BYOD Project - Through the Eye of the Camera

As part of my job as a National Counselor of English responsible for ICT and Curriculum Integration, I initiated a project in the Haifa District together with Amalia Na'ma, Inspector for English Language Education in the Haifa Region. The project was done in conjunction with the Haifa district. It invovled 6th graders and was inspired by the Haifa District online project למידה בראי המצלמה  led by Dr. Idit Avni, the person in charge in the district for integrating technology in the curriculum. 

Procedure:

Both Amalia Na'ma and I wrote the project together. Then Amalia chose ten schools from the Arab, Druze and Jewish sectors whose teachers feel comfortable with technology. Each school then was sent the instructions for the project. The regional counselors later helped the teachers in the field to materialize the project.

Description of the project:

BYOD Project in Haifa District

Students use their cellphones to take pictures of interesting places/people/or topics and write about it in their slide in Google Slides. Teachers also could use any Web 2.0 tools they thought was suitable.

Links to products of schools:

• Omar Ben Alkhattab School- Baqa - this school also used the online tool ThingLink to add another layer of information to their project.
• Tali Alona School

I'd be happy to get your comments about other projects you have done. Please write in the comments section below.

Free Images - Openclipart and Photos for Class

1.  ClipSafari provides many of the best clipart images available - it has more than 50,000 images.

Teachers may use all clipart from  ClipSafari all is free to use for any purpose, including commercial purposes.



2. Photos for Class is a site for teachers to download properly attributed, Creative Commons photos for school! 

Piclits for Creative Writing

Piclits is a great easy to use tool to encourage students to write creatively.  It revovles around attention grabbing images and word banks for writing a caption, a short paragraph or a short poem/story. Word lists are categorized by nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and a universal list.

Piclits offers a fun way to learn new vocabulary and play with word forms and sentence structure.


See the full PicLit at PicLits.com


There are two options for writing: one is by dragging and dropping words unto the picture and the second is by clicking on the freestyle button. You can save and edit a Piclit if you sign up. If you don't sign up you can still save your Piclit by using the Snipping tool in windows (here is a short video explaining how to do it).


Application in the classroom:

• Students find a picture that relates to current events and write about it
• Students write a short poem 
• Students write events that happened before a story that they read
• Students write about a different ending to a story that they read
• Students create a slogan/banner for a campaign
• Students find a picture that relates to the way they feel and write about it

If you have any more ideas, write to me!