Writing to Your Future Self
Future Me allows you to write yourself and email and have it sent at a time of your choosing (dramatic music) in the future. While you may not have a flux capacitor you can get your students emailing themselves up to 30 years into the future (you can do much less).
Whether the site, the student email address, email as communication or the earth itself will still be around is uncertain but I am certain you could get some really interesting work out of students using this site.
Related posts
The Cat In The Hat Experiment- A Literary Remix
The Litlab: J. Robert Lennon: The Cat Text I have to say one thing here: it is not fun to be with me. I like books and things. Tame: that is I. I get no kicks, fly no kites, play no games. Hops and pot are not my things. If you are here, I want you to go away. So what should this dish, this fox want out of me? I sat and picked at the fish and looked at those hands, so white. J. Robert Lennon has created a whole alternate story using just words from The Cat In The Hat. This would be a great English lesson. You could remix other things as well- AP news articles, poems, song lyrics etc. It’d be fun to have students use each other’s work. Jill would remix Dre’s paper and they’d talk about the different choices they made. That type of thing. The creativity comes out as a result of the restrictions. from Kottke.org photo credit chinkychongka
Wolverine Love Poems
I’ve been interested in using this Garfield Minus Garfield site for a while. Here are a few ways I might use it. Instant creative writing prompt- Write a love poem to a wolverine. Or write a love poem from the perspective of a wolverine. Or simply write a love poem using the word “wolverine” at least onceBonus points for including a Red Dawn reference. The image matters. Having images like this always changed the quality and engagement I got from my students. And we have a vocabulary exercise, in this case, for the word consume. Depending on where the student is at, they could match words to provided comics, find their own comics matches etc. I’d probably have them find their own matching comic and create a sentence along the lines of “Though Jon consumed the socks, the meal did not quench the fiery passion in his heart.” If you feel like really making your students work, you might white out all the words and have them use the comic of your choice to explain something complicated or leave the words in and ask them to provide the context that will make it make sense. For instance- this comic re-worded could become . . . a look at King George III’s thoughts on the American coloniesIf students don’t have image […]
The Director’s Bureau Special Projects Idea Generator
So The Director’s Bureau Special Projects Idea Generator generates fairly random three word idea strings like the one above – Do-it-yourself levitating animal. This is one of those things that I’d love to use in the classroom because it’s so simple and fun. It’s also flexible in terms of how big or small you’d like it to be. It could kill 10 minutes or be part of a whole unit. This particular generator isn’t really fit for student use because it’ll throw in “erotic” and some other iffy stuff but the teacher could spin the wheel a few times and come up with a great phrase for each week. I’d probably screen grab it or make something visual for the word results- as the packaging does matter. It can then be use for a variety of things. It’d be pretty cool right off as a creative writing or journal prompt but where things would be neat would be in tweaking it to focus on what you’re covering at the time. For instance- Describe the do-it-yourself levitating animal kit using every word from this week’s vocabulary list Write an ad for the do-it-yourself levitating animal creation kit using the bandwagon technique Write two responses to seeing an ad for the do-it-yourself levitating animal kit. In the first one respond in the […]
Trackbacks and Pingbacks on this post
No trackbacks.
- TrackBack URL
Comments on this post
I ran across this site awhile back, but didn’t think much of it as I rarely listen to notes I leave myself, however, it would be quite useful for students to set up reminders for tests and/or exams.
Nice new theme by the way.
Ben,
My basic thought was it didn’t really matter if they ever read what they wrote to themselves but more that they wrote something and thought about their future. Plus, the whole ego centric nature of it would be a motivating factor for most teens. It’d be interesting as well to have them write two letters to the future- one to themselves and one to a stranger. Then you can look at how the audience impacts the writing.
I didn’t even think of using it for something practical. 🙂
Thanks, I like the new theme as well. It’s pretty fancy. There are things in the php I’ve never seen before. Not that that’s very hard to do but I have seen a fair number of WordPress themes.
Tom
And here I was all focused on the simple aspect of it, I hadn’t even considered the bigger picture. I love the idea of using this as a way to get students thinking about the future. Looking forward is something I severely lacked in high school, and it’s an great habit to promote.
What a great writing tool! I could see students writing about what they want to learn or goals they want to achieve by the end of the school year. Your blog is fantastic btw, and I sent your video “Shake It Up” to all the teachers in my building. Keep up the good work!
Eska,
It’s amazing what’s out there for free, isn’t it?
Thanks for the encouragement.
Tom