LMS Blog Challenge: Interactive Bulletin Boards

So, lesson learned – never beat Laura Moore in a small little Twitter kerfluffle unless you’re ready for a bigger challenge.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Laura and I fought over who would blog about Lisa Johnson’s most recent amazing contribution to teachers everywhere – Customized Padlet backgrounds.  Laura countered with her own post yesterday, and she has thrown down the gauntlet.  Here is her challenge: “What is one idea worth stealing that made you a better educator/blogger? Share your experience through a blog post, tweet, or whatever platform you prefer. Make sure to pass on the challenge so we can all benefit from new knowledge. Use the #LMSchallenge. GO.” (By the way, her blog is “Learn Moore Stuff.”  Hence, the LMS.)

Do I steal stuff?  You bet I do!  I try my best to give credit where it’s due, but sometimes I don’t even know where an idea originated.  If you want to see a list of the people I regularly steal from, check out my Engaging Educators page 🙂

As I tweeted to Laura, the hard part is choosing just one thing I’ve stolen! As you can see from the title of this post, though, I’m going with the idea of interactive bulletin boards.

I hate doing bulletin boards.  But I love showcasing student work.  When I read this article by Sylvia Tolisano on the Langwitches blog, I got a seed of an idea – to use QR codes with art.  But I feel less guilty about stealing ideas if I kick them up a notch.  So, the result was a bulletin board with poetry, art, QR codes, a quiz, and an opportunity for student feedback.  Students were invited to guess which piece of poetry matched which artwork.  Then they could scan the QR codes and listen to an audio file to see if they were right.  Finally, they could scan a 2nd QR code that took them to a Google Form where they could vote on their favorite one.  You can find more details in this guest post that I did on Richard Byrne’s blog.

Of course, that led me to more interactive exhibitions, like ones that use the augmented reality app, Aurasma (which I stole from Richard Byrne).  In this post, I mention one of my favorite activities, where the students made videos of themselves in snow globes to go with a writing piece. (If you want some more augmented reality ideas, check out my page of resources here.)

Thanks to all of the people who share their ideas, because I would be an awfully boring teacher without them!

And now I must challenge three more people to carry the baton. Joelle Trayers, Brad Gustafson, and Todd Nesloney – consider yourselves tapped!  Follow Laura’s instructions above to share the ill-gotten gains that make you such great educators!