Sometimes, as they say, less is more.

We often ask students to expound upon their ideas, add more details to their writing, or explain further. But it’s equally a skill for them to be able to crystallize an idea into one word or image, and it’s an exercise that can challenge them to really think about their concept.

During his inservice presentation at our school last week, that’s just what Dean Shareski asked a group of our teachers to do.

After some small group discussion revolving around the idea of “learning”, we used compfight.com to locate a Creative Commons photograph that represented a word or concept that encapsulated what learning meant to us, and then used the Fotolr Studio HD app to import the photograph, add the word, and select the font and size and arrangement to create a dynamic visual.  The teachers emailed the images so we could collect them into one slide show.  And then each teacher had twenty seconds “Pecha Kucha” style to give a rapid fire explanation of their slide’s meaning.

Below are some of the slides created by our staff representing what learning is to them, collected into an Animoto. Interestingly, without the specific teachers’ explanations, each slide has to now stand on its own.  But also, by combining all the slides together, a new reflection also emerges about how we define learning collectively.

Learning is….