Neat Things

While examining my (non-book related) literacies, I discovered that there are three basic elements involved.

First, there's an input of influences. I listen to the things that other people make and sometimes I think they're neat.


Next, to varying degrees of success, I attempt to make my own neat things.


And finally, I get involved in a community of other people who like similar neat things.



To recap:

1. Input.


2. Attempt at creation.



3. Involvement with others in the community.

This is a picture of my friend Mark at the end of the first day of shooting a big blockbuster movie. He normally doesn't look like he just got run over by a truck.




In brainstorming for this assignment I knew I wanted to do something with music, and something with film because these are important and somewhat unconventional literacies that have played huge roles in my life. Figuring out how to organize them in a way that told a story, however, was a bit difficult. But this challenged me to think about these subjects in new ways. How were these things related? How could I tell a story using these images? While I have a background in visual storytelling (i.e. filmmaking), this seemed like a much different kind of task. I wasn't just telling a fictional story, I wasn't planning a documentary, instead I had to tell a story about literacy, which is something that I don't usually consider to be a very visual subject.

As I started to determine what images I would use, I simultaneously started to figure out what the story would be. In a lot of ways, this mirrors my process for writing a more typical paper, where I have some idea of what I'm going to say when I start, but where I don't really figure out my point until I've been working on it for a while.

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I know we don't need a resource link for the week but I came across Wing Young Huie's column in the Star Tribune and thought you all might enjoy his words of wisdom concerning the power of visual communication:

http://www.startribune.com/yourvoices/40430412.html?elr=KArks47cQiUdcOy_9cP3DiU47cQULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU

Fascinating Article

This article talks about the accelerating pace of technology developments...I know everyone is tired of reading...but trust me, it will totally blow your mind! There's an interesting bit in the middle regarding how students are currently being trained for a workforce that existed 20 years ago.

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/39916492.html?elr=KArks:DCiUo3PD:3D_V_qD3L:c7cQKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

Keep reading...there are rad radiohead links at the end!

Getting students to have genuine, intelligent discussions with each other concerning literature is going to be one of our biggest challenges as English teachers. And while blogs are another tool to get students to do this, I still wonder how to frame this so that a "genuine" conversation can take place. I know we've talked about this in class (I forget which one), but how do we make this more than just "another way to turn in homework?" (e.g. most of the Edina blogs). One important thing to consider is that students might just need some time to develop these skills; perhaps we will just need to be patient and give them many blogging opportunities (as well as quality feedback). Giving them time in class to blog might be another way to make sure that they aren't just rushing through it in order to get it done.

I thought that the Jenkins article brought up a number of interesting points about how "remixing" has been around for centuries, it was just called different things and utilized different technologies than what is available today. In remixing something, one simultaneously critiques the original work and creates something new...(hello Bloom's Taxonomy).

When one considers the use of wiki's, and other forms of collaborative technology and its increasing relevance to our lives, it seems clear that students will benefit from having a foundation in this kind of thinking and working. Jenkins describes "knowledge communities" as having the ability to, "confront problems of greater scale and complexity than any given student might be able to handle" (42). Many programmers work from home, for free to help solve problems (e.g. Firefox)...the future potential of this kind of work force (whether it's formed of volunteers or paid workers) could be exponentially powerful.

As a bit of a side note, the Jenkins article reminded me of how Radiohead used this new kind of thinking when they released singles from their last record. They released two songs in their component parts where you could purchase the drum track, the vocal track, the bass track, and the guitar tracks separately. They then invited fans to remix the songs and post them on a website where people could vote for their favorites. This not only allowed fans to be collaborators with the band, but it made Radiohead a lot of money. The first single made 5 times as much as a traditional single (since you had to buy the parts separately) and they had their highest ranking on the Billboard charts in years as a result. As companies (such as the record industry) struggle to effectively integrate changing technologies into their plans, they will need creative thinkers (i.e. our students).

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It's interesting how many of these remixes are vastly different from the original songs.
http://www.radioheadremix.com/nude/
http://www.radioheadremix.com

Matt's link of the week

Are you in need of good writing models? Tired of looking at books? Check out the website for Arts and Letters Daily:

http://www.aldaily.com/

Since it seems pretty subjective and arbitrary to assign grades to final papers, I definitely plan on putting more weight on how students progress through the process of writing. While the Dornan text can be a bit dry, it also has a lot of useful, practical activities and ideas concerning assessment. I liked the questions proposed on page 184 for a student to evaluate his or her own paper before conferencing with other students or the teacher. This puts the responsibility on the student to recognize where they need to focus. Helping students to understand what questions to ask of themselves and their writing is important to their taking ownership of their learning. After all, one thing I want my students to consider is the fact that they won't always have a teacher there to help guide them through their writing and its problems, so they need to learn how to evaluate it themselves.

I also liked the idea of dialogue journals...even though they seem unpractical in some ways (since the teacher probably won't have time to read them all, all the time). But I think having this dialogue is important. I remember doing dialogue journals in grade school, and I was always anxious to see what the teacher had to say. Even though she didn't respond to each day's entry, when she did respond, I really appreciated it. Even in graduate school, I appreciate seeing the teacher's comments in the margins of my papers. It might be interesting to try this kind of journal with students reading and responding to each others' journals. Although the dynamic would be completely different with a student responder. Encouraging words from a teacher go a long way; Dornan says "students are more likely to remember what teachers praise (and do it again in future papers) than they are to value comments on problems in the paper." But I have to say that one of the teachers whose comments are still at the forefront of my mind when I'm writing papers today are those of my college Shakespeare professor. He was super old school, (his first name was Standish, I kid you not). He was SUPER critical of papers (and this was my junior year at Madison, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to write a good paper by this point), and he TORE my papers apart. I've never seen so much red ink on one of my papers. But despite the fact that he was not full of encouraging words, he had a major influence on how I write academic papers. So it's not all butterflies and smiley faces. Although they help...especially at the secondary level where students are still striving to find their voices and their strengths. Perhaps part of why I appreciated Standish's harsh critiques was because I was at a more advanced level of writing by that point in my academic career. As secondary English teachers, we don't want to critique student work harshly so that they are turned away from the subject matter...we need to challange and encourage at the same time.

“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”
— Ernest Hemingway, letter, May 15, 1925 —

Some brief thoughts about the Mutligenre paper before I get into thoughts about revision...

The more I think about having students write a multigenre paper, the more I think that it will benefit the students, their writing skills and their enjoyment of the task. In considering (and reconsidering) my teaching philosophy, helping to foster a genuine enjoyment of reading has always been a top priority. Books have always been important to me, and I want to help students to see how and why books can play important roles in their lives.

When it comes to writing, on the other hand, I've had a different attitude. I want students to become better writers because these are important skills for life...but I haven't put a lot of thought into getting students to ENJOY writing. This is because, much of the time, writing still feels like work. Revision is not easy. So why not provide a more enjoyable platform (the MG paper) to learn the processes of writing and revision?

I've almost always been resistant to certain forms of revision. For example, I constantly revise as I write, as opposed to writing a complete draft and then going back to revise. Revising at the end of the draft usually seems too daunting. Students need to learn a variety of ways of doing things, so that they can determine what works best for them.

As I read Harper's article, I couldn't help but think about how the tools she described seem to have the potential to help almost all young writers. They are concrete and specific, without being constricting. Her ideas regarding "snapshots," "thoughtshots," and "exploding a moment," are better ways of saying things students have heard so many times before. Phrases written by a teacher such as, "more detail," "explain better," and "unclear," are vague. Harper instead provides tools that show students how break down the task and actually accomplish these things. In fact, this illustrates one of the biggest catch phrases in writing workshops: "show don't tell," since Harper doesn't just tell students what they need to fix, but she shows them how to do it.

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This site provides examples of how grammar operates in comic books. Using a selection of these examples could help to motivate some students to care about issues of grammar.

http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml

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This site could be used to show how poor grammar can affect people's perceptions of someone.

http://www.boldspark.com/entertainment/guide-proper-spelling-american-way

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Grammar humor:

http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/writing.html

I really enjoyed Romano's book, and the whole idea of Muligenre papers is very intriguing. I would love the opportunity to attempt this kind of a paper in the classroom. In a number of ways, it revitalizes the traditional idea of a paper and seems to put emphasis on student learning, understanding, and creativity as opposed to structure and rules. It also reduces the anxiety involved in having to write a certain number of a pages on a subject by allowing it to be broken down into manageable pieces.

Here is my main issue...and I would like to emphasize that this is MY issue, and not a problem with the idea of the multigenre paper itself. Having very little teaching experience, I feel that I would be much more comfortable teaching how to write the kind of paper that I know and understand (personal narrative, research paper, etc). I have experience with writing these kinds of papers and I feel that I would be able to field questions well and be able to explain and define the assignment so that expectations are clear and understood. Since I am in the very early stages of my teaching career, I feel like I need to work on some basic building blocks before I attempt this kind of project.

I'm worried that because I have no experience with multigenre papers outside of Romano's book, I will end up with a room full of confused students with blank stares. I'm worried that they'll have questions that I won't know how to address. I think that once I have more experience working with student writers, I'll feel more confident about how to go about teaching this very intriguing form...but I think I might need a year or two to get some of the basics down first.

I bet it would help my understanding immensely if wrote one or two multigenre papers (ideally in a workshop setting).

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This site has several ideas for Multigenre projects. The first one also links to an assignment sheet with a huge list of genre ideas:
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/multigenre.html


This site covers a lot of the basics of Multigenre projects, in a fairly succinct format. It includes answers to a lot of commonly asked questions, as well as "methods for taking notes," and a "project checklist" (which includes ideas for scheduling due dates for various parts of the project).
http://www.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/cyberenglish9/multi_genre/multigenre.htm