Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson and a plethora of examples, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We’ll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer work.

Rings

I begin by taking off my wedding band and discussing it with my students. I ask them what it stands for.

Quickly we get some outstanding examples:

• love
• marriage
• my wife
• forever (due to its circular shape)
• the ring finger connects to the vein of love

What if I lost my ring? Does that mean my marriage is gone? Is my love for Mrs. Byrd gone? Of course not! The ring is not actually love.

But many students know that a lost wedding ring could put me in some hot water. So a symbol has strong emotional connections to the idea it symbolizes.

Does a ring always symbolize love?

My favorite counter-example is the Ring of Power from Lord of the Rings. The Ring symbolizes quite the opposite: uncontrollable power. Anyone who obtains the ring becomes consumed by its unquenchable thirst for more power.

Liberty

Next, I display an image of the Statue of Liberty. What does it stand for?

• liberty (duh)
• freedom
• America
• friendship (especially with France)
• hope

Then I ask if anyone has ever seen a movie or image with the statue destroyed or damaged. My 6th graders had tons of examples. We talked about how filmmakers use a damaged Statue of Liberty to show the destruction of liberty and freedom.

I use the classic image from Planet of the Apes to show how the Statue of Liberty symbolizes Earth and its destruction.

Students might also enjoy discussing the symbolism in flags or other national symbols.

The Desert

Symbols do not have to be specific items. A desert is a common symbol, often representing difficulty. When we see a character in the desert, they are possibly going through a hardship or trial.

Bringing It Back To Characters

Throughout the year, we read stories that include symbolism. Hatchet‘s Brian owns a hatchet which symbolizes his hope to survive. Some students said it symbolized man versus nature. Nice!

Some quick symbolism from Pixar movies your students might be familiar with:

• Nemo’s “lucky fin” symbolizes the baraccudda attack that destroyed his family.
• On the bottom of Woody’s boot, Andy’s scrawled name symbolizes their bond and love.
• Mr. Incredible’s room of newspaper clippings represents his longing for another time.

Computer Icons

Our last topic of discussion is the symbols that represent computer programs. We discuss Firefox’s image of the globe surrounding by a fox. Safari is a compass. Keynote is a podium. Garageband is a guitar.

Creation

I explain that we are going to generate similar icons to represent a character. We identify a character’s main traits and their motivation. We think about the dialog, thoughts, and actions that show these traits and motivations.

Then students consider items that share these traits.

At first, students might try to simply draw the character or an object they hold. This is not enough. We want a very abstract symbol.

Consider a simple story such as The Three Little Pigs. The straw pig demonstrates laziness. What other objects show laziness? A straw house is too literal. We want something abstract. A recliner? A bed? A can of soda and some fast food? Now we’re talking!

After students have identified suitable items, I let them start creating their pixel art. We use a small grid. This keeps non-artists in a nice rigid framework, and challenges artists to be creative within the framework. Plus, all kids (and many adults) love pixely artwork because of its connections to video games.

Here is the worksheet (as a PDF) I used to structure this process.

Pixel Art

Naturally, our computers are too locked down to install any cool pixel art programs, so I repurposed Microsoft Excel. Students made square-sized cells and learned to change their background colors, in effect painting with a spreadsheet.

This could be done in the spreadsheet of your choice, including Excel, Numbers, and online with Google Docs.

In fact, here’s an incredible example of collaborative spreadsheet art using Google Docs:

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

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Introducing a new tool to help you click up creative questions: Respondo!

It combines the power of the brainstorming tool SCAMPER with literary elements and an interesting product menu.

Here’s a sample of the power of Respondo!

Substitute The Giver’s setting for A Wrinkle In Time’s setting. Dramatize how this would affect A Wrinkle In Time’s plot. Create a skit.

Check it out here.

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Photo by Robert Scoble

I stumbled across the following Wired article and found it very applicable to my own students:

Other studies have found the same thing: High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. Why Kids Can’t Search from Wired.com.

After reading this article, and seeing my own students type in poorly constructed search terms, I realized that I must explicitly teach search skills to my students.

Starting With Spears

We begin our year with an ancient tools projects. Students build a tool that early humans might have used.

Naturally, many students want to build spears. I use this as a way to explain how Google “thinks.”

No Questions

Many of them “ask” questions like this:

What can I make an ancient spear out of?

Students should not “ask” Google questions, using “who, what, where, when, or how.” I explain that Google matches words to websites, it doesn’t answer questions.

To teach this, I offer ridiculous non-examples, like:

Hello Google. I was wondering, what is the best way to build a spear for my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Byrd?

We discuss that Google will attempt to find pages that include every single word that we typed in. It’s unlikely that a page with all those words will be useful. Instead, students should think about keywords, or the most essential words about a topic.

A well-crafting search query might be:

ancient spears materials

This search will return results containing those three words anywhere on the web-page.

Getting Rid Of Britney

To begin searching, we start with the most simple search term. Let’s type spears into Google.

Guess what comes up?

That’s right, pages and pages about Britney Spears.

We have a laugh. Then we discuss that Google doesn’t actually understand what we type. It just mindlessly matches words to webpages. We have to be very specific in our search terms to get what we want.

I introduce the “–” symbol. Placed before a word, this tells Google to exclude the word. So, spears -britney will locate sites with spears but without britney.

Students now have a tool to make their searches more precise.

Precise Phrases

So now we have the correct spears, but what if we want to be more specific? Maybe we want ancient spears, German spears, or even ancient German spears.

When we use quotes around words, Google searches for the exact phrase.

If you type "ancient spears", including the quotes. the exact phrase ancient spears must appear on a page in order for Google to return it as a result.

Without Quotes

The top three results for ancient spears (without quotes) returns:

• Wikipedia’s Spears article
• Ancient weapons
• Ancient roman spears

With Quotes

Now, when I search for "ancient spears" (with quotes), the top results are:

• Spears used in biblical time
• Ask.com’s Ancient Spears page
• Spears in the ancient world

The differences are subtle, but the quoted results are more precisely about ancient spears, not ancient weapons in general or spears in general.

Britney Ann Spears

Imagine searching for someone named Britney Ann Spears. A regular search would be dominated by the Britney, whereas a quoted search will zero in on the specific Britney that we want.

• Searching Britney Ann Spears returns 177,000,000 results.
• Searching "Britney Ann Spears" returns only 10.

Word Choice and Phrase Length

Based on these tips, you can see how important it is to think of the most specific terms when searching, in order to avoid unhelpful results.

Likewise, eliminating unnecessary terms results in more useful results.

Evaluating Sources

Now that students are giving Google better search terms, the next problem is helping students pick from the sources that Google returns. Look for a future article on how I’m trying to accomplish this with my class.

From The Horse’s Mouth

Head to Google’s search help page for even more help with these tools.

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Grabbing Screenshots

Every time I present, someone asks how I got the images, so here’s the answer:

1) Download VLC, a free movie player available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

2) Pop a DVD in and open it with VLC.

3) Use Video > Snapshot, from the menu, to save a screenshot.

4) To choose where the snapshots are saved, and how they’re named, use preferences panel.

And that’s it!

Drop these into Powerpoint or Keynote to easily display to a group. Screen shots from movies are great for discussing plot, character, tone, setting, and visual composition.

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One week before my first classroom opened its doors, I attended a workshop by Rick Morris, who, among dozens of amazing tips, highlighted the ways he uses music to manage his classroom.

Ever since, I’ve used the theme from The Andy Griffith show as a cue for students to return to their seats. These musical transitions have saved my voice years of wear and tear.

Here are some of the ways I’ve been getting music into my classroom.

Smart Playlists

Playlists are a simple idea in iTunes: just drag the songs you want, and they will play in the order you desire.

However, a smart playlist is far more powerful for the classroom. A smart playlist automatically picks all songs that meet certain criteria that you select.

The most useful application in the classroom is that a smart playlist will find songs you haven’t listened to recently and play those first, keeping your classroom music from growing stale.

For example, I have a smart playlist that automatically pulls in all songs in the “classical” genre that do not have a “one star” rating. The smart playlist orders these songs according to “least recently played.” Here’s what it looks like:

These keeps the playlist fresh, since only unplayed songs are at the beginning of my playlist. It automatically includes any song labeled classical, and I can remove songs from the playlist simply by rating them with one star.

I named this playlist “classical” and simply double click it when I need some background music in the classroom.

The best part is, if I download or import a new CD of classical music, those songs are automatically included into this playlist. And these songs will be put first on the list, since they haven’t been played yet.

Here’s a more complicated smart playlist that will automatically include songs that I haven’t listened to in two weeks, have at least four stars, are less than five minutes long, and are no older than 2009. iTunes will pick 25 songs that meet this criteria, and sort them randomly.

Here’s a Lifehacker article on 10 useful smart playlists.

Pandora

Pandora is a streaming service that offers a free plan (with commercials) or a paid plan that is ad-free. Using Pandora, you develop your own radio station by typing in an artist you want to listen to.

Pandora then plays songs that are similar to that artist. You can give feedback by clicking thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Pandora then tweaks your radio station based on this feedback.

Anytime you are listening to a song, you can ask Pandora why it picked the song and it will give you the criteria. Here’s why Pandora picked “Man In The Mirror” for me:

Naturally, you can create multiple stations for different occasions. For example I have created everything from a holiday station to a station based on video game theme songs.

The downside to Pandora is that you cannot simply request a certain song or artist. My Michael Jackson station plays songs by Janet Jackson, Jackson 5, Prince, and other artists deemed “similar” by Pandora.

For the holidays, Pandora has been fantastic in the classroom. I just turn on my holiday station and we are treated to a variety of wintery music that I don’t have to spend a dime on.

Want some quiet work music? Create a James Taylor station and enjoy some gentle singer-songwriter tunes.

Pandora is available as a free app for your smartphone and can also be played through the Pandora.com website. Note that using the smartphone app is a great way to get around potential district blocking.

Here’s Pandora’s how-to page.

Rdio

Rdio is a pay service, with a monthly fee. This gets you direct access to almost any song you can think of without needing to actually buy the songs.

For example, I wanted to use the theme from I Love Lucy as students approached the projector to present a sample project. A couple taps on the Rdio app on my phone, and we were listening to this TV classic.

During Halloween, I made liberal use of the themes from Ghostbusters and Thriller, both available through the Rdio app.

As my students developed movie trailers, I quickly brought up the evocative soundtrack from Tron: Legacy as background music while they worked.

Rdio doesn’t have every song or album (The Beatles are notably missing), but there’s an amazing selection that has rarely let me down. For $5 or $10 a month, it offers a great value for people who frequently listen to a variety of music.

It’s also useful for rainy days when students are stuck inside, we can cue several requests during lunch and hear the songs they are interested in (which otherwise I would probably not own).

Again, your district may block streaming sites such as Rdio, but I simply use my phone and plug it into a set of speakers.

Here are Rdio’s frequently asked questions

DIY With Garageband

I had so much success with using The Andy Griffith song as a transition, I decided to find a quick, 45 second math transition. Unable to think of a fitting tune, I opened up Garageband on my laptop and wrote my own!

With a surprisingly loud beginning, a strange low-voice, and an opera-style singing part, it’s the song my students love to hate. They playfully grumble and roll their eyes as it starts up, yet by its conclusion, their homework, notebook, and whiteboard are ready to roll (and sometimes I even catch them dancing in their seat to it!).

Feel free to use this math transition (mp3) in your classroom to get kids ready for a math lesson.

I bet you have a few students who would love the chance to write their own transition songs for your classroom.

So, how do you use music in your classroom, any tech tips for making the most of it?

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1. Students create a poem to serve as the basis of their trailer.
2. They then develop a ten-box storyboard to sketch out their plan.
3. Then, using Flickr.com, the students find images that are similar to their sketches.
4. In iMovie, they add titles and motion to these images.
5. Then, they bring their movie into Garageband to add music and narration.
6. Finally, you can burn all of these trailers to a DVD for students to take home and play for their families.

Technology In The Gifted Classroom: Analyze Tone With Movie Trailers from Byrdseed on Vimeo.

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Here are my top five free tools to quickly discover (and easily keep track of) new ideas:

Google Reader

This is my number one way of stumbling across interesting ideas. If you’re unfamiliar with an RSS Reader, it keeps track of your favorite websites and shows you only new updates. Rather than checking twenty different sites, I just head to Google Reader and scroll through the latest from the sites I enjoy. I can ‘star’ outstanding posts and skip past those that don’t interest me.

You can follow Byrdseed.com in Google Reader using the RSS Feed.

Delicious

Delicious stores your favorite websites as bookmarks online. Besides being a convenient way to access your own bookmarks from any computer, Delicious also lets you share and browse others’ bookmarks.

For instance, I admire the educator Dan Meyer and like to keep track of what he thinks is interesting. Since he shares his bookmarks, I can see what he’s saving on Delicious.

You can also view bookmarks based on their topic or tag. I watch for recent bookmarks tagged ‘gifted.’ If I want to know the most popular ‘gifted’ bookmarks, delicious offers that as well.

I can even follow just Dan Meyer’s bookmarks tagged with math.

The most exciting part is that each page has an RSS feed that I can subscribe to using Google Reader. When anyone adds a new gifted bookmark to Delicious, I see it on Google Reader.

Dropbox

After a hard drive fail, I realized that I needed a better backup system. Dropbox is simple and free way to keep your files safe. Anything you put into your ‘dropbox’ folder is automatically uploaded and safely stored on Dropbox’s server. Plus, if you install Dropbox on multiple computers (say your home computer and work laptop) Dropbox automatically makes sure you have the latest files on BOTH computers. No more carrying files in a flash drive.

Evernote

Evernote is like my digital notebook. I store webpages, PDFs, digital photos, scanned images, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Like Dropbox, Evernote syncs all of my information to multiple computers (and cell phones) and saves it all on their servers.

An amazing bonus feature is the ability to ‘read’ text in images and PDFs. So if I take a photo that has writing in it, Evernote recognizes the writing as text. This makes it very easy to search and find anything I’m looking for.

Evernote has a million uses, read their website for more information.

Twitter

Twitter is a way of communicating using tiny, 140 character messages. There is a thriving community of educators, parents and advocates supporting gifted children on Twitter. To get started, try searching Twitter.com for messages with the tag #gifted. Every Friday there is an online chat under the tag #gtchat led by Deborah Mersino of Ingeniosus.net. Twitter is a great way to find inspiration for your classroom. Keep track of me on Twitter at ByrdseedGifted.

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Update 10/24/10: The Student Grouper has been reborn and no longer requires an Excel upload. Simply copy and paste your Excel data into the text area.

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This is a Zoetrope, basically a three dimensional version of an animated flip book. Watching it come to life was truly shocking, I watched it at least five times to try to wrap my mind around it. If you live in the area, definitely check it out in person (in the animation room at California Adventure) as a video simply doesn’t do it justice:

Classroom Application

Besides just sharing an amazing piece of art, you can use this as a hook to explore other concepts. Take one of these big ideas and ask students to find other examples that support the statement (a deductive reasoning activity):

• When our point of view changes, details converge to reveal new big ideas: when motionless, these sculptures form a very different image than when they begin spinning.
• Different patterns emerge when new details are introduced: adding tiny changes to each sculpture results in a different animation. 
• When one detail is missing, a convergence cannot occur: if the strobe light doesn’t come on, the amazing animation effect fails completely.
• Or explore Arthur C. Clarke‘s quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Any other ideas for using this video in a classroom? Share in the comments

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My wife and I watched this humorous and insightful TED talk about “manspaces,” the diverse rooms that men create for themselves (if you can’t watch the video below, it’s also available on the TED site):

I’m always looking for ways for my gifted students to interact with literature through different media, and realized that this video had applications as a literary response activity:

• Ask your students to design a room that reflects a character.
• Students can build a diorama, illustrate on paper, or design a 3d model in Google Sketchup.
• For stories that support it, have students show how characters have changed over time by creating a before and after room.
• Take photographs of students’ work, scan art, or save digital images and compile the various rooms onto a DVD for students to take home.
• For larger stories, build a home with several rooms – one for each character.

Happy New Year and I hope this sparks some meaningful enrichment activities for your students!

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