BP4_2009121_PicLit

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

This was my first PicLit in practice mode.

tbird said 20 hours ago:
Tell us more about this meeting. Where is it taking place. WRITE more and often. Thanks



See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

tbird said 13 hours ago:
Clever and very apropo.

This was my second and I made it for this post.



See the full PicLit at PicLits.com


tbird said 13 hours ago:
Well said. Grasping the magnitude of change and over-abundance of information. Just some of my thoughts. Thanks for sharing this PicLit. Kudos.

chata said 14 hours ago:
The agony and the joy of working on the edge!

After playing around I made this one and earned 4 stars! Very exciting.


PicLit.com is a site that brings pictures and words together. The idea is to creatively match words that capture the spirit of a photo. A single word, phrases, sentences, or even a paragraph may be written. Rhyme or prose, the end result is liken to the many posters we have seen hanging on the walls in classrooms.

Creating a PicLit is very simple. A photo is chosen, words can be dragged and dropped from a provided list of nouns, verbs, and adjectives or the user can ‘freestyle’ and write from their own thoughts. The PicLit is then published and the user is given an embed code and Url to share their work in other places on the web. ELA teachers have long had students use the strategy of using images as prompts for story starters. As a part of my writing project courses picture prompts were used for quick writes. Finding just the right words to convey the message of an image isn’t an easy task, but just imagine using PicLit to jump off the creative writing mojo of students.

I created the above images in less than 10 minutes and was really surprised at how quick someone had viewed my work and made judgments so soon after I posted. The viewer of my work came from the PicLit founder, Terry Friedlander. His critique of my work was very exciting. This made me think about how feedback is so important to learners. Comments and ratings are formative assessments, nudges.

In my opinion, the site is not cumbersome and easy to navigate; the graphics are pleasing and does provide sparks of thoughts for writing. The directions are simple for even the youngest reader. The site even provides 3 levels of writing lessons for users to differentiate their writing experience. Each level has its own instructions for writers. Coming soon to the application will be the ability to print, search, and tag PicLits. There will even be a weekly contest.

PicLit is a great tool for inspiring students to think, write, and share their work in a creative way online.