Inspiration to Create: Remix what Educators Share on Social Media

 What Inspires You?

How do you get new ideas? What sparks your creativity?

For me, I am often inspired by connctions with other educators, or even my students, and then I use that inspiration create new learning opportunities. This often happens to me in conjunction with intereactions I have with other education professionals online. In the past, this happened in chats and discussions on social media channels, like Twitter (now X). Now I am finding more connections via personal connections on Instagram and BlueSky Social. I am also making great connctions through private Facebook Groups, like the Adobe Creative Educators Facebook Group.

Most recently, I turned a post from Shel McConville (@teachbeyondpaper), Education Evangalist at Adobe,  from a recent Instragram Post demonstrating different Doll Style Types to create AI images. I remixed these into on an Adobe Express "Generate Image" prompt. Here's the image from Shel's post.

Recipe: Remix and Create Opportunities for Other Learners

My approach is to take the starting recipe, which in this case was to use different art styles (specifically doll styles), then create a starting document for my students. Here is a link to the first iteration of Adobe Express Template. My middle school students used this template to remix their own images. Here's a look at the first doll style based upon the post that McConville shared:

Students kept the "3d adorable cartoon doll style, then changed the description of the example that I had created. What was really incredible is that students - whether English speakers or Multi-Language Learners, were able to use the language they knew best to create their images. 

After successfully launching these Doll Style creations with my middle school students, I realized there might be a bigger audience for this type of lesson. I thought other teachers and students would benefit from this lesson as well. So I decided to remix again and share out this assignment with educators in my social media channels.

More Success: Remix and Share Again

In my second remix, I decided to include Shel McConville's original posts as set images alongside my AI generated images for students to remix. I created this as a rectangular slide presentation, but when I wanted to share this out on Instagram and Facebook, I realized that I needed a square shaped for posting. I made a second copy and resized it--and shared the first three images (downloaded from Adobe Express as image files - png or jpd) of the square-shaped version online. I also included the link that I'm sharing with your here so you can pass it along as well. Here's a link to the Instagram post and below is a screenshot of version 2 with a link to the template so you can share it out!

What can you do with this? Will you reshare, remix, or assign to students? Let me know on Instagram at @judyblakieney1 or on Facebook @judyblakeney.

Thanks to Shel McConville (@teachbeyondpaper) for inspiring me!

Happy Creating and Sharing.

Adobe Express - Creativity for Students and Educators

 Adobe Express - Creativity for Students and Educators

Title Slide of Blakeney's AI Image Generation
with Adobe Express Presentation

The expansion of Adobe Express and Adobe for Education over the past several years have brought innovation for students and educators of PK-12 schools and beyond. As a Career Technical Education and English Language Development teacher at a Title 1 Middle School in Orange County, California, I have had the pleasrue and amazement of seeing Adobe Express through the eyes and creativity of my students.

AI Generation Tools

Adobe Express has been upgraded significantly this year, with added AI capabilities, particularly with images. Students have generated images representing themselves using Adobe Express Templates and Guided Activities. My students, even those with limited English, enjoyed and were motivated to create images representing themselves as well as animals.

In addition to image generation of people and animals, other AI image generation options are Text Generation and background images. The image above, which I used for a title slide, was one of several generated with the prompt "green field, with orchard and sunrise including a sky with clouds."  The image below represents a poster I created about the computer lab classroom where I work, which I've titled "The Lab" and created text that is filled with fall colored leaves and grass.

The Lab Poster -
AI Generated Text and Image

Adobe Classroom in Adobe Express Edu Version

For students and teachers who have access to the Adobe Express Educational Version, use of a Classroom feature has been really beneficial, like a gift that keeps on giving with update and enhancements already this school year. Classroom was launched at the beginning of this school year in the United States. Teachers can push out, evaluate, comment, and download assignments that student access. These are shown in a gallery to teachers, but recently Adobe added a gallery viewing and commenting option for students as well, which teachers can turn on with a toggle switch - see the bottom left of this image to see the toggle switch.

Create an Assignment Panel in Adobe Express Classrooms

Bonus Resource - Link to Presentation

Here is a a link to a recent presentation on AI Image Generation in Adobe Express.  I hope you can get started creating images yourself and with students!

Happy Creating!

Judy Blakeney

Thinking About Creativity - Book Reflection on The Greatest Song by Kevin Griffin

 

Thinking About Creativity:

The Greatest Song: Spark Creativity,  Ignite Your Career, and Transform Your Life
By Kevin Griffin

This summer I decided to learn more about a few topics, with creativity being a primary one. My work using Adobe Express (#AdobeEDUCreative) over the past year has inspired me to investigate the topic and learn how I might be more creative--and how I can support "Creative Confidence" with my student and colleagues.

I learned about the book, The Greatest Song, by Kevin Griffin while listening to The Highway on SeriusXM's Country Music channel and heard an interview with Kevin Griffin a successful country music songwriter who lives in Franklin, TN near Nashville. He also wrote this book which addresses the question of how to increase creativity personally, as well as in your career and life. The book is written in a narrative style, following the life of protagonis, Jake Stark, a fictional Nashville-based, Country music. The book is a quick and fun read, but has some juicy steps on how to be more creative. The following video provides a glimpse, but if you are interested I recommend getting your own copy of Griffin's book!

Here are his basic steps of "The Method" which are addressed in the book as well as video above:

1.  Practice One: Creative Collaboration: The key with this step is listening more than talking and not rushing to make your point, but being open to others creative ideas and input. In his rules for creative collaboration, the fourth one is: "Check your ego at the door. Remember in a collaboration, 'My ego is not my amigo'" (Griffin 61).

2.  Practice Two: Filling the Well: This practice calls for doing things that refill rather than deplete you so that when creative expression is needed, you have something to offer. In the rules for filling the well, the fifth one states: " The more you learn, the bigger the return" (Griffin 77).

3.  Practice Three: Leaving Your Comfort Zone: Griffin's first rule for leaving your comfort zone is, "When life is in flux, when we are off balance, that;s often when we are the most creative. In fact, we flourish when exposed to randomness, disorder, and stressons: (99).

4.  Practice Four: Change your Attitude: Griffin's fourth rule for changing your attitude recommends, "Reverse engineering  is a great creative tool to see how a son, an idea or a successsful bubsiness started originally. Break it down to its essential elements, and it will often kicktart a new idea" (117).

5. Practice Five: Dare to Be Stupid: Griffin encourages risk-taking to develop new ideas in his Rules for Daring to Be Stupide: "Create an environment where big, out-of-the-box thinking is encouraged, and failure is not stigmatized" (149). 

These practices, steps in "The Method" provide an process for building creativity. Further, I really like the following Venn Diagram, which shows Creativity at the center of the four C's, where Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Collaboration converge.

Four C's: 

Source Photo: https://explorationsinliteracyblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/the-4-cs-in-seesaw/

Overlapping the Venn Diagram with the five elements of Griffin's "The Method" inspires me to make Creativity a central focus and avail students to the process of Griffin's Method. This will be a very exciting school year!

Rethinking Student Learning - English and Beyond.

What's Different?

My summer work as a teacher marks a making, dreaming, and reworking of my learning plans for students in the upcoming school year. Last year was by far my most challenging--and in ways most successful--as far as student growth is concerned. Still, as a teacher in a Title 1 middle school,  I left the year pondering how it could have been better...and most importantly how I can reach the reluctant students who did not grow. While the topic of "student learning loss" and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been very real to me--as I lived through this over the past three years with my students, I know something has to change in the way I teach, so that all students benefit.

The difference this summer it thinking about inspiring students to write about identity through personal narratives and essays, as recommended in Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher's book, 4 Essential Studies. My ELA7 team was already working with Book Clubs and Digital Compositions. Next year we want to expand our work to include more Poetry and Personal Essays.

I am also being inspired by Ghouldy Mohammad's work which Kittle and Gallagher reference. I am reading her book, Cultivating Genius and working to develop lessons and learning activities for my students that allow them to explore their identities and share with each other via digital publishing, audio recordings and more.

This exploration and path has been prompted by many things, including my participation in the #Merit22 program through the Krause Center for Innovation last year in the #KCISTEAM Leadership program this year. I want to help create and sustain a learning program where all students succeed and thrive beyond their and my greatest dreams. That has always been the case for me as a teacher. I am hoping this year will continue to build on this goal for my students

 

Why Go For #GoogleEI? My answer is #StrengthBasedEDU

Applying for the #SYD17 Cohort

My application to become a Google Innovator began with the dream of supporting all students in developing a strength-based approach to education. My dream was to support student, like my own adopted son, who struggled and were frustrated in school. I wondered, what if school where all students discovered their own innate talents, then built those talents into lifelong strengths. See my Google Innovator video application below for a before picture of my innovation project!

Pivoting my Project

#SYD17 Crew on A Day Trip, August 2017

In the Google Innovators teacher academy, I reconsidered how to support all students. My initial solution was for students to create digital portolios showcasing their talents and passions. Through the Design Thinking process led by @LesMcBeth from Future Design School @fdesignschool, I began to understand that the users of StrengthBasedEDU were not students at this time, but was in fact educators. As such, my design to launch changed. I understood that this challenge called for me to develop an educational process and resources to support educators, rather than students directly.

During the 2018-2019 school year, my partner in this work, Dr. Tricia Hyun, @drtriciahyun, and I presented our approach at a variety of conferences, from regional and National CUE conferences, to an EdtechTeam Summit in Orange County, as well as at California Teachers Association training events. Tricia and I began this work several years ago, working with the Institute for Teaching (IFT), where we both volunteer for the South Orange County Think Tank. As we presented, we refined our own understanding of Strength Based Education, and how we might best promote and develop this movement.  

Dr. Tricia Hyun and Judy Blakeney at SGVCUE Conference

Currently, we are writing a book on strength based education with members of the Southern California IFT think tanks. Additionally, we are developing a podcast that would share examples of IFT's work, particularly through grants to teachers . In fact, I am the recipient of a $5,000 grant, titled Exploring Coding and Career Focused Education for use in the 2018-2019 school year. I am returning to teaching in the classroom this year at Aliso Viejo Middel School where I will teach several Career and Technical Education courses. I plan to use this opportunity to expand and center my exploration of strength based education with children. I am excited for this adventure to begin, and to expand upon starting small and thinking big which was our goal at #GoogleEI #SYD17. 

We were recently featured in the TLC Ninja podcast, Nancy Minicozzi's (@coffeeNancy) Google Innovator project,  so if you want more information, listen to our explanation of Strength Based Eduction.

Future Opportunities

The training that Tricia and I have offered will continue to evolve. Take a look at our current website, www.strengthbasedEDU.com. Follow us on our Twitter handle: @strengthbaseEDU and watch the hashtag #StrengthbasedEDU to share this journey with us on this long and winding, ever-expanding road. Let us know if you would be interested in having us present our story, whether in person or digitally.

What's Hot at #ISTE17 - @FlipGrid

I've caught #FlipgridFever. Flipgrid is a web-based tool for sharing a quick video. Grids hold the topics that can be responded to with a link and a browser, or the app on a phone. Follow the link to my ISTE17 Grid is below if you want to respond, or just lurk to look at others' responses. What's great for teachers is that the smart minds at Flipgrid have a free version for teachers, Flipgrid One with one grid, which is available to teachers.


So how could you use Flipgrid in a classroom? Here are some ideas:

• Welcome message to students and responses with their introductions
• Answering a question about a text, experiment, or math problem
• Stating a claim with evidence, for other classmates to respond to
• Getting teachers to respond to a concern within a school

There are plenty more ideas, I'm sure. What do you think? 

Respond to this link to a Flipgrid topic to share your ideas: https://flipgrid.com/bdc268

Maybe you will catch #FlipGridFever too! If so, you might want to become a Flipgrid Certified Educator. Check out this Flipgrid Blog Post for more information.

Gone #sketch50 Wild!

Have you heard about #sketch50 (website https://sketch50.org/ ), where educators are creating sketches using either digital or analog means to build skills at representing ideas. Check out the description of this challenge on the website or Twitter handle @sketch_50 and hashtag #sketch50.

In case you have missed it, #sketchnotes are all the rage. Sylvia Duckworth keeps creating them, demonstrating how to represent understanding visually. Now the rest of us can give the opportunity to stretch our growth mindsets and let go of the “I can’t draw” fixed mindset.   I have started and have a challenge for you: I’m adding my visual representations, day by day, to a Google Slides, which I am posting to a Padlet created by the #sketch50 team. Here’s the link! Can you join me on the journey? I am excited to document my growth over the 50 days. I may even redo some of my sketches, after I gain more skill and confidence. 

Here's a link to my Google Slide deck. Share yours on the Padlet and let's get #bettertogether! Thanks to +Cate Tolnai +Ann Kozma and +Lindsey Blass for their work on this great idea!