The workBench’s drag-and-drop environment is powerful enough to make it possible to create all kinds of imaginative menus and links. However, before letting our creativity take flight, we’ll start with the traditional. Text links in a box are of course a traditional standard, such as in this project about a webquest. Open the project by clicking on the screen shot, and you’ll notice that every screen has similar screen elements and contains the same text menu in the same location.

In this type of project, you create an initial screen that contains all the basic design and menu elements, copy the screen, and paste it into the project as many times as you want different screens. You use your original screen as a template, then change the variable content in each replicated screen, and connect the text links for each menu. It’s a remarkably fast way to create web content. Since the menu is the same and in the same place on every screen, it is very easy for visitors to navigate and understand the structure of the project.

Of course it’s possible to make any word or group of words in a body of text into a link.

An interesting alternative to underlined text, however, is to use a line or arrow to make a connection from the text to a thumbnail or another text box in the margin and make that screen element outside the text into a link. It can be more interesting and visually engaging than just a block of underlined text. (Lines and arrows are available to put into projects from the workBench Library, which is in all accounts.) Visit this example, again by clicking on its screen shot.

You’ll notice as well in the project above that there is a menu in the lower left corner of the screen that is a series of numbers, 1 to 6. Click on any number, and you go to that screen. The number that is outlined in a box is the screen you’re on.

Some of the links alongside the text in the project above are logos or small portions of a homepage, to which the link connects. Using this same approach with logos and partial screen shots, we created a collection of resources for teachers. The project is very similar to the one above, with links to different screens in the lower-left corner. Open the project by clicking on its screen shot, then click on any logo to go to that website.

(For the Building Learners Project on the TeachersFirst site, we wrote a post on grabbing portions of screens to use in workBench projects. Take a look.)

Time to move toward the more imaginative edge. This photograph is of a Scrabble board with the word “Projects” written on the left with Scrabble pieces. The image was made into the background in a workBench screen. Then the EFL students who created the site dragged boxes over the image, made the boxes solid red, resized them to fit into the Scrabble squares, and wrote text, project names, in each of them. Finally they dragged another box over each of these red squares, made it a link, and made it invisible. (See the “invisible link” manual page.)

This Scrabble screen shot links to the home page of the EFL student’s project. Click on it, click on “Enter” when the project opens, and then click on “Student Projects” to get to this menu. Look around the site. It has a number of very imaginative menus.

This piece of art is part of a collection of online art that was used in a presentation at a conference. The presentation involved ways of discussing art with young students that enhance critical thinking, and the online collection of art served as the starting point for sample discussions.

Each screen that contains art has three invisible links: lower left is a “previous” button, lower middle is a link to the main menu, and lower right is the “next” button. The invisible links make it possible to navigate through the art without anything intruding on it. Click on the screen shot and try the invisible links across the bottom of the art.

The opening screen for this project is a photograph of some books in a box. When you role the cursor over the Conrad novels, it changes and indicates that there is an invisible link present. Open the project by clicking on this screen shot, and then click on the Conrad novels. The link takes you to a resource page for Conrad. A little library in a box, such as in this photograph, could contain invisible links to resources for students for each book in a course.

Invisible links, so easy to use, make it possible to select any part of any image or screen and make it into a link. Each person in a group picture could be a link to a special screen for that person. Invisible links could be placed over important parts of an art work, with each link connecting to another screen where that detail was investigated. How about invisible links (or lines and arrows) over the floor plan of a museum or a map?

For one more unusual menu, made of thumbnails, take a look at this workBench project embedded in our post about iconic photographs.

Then let your imagination loose on the seemingly mundane “menu” and create startling ways to get “from here to there.”

In the heart of Dorchester MA at Uphams corner, a group of high school students is working hard to engage its peers, families, community leaders and politicians in order to improve its neighborhoods. These young students, led by Dan Gelbtuch (who we’ve worked with before), are taking on huge initiatives.

They can do a far better job explaining what they’re doing, to whom they’re reaching out and what they’re building, so I’ll just pass the microphone right on over. In fact, a new avenue they’re taking in reaching out to educate, connect, and secure support and funding is through their new website being built in the workBench by two of their high school student members, Edouine Jean-Mary, and Jeffrey Lozada who has recently taken the reins.

Here is their site. Click the + button on the top left or click here to view it full size:

We just want to send out some respect and support to the teens and adults over at Youth Force. It’s been fun coming over to work with you, and we’re glad we can help.

This image from a vase is of Achilles, the famous Greek warrior from the Trojan War. He was given the choice of a long life and peaceful death in obscurity or a short life of adventure and enduring fame for being the greatest warrior of his age.

His strut on the stage was almost three millennia ago, and we still know his name and reputation, so he must have filled in the second bubble.

Greek heroes like Achilles didn’t fight for the team, the flag, or the country. They were driven by a quest for personal honor and fame. There was no good heaven to go to, so the only way you could live on was to make a mark that would endure in legend and the song of bards. Sounds pretty flimsy, but then, we do remember Achilles.

No spiking the ball, no end zone dances, no in-your-face trash talk. To the Greek gods, that was hubris, excessive pride on the part of puny human beings. The gods often would crush the perpetrator of such excesses in a wink. In the ancient Greek world, being the strong silent type wasn’t modesty. It was a shrewd survival skill.

To get these ideas across to his very bright but very modern students, a professor at Harvard, Gregory Nagy, taught (may still teach) a course called “The Concept of the Hero in Greek Civilization.” Since it fulfilled a generic requirement for non-majors, it got the nickname “Heroes for Zeros.”

Apparently an engaging and imaginative teacher, Professor Nagy turned to examples of Greek-like heroism in contemporary popular culture. For one example, he showed the classic Western, Shane.

Shane, a strong silent type, rides into western settlement on his horse out of nowhere, gets a job on a ranch as a hired hand, and seeks nothing more than hard work and an invisible past.

A hired gunman and his gang take over the town nearby as part of a turf war between a local cattle baron and the other homesteaders. Shane digs his holsters and two white-handled pistols out of his saddlebags, where they have been hidden.

He’s a gun fighter himself, who has been trying to avoid killing and his past. A sense of honor, however, impels him to protect these ordinary people he barely knows. He straps on his guns and rides into town. Outnumbered, he becomes an Achilles-like killing machine and cleans out the Bad Guys to a man. Very likely wounded, he rides away into legend, not to be seen again – but not to be forgotten.

Professor Nagy also showed Blade Runner, a violent but visually stunning movie about a futuristic Los Angeles where Harrison Ford hunts down replicants, or human-like androids. Roy, one of the replicants, may best represent the Greek hero in the movie. The film raises complicated issues as well about the future of the human race and what it means to be human.

Professor Nagy managed to link the Trojan War (circa 13th century BC) to 19th century Wyoming and to the Los Angeles of 2019 - a classical epic, a western, and a cyberpunk film.

Across a number of grades, teachers investigate heroes and the heroic with students. Following the professor’s lead, we can use popular culture as an extremely rich trove for research. We can even link it back to the Trojan War.

When Homer wrote the Iliad, he described the Trojans as having the same values, beliefs, bravery, and humanity as the Greeks. Wait a minute! They were the enemy. The Greeks destroyed their city and dragged them off into slavery, yet the account of the war, written by the victors, describes the vanquished Trojans as as worthy and noble as their conquerors - very unusual.

Leap into the world of American comic books, Captain America around the time of World War II. The cover of a comic book functions like a movie trailer. It’s meant to give you some information about the story inside, trigger your interest, get you to buy it. There is often enough information on the covers for them alone to be a window on our collective psyche.

One way of interpreting heroes is to understand their antagonists. For Captain America at the time of the war, the arch-villains are often stereotyped, grotesque caricatures of the Germans or Japanese - a very different depiction of the enemy than the Greeks gave to the Trojans.

What happened to Captain America’s villains over the next twenty years? Who replaced the World War II enemies? Were they dehumanized stereotypes as well? The covers tell the tale.

What happens when the heroes themselves become more than, less than, or other than human: the Hulk, Superman, Spiderman?

Leaving heroes behind for the moment, for a fascinating comic book window on male/female relationships, take a look at the covers for Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane.

Experiment with sorting the covers into themes: girl competes with rival for boy and wins; girl loses boy to rival and is despondent outsider; girl throttles rival in competition for boy; girl acquires some special new power or capability that upsets boy (even though the “boy” is Superman!).

Did all the competition and jealousy in the Lois Lane comic books, marketed toward girls, reflect the reality of girls’ relationships with each other and with boys or, like Barbie to self-image, did they play a role that distorted and reconfigured those relationships?

This fascinating Lois Lane cover (#106) shows her coming out of a machine that has transformed her for 24 hours into a black woman, an experience that she has chosen to have first-hand (but short-term).

The comic books, and popular culture in general, capture and reflect their times, often in a very unguarded and revealing way, and students can use them as a powerful window on both the past and themselves. That bridge across time can be deeply engaging.

For the teachers, the parents, the potential tutors, and the Sasquatch enthusiasts…

Tomorrow, April Fool’s Day, 826 Boston (also known as the Bigfoot Research Institute) will have it’s grand opening in our home city. Behind the wacky exterior, they’re doing some pretty amazing things:

826 Boston is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

With this in mind, we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications.

All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student’s power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.

If you don’t know about 826 it’s a great organization that started in Valencia and quickly sprouted up in New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Michigan, and now Boston. Apparently they have a sustainable model that’s really working. Each has a unique theme, and Boston’s new addition is no exception with it’s earnest exploration of cryptozoology.

Perhaps your students or children would be interested. Perhaps you’re interested in tutoring or doing a Haiku workshop. Or perhaps you need to pick up a new pair of Anti Chupacabra Steel Gloves. Either way, they’re worth a visit.

We just wanted to let you know that tomorrow, Saturday March 29th from 8pm to 2am we’ll be putting the workBench offline while we make some major improvements. Building and sharing your projects will all go much faster, and remain fast.

We’re gaining more and more users daily - thanks by the way for telling your friends and colleagues:) - and with our new system, things won’t slow down at all. Signing up all your students will go faster too. We’re really looking forward to this update. Here’s to a better experience for everyone!

See you bright and early Monday morning for a fresh new start.

One definition of an icon is an important and enduring symbol. There are photographs that assume iconic power for a generation, such as this picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting JFK’s casket at the president’s funeral.

At times iconic images reaffirm some enduring conviction that we have about ourselves, some deep vein that we see as defining us and holding us to together. At other times, they powerfully challenge those assumptions and point out the ironies and paradoxes in the mythologies that we have created about ourselves. Images can be shockingly violent and deeply disturbing.

Some of the power that the printed word had for earlier generations seems to have shifted to images for students today. It is not all loss. They often carry a visual literacy that is very different than that of their parents and grandparents. Images can be a very effective springboard for discovery, critical thinking, and learning.

A set of related photographs can be an entry point into researching, building a chronology, and interpreting an historic event. A picture is still worth a thousand words, and if an image can evoke those words from students, it’s a prized catalyst.

In the opening paragraph above, when we talk about ourselves, who is being referenced? Whose sense of self is being reinforced or challenged by an iconic photograph?

An image or set of images can be an entry point into investigating personal, racial, religious, gender, or national identity. A classic collection of photographs, such as Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man leads to reflection of what it means to be a human being and whether or not there is such a thing as “the family of humankind.”

Just beginning to experiment with these ideas, we made this workBench project that links images to both supporting text and other related images. Click on the featured photograph to enlarge it in its own window. Click on the “?” to bring up background information on the featured image and on the “G” to see a Google collection of related images. Use the thumbnails to go to other photographs. Click on the “+” button in the top left corner of the project screen, and it will open full size in its own window.

The project contains the Challenger disaster in 1986, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, raising the flag after the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, Mary Ann Vecchio beside the body of Jeffrey Miller at Kent State in 1970, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a a Viet Cong captive in 1968, the World Trade Center shortly after 9/11, a depression breadline after the Louisville, Kentucky food in 1937, and finally a security camera image of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold during the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

A teacher could create this type of project with photographs from a particular event or around a theme and use it as a starting point with students. It could be a way of collecting data from any target group on what that group recognized as iconic and what information they initially had.

Another approach might be to have students, individually or in teams, create the projects (or a portion of them, such as the background content). Click on the “?” and it might open a multi-screen student project.

One other idea. An image, or a sequence of images, can make a very effective writing or discussion prompt. Challenge students to compare and contrast a series of related photographs and to construct and defend a hypothesis about a unifying theme. Take a look at these three powerful images as such a possible writing and/or discussion springboard.

A very good source of images that are possibly iconic is Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. We’ve used this collection that contains several hundred examples.

And the workBench discovers TeachersFirst!

As they describe themselves on their website, TeachersFirst “is a rich collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format.”

They go on to explain that they offer their own “professional and classroom-ready content along with thousands of reviewed web resources.”

What really can save teachers heaps of leg work is the ability to search web resources by subject and grade on the site.

In a stroll down memory lane, we did a search for high school English and found a rich array of very diverse options:

- CuePrompter.com that makes any computer into a teleprompter.

- A BBC site on Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

- A PPS site on The History of Jim Crow

- Business Writing Help

And then to our great delight, 9th in the list of 763 high school English entries, we found TRintuition’s workBench!

The workBench was reviewed by TeachersFrist and featured on the site after Christmas. It’s currently also listed in TeacherFirst Edge, a listing of Web 2.0 tools for teachers.

The TeachersFirst Edge collection of sites is worth a close look, and if you haven’t seen the workBench review yet, be sure to take a look. We were very impressed by the expansive array of possible uses they identified for the workBench.

Thank you, TeachersFirst!