Painting Pictures with Words: Patricia MacLachlan
March 31, 2008
We had three schools join in with this amazing connection from Amon Carter museum. Patricia MacLachlan shared with students how place and setting are the most important place for her to start in her writing process. Then she moves to the characters.
To underscore the importance of place/setting, the backdrop for the videoconference were these wonderful paintings from the Amon Carter collection. During the student interactions, students were asked to interpret the art work. It was a great way for students to interact with the art in addition to the regular Q and A that we usually see during an author interaction.
What struck me most about this connection was the comfort level with the technology. Patricia MacLachlan was so relaxed and handled the local audience in the room with her and the remote sites equally. Nancy Strickland from the Amon Carter museum did a great job facilitating the session. (Sometimes when there is a local audience, the experience is not equal for local and remote groups.)
Do you ever get stuck in writing and what do you do?
The beginning and the ending are easy. I play solitaire on the computer and visit my friends in the writers’ group to bounce ideas off of.
Check out more programs offered by the Amon Carter museum online at Connect2Texas. Amon Carter museum also has a blog where they write about different events and happenings at the museum.
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Thank you, Roxanne, for your kind remarks. We had a blast! Patricia MacLachlan is a real jewel. This is our fourth guest speaker big multi-point conference and none of the speakers, including Patricia MacLachlan, were familiar with the technology. We had very little time for preparation this morning, but Ms. Maclachlan is a real pro! You should hear her in casual lunch conversation. She is such fun.
Even though I had never done a distance learning program with an in-house audience, I suspected that keeping the on-site and remote audiences both engaged might be a little tricky. She and I talked about the need to speak to both groups before we got started. And, we did work to keep the speaker and all viewers (including the camera) at as close to equal eye-level as possible. I didn’t want her looking down at students on the floor so we put them in chairs.
We wanted to make this program as interactive as possible, so we’ve added a posting to our blog where students can share their experiences and creative writing. Go to http://www.cartermuseum.org/blog and watch for student responses to the program under the topic Patricia MacLachlan Inspires Young Writers.
My class thoroughly enjoyed viewing the conference with Mrs. Machalan! She was so witty which caused my students to pay very close attention so they would know what I was laughing about. She was so informative and reinforced the things I had been hammering home to my students prior to the Writing TAKS. I think some of those things finally soaked all the way in. I could see many, many light bulbs clicking on. The hour went by so very fast.