Photography skills, selfies, app-hacking… this session had it all! It was another full-house and a room full of laughs in Denver this week at ISTE.

We combined tools, tactics and texts to explore visual literacy in action, making ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’, and talking about the difference…because that’s where we discovered opportunities for learning.

Click here to read an incredible write-up about the learning in this hands-on session from Michael Main, Art, Educational Enlightenment and Inspiration, which covers the themes of this session so beautifully…

“We made some incredibly cool images during our hour together, Cathy’s deeper intent was for us to recognize that we can do tremendous things with our students through technology tools, especially when we start to breakdown the barriers schools tend to naturally generate. (In other words, to tell our students, “do,” when our initial reaction is to scream, “don’t!) Cathy even told us that the apps she had picked were ones a school would usually not select. One of them, MegaPhoto (a ridiculously large collection of selfie filters), would seem frighteningly frivolous to most educators, even those deeply committed to educational technology. Yet, Cathy rapidly showed us how effective it could be as a creation and creativity tool. And, while we were using it to generate some truly incredible images, her real hope was that we would see how the apps students already have on their own devices can be some of the best options for breaking education out of it continued twentieth century, teacher-centered mindset. By opening ourselves to apps and options like a MegaPhoto,our classrooms can become more engaging and more student-centered while also helping student tap their own innate potential and letting them see the miraculous things that are possible when they become more intentional and thoughtful in their decision-making.”

 
Check out all the cool things we made, shared and said during our time together by scrolling through the Storify collection from Twitter (below).