The power of images

an #etmooc participant blog post published on
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After reading Roseli Serra‘s blog post on The Power of Image and Moving Image on Students’ learning and Projects I decided to share how I use images to deal with Storytelling, Vocabulary and  even Grammar.

Sometimes a picture we share in class triggers unexpected things. One day I shared a picture I took of the sunrise from my living room window. The picture triggered a lot of conversation, a lot of sharing emotions and feelings. From expressing how much we love sunrises and sunsets and even jumping into moonlight images we keep either in our minds, as part of our dear memories, or sharing some pictures we kept in our devices, and working on emergent language that our pictures brought making the whole moment more memorable.
The picture in question is this:

My student and I decided to write a poem, it just happened, we wrote together, but I let her edit the poem to please her style. And this is the result. See the power of an image shared?

DAWNS
You see? The darkness has gone
Brushes of orange playing with grey clouds
The view, the smell, the sounds of silence
My skin is sensitive, opened to the freshness of the morning
The azhar scent blows around the garden
This glory will remain inside of me during the bustle of the day
Celestial memories of another time
The nature has given me the gift of being alive.

These are some the images we use for StoryTelling.

And when we travel we use our images to learn

Butterflies and corals copy from datenglish

Alan Levine presented 5 Card Flickr Stories  during #ETMOOC in January and February 2013.
5 pictures are provided by the system and students develop their creativity to connect them and get their own stories

                                                                                         Flickr Photo Credits


I am so happy, you can see why. The little fish I had in my hands was a prize for my good behavior, my dad said.
We went to the forest, only the two of us. Mom stayed at home. Walking through the old trees I found flowers, mushrooms, birds, so many interesting things.
I was having good time, but after a long hike we reached a small stream and then my face changed. A big smile lighted the day. There was the chance to fish; one of my dreams might come true. And so it did.
I remember when I was a toddler I enjoyed watching through the window of my bedroom at the snowed mountains near our house.

Now I am older and I know that in spring the snow on these mountains melts and goes down and down, up to the forest, and small stream of freshwater is born to give me the gift of the little fish.

I usually use this mosaic to practice present Perfect
Image made using photos taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics by @sandymillin, @mkofab, @ELTexperiences, @shellterrell, @sandymillin, @JosetteLB, @Senicko, Vichang_in_there, @sandymillin used under CC Attribution Non-Commercial License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
One of my favourite sentence is: This person has achieved something very important. What have you achieved Josette?