Thursday, February 23, 2012

One of the Coolest Community-Building Projects Ever

If only there were a way to build community at your high school, to show your high school to the world in a positive light, to advertise all the cool things happening at your high school, and to mix in some major creativity at the same time...

Stratford High School in Houston, Texas, has done just that with this incredible Lip Dub video. I could write pages about all the reasons this project is priceless. Instead, I'll ask you to take five minutes and watch this video. I love this video for so many reasons. What Stratford did here isn't original (YouTube and Vimeo are full of high school one-take Lip Dub projects) but it's the best I've ever seen. Kudos to Stratford for pulling this off!



In a word: awesome.

Is your mind racing with ideas yet? It should be.

2 comments:

Mark McGuire said...

Hi Nathan

Wonderful video! I couldn't help myself from trying to figure out how it was produced. It would have taken a lot of planning. It looks like a very inclusive project and a real team effort.

This is a well-focussed blog on an excellent topic. Could I suggest a couple of additions while I'm here?

Ken Robinson's 2010 TED Talk "Bring on the learning revolution!" (http://goo.gl/6rxMz) is worth seeing and passing around. There is also an animated version, which is excellent. The two versions are compared here: http://goo.gl/Lrkwo. I teach communication design at the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand), and I like to talk about design choices (appropriate medium and so on) using content that highlights issues that I think students as well as teachers should be thinking about. Often, these are examples that I've come across as I do my own research and follow interesting links.

Another good resource is Ken Robinson's book, "Out of our Minds: Learning to be creative", which fleshes out the argument he makes in the TED talk. The book was first published in 2000, I think. I read the updated version, which came out in June 2011.

You may well have come across these resources already, but I thought I'd mention them just in case you haven't. One of my students discovered Robinson's animated TED talk, which I might not have discovered otherwise. Sometimes, I wonder who is following who!

Good to connect with you.
All the best!

Mark McGuire
Blog: http://markmcguire.net/
Twitter: mark_mcguire

Nathan Barber said...

Mark,
Thanks so much for your comments. I have to say that Ken Robinson's video is one of my favorites. We have shown it to our admin team and our entire faculty at my school. Also, I enjoyed both of Robinson's books and have passed them around several times to some of my faculty. I'm glad you mentioned those. Thanks again for sharing. I look forward to checking out your blog, too.
Nathan