It’s fitting when something new, positive and creative comes along for New Year, so thanks to Ewan McIntosh for the heads up on wordia, whose mission is to redefine the dictionary. This is done by means of short videos, to which collection we are all invited to contribute. The part of the invitation I particularly like is, “think of a word which has a special meaning for you.” As everyone in the teaching game knows, wanting to take part is a huge part of the journey.
I see an opportunity here for pupils and teachers of Music to parallel the excellent work of LTS‘s Learn Listening Online. There seems to be room for inventive and fun ways of illustrating concepts. Moreover, the fact that it is a dictionary should reinforce the connection between music and language. Contributors will need to think about parts of speech and perhaps even etymology. If contributing to this is not the embodiment of CfE, in terms of cross-curricular, creative connectivity, then I don’t know what is.
This illustration of the concept of round might give some idea of what I’m describing. My current favourite, however, is parody – this word was just asking for it.
Happy New Year!
Your idea for music is superb, although I wonder if you couldn’t just encourage music teachers and students to use wordia to do it, and then get a wordia search box put in Glow and on edubuzz blogs, for example. The alternative is shoehorning an innovation into an old-fashioned website that sits in “LTS land”, rather than where students and regular folk hang out. Doing it on wordia itself would mean more regular folk would see and learn from our students’ thinking, too.
Hi Ewan
Thanks for you comment and suggestion. Actually I did mean using “wordia” and only mentioned LTS to cite the excellent reference resource they have provided – rather than intending that the video idea should be housed there. I may need to get back to you about the practicalities of a search box on Glow etc
Happy New Year!
Alan