Information Overloaded

I was on del.icio.us last week and stumbled upon a very cool site by Austin Kleon where people have been posting newspaper blackout poems. Click here for one of my favorite examples from his site.

This type of poetry is created by taking a black marker and making poetry by coloring around the words in a newspaper article. The video below shows some grade 8 students trying it out! Very cool.

Okay, I am not sure if any of you watched the last season of American Idol or not, but a guy name Blake Lewis, who made it to the final two, was an awesome beatboxer. What is beatboxing you ask? Well, it is where you make drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using your voice.

A 15 year old by the name of Alex has become quite an internet phenomenon with his beatboxing skills. One of his youtube videos has in excess of one million hits.

I had the privilege over the last few days to work with Shaneen Jessome, a middle school teacher who decided to incorporate beatboxing with her middle school language arts poetry lesson. Grade 8 students worked in partners to write poems and then used Audacity to record rhythms with the multiple tracks.Too cool! Here are two great ones:Kris and Josh (Click to listen)Courtney and Shelby (Click to listen)