Nice poster, couldn’t we have put it on a blog?

Nice poster, couldn’t we have put it on a blog?

The kids in IH Barcelona have been producing travel posters, which as you can see we then display on noticeboards around the school (and not just in individual classrooms).

I like having people create posters in the classroom: it’s the making of things together that I particularly like, the collaborative, creative writing involved.

If you don't have the technology, or ease of access to it (and it’s not that easy here), it's a big step up from writing it (on your own), handing it in and forgetting about it, which is what writing was apparently about when I was a kid at school.

Couldn’t we put it on a blog?
The same sort of project could, of course, easily go on a blog. Among the obvious advantages:

• The kids can post drafts
• You (the teacher) can write comments, make suggestions, etc. on drafts
• Other kids can, likewise, comment, ask questions, add things…
• Other people (including parents…) can see it
  

A blog is also longer-lasting than a poster, and they are again "making things together" but, with a blog, something bigger, which they can be even more proud of.

Taking pride in your work, that’s one of the things I like about blogs. Who's ever going to be proud of a scrappy piece of paper a teacher has scrawled all over in red ink?

However…
When your kids post it on the Internet, what are they going to illustrate it with? They could of course just go steal the images off of Google. Google stole them anyway, so why shouldn’t they...?

I’ve got my moral qualms about doing that, myself. If you must, then I’d say if you made your blog entirely private, you might just about dismiss the qualms. But what kid wants an entirely private blog? What’s the point…?

You could get round the problem either (1) by having the kids create their own artwork, scan it and upload it or (2) by having them steal their images but by significantly digitally altering them (with a proper image editing program), to create "new" images, possibly in the form of collages.

•If you don't have an image editing program, you can download Gimp for free...