Uglies

I try and keep this blog specifically to technology in education, but everyone once in a while I think it's important to add a little something else. This is one of those times. One of the things I was most happy about this past summer was that I was finally going to get a chance to catch up on my reading. It felt like it had been ages since I got to sit down with a good book. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered my school was going to have a book club! I have been enjoying the books so much and have discovered a new found love for adolescent lit. It's funny, because I never really liked it when I was an adolescent. Apparently I was too busy reading older books.

So far in our book club we have read Unwind by Neal Shusterman, Schooled by Gordon Korman, and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. One of the first things that I noticed with these books is the language. I assumed that some of these books and plots would be a bit too young feeling for more. Wow! Not at all! The content in these books are nothing like I remember. I'm not sure, but I think pre-teens and teenagers are getting more sophiscated in their reading styles then 15 years ago.

While I have enjoyed all the books so far, I don't want to back track, therefore I will comment on the most recent book Uglies. Our club meets this Thursday so this should get my mind running with ideas to comment on.

At first, I thought this book was going to be too much like the first book Unwind. I wasn't too sure about it and didn't immediately like the idea of uglies vs. pretties. One of the repeating thoughts I kept having was how these kids what so badly to look pretty and be popular and can't wait for the impending day when they get their pretty surgery, a rite of passage for all 16 year olds. They couldn't see how beautiful and smart and amazing they already were! But isn't that
so true of all of us? When hasn't one of us thought about looking prettier or wanting to change some part of our being? So this made me relate to the main characters more and understand why their society starting this surgery.

So this made me start thinking about how kids could show what beauty is to them. Two ideas immediately popped into my head, the first using PhotoStory 3 and the second using glogster.com. Using PhotoStory, students could take pictures and words and create a moving definition of beauty. I like this program because you can take still pictures and use the effects to make the pictures feel as if their part of a movie. It's a very quick program too and uses a wizard like quality to guide students through the process of creating their "photo" story. With glogster, you could do something similar just in the form of a digital poster.

Do you have any other ideas? Add your comments in the section below!