The Noun Project

The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.


Here is their pledge to you:

Free

The symbols on this site are and always will remain free. We believe symbols can not be effectively shared with the world if they are not free.

Simple

Everyone likes simplicity. We want you to be able to come to our site and effortlessly find and obtain what you are looking for. Simple as that.

Fun

We think a language that can be understood by all cultures and people is a pretty amazing thing. We also think our symbols and the objects or ideas they represent are works of art worth celebrating.

Highest Quality

We get excited about things like scale, proportion, and shape. We are committed to design and quality in everything we do.

Listening List

In the Our Stories Moodle course I posted some stories from Story Corps. If you are interested in more places to listen to stories, there is a list of links here. I have not tried any of these out yet. If you find a great one, let us know.

education quotes flicker group

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“Great quotes about Learning and Change” Flickr group
Slideshow at Flicker

frankenstory

Remember those collaborative story games where one person starts a story and then passes it to the next person who adds the next bit. The group continues to pass the story from person to person, each one reading only the last entry and adding something new.

In the Frankenstory version you only get 40 words. You write the first part of a story. You send it on to your friend but they can only see the last few words you wrote. They write the next part in 40 words, send it back to you and you are done.

film shorts as text

From Bill Boyd @ the Literacy Advisor:

The short film is an ideal medium for developing the “traditional” literacies of reading, writing, talking and listening, a “short” film being a complete text lasting anything up to 30 minutes, but for our purposes ideally no more than ten or fifteen minutes, which means it can be shown two or three times in the course of a lesson if necessary. This is preferable to using an extract from a feature film as it doesn’t require an understanding of the whole work from which it has been taken, and there is a huge range of texts available, from animation to live action, fiction to documentary.

With a minimal understanding of the language of film, teachers can use short films to introduce and reinforce concepts related to reading and writing printed texts, such as narrative viewpoint, plot, characters and setting, as well as developing a greater understanding of the medium of film itself, the medium with which most of us engage most frequently. It is important to emphasise the similarities between printed and moving image texts, as well as the differences, since ultimately they are both about telling stories, and why we tell stories is arguably the reason for studying any kind of texts at all!

At the National Film Board site you can watch full-length NFB documentaries, animations and dramas online - beta.nfb.ca/

Storytelling: Anecdotes

This is Ira Glass. He has a show called This American Life about storytelling.
This video is 5:24 long.
(If you cannot see this video because You Tube is blocked, see below).

Ira Glass tells us that the building blocks of storytelling are:

1. Anecdotes. Anecdotes use bait and momentum to keep the listener interested.
   
2. A Moment of Reflection. This moment answers the question, "Why am I listening to this story?"

What is an anecdote?

Why are anecdotes powerful?

How do anecdotes use momentum to make boring stories exciting?

What is bait?

Think of something funny or scary that happened last week. Tell an anecdote about that event. Use bait and momentum to make your story interesting. Use a moment of reflection to answer the question, "Why am I listening to this story?"

** If You Tube is blocked: You can use Zamzar, a free online video conversion service. I entered the URL for the You Tube video, chose avi as the type of file, waited about 20 minutes, checked my email, went to the web address and then uploaded the new video onto this blog. You can also download the videos directly onto a computer (MPEGs are probably best -- check with the TDSB tech people) and watch them without using the internet at all.

Storytelling: Tales we Tell Children

Some people tell stories.
Some people sing stories.
Some people read stories.

Why are stories important for children?
What are the stories people tell children?
Why those stories?

Here are some stories:

# Christopher, Please Clean Up Your Room! (NFB Video)
# The Cat Came Back

# The Magic of Anansi (NFB Video)

# Roses Sing on New Snow (NFB Video)

# The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier (NFB Video)
# The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier (CBC Audio)

# The legend of Nanabozho (CBC Audio)
# Summer Legend (NFB Video)

Did you listen to any of the stories?
Which ones did you like best?

What stories did you like best when you were very young?
Why do you think you liked them so much?

What stories do you tell the children you know?
Why do you pick those stories?

Storytelling: Interviews

What story do you want to hear?











Who would you like to ask to tell you a story?
What stories from your family or your community are interesting to you?

There are 3 things to do.
1. Listen to people tell each other stories.
Here are some links.

* A son asks his father about his marriage and divorce and marriage
* A great-nephew asks his great-uncle about the secret of long life
* Debra asks her friend Ed about his best tip ever
* A Big Brother and Little Brother ask each other questions
* Listen to more stories

2. Plan your interview.
Think about who you would like to interview.
Make some questions.

You can use the Question Generator at Story Corps.
You put your information into the question generator and they will send you a list of questions by email.

You can use the the Great Questions List at Story Corps.
When you go to the Great Questions List, you can click on the topic you are interested in and find questions you would like to ask.

Or make up your own questions.

3. Write up your questions and share them with the class.

Storytelling: Memoirs

What story do you want to tell about yourself?
A memoir is a story from our own lives.

The idea for a 6-word story came from Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. He was born on July 21, 1899 and died on July 2, 1961. That is him in this picture -->

One day he bet a friend that
he could write a whole story in 6 words.
He wrote a very sad story.
His story was "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."
He won the bet.

Smith Magazine had a contest. People had to write a story from their lives in 6 words. They collected 1,000 stories and made a book.

You can read some of the 6-word stories here.

What about you? Can you write a story from your life in only 6 words?
Click on Comments and give it a try.

Health: Our Bodies

We are going to read and write about what makes us magic!
You can write a poem or a story.
You can write about your body or something that you can do that makes you feel magic.

Read the stories and poems below.
Write your own poem or story about how your body is magic.

Read a poem.
This poem is by a former construction worker called Kate Braid.

There is a story about Kate Braid in a literacy reader called Coast-to-Coast Reader by Joan Acosta. You might have it in your program.

These Hips
by Kate Braid

Some hips are made for bearing
children, built like stools
square and easy, right
for the passage of birth.

Others are built like mine.
A child’s head might never pass
but load me up with two-by-fours
and watch me
bear.

When the men carry sacks of concrete
they hold them high, like boys.
I bear mine low, like a girl
on small, strong hips
built for the birth
of buildings.

Read a story.

There is a story that you can read.
It is by a literacy student called Brenda Meyers.
It is about her favourite body part.
She wrote the story after reading the poem by Kate Braid.
You can see the story here.

Listen to a poem.

You can find the poem to listen to here.
It is called homage to my hips and it is by Lucille Clifton.
A homage is a way of showing respect to someone – or something.

In this poem, she talks about her magic hips.
She also talks about being sexy.
I do not think it is rude.
I think it is funny.
But everybody has different ideas about what is rude and what is funny.
If you think that this will make you feel uncomfortable, do not listen to the poem.
Or if you are worried about people in the program overhearing the poem – use headphones.

When you click on the link, wait for the poem to load – watch the blue bar grow – and then click PLAY.

You can read the poem below.

homage to my hips
by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips
they need space to move around in
they don't fit into little, petty places

these hips are free hips
they don't like to be held back
these hips have never been enslaved
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do

these hips are mighty hips
these hips are are MAGIC hips
I have known these hips to put a spell on a man and to spin him like a top.