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Sunday, December 29, 2013
Monday, March 7, 2011
Digital Literacy Project Reflection
The accompanying video to this essay is “Tempting”, a short film I directed in May 2007. The initial version was written by Stuart Thomas, shot by Philip Briggs, and edited by Sam Cunningham. On completion, I was overall fairly happy with it. It was a solid short that encapsulated a lot of the loony-toons sort of comedy I was shooting for, combined with a slight sense of morbidity. I liked it.
There were, however, a few minor problems I had with the film as it was. It used a few takes I wasn’t completely happy with, and a few shots were present that I wanted, in retrospect, taken out. The music also wasn’t quite right. I used Franz Liszt’s Totentanz and while it’s still there, it’s slightly remixed to fit the movement of the frame better. I also altered the ending in a tiny way: I added the sound of the actor choking back into the mix.
Since I’m already fairly familiar with this mode of literacy and this edit didn’t really “teach” me anything new, it’s hard to approach a reflection from those angles. Similarly, it’d be somewhat disingenuous to illustrate how composition with film and video differ from conventional writing. I won’t say those differences don’t exist, nor will I claim that I didn’t learn anything new in re-editing, since the very nature of creating is a learning experience.
But it would be a lie to approach it as something completely new. So, instead, I’d like to focus on implications of using this in education.
To be blunt, I think it’s a mixed bag, but certainly not something to oppose. A week ago, I agreed with Jack Nilles when he questioned teachers who taught something like this rather than traditional literature. I certainly agree with him; although the same sorts of critical thought is used in all of these modes, there is something real which is lost when the focus moves entirely away from literature.
It’s certainly important to consider student needs. The most interesting analogy I’ve heard so far is in dealing with the students who don’t know or care about literature, and never will. But, “say you’re in a business meeting and you’re making smalltalk with your boss or co-workers. Are you going to bore them with job-related conversations, proving that you’re so singularly-focused that you have no other interests in life? Or will you talk about a great book you once read, and the two of you can find some common ground?” Traditional literature has a place, and it’s rightful to consider its place to be at the forefront of language arts.
But modes such as video production can’t be ignored or shuffled aside. Let’s look at an area I love, and someday want to coach again: debate. The principles of argumentation and composition are vital to the field, and it’s an area that students need to know in order to succeed. The best way to understand a field (in this case, argument) is to understand it from multiple viewpoints. Consider the student who’s learned how to formulate a written argument, and an oral argument. The student can graduate into using multimedia or video production to learn a new avenue for argumentation.
From another perspective, there’s always adaptation. I obsess over this. It’s a wide field in which we look at how the stories which have been told for thousands of years become unique because the person telling the story is different. While traditional literature is great for one perspective in this, video production is a great second perspective.
I do have a great deal of experience in film/video production, and I won’t claim it should merely be an extracurricular. It has a vital place in our core classes. The video accompanying this isn’t just a piece of fluff; it’s an examination on the popular conception of junk food and health-consciousness. It’s a satire and a deconstruction. Asking students to take a similar broad idea and make a short movie about it is a key and valid avenue to understanding it.
The problem is in overcoming the luddite ideas against using it in school, or (even worse) using it with so many limitations that it becomes more harmful than beneficial. Last week in class we were talking about how many schools don’t have computers for all the students, and how many sites are blocked in so many districts. The implications to policy-makers is clear: there is an absolute benefit to using it as a large-scale educational aid and, quite often, the supposed down-sides are nothing more than unfounded fears on behalf of those setting the rules. It’s a real pity, because I’d love to teach narrative video production to students. Whether it’s a secondary course focused on production, or a unit within traditional language arts, there is a tremendous benefit to making use of it.
There were, however, a few minor problems I had with the film as it was. It used a few takes I wasn’t completely happy with, and a few shots were present that I wanted, in retrospect, taken out. The music also wasn’t quite right. I used Franz Liszt’s Totentanz and while it’s still there, it’s slightly remixed to fit the movement of the frame better. I also altered the ending in a tiny way: I added the sound of the actor choking back into the mix.
Since I’m already fairly familiar with this mode of literacy and this edit didn’t really “teach” me anything new, it’s hard to approach a reflection from those angles. Similarly, it’d be somewhat disingenuous to illustrate how composition with film and video differ from conventional writing. I won’t say those differences don’t exist, nor will I claim that I didn’t learn anything new in re-editing, since the very nature of creating is a learning experience.
But it would be a lie to approach it as something completely new. So, instead, I’d like to focus on implications of using this in education.
To be blunt, I think it’s a mixed bag, but certainly not something to oppose. A week ago, I agreed with Jack Nilles when he questioned teachers who taught something like this rather than traditional literature. I certainly agree with him; although the same sorts of critical thought is used in all of these modes, there is something real which is lost when the focus moves entirely away from literature.
It’s certainly important to consider student needs. The most interesting analogy I’ve heard so far is in dealing with the students who don’t know or care about literature, and never will. But, “say you’re in a business meeting and you’re making smalltalk with your boss or co-workers. Are you going to bore them with job-related conversations, proving that you’re so singularly-focused that you have no other interests in life? Or will you talk about a great book you once read, and the two of you can find some common ground?” Traditional literature has a place, and it’s rightful to consider its place to be at the forefront of language arts.
But modes such as video production can’t be ignored or shuffled aside. Let’s look at an area I love, and someday want to coach again: debate. The principles of argumentation and composition are vital to the field, and it’s an area that students need to know in order to succeed. The best way to understand a field (in this case, argument) is to understand it from multiple viewpoints. Consider the student who’s learned how to formulate a written argument, and an oral argument. The student can graduate into using multimedia or video production to learn a new avenue for argumentation.
From another perspective, there’s always adaptation. I obsess over this. It’s a wide field in which we look at how the stories which have been told for thousands of years become unique because the person telling the story is different. While traditional literature is great for one perspective in this, video production is a great second perspective.
I do have a great deal of experience in film/video production, and I won’t claim it should merely be an extracurricular. It has a vital place in our core classes. The video accompanying this isn’t just a piece of fluff; it’s an examination on the popular conception of junk food and health-consciousness. It’s a satire and a deconstruction. Asking students to take a similar broad idea and make a short movie about it is a key and valid avenue to understanding it.
The problem is in overcoming the luddite ideas against using it in school, or (even worse) using it with so many limitations that it becomes more harmful than beneficial. Last week in class we were talking about how many schools don’t have computers for all the students, and how many sites are blocked in so many districts. The implications to policy-makers is clear: there is an absolute benefit to using it as a large-scale educational aid and, quite often, the supposed down-sides are nothing more than unfounded fears on behalf of those setting the rules. It’s a real pity, because I’d love to teach narrative video production to students. Whether it’s a secondary course focused on production, or a unit within traditional language arts, there is a tremendous benefit to making use of it.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
03/03 reading reflection
Here's a guy who gets it.
I chose to read chapter six of our assigned reading this week, "Poetry Fusion: Integrating Video, Verbal, and Audio Texts." After a few previous readings on digital literacy and seeing just how woefully inadequate their very understandings are of what they want to use, this is a guy who gets it. Honestly, I think I may use a lot of his layout as information for designs on video production units I'm thinking of. Would I use it all? I dunno, I'm not a fan of podcasts, but the way he's using them here makes an incredibly convincing argument in favor of them. We've all had those teachers who said "read the poem out loud to yourself or your classmate." Who's ever done that? Not me. Not worth it. But here, the author manages to get that same effect our teachers were shooting for, but in a FAR more authentic and useful way.
Ted, Leigh, and Dan all remember it, they were in the class with me. Linguistics. "The History of English", a woefully outdated doc that had some great information in it. My favorite part was the guy who put the Old English Beowulf to music and sang it. What this chapter espouses is something similar to that - it creates a poem that you hear and appreciate for its original style. You break away from the density of the language in reading it.
In terms of video and multimedia, he brings a similar versatility. And, while it's largely left unsaid, the implication to me (at least, I hold to it) is that students with an intrinsic understanding of multimedia literacy begin to connect the dots...again, between what they know and what they don't know. We see that in a huge way about halfway through the chapter, under the "video as text" entry, where a student who began the project with no reaction to the piece is able to develop a real appreciation for what's going on. The main reason, I know, is that the student has taken what he/she knows (how a movie looks) and has been able to marry it to what he/she didn't know (the deeper interpretation of a poem), and a huge part of this has been in learning the essentials of how to make a movie. The teacher had the student break a script, basically, in order to shoot it. The beauty here is that in breaking the script, all of the students have been textually digging into the poems and uncovering deeper meaning from a large variety of angles.
Assessment - again, full honesty: I've taught aspects of this to college kids. I largely assessed/graded completely informally based on the idea of "do they have a plan and did they execute it?" I really like the breakdown of how he laid out his rubric, and what I love most of all is that the students have a hand in grading.
This entire post feels un-meaty. The problem is that I not only don't disagree with anything here, but I just love it. Again, this is a guy who gets it.
My link of the week:
Adobe's video production curriculum
I really like this area for the same reason I liked the chapter I read: it's a good, solid starting point to looking at how to teach the subject.
I chose to read chapter six of our assigned reading this week, "Poetry Fusion: Integrating Video, Verbal, and Audio Texts." After a few previous readings on digital literacy and seeing just how woefully inadequate their very understandings are of what they want to use, this is a guy who gets it. Honestly, I think I may use a lot of his layout as information for designs on video production units I'm thinking of. Would I use it all? I dunno, I'm not a fan of podcasts, but the way he's using them here makes an incredibly convincing argument in favor of them. We've all had those teachers who said "read the poem out loud to yourself or your classmate." Who's ever done that? Not me. Not worth it. But here, the author manages to get that same effect our teachers were shooting for, but in a FAR more authentic and useful way.
Ted, Leigh, and Dan all remember it, they were in the class with me. Linguistics. "The History of English", a woefully outdated doc that had some great information in it. My favorite part was the guy who put the Old English Beowulf to music and sang it. What this chapter espouses is something similar to that - it creates a poem that you hear and appreciate for its original style. You break away from the density of the language in reading it.
In terms of video and multimedia, he brings a similar versatility. And, while it's largely left unsaid, the implication to me (at least, I hold to it) is that students with an intrinsic understanding of multimedia literacy begin to connect the dots...again, between what they know and what they don't know. We see that in a huge way about halfway through the chapter, under the "video as text" entry, where a student who began the project with no reaction to the piece is able to develop a real appreciation for what's going on. The main reason, I know, is that the student has taken what he/she knows (how a movie looks) and has been able to marry it to what he/she didn't know (the deeper interpretation of a poem), and a huge part of this has been in learning the essentials of how to make a movie. The teacher had the student break a script, basically, in order to shoot it. The beauty here is that in breaking the script, all of the students have been textually digging into the poems and uncovering deeper meaning from a large variety of angles.
Assessment - again, full honesty: I've taught aspects of this to college kids. I largely assessed/graded completely informally based on the idea of "do they have a plan and did they execute it?" I really like the breakdown of how he laid out his rubric, and what I love most of all is that the students have a hand in grading.
This entire post feels un-meaty. The problem is that I not only don't disagree with anything here, but I just love it. Again, this is a guy who gets it.
My link of the week:
Adobe's video production curriculum
I really like this area for the same reason I liked the chapter I read: it's a good, solid starting point to looking at how to teach the subject.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
reflection for 2/24
I'm going to be honest here: this post is going to be more of a rant than anything. If I can remember I'll try to cite a bit, but mostly I'm going to be riffing off the general vibe, especially from the kadjer piece.
I've brought this up before, in Tracey's class a few weeks ago during the new literacies posting, but it's something that genuinely bothers me. In this case, it starts immediately in the article as a sort of cautionary tale: the principal claiming his teacher "gets" tech with kids, only to see them using laptops in such an absurd way they'd be better off with notebooks.
As far as I am concerned, much of the computer use in/around classroom activities isn't too far off from this, no matter what is claimed. And it's really a matter of understanding language/culture. That is, there is a definitely online culture. The people who get it, get it. The people who don't try to accommodate the culture into their own understandings. It...it just doesn't work.
In the case of 5481, we read a short article (guy's last name was Gee, forget his first name) who advocated using video games as a teaching tool. OK. He's running off of a false premise in not recognizing video games as skinner boxes (i've said it a hundred times and i'm sure i'm not alone), but his general idea was sound enough. it's certainly a game attempt to make his materials relevant to his students, and i won't fault him for that. but he was so out of touch with the entire jargon-structure and even the ethos behind gaming that i just know it would fall flat with him.
And there's a similar attitude at work in this week's readings. Please note: I DO NOT VIEW THEIR EVERY ARGUMENT AS INVALID. I definitely don't want to be misunderstood, as if i'm ignoring everything they say as somehow worthless. I just think that they're doomed to fail, because they don't understand the beast, as it were.
Now, in the case of the Kadjer article, I won't claim that the recommendations on using blogs are invalid. They're not. But they're entirely based on a mode of communication incompatible, in many ways, with blogs and netiquette in general.
I guess the best way I can describe it is this: we have a mutually accepted code of conduct in a mode of writing. Let's use journals as an example, because it's handy for the purposes of this. We have a general variety of tones, a general type of "respect" that we, as journal-writers, by nature afford to the reader. These aren't instinctive by a long shot. They're learned behaviours and they're subtle. They're based on very old principles of communication tied into cultural norms. As an emotional example, something like sarcasm takes a radically deferential tone in something like a journal. To this day I have to continually look at my print writing when i'm doing a first-person view, and try to figure out where my net-ingrained sense of hyperbole and sarcasm is causing misconceptions. and in my speech? fugedduboutit.
Net writing is different. Net writing is based on its own culture. I ask you this: if by some fluke you're one of 50 americans who gets letters in the mail, compare the language and tone to an e-mail. NOW, if the person writing the e-mail is someone with an online life, they're going to be radically different in a dozen different ways. some will be superficial, some will seemingly affect the very tone. those without that online life, those who accommodated their view of this kind of personal writing into e-mail, will have messages very similar to an actual letter. very little emotion, very precise language, etc.
Email's just different than print writing. "printing it out" doesn't change it. you need to remember: the idea of an internet with rules is new. the net was built by geeks like me...except they were smarter and had patience to deal with hardware. while print etiquette is built on a certain "code of conduct", netiquette has its own structure, and it shows its face in different senses depending on the format. im's are different from texts, texts are different form email, et al. it's all built on the old internet, the one built by those geeks. geeks are generally aggressive, rude, and sarcastic. i don't mean this as an insult, nor do i mean it as a universal. geeks are also problem-solvers, and we take any sort of "rule" as an invitation to bend/break/move around it. communication on the net is built upon this kind of aggression and subversion. most kids these days with internet access live in it and are versed in the rules. it's why this message is laden with a lack of punctuation, is occasionally sarcastic, and is filled with rhetorical fallacies i wouldn't dare approach in an actual print format.
Wanna know why hacking exists? because it's a puzzle to solve. screw "legal", it doesn't apply. the fact that rl society is attempting to impose law and order on it does not, for now, mean that those laws will be followed.
and teachers, such as we see here, are attempting to put their rules onto it. i do NOT mean this negatively. i just mean that their students are more well-versed in the conduct than they are, generally speaking, and they know how to operate it. so well-meaning teachers such as those in the kadjer article throwing out assignment blogs are wasting their time. they're trying to put a shiny hat on a journaling technique, and their intentions are admirable. but they should stick to journaling with a notebook unless they're versed enough to make an online assignment actually different. look at my post here. i'm REALLY trying to make this non-internet in tone. not sure how successful i am. based on lack of capitalization and complete lack of pronouns in otherwise complete sentences, i'd bet it's more net than print. and if this were an actual paper, it wouldn't look anything like this. I'd also use punctuation more.
My reason is simple: the language and deference for online writing by this teacher, as an example, is antithetical to what the students already operate on when online. the article, like the gee article from a few weeks ago, is the modern equivalent of saying "golly look at this here television-box, it's newfangled. we need to get that into class." yes. the intention is admirable. but the language and mode of thinking is outdated. can you teach a student when the student knows more about the medium than you?
another fairly superficial example: raise your hands if you know what it is to be trolled. or rickrolled. either/or. similarties between the two.
again, again, again - it is admirable. he's trying to spur interest by introducing a fun piece of equipment that the students want to use. but they use it differently. it's also admirable for administrators to mandate their teachers keep up to date on it. but if the very mode of thinking is still set to pre-internet, it's only going to go so far. i don't mean this universally, obviously. my cooperating teacher's great with it in a lot of ways, and he also has a view i share on it: it's all part of a toolbox. use what's needed where it's needed.
my link for the week:
it's a recent "blog" post with imbedded video asking, "is the internet really an amplified for youth deviance, bad behaviour, and risk?"
My answer: no, and you're comparing apples to oranges.
I've brought this up before, in Tracey's class a few weeks ago during the new literacies posting, but it's something that genuinely bothers me. In this case, it starts immediately in the article as a sort of cautionary tale: the principal claiming his teacher "gets" tech with kids, only to see them using laptops in such an absurd way they'd be better off with notebooks.
As far as I am concerned, much of the computer use in/around classroom activities isn't too far off from this, no matter what is claimed. And it's really a matter of understanding language/culture. That is, there is a definitely online culture. The people who get it, get it. The people who don't try to accommodate the culture into their own understandings. It...it just doesn't work.
In the case of 5481, we read a short article (guy's last name was Gee, forget his first name) who advocated using video games as a teaching tool. OK. He's running off of a false premise in not recognizing video games as skinner boxes (i've said it a hundred times and i'm sure i'm not alone), but his general idea was sound enough. it's certainly a game attempt to make his materials relevant to his students, and i won't fault him for that. but he was so out of touch with the entire jargon-structure and even the ethos behind gaming that i just know it would fall flat with him.
And there's a similar attitude at work in this week's readings. Please note: I DO NOT VIEW THEIR EVERY ARGUMENT AS INVALID. I definitely don't want to be misunderstood, as if i'm ignoring everything they say as somehow worthless. I just think that they're doomed to fail, because they don't understand the beast, as it were.
Now, in the case of the Kadjer article, I won't claim that the recommendations on using blogs are invalid. They're not. But they're entirely based on a mode of communication incompatible, in many ways, with blogs and netiquette in general.
I guess the best way I can describe it is this: we have a mutually accepted code of conduct in a mode of writing. Let's use journals as an example, because it's handy for the purposes of this. We have a general variety of tones, a general type of "respect" that we, as journal-writers, by nature afford to the reader. These aren't instinctive by a long shot. They're learned behaviours and they're subtle. They're based on very old principles of communication tied into cultural norms. As an emotional example, something like sarcasm takes a radically deferential tone in something like a journal. To this day I have to continually look at my print writing when i'm doing a first-person view, and try to figure out where my net-ingrained sense of hyperbole and sarcasm is causing misconceptions. and in my speech? fugedduboutit.
Net writing is different. Net writing is based on its own culture. I ask you this: if by some fluke you're one of 50 americans who gets letters in the mail, compare the language and tone to an e-mail. NOW, if the person writing the e-mail is someone with an online life, they're going to be radically different in a dozen different ways. some will be superficial, some will seemingly affect the very tone. those without that online life, those who accommodated their view of this kind of personal writing into e-mail, will have messages very similar to an actual letter. very little emotion, very precise language, etc.
Email's just different than print writing. "printing it out" doesn't change it. you need to remember: the idea of an internet with rules is new. the net was built by geeks like me...except they were smarter and had patience to deal with hardware. while print etiquette is built on a certain "code of conduct", netiquette has its own structure, and it shows its face in different senses depending on the format. im's are different from texts, texts are different form email, et al. it's all built on the old internet, the one built by those geeks. geeks are generally aggressive, rude, and sarcastic. i don't mean this as an insult, nor do i mean it as a universal. geeks are also problem-solvers, and we take any sort of "rule" as an invitation to bend/break/move around it. communication on the net is built upon this kind of aggression and subversion. most kids these days with internet access live in it and are versed in the rules. it's why this message is laden with a lack of punctuation, is occasionally sarcastic, and is filled with rhetorical fallacies i wouldn't dare approach in an actual print format.
Wanna know why hacking exists? because it's a puzzle to solve. screw "legal", it doesn't apply. the fact that rl society is attempting to impose law and order on it does not, for now, mean that those laws will be followed.
and teachers, such as we see here, are attempting to put their rules onto it. i do NOT mean this negatively. i just mean that their students are more well-versed in the conduct than they are, generally speaking, and they know how to operate it. so well-meaning teachers such as those in the kadjer article throwing out assignment blogs are wasting their time. they're trying to put a shiny hat on a journaling technique, and their intentions are admirable. but they should stick to journaling with a notebook unless they're versed enough to make an online assignment actually different. look at my post here. i'm REALLY trying to make this non-internet in tone. not sure how successful i am. based on lack of capitalization and complete lack of pronouns in otherwise complete sentences, i'd bet it's more net than print. and if this were an actual paper, it wouldn't look anything like this. I'd also use punctuation more.
My reason is simple: the language and deference for online writing by this teacher, as an example, is antithetical to what the students already operate on when online. the article, like the gee article from a few weeks ago, is the modern equivalent of saying "golly look at this here television-box, it's newfangled. we need to get that into class." yes. the intention is admirable. but the language and mode of thinking is outdated. can you teach a student when the student knows more about the medium than you?
another fairly superficial example: raise your hands if you know what it is to be trolled. or rickrolled. either/or. similarties between the two.
again, again, again - it is admirable. he's trying to spur interest by introducing a fun piece of equipment that the students want to use. but they use it differently. it's also admirable for administrators to mandate their teachers keep up to date on it. but if the very mode of thinking is still set to pre-internet, it's only going to go so far. i don't mean this universally, obviously. my cooperating teacher's great with it in a lot of ways, and he also has a view i share on it: it's all part of a toolbox. use what's needed where it's needed.
my link for the week:
it's a recent "blog" post with imbedded video asking, "is the internet really an amplified for youth deviance, bad behaviour, and risk?"
My answer: no, and you're comparing apples to oranges.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
reading reflection for 2/17
So, I posted a little bit of this in a response to Jack's blog, but I'll restate here just for the sake of flow.
I really responded to the Van DeWeghe article in ways I haven't responded to anything else so far. We've had a few really practical and solid guides (the dornan text as a whole is incredibly practical, as an example), but none so immediate to me.
A few weeks ago, the English 9 group had to come in with 3-4 ideas for what they wanted to do their research papers on. The general topic they had was simple: pick someone in your life who had to undergo a huge change of some kind. document the social aspects. some people chose medical crises, immigration, etc. their primary sources are personal interviews.
My cooperating teacher had them all in groups of 3-4 and they each had a simple worksheet on which they'd document their peers' ideas and how "good" they thought said-ideas were. while they were working, he came up to me and said, "it's a good idea to always do, but don't be surprised when they don't do the kind of critique you want." So I asked him a little bit about why he did the group critiques/revisions, what he meant by different kind, etc. He pretty much said, "you can give them very specific lenses to look through. ask them to answer specific questions, etc. but no matter what, they're going to default back to either saying 'i like it' or 'fix comma here, capitalize here, i like it!'"
That day, his third hour also had assigned groups for the same sort of thing. 11th grade honors, in this case. same thing. he said no matter how smart the kid is, what grade they're in, it doesn't matter. only 1 in 20 will, in high school, be able to do it. the rest will default to the more shallow stuff we often complain about, and Van DeWeghe comments on. it's just, in my cooperating teacher's opinion, a matter of maturity, strength of ability/confidence as writers, and social dynamics.
Why do them? That was my big question. His response: "eventually they will be strong enough and mature enough to use them in a more productive way, without a teacher's intervention. When that comes to them in a few years, they'll already be in the habit of doing it. It'll be familiar to them and productive."
he combats this whole thing when it comes to actual draft revisions by using turnitin.com, which has a feature that will send out each student's essay, anonymously, to X amount of students (you tell it how many: in his case, it goes out to 3 others). students are then required to comment on the papers...again, anonymously. the website also has a feature in which, the teacher, plug in questions. when it turns around and sends out the anonymous papers to students, it attaches the questions in terms of a minor worksheet that they have to answer. the anonymity helps for a bit more truthfulness.
I had a thought about a way to combat this, stolen wholesale from the girlfriend.
groups of four. assign each person a role: this person praises, that person critiques. another person looks specifically at grammar/spelling. she apparently uses it a lot for draft revisions and it works well.
i have to admit, it's kind of interesting to look at the praises for "teaching higher level thinking" vs. the more pragmatic view that my cooperating teacher has. but i do see a lot of abilities for common ground in there, especially when you take into account the idea that it models good habits that they'll hold onto and use more effectively at later points.
My link for the week:
this is a peer editing form. I actually quite like the questions. they're pointed, but open-ended. I plan to use something similar in teaching the research paper to the 11th graders.
I really responded to the Van DeWeghe article in ways I haven't responded to anything else so far. We've had a few really practical and solid guides (the dornan text as a whole is incredibly practical, as an example), but none so immediate to me.
A few weeks ago, the English 9 group had to come in with 3-4 ideas for what they wanted to do their research papers on. The general topic they had was simple: pick someone in your life who had to undergo a huge change of some kind. document the social aspects. some people chose medical crises, immigration, etc. their primary sources are personal interviews.
My cooperating teacher had them all in groups of 3-4 and they each had a simple worksheet on which they'd document their peers' ideas and how "good" they thought said-ideas were. while they were working, he came up to me and said, "it's a good idea to always do, but don't be surprised when they don't do the kind of critique you want." So I asked him a little bit about why he did the group critiques/revisions, what he meant by different kind, etc. He pretty much said, "you can give them very specific lenses to look through. ask them to answer specific questions, etc. but no matter what, they're going to default back to either saying 'i like it' or 'fix comma here, capitalize here, i like it!'"
That day, his third hour also had assigned groups for the same sort of thing. 11th grade honors, in this case. same thing. he said no matter how smart the kid is, what grade they're in, it doesn't matter. only 1 in 20 will, in high school, be able to do it. the rest will default to the more shallow stuff we often complain about, and Van DeWeghe comments on. it's just, in my cooperating teacher's opinion, a matter of maturity, strength of ability/confidence as writers, and social dynamics.
Why do them? That was my big question. His response: "eventually they will be strong enough and mature enough to use them in a more productive way, without a teacher's intervention. When that comes to them in a few years, they'll already be in the habit of doing it. It'll be familiar to them and productive."
he combats this whole thing when it comes to actual draft revisions by using turnitin.com, which has a feature that will send out each student's essay, anonymously, to X amount of students (you tell it how many: in his case, it goes out to 3 others). students are then required to comment on the papers...again, anonymously. the website also has a feature in which, the teacher, plug in questions. when it turns around and sends out the anonymous papers to students, it attaches the questions in terms of a minor worksheet that they have to answer. the anonymity helps for a bit more truthfulness.
I had a thought about a way to combat this, stolen wholesale from the girlfriend.
groups of four. assign each person a role: this person praises, that person critiques. another person looks specifically at grammar/spelling. she apparently uses it a lot for draft revisions and it works well.
i have to admit, it's kind of interesting to look at the praises for "teaching higher level thinking" vs. the more pragmatic view that my cooperating teacher has. but i do see a lot of abilities for common ground in there, especially when you take into account the idea that it models good habits that they'll hold onto and use more effectively at later points.
My link for the week:
this is a peer editing form. I actually quite like the questions. they're pointed, but open-ended. I plan to use something similar in teaching the research paper to the 11th graders.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
oh, my link for the week!
The online english grammar guide
i like it because i'm on the kids' side: i hate memorization. i hate repetition. books exist so you don't have to remember. same with the net. this is a good breakdown of everything. hit ctrl+f and look for what you want.
there are several that i use in addition to this, depending on what i need. this is just one of the "nicer" ones.
i like it because i'm on the kids' side: i hate memorization. i hate repetition. books exist so you don't have to remember. same with the net. this is a good breakdown of everything. hit ctrl+f and look for what you want.
there are several that i use in addition to this, depending on what i need. this is just one of the "nicer" ones.
but I like grammar...
I mean it, i love grammar. Although I will admit, my love for it is only in some areas. honestly, as much as i like grammar, i wouldn't go as far as weaver suggests: introducing participal phrases, etc. i don't care about that NOW. very little point in teaching it.
Again, total honesty - i'm a trained playwright, a trained poet. i learned by being shown how the whole looks and in the case of poetry how meter works. beyond that, boring.
and in terms of the complexity that weaver advocates for being a part of the daily lit lessons: not needed. at all. it's bogging things down by asking students to memorize names for what they know. MAYBE, if they become New Critics, they can learn it.
That all being said, what i do advocate and like about grammar is not something i advocate teaching instead of lit. i love the weaver model of it, just not that complex. the car analogy she listed is actually quite apt: i to this day don't know, care, or understand how a car works beyond combustion. i do know how to drive. a student can know the basics of writing without knowing the literary version of a transmission, methinks.
Revision and drafts - i think the only thing I disagree with is the implicit statement about what these authors have used for "revision" and drafts in the past. i've never had this problem with just looking at grammar. i think the difference is i don't ask for revision from a draft as a whole. i make them work in pieces and workshop them. i don't care about spelling/grammar, and i judge content. i feel like it's a big problem to do peer revision ALONE, and it's also an issue to work with entire drafts. too often they don't really listen when they think of it as a big cumbersome paper, and when looking at each other's they're just going to look at the spelling/grammar unless they're asked to look at specific questions.
but that's just me.
Again, total honesty - i'm a trained playwright, a trained poet. i learned by being shown how the whole looks and in the case of poetry how meter works. beyond that, boring.
and in terms of the complexity that weaver advocates for being a part of the daily lit lessons: not needed. at all. it's bogging things down by asking students to memorize names for what they know. MAYBE, if they become New Critics, they can learn it.
That all being said, what i do advocate and like about grammar is not something i advocate teaching instead of lit. i love the weaver model of it, just not that complex. the car analogy she listed is actually quite apt: i to this day don't know, care, or understand how a car works beyond combustion. i do know how to drive. a student can know the basics of writing without knowing the literary version of a transmission, methinks.
Revision and drafts - i think the only thing I disagree with is the implicit statement about what these authors have used for "revision" and drafts in the past. i've never had this problem with just looking at grammar. i think the difference is i don't ask for revision from a draft as a whole. i make them work in pieces and workshop them. i don't care about spelling/grammar, and i judge content. i feel like it's a big problem to do peer revision ALONE, and it's also an issue to work with entire drafts. too often they don't really listen when they think of it as a big cumbersome paper, and when looking at each other's they're just going to look at the spelling/grammar unless they're asked to look at specific questions.
but that's just me.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
week three reading post for 2/3
I'll be honest: while I definitely got some practical points out of the Dornan reading for this week, the Romano reading just felt monotonous. Yes yes I get it: you like multi-genre papers. All I saw from you here was a ton of small "zomg I love it so much!" Not worthless, not by a long shot. But at the moment..not so applicable.
HOWEVER, The Dornan stuff I've found immediate value in has been a very solid breakdown on different ways to approach different papers. This goes even further in the wiki readings this week. I have a huge background in argument and debate, as well as a love for the practical application of the five-paragraph essay. So I responded pretty well to it...
Kimberely Wesley seems to lack any sense of transitive use. At one point she states something like, "the form is restrictive because it doesn't allow possibly good ideas a student comes up with to come to fruition." There was a tired seed metaphor in there too. Anyway...sure, I can see that if she forces them to put large subjects into a small essay. I think of it like this - the five paragraph essay is just a generalized template. It's the "medium-sized" version of the form. A few years ago, I volunteered in a sixth-grade classroom as they were learning the structure of essay-writing. They started with the "perfect paragraph", which is also known as the paragraph sandwich graphic organizer. We spent a few weeks learning the form of the intro/body/conclusion in a single paragraph, and then we moved onto a full page. A five-paragraph essay using the same basic style. The idea wasn't that it was the end: it's not. they were told this, we know this. But it's a good start to a good form of a thesis, a few points you prove, and a conclusion. Wesley seems to really lack this understanding, and it's unfortunate that she's so willing to toss a good and perfectly valid format just because she doesn't understand that it's not an end to a process. Novick's very introduction is perfect in that regard: it's a severe lack of imagination, and possibly an incredibly reactionary view of "it's been used in the past, and therefore invalid." This causation fallacy is frustrating, to say the least.
Argument ties into this. I view all essays as inherently argumentative. In academic writing, it's largely rhetoric in nature. As unfortunate as I feel it is that people like Wesley abandon a GOOD introduction to logical thought in writing via the five-paragraph essay, I feel incredibly fortunate that someone like Randi Dickson is able to identify the over-arching concept. The form of the five-paragraph essay is good because it's manageable to kids who haven't written an essay before. Optimally, by the time they're in the 9th-10th grade, they're also doing larger essays, but the five-paragraph essay keeps the general form in motion for them. It's not just an exercise: it's an application of understanding the structure of the rhetorical argument, and it's a solid (and, again, MANAGEABLE for them) method to apply their instinctual verbal abilities into a written form. Right now, I'm beginning work on a unit for writing a research paper for the honor's college writing class. My method to getting there? Impress on them the importance of verifying source, the proper use of collected-research, and giving them a solid understanding of logical argumentative processes. This is the backbone to the writing we expect of them. As-is, I have several tentative moments where they will be writing five-paragraph essays. The idea is not for them to be purely summative assessments, but for them to be applications of learned concepts that they can bring into their larger (7-8 pages) research papers.
They need to understand how to avoid fallacy. They need to learn persuasive argument in a written form. While I'm all for something like Romano's multi-genre project, it's not something to replace a five-paragraph essay. Those who criticize the form, I've noticed so far, simply aren't understanding what it is. And by that measure: the teachers who are teaching the five-paragraph essay as a simple exercise with no further application are showing a similar lack of thought.
My links for the week:
how to win an argument
An overview of the academic essay
These are a little more wordy than my previously-linked sites. They're not really something I'd generally just throw on a student, although they're certainly something they can look at once they're on firmer ground. But they are something to keep in mind. The "essay" is a nebulous form held together by basic principles. Those basic principles are not just present in an academic setting.
HOWEVER, The Dornan stuff I've found immediate value in has been a very solid breakdown on different ways to approach different papers. This goes even further in the wiki readings this week. I have a huge background in argument and debate, as well as a love for the practical application of the five-paragraph essay. So I responded pretty well to it...
Kimberely Wesley seems to lack any sense of transitive use. At one point she states something like, "the form is restrictive because it doesn't allow possibly good ideas a student comes up with to come to fruition." There was a tired seed metaphor in there too. Anyway...sure, I can see that if she forces them to put large subjects into a small essay. I think of it like this - the five paragraph essay is just a generalized template. It's the "medium-sized" version of the form. A few years ago, I volunteered in a sixth-grade classroom as they were learning the structure of essay-writing. They started with the "perfect paragraph", which is also known as the paragraph sandwich graphic organizer. We spent a few weeks learning the form of the intro/body/conclusion in a single paragraph, and then we moved onto a full page. A five-paragraph essay using the same basic style. The idea wasn't that it was the end: it's not. they were told this, we know this. But it's a good start to a good form of a thesis, a few points you prove, and a conclusion. Wesley seems to really lack this understanding, and it's unfortunate that she's so willing to toss a good and perfectly valid format just because she doesn't understand that it's not an end to a process. Novick's very introduction is perfect in that regard: it's a severe lack of imagination, and possibly an incredibly reactionary view of "it's been used in the past, and therefore invalid." This causation fallacy is frustrating, to say the least.
Argument ties into this. I view all essays as inherently argumentative. In academic writing, it's largely rhetoric in nature. As unfortunate as I feel it is that people like Wesley abandon a GOOD introduction to logical thought in writing via the five-paragraph essay, I feel incredibly fortunate that someone like Randi Dickson is able to identify the over-arching concept. The form of the five-paragraph essay is good because it's manageable to kids who haven't written an essay before. Optimally, by the time they're in the 9th-10th grade, they're also doing larger essays, but the five-paragraph essay keeps the general form in motion for them. It's not just an exercise: it's an application of understanding the structure of the rhetorical argument, and it's a solid (and, again, MANAGEABLE for them) method to apply their instinctual verbal abilities into a written form. Right now, I'm beginning work on a unit for writing a research paper for the honor's college writing class. My method to getting there? Impress on them the importance of verifying source, the proper use of collected-research, and giving them a solid understanding of logical argumentative processes. This is the backbone to the writing we expect of them. As-is, I have several tentative moments where they will be writing five-paragraph essays. The idea is not for them to be purely summative assessments, but for them to be applications of learned concepts that they can bring into their larger (7-8 pages) research papers.
They need to understand how to avoid fallacy. They need to learn persuasive argument in a written form. While I'm all for something like Romano's multi-genre project, it's not something to replace a five-paragraph essay. Those who criticize the form, I've noticed so far, simply aren't understanding what it is. And by that measure: the teachers who are teaching the five-paragraph essay as a simple exercise with no further application are showing a similar lack of thought.
My links for the week:
how to win an argument
An overview of the academic essay
These are a little more wordy than my previously-linked sites. They're not really something I'd generally just throw on a student, although they're certainly something they can look at once they're on firmer ground. But they are something to keep in mind. The "essay" is a nebulous form held together by basic principles. Those basic principles are not just present in an academic setting.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
post for 01/27/11
For this reflection, I'm focusing primarily on Atwell's chapter on writing workshops.
There are so many "what-if's" here, it's hard to claim viability. Ideologically I agree with much of what is here, although it's difficult to agree with the statement, "anyone can write", at least creatively. It's a nice sentiment, but after several years of teaching it, and a lifetime of working on it, I'm fairly confident that teaching *good* creative writing is an impossibility...at least in the age groups I've worked with. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if you could take a group of four-year-olds and work with them regularly for a decade, fostering an entire generation of good novelists/poets/playwrights. Academic writing is another matter: you can teach a template and give room for students to experiment and learn from it.
But you can give a group of students room and time, as well as a few skills, to foster any abilities in creative writing. That's where this chapter comes in. After a bit of hunting around I found a few resources that can provide specifics on how to create space and provide direction for it. They're linked at the bottom.
But there is so much "what if" in this article. Atwell seems to be describing a magical classroom space unlike most of what i've been in. There's room in the center for the desks, room in one corner for privacy in writing. Room along walls for "conference areas" that are isolated enough that the conversation doesn't bleed across the rest of the classroom. The ideals are noble, but where's the space? I'd love to see the space. Otherwise, we're looking at something more along the lines of several classrooms...which isn't an impossibility. At the High School I'm at right now, students are more or less free to go where they please, even during class hours, so long as they don't cause problems. An environment like that would allow students to move between classrooms as needed, but would destroy some of Atwell's advocation for moving amongst students and asking questions/checking in.
Again, I love the ideal; her advocation of 3 hours per week of dedicated writing workshop is not only great, but also conservative. I'd argue for more hours, especially if the class isn't her year-long layout but instead a semester. But where does that time come in? Does "English writing workshop" become an elective class, or in the high school are we going to be trying to claim this to be a substitute for language arts/english literature instruction? As lofty as it is to spend a year doing this, I have a hard time believing not only that the administration will buy it that this is a good substitute for that instruction, but also that a teacher can pull off that substitution successfully.
I do buy it (on a practical level) as an addition. Another class going on with in addition to norm curriculum that is a writing workshop. Or a unit within a broader year (even though that may very well castrate the long-term abilities of the very ethos at play in this) could be workable.
And what is being taught? Pure creative writing? That may very well frustrate some students over an entire year, unless you're playing it purely hands-off and never offering any critical statements to their work. If you're not, and you do allow other students who read peer work to state critically what works and what doesn't, you're left with a few students who know very well by January (at the latest) that they're not very good at creative writing. They get to sit there, frustrated, while a few students who are good at it get to reap benefits.
Or they become the Dan Browns of the future, and society as a whole will hate us. The world is filled with bad writers who just aren't told they're bad writers. I'm not advocating merciless cutting...more of a Christensen model of criticism.
But we're still left with groups of kids who aren't very good at it, stuck in the class.
Is it academic writing? That's far more teachable. But can you justify spending an entire year on it? I'll be honest: I have very little DIRECT experience in writing workshops/labs, but I do know a few people who built, in the last five years, some of the more acclaimed/successful workshops. They do not operate on a daily basis all year. They exist as a supplement for students (college students at Missouri State) to come in as needed. Yes, kids are different than adults. Kids are more honest in saying, "this is boring" than adults are.
In the end, the article strikes me as a lot of noble rhetoric, but you can't really use it as it's stated it needs to be used...not blanket across an entire grade or school. Pieces of it are definitely workable, and my supplemental resources for the week illustrate ideas on how to use those pieces in part of a larger unit woven throughout a more traditional language arts year.
Resources for the week:
Writing Fix Writer's workshop
OWL 7-12 writing workshops
There are so many "what-if's" here, it's hard to claim viability. Ideologically I agree with much of what is here, although it's difficult to agree with the statement, "anyone can write", at least creatively. It's a nice sentiment, but after several years of teaching it, and a lifetime of working on it, I'm fairly confident that teaching *good* creative writing is an impossibility...at least in the age groups I've worked with. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if you could take a group of four-year-olds and work with them regularly for a decade, fostering an entire generation of good novelists/poets/playwrights. Academic writing is another matter: you can teach a template and give room for students to experiment and learn from it.
But you can give a group of students room and time, as well as a few skills, to foster any abilities in creative writing. That's where this chapter comes in. After a bit of hunting around I found a few resources that can provide specifics on how to create space and provide direction for it. They're linked at the bottom.
But there is so much "what if" in this article. Atwell seems to be describing a magical classroom space unlike most of what i've been in. There's room in the center for the desks, room in one corner for privacy in writing. Room along walls for "conference areas" that are isolated enough that the conversation doesn't bleed across the rest of the classroom. The ideals are noble, but where's the space? I'd love to see the space. Otherwise, we're looking at something more along the lines of several classrooms...which isn't an impossibility. At the High School I'm at right now, students are more or less free to go where they please, even during class hours, so long as they don't cause problems. An environment like that would allow students to move between classrooms as needed, but would destroy some of Atwell's advocation for moving amongst students and asking questions/checking in.
Again, I love the ideal; her advocation of 3 hours per week of dedicated writing workshop is not only great, but also conservative. I'd argue for more hours, especially if the class isn't her year-long layout but instead a semester. But where does that time come in? Does "English writing workshop" become an elective class, or in the high school are we going to be trying to claim this to be a substitute for language arts/english literature instruction? As lofty as it is to spend a year doing this, I have a hard time believing not only that the administration will buy it that this is a good substitute for that instruction, but also that a teacher can pull off that substitution successfully.
I do buy it (on a practical level) as an addition. Another class going on with in addition to norm curriculum that is a writing workshop. Or a unit within a broader year (even though that may very well castrate the long-term abilities of the very ethos at play in this) could be workable.
And what is being taught? Pure creative writing? That may very well frustrate some students over an entire year, unless you're playing it purely hands-off and never offering any critical statements to their work. If you're not, and you do allow other students who read peer work to state critically what works and what doesn't, you're left with a few students who know very well by January (at the latest) that they're not very good at creative writing. They get to sit there, frustrated, while a few students who are good at it get to reap benefits.
Or they become the Dan Browns of the future, and society as a whole will hate us. The world is filled with bad writers who just aren't told they're bad writers. I'm not advocating merciless cutting...more of a Christensen model of criticism.
But we're still left with groups of kids who aren't very good at it, stuck in the class.
Is it academic writing? That's far more teachable. But can you justify spending an entire year on it? I'll be honest: I have very little DIRECT experience in writing workshops/labs, but I do know a few people who built, in the last five years, some of the more acclaimed/successful workshops. They do not operate on a daily basis all year. They exist as a supplement for students (college students at Missouri State) to come in as needed. Yes, kids are different than adults. Kids are more honest in saying, "this is boring" than adults are.
In the end, the article strikes me as a lot of noble rhetoric, but you can't really use it as it's stated it needs to be used...not blanket across an entire grade or school. Pieces of it are definitely workable, and my supplemental resources for the week illustrate ideas on how to use those pieces in part of a larger unit woven throughout a more traditional language arts year.
Resources for the week:
Writing Fix Writer's workshop
OWL 7-12 writing workshops
Thursday, December 9, 2010
how would I INCORPORATE IT!?
I don't want to be overly glib about it, so I will...and then clarify.
The short answer: literature/writing doesn't exist for me without using film/tv/internet as a major part of it. So I'd use it all, and it would be daily.
It's just a huge part of who I am. Many of my cohort comes at all of this from a literature perspective, and I certainly am not naive to literature. I've seriously studied the super-idea of "literature" since about 12 years old, and I know play-writing/screen-writing and poetry incredibly well, but not to the detriment of prose. However, my first experiences with the artistic experience is through film. Without equating what I read to what I've seen, I have serious problems generating interest in myself. So my lessons by their definition default to webpages that might equate, films that better show the themes, etc. It all works as allegory for our own experiences, but film simply speaks to me in its own "better" way. As a result, when I come up with lessons, I default to what movies or tv I could use with it, or what websites would help make the understanding easier for students. Even something like Shakespeare, Shelley, Donne, or Eliot, all of whom I've loved since I was a kid...I always look at the text as one part of a much larger picture. The unsung hero to all of this is games, which I also view as a huge part of educational understanding.
So there's my strength. My default is to incorporate this all together in a lesson, and without a computer and dvd-player to help me along, I'd have some huge adaptations within myself to make. That's my weakness. My weakness isn't in incorporating all of this. It's in finding myself in situations where I can't.
My DREAM class (one of two) is teaching a year-long class on screenwriting/shooting/editing.
The second dream class is debate, but there's another story.
My default, FYI, is the honor's/AP route. Hopefully my education/background helps me there.
so that prime dream class of teaching video production and screenwriting can't exist without my defaults, and it certainly can't exist without specific modeling/scaffolding using a hundred different programs. I really enjoyed our imovie assignment, specifically the part about using photos to do it. I'd love to make that an early component: giving students cameras and telling them to shoot pictures. still photos. make a short montage of it. Something like flickr and imovie combined would also work really well: asking them to pull available images and tell a story with them isn't too far off from early directing projects i've done in early directing classes. by the same token, digital comic books would be a good primer for storyboarding.
The short answer: literature/writing doesn't exist for me without using film/tv/internet as a major part of it. So I'd use it all, and it would be daily.
It's just a huge part of who I am. Many of my cohort comes at all of this from a literature perspective, and I certainly am not naive to literature. I've seriously studied the super-idea of "literature" since about 12 years old, and I know play-writing/screen-writing and poetry incredibly well, but not to the detriment of prose. However, my first experiences with the artistic experience is through film. Without equating what I read to what I've seen, I have serious problems generating interest in myself. So my lessons by their definition default to webpages that might equate, films that better show the themes, etc. It all works as allegory for our own experiences, but film simply speaks to me in its own "better" way. As a result, when I come up with lessons, I default to what movies or tv I could use with it, or what websites would help make the understanding easier for students. Even something like Shakespeare, Shelley, Donne, or Eliot, all of whom I've loved since I was a kid...I always look at the text as one part of a much larger picture. The unsung hero to all of this is games, which I also view as a huge part of educational understanding.
So there's my strength. My default is to incorporate this all together in a lesson, and without a computer and dvd-player to help me along, I'd have some huge adaptations within myself to make. That's my weakness. My weakness isn't in incorporating all of this. It's in finding myself in situations where I can't.
My DREAM class (one of two) is teaching a year-long class on screenwriting/shooting/editing.
The second dream class is debate, but there's another story.
My default, FYI, is the honor's/AP route. Hopefully my education/background helps me there.
so that prime dream class of teaching video production and screenwriting can't exist without my defaults, and it certainly can't exist without specific modeling/scaffolding using a hundred different programs. I really enjoyed our imovie assignment, specifically the part about using photos to do it. I'd love to make that an early component: giving students cameras and telling them to shoot pictures. still photos. make a short montage of it. Something like flickr and imovie combined would also work really well: asking them to pull available images and tell a story with them isn't too far off from early directing projects i've done in early directing classes. by the same token, digital comic books would be a good primer for storyboarding.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
videos!
I apparently sound REALLY geeky when I say it, but the below video is something I imagine hearing at a werewolf bonfire.
This first video is a Finntroll song, "Trollhammeren". Any metal from this region not about burning a church will be about a celebration of some kind...you just have to remember that we celebrate with more violence than you'd think. The entire point is celebration, and every shot furthers the speed of the song - count, if you dare, the amount of times someone pulls from a skin or a stein as he dances. I DARE you. There's very little linear progression to the video, it's more about expanding on the feeling of the song, and the song itself is fairly typical of finntroll in that it extols successful celebration. If it were being used to sell the music, I'd say it would do a great job among audiences not familiar with metal: rather than subject us to the norm of seeing closeups of everyone playing and make the video entirely about them playing the song, it constructs an optimal venue, and it does so in an aggressive, but non-violent way. To the metal-virgin, it says essentially that they're just about having some fun. The sound is primal (especially the use of drums throughout the song to create the bones of the song) and it's about addressing the primitive part of ourself.
This next video is a little different.
This is an older video, it's from Morbid Angel, the album is "Domination". They're a much more "typical" metal band in that they focus entirely on death metal and their goal is to scare the hell out of you. The video's pretty old, it was the official video for the song way back when Mtv used to play music. It focuses on everything the Finntroll video doesn't: it highlights the band, from the intro shot of the drummer's foot to the guitarist solo at the end. It is made solely to sell a very dark (but cool-sounding) product.
Contrast all of that to this:
This is "The Serpentine Offering" from the Dimmu Borgir album "In Sorte Diaboli". Great album. Fairly horrid videos when you look at the bluescreen work they do. They do a sort of amalgam of the two styles shown above. They present a narrative framework for their song: that of a feudal village inundated with primitive christianity, until they're brought to task by their old "gods". This is a common thematic motif in metal, that of the old gods we've forgotten still being relevant, and still watching us. The band also throws themselves into the video as musicians, with occasionally-hilarious results. You can see this even more clearly in the video "The Sacrilegious Scorn", which I will not post here, but highly suggest you look for it - in the video the band is on a bad blue screen of a storm front where they roll dice on an old frying pan and threaten each other. The goal here is a little more simple: they're doing wish-fulfillment, placing themselves in an environment they want to actually live in. The music on the posted video has the repeated lyric, "My descent is the story of every man, I am hatred, darkness, and despair." They insert that song into the imagery of the old scandinavian christian village in order to illustrate exactly what they're talking about...
This first video is a Finntroll song, "Trollhammeren". Any metal from this region not about burning a church will be about a celebration of some kind...you just have to remember that we celebrate with more violence than you'd think. The entire point is celebration, and every shot furthers the speed of the song - count, if you dare, the amount of times someone pulls from a skin or a stein as he dances. I DARE you. There's very little linear progression to the video, it's more about expanding on the feeling of the song, and the song itself is fairly typical of finntroll in that it extols successful celebration. If it were being used to sell the music, I'd say it would do a great job among audiences not familiar with metal: rather than subject us to the norm of seeing closeups of everyone playing and make the video entirely about them playing the song, it constructs an optimal venue, and it does so in an aggressive, but non-violent way. To the metal-virgin, it says essentially that they're just about having some fun. The sound is primal (especially the use of drums throughout the song to create the bones of the song) and it's about addressing the primitive part of ourself.
This next video is a little different.
This is an older video, it's from Morbid Angel, the album is "Domination". They're a much more "typical" metal band in that they focus entirely on death metal and their goal is to scare the hell out of you. The video's pretty old, it was the official video for the song way back when Mtv used to play music. It focuses on everything the Finntroll video doesn't: it highlights the band, from the intro shot of the drummer's foot to the guitarist solo at the end. It is made solely to sell a very dark (but cool-sounding) product.
Contrast all of that to this:
This is "The Serpentine Offering" from the Dimmu Borgir album "In Sorte Diaboli". Great album. Fairly horrid videos when you look at the bluescreen work they do. They do a sort of amalgam of the two styles shown above. They present a narrative framework for their song: that of a feudal village inundated with primitive christianity, until they're brought to task by their old "gods". This is a common thematic motif in metal, that of the old gods we've forgotten still being relevant, and still watching us. The band also throws themselves into the video as musicians, with occasionally-hilarious results. You can see this even more clearly in the video "The Sacrilegious Scorn", which I will not post here, but highly suggest you look for it - in the video the band is on a bad blue screen of a storm front where they roll dice on an old frying pan and threaten each other. The goal here is a little more simple: they're doing wish-fulfillment, placing themselves in an environment they want to actually live in. The music on the posted video has the repeated lyric, "My descent is the story of every man, I am hatred, darkness, and despair." They insert that song into the imagery of the old scandinavian christian village in order to illustrate exactly what they're talking about...
sharing of music
What I listen to most: a lot of metal lately. It's really hard though, after the age of 15 or so, to try and define yourself based on music, and I say I "metal" simply because it's the one I play most often lately. I switched over from cd's maybe six years ago, and when I put it all on an external drive the count was something like 120 gigs of music, that number's now at over 200. I listen to most of it fairly regularly, and it follows the basic trends of blues, jazz, polka, classic rock, instrumental, and metal. There's just...a little bit more metal than the rest. My primary reason for listening is simple in that it's loud, violent, and shows an incredible amount of artistry/musicianship that a lot of other genres tend to lack. Almost all of the metal I listen to is scandinavian black/death/doom/progressive metal, and the latter especially (progressive) is more experimental than anything, portraying very few of the stereotypical metal-tendencies. They'll incorporate any number of instruments to a song, so long as it sounds right in the end.
Concerts - almost entirely metal. I get bored otherwise. I've only been to one non-metal concert in the last six years, and it was an acoustic by a metal band. I just really hate having to sit still and just listen to some song, and metal doesn't really do seating. There's just a large pit in the center, and everyone roams freely.
It's the anger, aggression, and cynicism that really turns me on. The entire point to black and death metal is that everything is not all right, the symbols of our society are boned, and it's appropriate to fight against it. 60's folk metal has nothing on the guy who burned a church down because he decided that christianity is the greatest evil to befall norway EVER. Yeah...he's in jail. I don't really condone the violence obviously, in terms of physical action, but I appreciate the ethos. ESPECIALLY since it's often driven by that scandinavian paganism (note that's lower-cased, pagans are not organized. idiot wiccans) that appeals to my childhood misconceptions where the myths were real...that's a whole 'nother story.
The song I'll be bringing in for this: what I'll show in class largely depends on the mood. I don't really have a singular favorite, and I don't really have a singular favorite genre. So I'll play whatever seems fitting at the time, and this also depends on whether or not I can play NSFW songs. Options:
Vintersorg
Morbid Angel
Diabolical Masquerade
Opeth
Tom Waits
Mac Wiseman
Finntroll
Sepultura
How I would teach this in the classroom: first, I don't know if I could. IF I did, it would be either from a historical perspective using tribalism as a moniker, and use something like Sepultura or Finntroll for that, or else I would do it from the perspective of creative soundtracks to personal movies, using Vintersorg as an example of symphony.
It's all very primal, and a lot of it depends on a more tribal structure. They often rebel against large governments with any kind of malicious power over them. It's sort of like the Norse version of rap in terms of what it accomplishes. And just like rap, there's a lot of commercialist crap on the market. So I could also use this in the classroom as a sort of media literacy/awareness unit and ask students to dissect different examples in order to determine why it's made. Is the music made only to be sold (a very american thing generally) or is it made for its own sake or some greater artistic purpose? What does it say when entertainment is packaged solely for consumption?
Historical context of the genre...or at least the sub-genres I listen to: oftentimes they're started in a ludditical fashion. Swedish/Norwegian/Germans who have no interest in the prevailing ethos of the modern world, and work towards a fusion between what came before and what ought to be. Oftentimes this boils down to paganism/religious freedom and a fully democratic-socialist government. I recently learned there is an actual group of knuckleheads who claim to do christian metal. That...doesn't really work. It flies in the face of everything.
In contrast to genres of metal such as american thrash, black/death metal tends to look for old sounds and infuse them into modern. Example: Finntroll is a metal band, it's also a polka band. More specfically, it's humpaa metal, using the darker and faster scandinavian version of polka as a basis for its sound.
Diabolical Masquerade or Dimmu Borgir tend to go in a different direction, using full orchestras as a spine for their songs.
Their videos...
let's just say they're not the norm. They are very esoteric, oftentimes constructing a visual narrative out of the song's narrative. If you've ever seen the show metalocalypse, you've seen a pretty good parody of this in the first season (i believe it's the second episode), where they show almost the entirety of a song called "thunderhorse" before their lead singer pulls the plug on it. The video in the episode shot for using all of the stereotypes in a bad metal video: apocalyptic, feudal system, main character as a mighty old-school warrior who beheads everyone in his way, etc. They're rarely made to be sold, often only up on the band/artist's website as an extra for fans.
Concerts - almost entirely metal. I get bored otherwise. I've only been to one non-metal concert in the last six years, and it was an acoustic by a metal band. I just really hate having to sit still and just listen to some song, and metal doesn't really do seating. There's just a large pit in the center, and everyone roams freely.
It's the anger, aggression, and cynicism that really turns me on. The entire point to black and death metal is that everything is not all right, the symbols of our society are boned, and it's appropriate to fight against it. 60's folk metal has nothing on the guy who burned a church down because he decided that christianity is the greatest evil to befall norway EVER. Yeah...he's in jail. I don't really condone the violence obviously, in terms of physical action, but I appreciate the ethos. ESPECIALLY since it's often driven by that scandinavian paganism (note that's lower-cased, pagans are not organized. idiot wiccans) that appeals to my childhood misconceptions where the myths were real...that's a whole 'nother story.
The song I'll be bringing in for this: what I'll show in class largely depends on the mood. I don't really have a singular favorite, and I don't really have a singular favorite genre. So I'll play whatever seems fitting at the time, and this also depends on whether or not I can play NSFW songs. Options:
Vintersorg
Morbid Angel
Diabolical Masquerade
Opeth
Tom Waits
Mac Wiseman
Finntroll
Sepultura
How I would teach this in the classroom: first, I don't know if I could. IF I did, it would be either from a historical perspective using tribalism as a moniker, and use something like Sepultura or Finntroll for that, or else I would do it from the perspective of creative soundtracks to personal movies, using Vintersorg as an example of symphony.
It's all very primal, and a lot of it depends on a more tribal structure. They often rebel against large governments with any kind of malicious power over them. It's sort of like the Norse version of rap in terms of what it accomplishes. And just like rap, there's a lot of commercialist crap on the market. So I could also use this in the classroom as a sort of media literacy/awareness unit and ask students to dissect different examples in order to determine why it's made. Is the music made only to be sold (a very american thing generally) or is it made for its own sake or some greater artistic purpose? What does it say when entertainment is packaged solely for consumption?
Historical context of the genre...or at least the sub-genres I listen to: oftentimes they're started in a ludditical fashion. Swedish/Norwegian/Germans who have no interest in the prevailing ethos of the modern world, and work towards a fusion between what came before and what ought to be. Oftentimes this boils down to paganism/religious freedom and a fully democratic-socialist government. I recently learned there is an actual group of knuckleheads who claim to do christian metal. That...doesn't really work. It flies in the face of everything.
In contrast to genres of metal such as american thrash, black/death metal tends to look for old sounds and infuse them into modern. Example: Finntroll is a metal band, it's also a polka band. More specfically, it's humpaa metal, using the darker and faster scandinavian version of polka as a basis for its sound.
Diabolical Masquerade or Dimmu Borgir tend to go in a different direction, using full orchestras as a spine for their songs.
Their videos...
let's just say they're not the norm. They are very esoteric, oftentimes constructing a visual narrative out of the song's narrative. If you've ever seen the show metalocalypse, you've seen a pretty good parody of this in the first season (i believe it's the second episode), where they show almost the entirety of a song called "thunderhorse" before their lead singer pulls the plug on it. The video in the episode shot for using all of the stereotypes in a bad metal video: apocalyptic, feudal system, main character as a mighty old-school warrior who beheads everyone in his way, etc. They're rarely made to be sold, often only up on the band/artist's website as an extra for fans.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
11/18 documentary analysis
the doc i watched was "flock of dodos". its primary purpose is an analysis of the intelligent design v. evolution argument and a charting of its genesis as creationism into a weapon of "scientific theory". within this is a singular argument, followed by a few sub-arguments. the argument: intelligent design is nothing more than an idea. it is not science, it is purely faith and is being posited as science in order for a few ultra-conservative/religious members of some school boards to avoid teaching scientific method. it further posits that evolution is under this kind of attack due to failures of communication among biologists. rather than speak as human beings, they speak in scientific jargon and it becomes difficult to follow the sheer amount of data proving evolution.
HOWEVER: the film does not demonize proponents of intelligent design. it meets with several school board members pro-intelligent design (or more accurately, against evolution) as well as some of the major national figures in the pro-intelligent design community. the filmmaker, former marine/molecular biologist-turned-filmmaker randy olson, goes to great pains in order to explicitly state that these people are not bad people, many of them are in fact great people who are merely uneducated and the onus is on the scientific community to change their discourse in order to accurately convey the truth of the theory in evolution. he furthermore states, through wonderful graphic representations, the importance of education in "filling the gaps of knowledge" in order to know the universe.
Olson's primary technique is humour: the title "flock of dodos" is a self-deprecating statement which can refer to his own scientific school (destined for extinction) or later in the film to the failures of intelligent design (famously defeated in 2004). he employs very few talking head-style interviews, instead focusing on human interviews with experts, lay-people, and his own mother's perspective. this is interspersed with humorous animations and historical footage on the subject.
it succeeds in its endeavours through that humor. it doesn't aim to preach to the intelligent-design masses, merely to point out that they can't participate in scientific discourse as-is simply because their "theory" is not a theory by the rules they claim to play by...it is instead a mere idea, untested and untestable other than by fallacy. the film also places a lot of blame on the over-intellecualization of evolutionary theorists, people who truly know what they're doing but are unable/unwilling to speak to the "common" man.
based on this film is the student activity of examination of argument. documentaries tend to have an interesting perspective because they often seek what is seen as a "wrong" and make an argument as to why it ought to be otherwise. errol morris' "thin blue line" or joe berlinger's "paradise lost" do this famously: they spot what they see as a social injustice (the wrongly-convicted) and make an argument in favor of release. my activity, therefore, is simple:
find an argument. in a documentary of the student's choice (or depending on context, among a list designated by the teacher) and state what the argument is, and how it follows the basic principles of communication. this activity would be prefaced on the basics of argumentation as a communication tool and the students would be provided with the characteristics of an argument. the student would then be required to go down this list of characteristics:
1. an inferential leap
2. a perceived rationale for the leap
3. a choice among competing claims
4. willingness to confront
5. an optimally shared frame of reference
within the film chosen, the student will be asked to go through these characteristics and show where/if these characteristics are present. from here, in groups of three, the students share their results: what are the common arguments they see? what characteristics seem to be shown? is the argument one of persuasion?
HOWEVER: the film does not demonize proponents of intelligent design. it meets with several school board members pro-intelligent design (or more accurately, against evolution) as well as some of the major national figures in the pro-intelligent design community. the filmmaker, former marine/molecular biologist-turned-filmmaker randy olson, goes to great pains in order to explicitly state that these people are not bad people, many of them are in fact great people who are merely uneducated and the onus is on the scientific community to change their discourse in order to accurately convey the truth of the theory in evolution. he furthermore states, through wonderful graphic representations, the importance of education in "filling the gaps of knowledge" in order to know the universe.
Olson's primary technique is humour: the title "flock of dodos" is a self-deprecating statement which can refer to his own scientific school (destined for extinction) or later in the film to the failures of intelligent design (famously defeated in 2004). he employs very few talking head-style interviews, instead focusing on human interviews with experts, lay-people, and his own mother's perspective. this is interspersed with humorous animations and historical footage on the subject.
it succeeds in its endeavours through that humor. it doesn't aim to preach to the intelligent-design masses, merely to point out that they can't participate in scientific discourse as-is simply because their "theory" is not a theory by the rules they claim to play by...it is instead a mere idea, untested and untestable other than by fallacy. the film also places a lot of blame on the over-intellecualization of evolutionary theorists, people who truly know what they're doing but are unable/unwilling to speak to the "common" man.
based on this film is the student activity of examination of argument. documentaries tend to have an interesting perspective because they often seek what is seen as a "wrong" and make an argument as to why it ought to be otherwise. errol morris' "thin blue line" or joe berlinger's "paradise lost" do this famously: they spot what they see as a social injustice (the wrongly-convicted) and make an argument in favor of release. my activity, therefore, is simple:
find an argument. in a documentary of the student's choice (or depending on context, among a list designated by the teacher) and state what the argument is, and how it follows the basic principles of communication. this activity would be prefaced on the basics of argumentation as a communication tool and the students would be provided with the characteristics of an argument. the student would then be required to go down this list of characteristics:
1. an inferential leap
2. a perceived rationale for the leap
3. a choice among competing claims
4. willingness to confront
5. an optimally shared frame of reference
within the film chosen, the student will be asked to go through these characteristics and show where/if these characteristics are present. from here, in groups of three, the students share their results: what are the common arguments they see? what characteristics seem to be shown? is the argument one of persuasion?
news broadcast dissection
broadcast watched: KARE 11, 6pm broadcast on 11/22/2010.
I started watching five minutes early, catching the end of the 5.30 national broadcast. this was the day after the large storm front of freezing rain/snow, and the pre-news promo was a blurb about the storm and a man talking about covering a 24-hour shift throughout the holidays to keep up. this was interspersed with pre-morning footage of snowplows and trucks driving down clogged city streets. this went for 30 seconds. it was followed immediately by news that Brad Childress, head coach for the MN vikings, had been fired that morning. A brief excerpt of an interview with the vikings owner was shown, and this lasted another 15 seconds to introduce the show.
the ACTUAL show opened with sports, and Childress being fired. Gotta be honest, it took Jim Hatten and Jack Nilles TELLING me who brad childress was for me to figure this one out. It went directly to the sportscaster offering his opinion on what is apparently the biggest news affecting Minnesotans...he dissected the owner's press conference as well as the players' reactions, in addition to the packers loss that resulted in the firing. then they went to the interim head coach talking about what he'll do to make a difference. this was two minutes.
second was a human interest blurb...on Brad Childress and an interview w/him and his wife. this lasted 45 seconds with one quote from Mrs. Childress, and then went into a whoring for the KARE 11 website, and how we can see the entire interview there as well as a sneak-peek at some grandiose holiday-themed series of interviews the co-anchor is doing.
total time for sports - 2 min 45 seconds.
then weather! it went to weather after a cutesy blurb from the anchors. it was all about fear of reaching holiday destinations and how MNDOT was unprepared for the weekend freeze. a brief statement about the weekend accidents existed, then a further blurb from the MNDOT rep of the promo talking about how they'll keep going.
--- and of course airports and ice, with a brief blurb from a MSP rep about how snow isn't an issue and won't stop them.
--- this was one min 30 sec, and then went to Belinda Jensen, the pretty apple-faced meteorologist dressed immaculately yet cutely in a faux-deerstalker get-up. she went into the fears for the next few days and how it will warm up briefly, for the snow to royally screw us. This went another 1 minute 40 seconds, including a cg map of the state and weather fronts, and pretty belinda's assurances that she'll work hard to find concrete answers to what weather the state will face over the weekend.
Tally, just covering Vikings and weather (are these really the biggest stories, you dunces?), nearly five minutes...
back to the anchors, a MN man who went to jail for pointing a gun at another driver during "road rage gone wrong" in St. Cloud. The anchor made a point of saying the victim had his wife and young children in the car. this went 30 seconds and went to a teaser for the commercial about the gubernatorial recount, and more about heavy snow incoming...
back in - MN supreme court ruling which OK's the recount for the election. this story, which included how ballots are counted and how that plays into the decision for the recount. 1 min 40 seconds.
state canvassing board and recounts, as well as dayton's current lead, 10 sec
twins mgr won an award for manager of the year and a contract extension, this went into "appreciation days" for the manager. 20 sec.
it segued, before i even realized what had happened, into "snowplow driver appreciation day" in WI, 15 sec.
then another commercial and another promo for weather/sports...again upcoming. and a promo for tech gadgets and holiday shopping. "what's new and what you need to know, monday night at 10." - 15 sec.
commercials on how KARE 11 is "walking to end hunger at the MOA nov 25th"
the news is back on - ND and MN and snowfall, low temp, and how the storm system also caused tornadoes in WI. 30 sec.
back to Belinda and weather - and her supposed "expertise" on weather, more about how weather incoming (completely rehashed from a whopping five minutes ago). current weather, road conditions, weather for tomorrow through thursday. more pretty maps. 3 min 50 sec.
back to randy shaver and sports - vikings and no playoff chance, childress fired and the players hated him. another blurb with the vikings coach and the appointment of the interim head coach. some lip service on some player named brett farve being an opening qb and more from the int head coach. 3 min on just pro football...high school football in the state came up next. college ball next. total time on sports, 3 min 55 sec and then more teasers for post-commercial. then commercials, starting with one for the NBC nightly news.
back to the news. anchor intros a story on christmas - the delivery of a 30-ft-tall spruce to the governor's mansion. where it came from, how much it weighs, how pretty it apparently is, and jokes about placing such a large tree. it closes on this. apparently i'm supposed to like them. this final piece, including pedantic joking, 50 sec.
it led into entertainment tonight, where apparently sarah palin's daughter is something worth talking about.
ugh. see my previous post on a news assignment for students.
I started watching five minutes early, catching the end of the 5.30 national broadcast. this was the day after the large storm front of freezing rain/snow, and the pre-news promo was a blurb about the storm and a man talking about covering a 24-hour shift throughout the holidays to keep up. this was interspersed with pre-morning footage of snowplows and trucks driving down clogged city streets. this went for 30 seconds. it was followed immediately by news that Brad Childress, head coach for the MN vikings, had been fired that morning. A brief excerpt of an interview with the vikings owner was shown, and this lasted another 15 seconds to introduce the show.
the ACTUAL show opened with sports, and Childress being fired. Gotta be honest, it took Jim Hatten and Jack Nilles TELLING me who brad childress was for me to figure this one out. It went directly to the sportscaster offering his opinion on what is apparently the biggest news affecting Minnesotans...he dissected the owner's press conference as well as the players' reactions, in addition to the packers loss that resulted in the firing. then they went to the interim head coach talking about what he'll do to make a difference. this was two minutes.
second was a human interest blurb...on Brad Childress and an interview w/him and his wife. this lasted 45 seconds with one quote from Mrs. Childress, and then went into a whoring for the KARE 11 website, and how we can see the entire interview there as well as a sneak-peek at some grandiose holiday-themed series of interviews the co-anchor is doing.
total time for sports - 2 min 45 seconds.
then weather! it went to weather after a cutesy blurb from the anchors. it was all about fear of reaching holiday destinations and how MNDOT was unprepared for the weekend freeze. a brief statement about the weekend accidents existed, then a further blurb from the MNDOT rep of the promo talking about how they'll keep going.
--- and of course airports and ice, with a brief blurb from a MSP rep about how snow isn't an issue and won't stop them.
--- this was one min 30 sec, and then went to Belinda Jensen, the pretty apple-faced meteorologist dressed immaculately yet cutely in a faux-deerstalker get-up. she went into the fears for the next few days and how it will warm up briefly, for the snow to royally screw us. This went another 1 minute 40 seconds, including a cg map of the state and weather fronts, and pretty belinda's assurances that she'll work hard to find concrete answers to what weather the state will face over the weekend.
Tally, just covering Vikings and weather (are these really the biggest stories, you dunces?), nearly five minutes...
back to the anchors, a MN man who went to jail for pointing a gun at another driver during "road rage gone wrong" in St. Cloud. The anchor made a point of saying the victim had his wife and young children in the car. this went 30 seconds and went to a teaser for the commercial about the gubernatorial recount, and more about heavy snow incoming...
back in - MN supreme court ruling which OK's the recount for the election. this story, which included how ballots are counted and how that plays into the decision for the recount. 1 min 40 seconds.
state canvassing board and recounts, as well as dayton's current lead, 10 sec
twins mgr won an award for manager of the year and a contract extension, this went into "appreciation days" for the manager. 20 sec.
it segued, before i even realized what had happened, into "snowplow driver appreciation day" in WI, 15 sec.
then another commercial and another promo for weather/sports...again upcoming. and a promo for tech gadgets and holiday shopping. "what's new and what you need to know, monday night at 10." - 15 sec.
commercials on how KARE 11 is "walking to end hunger at the MOA nov 25th"
the news is back on - ND and MN and snowfall, low temp, and how the storm system also caused tornadoes in WI. 30 sec.
back to Belinda and weather - and her supposed "expertise" on weather, more about how weather incoming (completely rehashed from a whopping five minutes ago). current weather, road conditions, weather for tomorrow through thursday. more pretty maps. 3 min 50 sec.
back to randy shaver and sports - vikings and no playoff chance, childress fired and the players hated him. another blurb with the vikings coach and the appointment of the interim head coach. some lip service on some player named brett farve being an opening qb and more from the int head coach. 3 min on just pro football...high school football in the state came up next. college ball next. total time on sports, 3 min 55 sec and then more teasers for post-commercial. then commercials, starting with one for the NBC nightly news.
back to the news. anchor intros a story on christmas - the delivery of a 30-ft-tall spruce to the governor's mansion. where it came from, how much it weighs, how pretty it apparently is, and jokes about placing such a large tree. it closes on this. apparently i'm supposed to like them. this final piece, including pedantic joking, 50 sec.
it led into entertainment tonight, where apparently sarah palin's daughter is something worth talking about.
ugh. see my previous post on a news assignment for students.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
news activity.
There will be an analysis of a news broadcast in the next few weeks, whenever I get to a television...
This activity is meant to be done over 2-3 days in small pieces. To be honest, I feel it's a good "pre-reading" activity in order to start an entire unit on media bias/marketing, and as such kept that in mind as a larger focus when writing this.
If it bleeds, it leads
Start with an introductory poll, either informally through class discussion, or in a written form (recommended) via entrance ticket - do you watch the news? Why or why not? If you do watch a news broadcast, do you choose a specific one regularly and is it for the news broadcast itself? If you don't, what is your reasoning?
From here, break the students into groups of 3-4 with an even mix of yes/no's between each group. Ask them to discuss/argue their reasoning on either side.
--- Example: Jeff watches the 10pm news on NBC solely because it's a lead-in to a show he does like. Amy watches the same NBC broadcast every night because she feels the show possesses a lack of bias and turns the tv off right after. By contrast, Jennifer doesn't watch anything because they don't spend enough time on what she's interested in. She instead looks at a few websites every day or so.
Assign each group two networks. Each group will view and make notes on the two broadcasts, comparing the two to see what each network does: do they devote similar times to the same issues? does one network broadcast seem to report a candidate (if applicable) that the other does not? The groups will pay particular attention to the lead-in hype (can be commercials pre-show or the first few sentences of the broadcast). What do these networks report on first?
Compare these two broadcasts deepy: do they follow a similar format/time structure? What is that leading story? Students will often find that the lead story is one of two or three things: corruption in police, local violent crime, or local dangerous weather patterns.
Pulling back into a large group, students will then all compare notes to develop a consensus between all networks: what does it mean when they open, and spend most of their time on, stories designed to scare?
This activity is meant to be done over 2-3 days in small pieces. To be honest, I feel it's a good "pre-reading" activity in order to start an entire unit on media bias/marketing, and as such kept that in mind as a larger focus when writing this.
If it bleeds, it leads
Start with an introductory poll, either informally through class discussion, or in a written form (recommended) via entrance ticket - do you watch the news? Why or why not? If you do watch a news broadcast, do you choose a specific one regularly and is it for the news broadcast itself? If you don't, what is your reasoning?
From here, break the students into groups of 3-4 with an even mix of yes/no's between each group. Ask them to discuss/argue their reasoning on either side.
--- Example: Jeff watches the 10pm news on NBC solely because it's a lead-in to a show he does like. Amy watches the same NBC broadcast every night because she feels the show possesses a lack of bias and turns the tv off right after. By contrast, Jennifer doesn't watch anything because they don't spend enough time on what she's interested in. She instead looks at a few websites every day or so.
Assign each group two networks. Each group will view and make notes on the two broadcasts, comparing the two to see what each network does: do they devote similar times to the same issues? does one network broadcast seem to report a candidate (if applicable) that the other does not? The groups will pay particular attention to the lead-in hype (can be commercials pre-show or the first few sentences of the broadcast). What do these networks report on first?
Compare these two broadcasts deepy: do they follow a similar format/time structure? What is that leading story? Students will often find that the lead story is one of two or three things: corruption in police, local violent crime, or local dangerous weather patterns.
Pulling back into a large group, students will then all compare notes to develop a consensus between all networks: what does it mean when they open, and spend most of their time on, stories designed to scare?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Hrm...
apparently no news broadcast does torrents or online streaming. this is complicating things for someone with no tv...
Thursday, November 4, 2010
sci-fi
my absolute FAVOURITE cinema genre is the sci-fi area. This isn't because there are very many good examples, but purely because it's the area with the most promise. It's an area that divorces itself from films roots in drama and literature, becoming a purely cinematic style. Films such as "Metropolis", "2001", or "Dark City" truly show just how far film as its own unique form can go in terms of creative expression.
Unfortunately, it's also incredibly easy to make a cheap, bad sci-fi movie. In the earlier days of cinema, this was easy to spot: something like "This Island Earth" or the slew of pulp monster movies were based on the principle of "man-in-suit terrorizes bad actors". More recently, it's become a source of knowing humor. Make the worst science fiction movie you can, and it moves away from bad into funny:
With the advent of CG imagery, it's become more dicey. It's hard to tell if it's good or bad based solely on (for example) a trailer, requiring you to actually see the movie to figure it out. Dips into sci-fi horror with movies such as "Underworld" fit this to a tee.
Conventions of character don't exist as a whole, but in the more by-the-numbers example, you'll often have the intrepid space-farer, hard-bitten cop looking for that something weird, etc. This protagonist often has a flimsy background in which he is the best at whatever he does, but lost someone as a result of his job. combined to this is often the damsel in distress who outwardly SEEMS as powerful as the protagonist, but quickly falls into the one who must be saved when actual trouble comes up.
See "Event Horizon" for the epitome of this. Horrid movie.
No matter how you look at it, science fiction depends on one element: the "other". For the purposes of cinema criticism, the term becomes more of a jungian catch-all for aspects of self (or, sometimes, other characters) which are unknown and therefore terrifying. The best science fiction embraces it in a way only the Western has been able to do. "Metropolis" had the mysterious people living in the city, those who seemed nefarious and proved to be mechanical in origin. Their enslavement of humans to keep the world running was the critical point to the film. "Dark City" inverted this: humans lived in a seemingly normal world, but there were strange oddities about, which proved to be the product of a strange and mysterious group living underneath, powering the city as a part of a grand social experiment.
Setting: the most common setting is ELSEWHERE. Space has become the most common area to set science fiction in the last fifty years, due solely to the fact that it is considered the "last frontier". I mentioned above that the genre embraces "the Other" as a point of conflict and only the Western did the same. The key similarity here is that both the Western and Science Fiction work because of the frontier mentality. The other exists on the fringe or outside of society. It is that which is unknown that we are wary of. The western's death, it can be argued, is due to the settlement of the west by what we call civilization, leaving little else to the imagination. It's hard to imagine the Indian as "Other" when we've cut away propaganda and have learned that the Indian is merely us.
Space is the most common, but far from the only area. Our own world, while commonly considered "known", is in fact still filled with mystery. Films such as "The Abyss" capitalizes on the fact that we know less about our ocean floor than we do about the moon. It hypothesizes intelligent life far beyond our own capabilities living on the bottom of the sea, and the threats it can pose us.
Quite often, technology advancement is the key point behind science fiction...but not always! Areas such as the post-apocalyptic film "The Road" can be argued as science fiction, and engage themselves solely based on the LACK of technology. That which is different from our own familiarity becomes science fiction. It can be more accurately stated that "technology differences" from our own norm is the commonality. Even sci-fi dealing with supernatural elements (think "Underworld") deal with technological innovation to solve the key problems. While the movie was certainly god-awful, you can't argue that they deal with classical horror conventions (vampires and werewolves) and embed a strong science-fiction principle in their fantastical weaponry used to fight them.
The basic features of the story:
The characters may be flawed or classical, but the common link between them all is resolve to deal with the problem at-hand. While they are well-versed in the advantages of the technological marvels around them, it is their strength of character that defines them as unique: Captain Kirk isn't just the best with the technology around him...he's a stunning judge of character with a brilliant mind, and this is how he wins.
Problems almost always deal with death: either unknown forces outside of the frontier attack us as a species, or the frontier itself proves to be an adversary (2001 makes famous use of this).
The two basic assumptions going in: first, the world is more than what we can see, more than what we know. What is outside our comprehension can kill us, or aid us. Only understanding creates benefit. second, our technology is the key aspect to our world. Taking it away will devolve us into monsters, adding more will aid us, and the "Other" will always be able to overcome it.
Its goals: its primary goal is often in allegory. The films will argue one of two things: either our path of technological innovation will save us, or it will damn us. More recently, the latter view has fallen away, and the commonality in much of modern science fiction is that our technology, and our resolution/ability to use it wisely, is what will save us as a species. More classically, it's been far more cautionary. Science fiction can trace roots all the way back to early mythology. The most famous example is that of Prometheus, he who gave fire (technology) to man was punished for allowing us to use that which should only belong to the gods. This was continued not only in stories but in popular feeling til the modern day, seen most powerfully in "Frankenstein": here, man LITERALLY plays god with his use of technological innovation, and it kills him for having the nerve to play in a god's domain. Within this, of course, is Dr. Frankenstein's struggles. Note that he looked upon his creation with horror. When faced with the sheer power of what he'd done, he couldn't act and use his creation responsibly.
Lesson Plan/Activity:
A history of the genre!
First, in groups of three, the class will brainstorm 3 ways which technology helps them, and 3 ways it hurts them. These instructions should be kept this vague in order to allow the student to see it as he/she sees fit...anything from "my cell phone lets me talk to friends more" to "automobiles kill more people than the bubonic plague" become acceptable.
Second, in a large group, we discuss. Each group lays out their three of each category, and they're listed on the board. A "master list" is created. The top three from each side. Then they're examined: imagine the flip side to each one. Example: the cell phone lets you talk to friends more, but does it invade into time you could/would be spending in more productive, happier ways?
Third, we move into the aims of science fiction. Can we take them "literally"? If not, what purpose do these stories serve? What do they tell us about our own society?
Choose three science fiction movies and examine: what do they enlighten to us about our own world. This enlightenment can be based upon society or purely technological innovation.
Examples:
Metropolis
Dark City
2001
Star Wars
What does this "other" mean? Who do they REALLY represent? Authority? Chaos?
Unfortunately, it's also incredibly easy to make a cheap, bad sci-fi movie. In the earlier days of cinema, this was easy to spot: something like "This Island Earth" or the slew of pulp monster movies were based on the principle of "man-in-suit terrorizes bad actors". More recently, it's become a source of knowing humor. Make the worst science fiction movie you can, and it moves away from bad into funny:
With the advent of CG imagery, it's become more dicey. It's hard to tell if it's good or bad based solely on (for example) a trailer, requiring you to actually see the movie to figure it out. Dips into sci-fi horror with movies such as "Underworld" fit this to a tee.
Conventions of character don't exist as a whole, but in the more by-the-numbers example, you'll often have the intrepid space-farer, hard-bitten cop looking for that something weird, etc. This protagonist often has a flimsy background in which he is the best at whatever he does, but lost someone as a result of his job. combined to this is often the damsel in distress who outwardly SEEMS as powerful as the protagonist, but quickly falls into the one who must be saved when actual trouble comes up.
See "Event Horizon" for the epitome of this. Horrid movie.
No matter how you look at it, science fiction depends on one element: the "other". For the purposes of cinema criticism, the term becomes more of a jungian catch-all for aspects of self (or, sometimes, other characters) which are unknown and therefore terrifying. The best science fiction embraces it in a way only the Western has been able to do. "Metropolis" had the mysterious people living in the city, those who seemed nefarious and proved to be mechanical in origin. Their enslavement of humans to keep the world running was the critical point to the film. "Dark City" inverted this: humans lived in a seemingly normal world, but there were strange oddities about, which proved to be the product of a strange and mysterious group living underneath, powering the city as a part of a grand social experiment.
Setting: the most common setting is ELSEWHERE. Space has become the most common area to set science fiction in the last fifty years, due solely to the fact that it is considered the "last frontier". I mentioned above that the genre embraces "the Other" as a point of conflict and only the Western did the same. The key similarity here is that both the Western and Science Fiction work because of the frontier mentality. The other exists on the fringe or outside of society. It is that which is unknown that we are wary of. The western's death, it can be argued, is due to the settlement of the west by what we call civilization, leaving little else to the imagination. It's hard to imagine the Indian as "Other" when we've cut away propaganda and have learned that the Indian is merely us.
Space is the most common, but far from the only area. Our own world, while commonly considered "known", is in fact still filled with mystery. Films such as "The Abyss" capitalizes on the fact that we know less about our ocean floor than we do about the moon. It hypothesizes intelligent life far beyond our own capabilities living on the bottom of the sea, and the threats it can pose us.
Quite often, technology advancement is the key point behind science fiction...but not always! Areas such as the post-apocalyptic film "The Road" can be argued as science fiction, and engage themselves solely based on the LACK of technology. That which is different from our own familiarity becomes science fiction. It can be more accurately stated that "technology differences" from our own norm is the commonality. Even sci-fi dealing with supernatural elements (think "Underworld") deal with technological innovation to solve the key problems. While the movie was certainly god-awful, you can't argue that they deal with classical horror conventions (vampires and werewolves) and embed a strong science-fiction principle in their fantastical weaponry used to fight them.
The basic features of the story:
The characters may be flawed or classical, but the common link between them all is resolve to deal with the problem at-hand. While they are well-versed in the advantages of the technological marvels around them, it is their strength of character that defines them as unique: Captain Kirk isn't just the best with the technology around him...he's a stunning judge of character with a brilliant mind, and this is how he wins.
Problems almost always deal with death: either unknown forces outside of the frontier attack us as a species, or the frontier itself proves to be an adversary (2001 makes famous use of this).
The two basic assumptions going in: first, the world is more than what we can see, more than what we know. What is outside our comprehension can kill us, or aid us. Only understanding creates benefit. second, our technology is the key aspect to our world. Taking it away will devolve us into monsters, adding more will aid us, and the "Other" will always be able to overcome it.
Its goals: its primary goal is often in allegory. The films will argue one of two things: either our path of technological innovation will save us, or it will damn us. More recently, the latter view has fallen away, and the commonality in much of modern science fiction is that our technology, and our resolution/ability to use it wisely, is what will save us as a species. More classically, it's been far more cautionary. Science fiction can trace roots all the way back to early mythology. The most famous example is that of Prometheus, he who gave fire (technology) to man was punished for allowing us to use that which should only belong to the gods. This was continued not only in stories but in popular feeling til the modern day, seen most powerfully in "Frankenstein": here, man LITERALLY plays god with his use of technological innovation, and it kills him for having the nerve to play in a god's domain. Within this, of course, is Dr. Frankenstein's struggles. Note that he looked upon his creation with horror. When faced with the sheer power of what he'd done, he couldn't act and use his creation responsibly.
Lesson Plan/Activity:
A history of the genre!
First, in groups of three, the class will brainstorm 3 ways which technology helps them, and 3 ways it hurts them. These instructions should be kept this vague in order to allow the student to see it as he/she sees fit...anything from "my cell phone lets me talk to friends more" to "automobiles kill more people than the bubonic plague" become acceptable.
Second, in a large group, we discuss. Each group lays out their three of each category, and they're listed on the board. A "master list" is created. The top three from each side. Then they're examined: imagine the flip side to each one. Example: the cell phone lets you talk to friends more, but does it invade into time you could/would be spending in more productive, happier ways?
Third, we move into the aims of science fiction. Can we take them "literally"? If not, what purpose do these stories serve? What do they tell us about our own society?
Choose three science fiction movies and examine: what do they enlighten to us about our own world. This enlightenment can be based upon society or purely technological innovation.
Examples:
Metropolis
Dark City
2001
Star Wars
What does this "other" mean? Who do they REALLY represent? Authority? Chaos?
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
haven't forgotten...
i'll be posting something in-depth on fantasy/sci-fi/horror in cinema. probably tomorrow or thursday morning, whenever time allows. from there i'll build a powerpoint with google docs...i'm so excited? I've never used web-based presentation stuff successfully before, but google doc seems a lot more stable than the norm, so it shouldn't be aggravating or anything. I'll post a link to it through here as well as through the wiki.
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