Today we spent some time refreshing what we had looked at and listened to last week. I’m constantly amazed and impressed by how much the children remember! And of more interest to me are the little details that they have taken away from the sessions. As the person who initiates the ideas for the session, I have my own intentions about what they will take away and often, to my delight, find that small details pass me by. As we were reviewing last week’s session, the children had a clear memory of the audio they had listened to. Very impressive!

The idea of online collaboration and sharing is certainly a new experience for a lot of us. The software brings with it challenges for the creative collaboration and new ways to think about creating. It is a different experience to being physically in the classroom and being able to pick up on the cues and body language of the group. I thought it would be useful to spend a bit of time looking at the Elluminate software and see if there were ways we could play with the collaboration. It is interesting to see if there are other ways for us to communicate using the tools and to see if new forms of ways of giving feedback emerge. For instance, we found today that using the ‘wand’ tool to point at something is very useful.  The children, of course, are very well-versed on digital technologies and it seemed automatic to them to use this tool. I think I had to get used to thinking that way. Reflecting on this after the session, I think it’s mainly because I’m alone in my studio, looking into the screen and not getting the physical cues.

We also had a short discussion on writing a blog. Mrs. English provided a very good explanation: a diary that is online so everyone can see it. We looked at some of the other schools’ blogs and I think the children enjoyed seeing what their peers are creating.

In the second part of the session, after the morning break, we started working on making guitars but using the theme of Hotlands animals, which is something the class are looking at. As stimulus, I shared an image of a jungle scene and played a soundscape that I had created, which contained animal sounds and was intended to evoke a rainforest theme. I asked the children to listen to the piece and identify sounds as well as to select an animal from the visual scene and try to imagine what the animal was doing. The children had wonderful ideas about the various antics of the animals (documented in the class blog). The children then set about drawing images of the scenes they imagined and writing a title for the scene. These images were used to decorate the guitars. While the children are making things, I find that I’m waiting with excitement to see what they have made. I had lots of short visits from the individual children, coming up to the webcam to show me their guitar. At the end of the session, we created a new version of the well-known song ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands’ by replacing some of the words: ‘If you’re a monkey and you know it, sing and dance’. Great fun: lots of guitar-playing, singing and dancing children!