Monday, 15 December 2008
Adventure Island - creativity for young writers
Information about Adventure Island - the creative participatory game/story/digital mutimedia that's part of my young writers site Kids on the Net has been hitting the blogosphere this month, with Tom Barrett and Larry Ferlazzo talking about it. There have been qite a few requests for logins recently.
I'm thinking of creating a Camtasia video to show how the island plan works, I think some teachers find it a little awkward to get to grips with. Perhaps a Christmas activity? Then it would be ready for the rush of signups we usually get in the first half of the year.Labels: Adventure Island, children's writing, creative writing, Kids on the Net, literacy
posted by Helen Whitehead 5:37 PM
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Fat Gourg on YouTube
Following on from Saturday's newspaper story about Fat Gourg, the 7-year-old's monster who become an internet craze in France, the story hit the local TV yesterday - and the French fans have already put it up on Youtube.
If they had shown the interview they did with me I would have been saying how wonderful it is to have a story that shows the positive side of the Internet.
All writing that is submitted to Kids on the Net is fully moderated and published so safely that it took 5 years, a newspaper, a TV station and thousands of French fans to find Luke.
It's wonderful that they were able to find Luke and interview him! Meanwhile, the current crop of children at his old school, Oakthorpe Primary, have submitted their own monsters who reside on the Monster Motel website in Fat Gourg's Friends annex.Labels: children's writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:39 PM
Saturday, 5 July 2008
I never thought I'd be part of an internet cult!
My project Kids on the Net features today in the Leicester Mercury - and it's all down to a monster ("Fat Gourg") created by seven-year-old Luke, during a writing workshop I held in a Leicestershire primary school in March 1999. Starting as one of our many writing ideas for kids the monster has since become something of a cult figure for a group of young French artists and cartoonists. writing ideas for kids
In 2003, the drawing was discovered on the website by famous French online cartoonist Pierre Primen. The 25-year-old raved about Fat Gourg on Primsworld, his website dedicated to funny cartoons and drawings, which gets 50,000 visitors a day, sparking instant adulation. Apparently there's even, on August 8 - the "eight" symbolising his fat body - a Fat Gourg Day!
He has a Friends Reunited profile, where he is listed as single and retired, and a Facebook profileand there is a Facebook group dedicated to finding him.Now the hunt is on to find Luke. His French fans "would like to know if Luke remembers drawing this monster. If he does, I guess we have to thank him for all the fun Fat Gourg has brought to us, and we have millions of questions to ask him about this character. We also have to offer him a statue to pay tribute to his oeuvre!"
I hope Luke is amused and not embarrassed by all this. But imagine being able to say you launched an internet cult at the age of 7? I find the whole story most heartwarming, and I remember Luke's classmates and school with affection - they had the best school dinners I've ever had!
Fat Gourg can be found in the Monster Motel on the Kids on the Net website. The project is still going and invites children worldwide to contribute their own monsters - a great topic for kids' writing activities. Children's own writing is featured throughout Kids on the Net and there are many different writing activities for kids.
Labels: children's writing, digital writing, Fat Gourg, Kids on the Net, online projects for kids
posted by Helen Whitehead 3:02 PM
