- ABOUT
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CHILDREN'S BOOKS
- Kindergarten Day USA and China
- Counting Pumpkins
- Elephants and Golden Thrones
- Steel Drumming At the Apollo
- Shapes Where We Play
- All Kinds of Friends, Even Green!
- Spring Changes
- Fall Changes
- Berry Smudges and Leaf Prints: Finding and Making Colors from Nature
- Hurray for Pre-K!
- Reading Grows
- For My Family, Love Allie
- Just Kids
- Secrets
- Kindergarten Kids
- Brothers And Sisters
- EDUCATION PHOTOGRAPHS
- MULTIMEDIA
- SCHOOL VISITS
- NEWS + UPDATES
- BLOG
Ellen Senisi Educator Services
I use media – print and multimedia arts – in unique ways to promote literacy and arts-in-education as well as help students meet curriculum standards. I do this through author visits and am now also creating online multimedia projects (similar to project-based learning) on specialized subjects.
My Background
I am an education professional (former teacher with two graduate degrees), author\photographer of 16 children’s photo essay books (some now re-released as eBooks/apps), have 20 years of experience photographing in classrooms for the major education publishers, and produce multimedia videos for and about children and education.
Author Visits
My author visits are primarily for elementary students, although I have done some photography teaching workshops at the upper levels. The fee for a one-day author visit is $800 for presentations scheduled in 2012. An extra fee is charged for writing a new presentation; that fee depends on how much and what type of new material must be created so will likely range from an extra $400 – $1,200. Fees for virtual school visits over the internet start at $200 for a thirty-minute visit. Current existing presentations include: Character Education; Book from Idea to Print; Create-A-Photoessay Workshop, and Star in Your Own Picture Book. I have a document that describes these programs in more detail. I am listed in the BOCES Arts in Education Directory in the Capital District so BOCES aid may be used to pay a portion of my services at BOCES participating schools.
What I bring that is special: My specialty as a professional is combining words with images so I am able to promote literacy in high-interest ways to students by showing them how words, visuals, and audio can be combined creatively.
Expanded Author Visit: A Media Arts Project on Rainforest
I am currently working with a team to create a specialized program with multiple media components called Rainforest Journey. In addition to a school visit, classrooms or schools signing on for Rainforest Journey will get one-year access into a special website created just for this program. Schools that opt for website participation, in addition to the official school visit, will be able to access photographs, video clips, mini-stories, a student forum, an end-of-project multimedia video, and assessment materials. There will also be a record of my journey to the Amazonian rainforest in October 2012 in a daily blog. The blog will include photos and video clips as I walk the forest trails and communicate with local people. (See blog excerpts here)
The best of the material collected will be organized into a print-on-demand book that will be given to the school. The Rainforest Journey website will be offered for free while it is in beta testing mode beginning in May, 2013. School presentations on the Rainforest Journey will be available for the fees quoted above at that time.
The objective of Rainforest Journey is to use media arts to present concepts aligned with national curriculum standards in science and English language arts. Once testing is completed, the media will be located on a password-protected website which classrooms, schools, or homeschooling families can opt into at various levels for a quarterly or yearly fee.
A sample version is available for browsing here. Note that while the sample version has primary and intermediate lessons, the completed website will have lessons targeted for the individual grade levels for K – 4. The lessons will be coordinated (as is shown on the current sample site) with referenced curriculum standards.
What I bring that is special: My background as an educator/writer and my versatility with a variety of electronic media gives me the ability to create and coordinate electronic media with print-on-demand books unique to the project, thereby encouraging book literacy and subject competencies aligned with curriculum standards.
My websites:
