Selfie Stick
A selfie stick is a telescoping pole that allows people to put their phone at the end and take a picture of themselves. The selfie is a modern form of art. Selfies are part of the modern culture. Ask a student to show you their photo roll (do not really do this, you probably do not want to see their pictures) and likely it is full of selfies. Confession, my phone is full of them.
Why Do I Care About This
One challenge when creating lessons is to connect the learning objective with things the student cares about. It is important as a teacher that we know what the students are into. (Students do not do email or Facebook so ditch the make a fake Facebook page assignment, mom’s use Facebook.) Minecraft, Instagram, Vine, Meme’s… how can we incorporate the tools that students love to do into our assignments?
A math teacher friend told me she assigned her students to take a picture of math outside the classroom. Very few of the students did it. She updated the assignment to “Take a selfie with the math” and suddenly the students were really into the task of finding math out in the real world.
Having a selfie stick in class indicates to students that you value what they value. How can students include a selfie with their work? “Students, feel free to use the selfie stick.” Do not forget to use the selfie stick yourself, because you’re cool like that.
Purchase
You can get a selfie stick almost anywhere, including some gas stations. A quick search on Amazon yields a long list of choices.
One of my favorite websites is thinkgeek.com. (Another confession, I bought a Tardis onesie for a friend on that site) If you’re really a geek you clearly need not only a selfie stick… but a light saber selfie stick.