Silent Films in the Classroom

This week in my Mass Media and Society class, we went over a brief history of the early film industry. Not only was this just plain interesting, but I thought this was a great opportunity to think about just how this could apply to the classroom. In one of the readings we read in previous weeks, can't recall just which one it was, the author mentioned how he/she used silent films in her classroom as a new subject for interpretation. I admit, when I had first read this idea in the text, I couldn't see this being a very effective medium for interpretation, let alone being all that interesting. Yet, when we watched clips from a lot of classic silent films, I realized just how much interpretation is absolutely crucial to even understand what is going on in the film. They require you to be a much more active viewer than modern "talkies" do. With this in mind, I see how silent films could be a viable source of material in the ELA classroom. This, I believe, is just a thought that makes teachers cast their nets a little wider when searching for material. We think to include blogs, podcasts, videos, movies, and more, but we can also look back in time and use silent films as well.

Make It Mean Something

Although the focus for this week's readings and the focus of this week's class is to be podcasting, I got more out of them than a simple how-to. Podcasting wasn't even the thing that stuck out most to me. Even though both Kajder's Chapter 5 and Rozema's "The Book Report 2.0: Podcasting on Young Adult Novels" gave great examples of the ways in which podcasts can be used effectively in the classroom, I found these readings to talk more the idea of making writing mean something.
The quote from eigth-grader, Hank, hit me the most in Kajder's text. He said, in response to his teacher's idea to adapt literature circle discussions to make them into podcasts, "[i]f you want a podcast to mean something, you've got to say something in it that is worth listening to. I'm game for this, but I don't want to hear kids' discussions. Don't school-ify this. We can do better" (Kajder 79, italics added). This, first off, proved that students understand genre and audience much better than we give them credit for. Hank clearly understood what a podcast was, what it should be used for, and what content it should contain. This alone is an opportunity for a lesson.
More than that, though, this statement made me realize just what using podcasts and other multimodal means really do. They make the writing "mean something," and that is what kids really want. Writing solely for school in a world that practically lives off of public writing via the Internet is just not enough. If someone other than the teacher isn't reading it, kids feel like it is worth less. If we can make the writings seem more valuable to students simply by allowing them to post it on a public forum of some sort, I see little reason not to allow them to do this.
Also, I believe that making writings public means so much to students because of the features built into modern social media. They allow you to "like," comment, and re-post content posted there. It gives students the opportunity to receive that peer approval that they seek. I've found myself being rather excited to read my comments on this blog, enough though I never thought I'd feel that way about it. More than that, though, these features, which kids like Hank in Kajder's text push for, allow writing to be an open conversation. It makes text alive.

Flying Blind

A thought that was brought up this week in my American Literature II class was the fact that literature is often presented to students without the proper background knowledge necessary to make the literature make sense and cause students to understand its importance. For example, in that class we were reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Someone in class mentioned how they had read this novel previously in high school and didn't care much for it, but when reading it this second time around, appreciated it much more. This was due to the extensive introductions to the time period as well as to Mark Twain we read prior to reading the novel. We also had spoken in the previous class about the climate of literature in America up to this point in time. This placed the novel in specific time, made us understand the author's life as well as his style of writing, and, ultimately, make Huck Finn more important than simply a story of a boy on a raft.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the high school level. Too often books are just passed out to students, and then they read them that night without any context. This could be the reason why so many kids, even those who are already interested in reading and literature, are so turned off by classic literature. They just don't understand what is going on the book and why its important to be reading. If we take the small amount of time to give that sort of background knowledge to kids before the dive into the book with blinders on, the literature can actually make sense and resonate with them. Classic literature won't have to be so scary if we don't lead kids in blind.

Spoonful of Sugar

After completing this week's readings, the main theme that kept popping up was, very generally, how to use multimodal lessons and activities. While last week's reading taught us what multimodality is and the benefits of its use, this week made us face the question of exactly how we use this knowledge. As Miller and McVee explain in their text, multimodality cannot simply be the "spoonful of sugar" to help the sometimes unpleasant traditional modes of instruction. This is something that really resonated with me. We cannot simply take our "normal" curriculum and season it with some multimodal activities to spice things up, nor can we make multimodality the main course. The idea is to use multimodality when it will be the most beneficial to students, and choose traditional methods when those are the best fit. Multimodality should serve simply to broaden our bank of ways to teach. From there, we can choose from any number of our now expanded bank of ideas to teach in the best possible manner for each individual situation.

A Video Game Assessment?

Right now I just want to take the time to kick around an idea for an activity/assessment that has been at the back of my mind since we began talking about multimodality in class. After talking with my roommate, who on multiple occasions has explained to me how the story lines of video games hold his attention much more than any of the literature he has read, and with my brother, who loves video games, I have thought to capitalize on the interest in video games and the inherent elements of fiction writing in those video.
The concept of this assessment is to mash together creative writing concepts and the high interest in video games present in today's youth. I would require students to create a brief story line that would be acted out in their game, create and perhaps visually represent characters, and design game play aspects. Students would need to identify basic elements of narrative such as conflict, rising and falling action, and climax within their story line for their game.
A lot more details must be worked out before this can be a functional project, but I wanted to get my idea down. I would greatly appreciate any criticism, especially from any video game aficionados.

Teach with Tech: Tech Teaches, Too

Kist's "Short" chapter a really good job of taking the idea of teaching in a technological, socially networked classroom in two different directions. The first direction is what I think most of us think of when we mention teaching and technology in the same breath -- multimodality. Specifically, Kist offers many ideas for lessons and activities that deal much with transmediation. I have found a few in this chapter that now have a nice big star beside them in my text. The first activity I really liked was "Julius Caesar, the Musical." At first glance, I thought this would be one of those activities where students acted scenes out with the added element of musical numbers. This scared shy, non-theatrical me. When I read the activity, though, I really liked it. The idea is to use music to express the plot or the mood of particular scenes of any drama you might be teaching at the time. I like this activity for two reasons. One is that requires students to review the play, interpret it, and analyze it for details such as mood and tone before they ever get to actually put it to music. Then students get to apply the same skills to music of their choice. This is what leads to the second reason I like this activity. Students get the opportunity to use music of their choice in this activity. They aren't limited to "good" music as they are often limited to "good" literature in the classroom. students can then own their work. It is theirs because it is made up of things they enjoy. This means students are motivated, and the battle for motivation is the underlying fight teachers fight everyday.

I mentioned earlier that I liked Kist's chapter for two reasons. Reason number two is that he not only speaks of using technology or nontraditional methods to teach, but also of how to channel the skills today's socially networked kids have into a more academically specific vein. For example, kids today are very used to the idea that they create material, post it to the Internet, and their peers respond and contribute to that material. So saying, collaboration is no new concept to them, but in the classroom this usually just mean group activities that mean dividing the assignment into sections that one student works on. Kist suggested the "Writing Collaboratively" activity that requires students to compose a poem together. One product made up of the words and ideas of four different students. That's the kind of collaboration I want in my classroom. Moreover, though, this activity utilizes today's students' already strong collaborative skills and brings them into the academic setting. This makes these skills seem validated as valuable in students' eyes. They are literate, productive citizens and activities like this help prove that not only to teachers, but to themselves as well.

Hello

Hello. My name is Tyler Estabrook. I am studying to become an English teacher in the secondary setting. Through the use of this blog, I hope to record and reflect upon my studies as they apply to my educational pursuits. Enjoy.