Creating a Personal Montage

Exploring Web 2.0 can lead you down roads you didn't expect. I was on YouTube, just looking at a few montages created by people I got to know through my Flickr group, and I saw the little button on the One True Media sign that said "Create Your Own", and so I just had to try it (I am an impulsive Teacher Librarian after all!). An hour later, and I'm still playing with it, adding photos of the boys and choosing background music. I liked the idea of adding text, but it is a premium feature and costs about $39 a year. I'm not that ready to commit, so I made the basic montage. I'm going to try to add it here, but please keep in mind that I didn't have much luck with embedding my Flickr slideshow. I'm crossing my virtual fingers here!

My Lads

I think this site would be very useful in the classroom. We could create montages of fieldtrips, and if the text did not cost money to add, or if I invested, the students could use it to recount the events of our trip. Hopefully focusing on what was learned, and not just the social side of an outing, though that may have a place in building a classroom community that we can share beyond the walls of said classroom. Hmm, that is more photo food for thought.

I imagine this site could be used across the grades as well--I would have easily used it when I taught Kindergarten to record activities such as show and share, using building blocks, baking, book making, finger-painting, puzzle making, just about anything. In middle years I would have used it to record volunteer endeavours such as working for the food bank, cleaning a green space, visiting a nursing home.

What I think would be really interesting, would be to ask the students how it would be best used in the classroom. Especially for those of us who have worked or are working in school divisions that restrict access to such sites. Having students debate the educational virtues of such sites and writing persuasive letters to the administration and school board might be a very useful activity indeed!