Time flies when you're having fun

It is hard to believe the semester is coming to a close. I very much enjoyed all of the learning experiences that I had with all of you. To those of you preparing to teach the future of America, good luck. I cannot imagine what that would be like to go and do. If I do ever get into teaching at the collegiate level, I know that what I have learned will help me greatly in being a better teacher. I hope that I can stay in touch with many of you to get some pointers about this whole teaching thing and if you guys need anything from me, I'd be happy to help you out. Good luck out there teachers!

The Classics

I really am a stickler for the classics. I love learning about and finding new understandings of the Canon. Now, there are two issues with the canon, namely, diversity and relevance. Kids may have trouble relating to the texts and most of the texts were written by heterosexual white men. I feel like a lot of the argument about young adult lit revolves around YAL or the classics. I like the idea that we explored with graphic novels, why not both?

There are many young adult literature books that you could read in tandem with a classic text so that the students can better understand and more deeply take in the story. There are many modern adaptions of canonical works, as well as books that tackle the same themes. For example, Chuck Palahniuk based his main three character's in Fight Club off the love triangle from The Great Gatsby. Coraline by Neil Gaiman tackles a girl trying desprately to fit in and discover herself, but in the way The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger is about a boy's look inward to see who he is.

Now, combining relevant stories with non-print activities such as drama and video assignments, I think that students can gain a much deeper and better understanding of the classic texts.

Drama and understanding

I have always stuck my nose up to acting out scenes from a play or book. I always felt like I didn't know enough to really portray the character well. And then we participated in the drama for class last Monday. I must say, it did help me get into the mindset of the character a lot. I began to really feel for the character that I was embodying. I was able to relate to the character's struggle. I definitely think that this takes a higher level of comprehension than most middle school or early high schoolers are capable of, but I think it could be very effective none the less.

I really enjoyed the activities outside of just acting out some scenes. It moves away from the two dimensional view of characters that is common in short stories. Students can find a deeper understanding of character's motivations. So the grocery store owner in the poem we read. A quick shallow analyses of him shows a mean father who doesn't really care about his family, he just wants to make money at his store. But, through process drama, you may discover a loving and devoted husband and father who is just trying to provide for his family and keep their main source of income.

Supplement or Replacement?

Graphic novels... should they be used to supplement or to replace canonical literature. From my experience, they can greatly help at risk students understand the classic texts. Students may have trouble picturing how a scene would look or may need a visual cue to help them understand little parts of the plot that may not be as obvious in pure text form. As a general rule though, adaptations of classic texts have a tendency to leave out parts of a story. The graphic novel adaption of Portrait of Dorian Grey leaped from Dorian as an innocent youth to his corrupt adult life, skipping over his development and loss of innocents. This gives less of a portrait of Dorian Grey and more of an overview. (bad pun, I know)

Also, other novels like A Wrinkle In Time are challenging to change into a visual format. The story has a scene that takes place in a two dimensional universe and another universe that the characters cannot seem to describe in human speech. This means that both of these universes would be very challenging to draw.

Last Week's Project

After talking with Sammi and Emily, we decided that going into class on Monday, we did not have much hope for our video. All of us had trouble story boarding our ideas and utilizing the camera shots to maximize the message we were trying to send. It wasn't until we actually worked together that things began to come together. I realized that we were doing a really good job of working together. One person would offer an idea, the other two would listen, comprehend, and then offer an advancement of the idea.

At the beginning of the project, I really didn't think it was going to go so well, but I really think that our video is pretty good. Little recommendation, read Alexie Sherman's short story on D2L. It is a quick read and will make the video a lot less confusing. My girlfriend watched the movie before she read the story and had no clue what was going on. After she read the story though, she thought it was really good.

My Podcast

The podcast was another assignment that I found out took more work than I was expecting. Going into it, I was expecting to just hit record and talk about the book. I tried that and then made a check list using the rubric. I realized I missed a whole lot of stuff. So I thought I would have the rubric out while I recorded. The recording ended up sounding fake and just not very fluid. So I wrote a list of things to talk about and went off of that. That is what ended up working the best.

Also, writing the podcast forced me to do more research than I expected. But because I love the book, doing research was not a hard for me to do. Over all, good assignment. I definitely think I could work stuff like this into projects I do on the side.

A Video Project

I always have a similar hesitations when I hear about assignments with videos. First off, when I had to do a video assignment in middle school, we didn't have digital recording (or at least I didn't have access to it). So for a video project, we did each scene in one take, in order, and had no way of editing or refining the project. So when I got the assignment I thought of all of the cool things that I could do with it and how it awesome mine was going to be. Then, when we watched through it, I discovered the sound was really different for different scenes, and the quality was NOTHING like the movies (which I kinda expected, not knowing better). Now I know technology has come a long way, but that might heighten the expectations of students.

Next, there is the issue of participation. In large projects, its easy for students to assume a more minor role and still receive credit for an assignment. A solution to this is to make a set of jobs for the movie and divide the work load. So the writer writes the script, the director makes artistic decisions on how the scenes should be shot, and the actor investigates the motivations of why the character they are portraying acts the way he/she does. All members of the group would be required to do research on the subject of their video. So, after the project is complete, each student would write a paper presenting what they discovered in their research and how that effected decisions. Along the lines of participation, what if the writer doesn't do his job? Do you penalize the other members of the group? How can you grade the other members of the group?

My final hesitation is the time factor. Students finding time just to get together for filming can be a huge challenge. On top of that, they have to wait on the writer to write the script, find extras, and edit the video. Your students will have other assignments going on and it is hard to imagine devoting that much time to just your project.

Emotional Catharsis

As I recall (it has been a while) highschool was a bit of a turbulant time for me emotionally. I was not popular in any sense of the word and because of that, I went through my fair share of ups and downs. I have always been a fan of writing anonymously or under a fake name. It is a way to let out your emotions while not feeling like you are under a microscope. The military has trained the "talk about your feelings" almost completely out of me to point where talking about them to a person makes me feel like I am being judged or observed. I have found that writing as someone else or anonymously allows me to be 100% honest and put anything out there yet still feel safe and comfortable behind my veil. If students start blogging in class, they may find that they can utilize this tool in there personal lives. Getting your feelings into print or another for of media is extremely theraputic. For me, I think though the detail and motivations of my feelings before I can write about them. Then after I write, I can edit the writing so that it best refects what it is that I am trying to say. Then once the writing is done, I finally feel like I have dealt in a real way with what I was feeling. For me it may be writing, for others it may be music composition or art. Regarless of the media, web tools explored in this class and later in the classroom can help students to express themselves in different ways. (why I am still loving on this whole Tumblr thing.)

Never a dull moment

So I was doing the reading in Wilber chapter 3. It was slightly monotonous because I have a pretty good understanding of blogs and wiki's (though learning the origins of the terms was pretty interesting). Then I came to digital stories. Have you ever had an awesome idea and then told someone about it and discovered what you thought of already exists? That is what happened.

About 2 years ago I came up with an idea for a book. I wanted to write a horror novel because I seem them as the most challenging media in horror. With a movie, you have the cheap scares of a monster jumping out and saying boo. You also are watching something on a screen and tend to be able to distance yourself from it. The few horror epics I have read that were truly scary suck you in. You immerse yourself in the story. So I said "challenge accepted" and began brainstorming. What I realized was that words on a page was deep enough for me. I was the reader to feel like they were killer in my story or at least knew him intimately. So, I decided that what I wanted was the killer's logs of his murders as he develops his "craft". So, I wanted each chapter to be a log of the entire process of each victim. It would start out with hand written notes about who the victim is, where they live, what their habits are, who they live with, ect. Then he would decide the mode of killing them and experiment with it. If it was a knife, there would be anatomy drawings with notes about effective places to stab or cut. (sorry if this is freaking you out. I really wanted this thing to be scary.)

So cutting to the chase, I realized this had to be a digital media project so I could include photos, hand written notes, and other items. I came up with this ground breaking new form of what a book could be! Then I realized that the internet beat me to it and these already exist. Damn.

My new Tumblr

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be writing a blog on being a Modern Gentleman. I think that the best place to do this would be Tumblr because I can post video, audio, or text based posts. I am not sure how this will turn out but I am pretty excited to get started on it. If any of you have some time and feel like checking it out, here is the link. http://gentlementoday.tumblr.com/

I don't know when I will find time to post, but I figure getting started was the best way to get it off the ground. If anyone has some input, I'd love to hear it!

Sorry to keep you guys waiting

I'm back! Does anybody else really dig on this whole Podcast idea? Not just as a learning tool or project idea, but just in general! I had heard of them, but had no clue how they worked or what they are. I think that making podcasts would be an easy and effective way for students to express themselves. Students who don't enjoy or have trouble writing would probably find it easier writing the way that they talk instead of writing to be read. I think that podcasts could really engage students who may be turned off otherwise. I have been thinking about starting a blog on my own for a while about the modern gentleman (did it pop up in any of your feeds?) but couldn't find the best way to do it. Writing didn't seem like enough, and I didn't want to have to do a video every time I wanted to post. Podcasting seems like a prefered method to post! I think part of the trick to podcasting is not havig a script, but have an outline sitting in front of you. I like to know what I want to say, but not know how I am going to say it. That way podcasts stay focused, but still feel and sound natural.

Another thing I like about the podcast idea is that you can give a lot of creative license to the student while still keeping a concise rubrik. Robert Rozema wrote in his article that he required "an engaging opener, key excerpts from the tet,  the name of the author and the title, and credits for any copytighted music used in the podcast" (32). This leaves students free to do a lot with the assignment. Some might talk about their feelings on the book. Others may orally perform part of the book. Others might write their own dialog based on how the book was written. I thought that the excerp from Feed podcast was really well done and a cool concept!

My book trailer

So I was thinking about a few different books for my book trailer. The list was Sabriel by Garth Nix, The Pigman by Paul Zindel, the graphic novel adaption of Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Tim said that a lot of people know of A Wrinkle in Time so I should probably pick a different book. I'm leaning toward Artemis Fowl, but I think I'm going to read all of them then decide. I'm not a big fan of group projects because I'm a total A type personality and need to be in control of everything I am working on so I have trouble working with others. If you think that you can deal with me though, let me know and maybe we can work together. I've already read it so I have some ideas for it, but I want to re-read it first to get my mind on straight. Hit me back.

Sorry for the late post bloggers

I apologize for how late these blogs are getting posted. Its been a crazy week and I had some trouble getting on here.

So, "Why Tweens and Teens Hate School" caught my eye. As I was reading the article, I was very split. Half of me was agreeing whole heartedly with what the writer had to say. Yeah, high school was six years ago for me (oh shit now I feel old again) but I still remember HATING it. Homework was a bore, teachers didn't understand, classes were too early, and the rest of it. But once the author started talking about the "homework of the future", I found myself think, No! That is too easy and too awesome and if I had to go through it, every one of those little brats in middle and high school now should have to as well! I realize though that this reaction is only because I an jealous I didn't have the opportunity  Thinking back, my favorite classes in high school were my music classes because the teacher used multimedia to enhance the class.  So who knows, maybe this fancy shmancy new technology might be helpful after all.

A quick intro

I imagine that if you are reading this that you are in my Writing for Non-print Media class. If not, you're still welcome. If there is any question of which of the people in our class is me, I'm the loud one with the tattoos. I am rather out spoken and I am very opinionated. I enjoy playing devil's advocate as much as possible. I LOVE reading and discussing my reading. I enjoy writing as well and have been published a few times. I am always excited for others to read my work and give me feedback. So if you are interested reading any of my stuff, let me know!