Empty Bulletin Board

This is the bulletin board in the hallway directly outside of my classroom door. It bugs me. It bugs me because first of all it is empty and I don't think it looks very nice. It also bugs me because I wonder about the impression it gives of me as a teacher and of my classroom to parents and students who are not in my classroom. But I have a problem with this bulletin board: I rarely have anything to put up on it. A lot of the work completed in my classroom is electronic so I don't have any cutesy art projects or stories or other pieces of writing to put up on this board. I usually feel the pressure and will come up with an assignment or two a month which are designed for the bulletin board. but for two weeks now, it has stood in the hallway, empty, in silent condemnation of me and my teaching methods. I need a bulletin board that is like one of those electronic picture frames that can display our flickr account. Or a bulletin board that is RSS enabled so that it can display the voicethread projects, the Google presentations, the blog posts, and wiki pages that we have been working on lately. I need a new way to show what we are up to. Until then, I guess I need to find some Christmas stuff to put up on it...

Tags: bulletinboard, classroom 2.0

Comments

[Sharon Peters]

Hi Clarence, I had the same problem in my classroom last year - walls of empty bulletin boards - and worse, my class was used as the student lounge when I wasn't teaching! I decided to create a gallery of my students' online work and tried to make it as colourful as possible. I took photos of the students and printed them out to match their written work. I put up postcards and photos of the schools we were matched with so people had "visuals" of the schools in Russia, Israel, Australia, and the States. I also put a set of cheap clocks with the times of the schools we were matched with (labels of time zones beneath the clocks). The clocks were very well received and provided another visual to complement our global partnerships. I put up a big sign in the middle "LCC GOES Global!". Parents and students were drawn to the boards and it became a beautiful focal point for the lounge/classroom.
I would encourage you to try something similar - it helps to bring the online invisible world into the physical classroom!

[mrsdurff]

Why not put up a bulletin board that directs people to the class website with tear-offs of the url? you could leave that one up a looonnnnnnnnngg time.

[Brian Mull]

You know Clarence, in my first school, I was written up because I didn't change my bulletin board enough.

Better jump on it soon ;)

[Art Gelwicks]

Perhaps a hyperlinked mind map of Seasonal stories and characters done with yarn and construction paper?

[H B Wenger]

Amen, Clarence! It is a shame that some administrators, teachers, and parents feel that having a printed piece of paper at the end of a project makes it a great project! But, in the end, we have the wall space and something needs to go there. By hanging snippets and screen shots of your projects, along with the tearoff URL's mrsduff previously commented on, it will allow everyone the chance to view your 'bulletin board' whenever and wherever they want to! Bet the other teachers can't do that with the papers they printed :)

P.S. - Do us a favor...be sure to post the picture of what your board looks like when it's done!

[Michael Russo]

I laughed out loud reading this post - for at least 2 or 3 years I've struggled the same way - how to make my bulletin boards Web 2.0 (or even 1.0...) compatible. Maybe someday they will be replaced by plasma screens so we can show off what really goes on, but for now I end up doing something similar to Art - low-tech printouts with references to where to see the good stuff online.

[Barbara]

Looks like you got plenty of advise on this one :~)......Advertise...use it for your elevator speech...highlight our two locations and our connection...That can stay up and just add whatever the current project is...The Outsiders from Two Perspectives...

[Ann O]

How about a map with pins showing your connections to the world? Kind of a paper Cluster Map. It will be constantly updated. It could be a "job" in the class. Next to it, post the tear off sheets that Mrs. Durff suggested and the clocks and pictures Sharon Peter's suggested. It can be a work in progress reflecting the online projects and connections updated by your students.

[Kelly Dumont]

How about you volunteer to swap out the board for a 50" Flatscreen? That would truly be able to show better what is going on in your classroom.

[Clarence Fisher]

Wow. This simple post seemed to strike a nerve with people. And Barbara's right. There are a lot of good ideas here. I think I'm just going to fill it up now before Christmas with some stuff and then after Christmas I will get to work on a "real" bulletin board that tries to showcase some of our online work. Thanks to all for the great suggestions. There are some real gems here for a guy who has always struggled with finding ways to fill them up.

[Melanie Holtsman]

I think you should take screen shots of all of the things going on in your room and print them out. Post those on your board. Others should see the great things you are doing! I do love the idea of it changing like a photo frame, though. :)

[Ron Bosch]

This post was hilarious to me as I am sitting in my classroom next to a blank bulletin board (at least your bulletin board had some pretty background paper). I too struggle with what to put up on the bulletin board because a lot of my students' work is digital. This past summer our school had renovations and they took all of the bulletin boards down and we had the option if we wanted them back up and I jumped at the opportunity to say no to the one outside my classroom door. What a huge pressure taken off my shoulders. Although now that I saw some of the great suggestions in the comments of this post I kind of wish I had the bulletin board back. Just last week my principal asked if I wanted a tack strip put up outside the classroom. I made the comment to her that I really don't have anything to put up on it, but it would be great if we could get some flat panel display monitors to show student work (she just laughed and said yeah right).

[George Mayo]

My students and I are constantly changing and creating new bulletin boards in our class, and the hallway. I find that it's just as important to showcase student work in the classroom, as well as online. Sometimes, we create huge word walls using digital posters. Recently, I've been printing out old Russian propaganda posters as we read Animal Farm for a bulletin board in the hallway. I find it useful to create bulletin boards when we start new units, or projects. Much of the student work used in our bulletin boards is also saved on our classroom Flickr account. We've used artwork from our bulletin boards to create short movies. Bulletin boards can be a very useful tool in my opinion.

[readerdiane]

How about a bulletin board explaining Web 2.0 terms or websites. Educate others.

Print out some blogs. Headline = What we are Reading and Writing!!! What are you doing?

[Clarence Fisher]

If I had known the bulletin boards in my classroom were this hot of a topic I would have written about them months ago! No, maybe not, but more seriously, I am astounded by the response to this post and want to thank everyone for the great ideas!

[David Jakes]

Here is what I would do. I'd have them make motivational posters like the Successories Posters. I'd take photos of the kids interacting with Barbara's class, then I would have them go to Motivator (http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php)and have them make posters (very 1.0, but bulletin-board friendly) that interpret their learning.