrote a book called Bend-the-Rules Sewing.  A blog inspires a book, which inspires a Flickr photo group showing what readers have made from the patterns in the book.  When a crafting book inspires over 1000 readers since October alone to submit photos of their projects, we librarians need to sit up and take notice.  How can we leverage this concept in our own libraries?

Or check out this new blogging idea: two bloggers are engaging in an artistic conversation by using a blog as an incentive to create new things.  The blog documents their thinking process, not just the final product.  (Sound familiar? Don’t we encourage students to think about their thinking during the research process?)  A blogging project like this has metacognition and reflection built right in.  Check out this description, or read the Eight by Eight blog to see the conversation unfold.  How could we partner students or professional learning communities into a similar conversation using a blog?

Help me think through these ideas … how can we translate them into our own school environments?

(Just a gentle reminder that our corporate policy requires that comments be moderated, so although I’m dying to hear what you have to say, it may take a few hours for your post to appear.)

Image source: http://www.tabblo.com/partners/flickr

Last year, my family adopted a “homemade or gifts of time” approach to the holidays. It made the holiday so much more fun! Instead of spending time frustrated in long lines in shopping centers or jockeying for parking spaces at the mall, I spent my time in creativity mode.

I’m realizing that “homemade” can be digital and high-tech, too. For example, few of the second grade boys who work in our school library media center each morning have made podcasting CDs for their families for holiday gifts, complete with hand-drawn labels, and we’ve also wrapped nature poems in ribbons for gifts. I find that the act of preparing a piece of student work to be shared with others often infuses the project with extra energy. (The first time we gave podcasting CDs as gifts, the student and I strategized the number that needed to be burned. But while my back was turned, he popped a few more into the computer! That’s exactly the kind of thing that helps us know we’ve hit a chord in a kid.)

This year, I’ve been following a lot of crafting and quilting blogs to get ideas for my family’s gifts. (This is an amazing online community … something I’ll write about in more depth later.) Today, I found a link to this HP/Flickr toys site, which lets you access your Flickr albums, select favorite images, and drag them into the template. The system generates a PDF, which you print, cut out, and assemble. Wouldn’t these cubes make nifty gift tags, ornaments, or little gift boxes?

The site also lets you make 8.5 x 11″ posters for free, as well as order photo books. I’m looking at the 4″x4″ book for $9.95 … the price is so low that I’m willing to try it out.

Join the Conversation: Educational Uses for Photo Cubes

We can’t overlook the fact that technology motivates people.  So how could we use this free photo cube tool in an educational setting?

One useful tool might be to remember that Flickr accounts can be private and not shared online, whic could help with online student safety.  My own Flickr account is private, but I can authorize some Flickr tools to access those private photos for projects.

Here are some quick thoughts — what can you add?

• Autobiography: Ask students to find and upload five photos that reveal something about their life history.  Share the cube with a partner.
• Biography: Students upload five images about a famous person and share them with a partner.
• Science: Students select five images that represent a particular science concept: mutation, adaptation, symmetry, gravity, parasite/host, etc.
• Social studies: Students select images that represent a core democratic value.
• Creative writing: Students select five images, create the cube, then swap with a partner.  The partner uses the images on the cube as a story starter or basis for a poem.
• Math: Students select images that illustrate Fibonacci’s number.