Monday, April 25, 2011
Class Reflection (Pytash)
I liked how this semester we learned more about lesson planning and we used canonical literature. I was a bit leery of young adult literature but this class, and mainly working on the final, has taught me that young adult literature can compliment canonical literature in the classroom. I don't think teachers should stray from the canon but I think teachers should be more flexible in teaching newer things. The combination of young adult literature and multi-modal resources can help breathe life into the literature language arts teachers are teaching. This class has taught me the effective use of young adult literature and how to break difficult material down into smaller pieces that adolescents can understand. I want my classroom to be student-centered so I will do what I can to get students to care about the material (even if I personally detest young adult literature).
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Class Reflection
I didn't think that I would enjoy this course as much as I did. I was hesitant to even think of multi-modal resources in the classroom because when I was in school we didn't use such things. One thing that I've learned is: the times, they are a'changin'. Teachers NEED to keep learning relevant and exciting. We need to prepare students for the future and technology is the future. I don't think that we should eliminate the canon but we can enhance the material. I did my wiki on Shakespearean sonnets and it was wonderful to see that multi-modality can strip away the dullness of the material and make it alive for students. It can also help make it relate-able to students that are not Caucasian, which is important. I think that there is a balance between entertainment and education that needs to exist and through careful (and thoughtful) planning, teachers can achieve that balance. I'm glad that my mindset has shifted and that I now know of all the resources that are available to teachers on the internet.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Queen Bee and Keepers
I went to a show at the Kent Stage recently to see a superb band called Queen Bee and the Keepers.
This is a photo that I took at the show. Anya Antonavich sweetly sings captivating, powerful lyrics into the microphone.
It is hard to describe the band's music in terms of genre. The music is too dynamic to categorize. It could be considered Indie/Jazz/Folk/Pop. Antonavich's honey-sweet, jazzy vocals deliver the poignantly honest lyrics that express messages of love, loss, God, and death. Each band-member oozes passionately through their instruments. "Pie Glove Shoe" is an upbeat love-song that steers clear of generalities and hones in on authentic care for another person. Give them a listen...
queenbeeandthekeepers.bandcamp.com/
This is a photo that I took at the show. Anya Antonavich sweetly sings captivating, powerful lyrics into the microphone.
It is hard to describe the band's music in terms of genre. The music is too dynamic to categorize. It could be considered Indie/Jazz/Folk/Pop. Antonavich's honey-sweet, jazzy vocals deliver the poignantly honest lyrics that express messages of love, loss, God, and death. Each band-member oozes passionately through their instruments. "Pie Glove Shoe" is an upbeat love-song that steers clear of generalities and hones in on authentic care for another person. Give them a listen...
queenbeeandthekeepers.bandcamp.com/
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Literature, Knowledge, and the High School Graduate (Pytash)
I found the election assignment to be interesting. It got students engaged and critically thinking about Julius Caesar. I will definitely consider doing a similar assignment in my future classroom. It incorporated elements of a literature study like:
-close reading of the text
-character analysis
-drawing inferences
-application
-evaluation
I don't want to create cookie-cutter assessments for students. I think teachers can be creative and establish new ways of assessment, like this assignment, that engage students and allow for meaningful learning.
-close reading of the text
-character analysis
-drawing inferences
-application
-evaluation
I don't want to create cookie-cutter assessments for students. I think teachers can be creative and establish new ways of assessment, like this assignment, that engage students and allow for meaningful learning.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Naruto Vs. Pinocchio
Text and Dialogue Naruto Pinocchio
Naruto's answers will be in BOLD.
Balloons (words/thoughts) Yes Yes
Captions Yes Yes
Emanata Yes Yes
Labels/signs Yes Yes
Lettering Varies in size, depending on message,
consistently all caps
In all capitals not a lot of text, mostly visual.
Sound Effects Yes. Example: "THAM!" Yes.
Visual Features
Characters Pointy hair. Japanese anime style. Long nose. Blank eyes
Objects Cameras, alarm clock, Not a lot. Weapons.
other ordinary objects.
Icons The clan symbol. No.
Scenery In Japan. In Nasolungo.
Depicted action (internal/external) External Both.
General Layout and Design
Borders Yes Yes
Gutters Yes Yes
Panels Yes Yes
Open Panel Yes Yes
Splash Yes Yes
I was impressed that both were so visually dynamic and, like studying film, would not have noticed it unless I took a closer, critical look.
Angles and Frames
Bleed Yes Yes
Close-up Yes Yes
Head shot Yes Yes
Head-shoulder shot Yes Yes
Full-figure shot Yes Yes
Longshot Yes Yes
Extreme longshot No Yes
Reverse Yes.. and it was hard to read. No
Rhetorical Techniques Applied in Text, Visuals, and Design
Exaggeration With facial expression
Yes, with situation
Empathy/identification The reader feels empathy
for the characters
Readers can identify with Pinocchio and his struggle
Mood/tone Playful, suspicious, action Serious Sarcastic
Simplicity/complexity Complex Complex
Irony/satire Satire regarding the government No
Realism/icons/symbolism Clan symbol means different village
very significant throughout work. The nose is symbolic. Vampires also need blood.
Order/disorder Order Disorder
Juxtaposition
Relationships Different people betray village
or other village attack. They are
rivals.
Vampires try to take over village for blood. Pinocchio tries to stop vampires avenging his father's death.
Point of View Omniscient, detached. Insider
Naruto's answers will be in BOLD.
Balloons (words/thoughts) Yes Yes
Captions Yes Yes
Emanata Yes Yes
Labels/signs Yes Yes
Lettering Varies in size, depending on message,
consistently all caps
In all capitals not a lot of text, mostly visual.
Sound Effects Yes. Example: "THAM!" Yes.
Visual Features
Characters Pointy hair. Japanese anime style. Long nose. Blank eyes
Objects Cameras, alarm clock, Not a lot. Weapons.
other ordinary objects.
Icons The clan symbol. No.
Scenery In Japan. In Nasolungo.
Depicted action (internal/external) External Both.
General Layout and Design
Borders Yes Yes
Gutters Yes Yes
Panels Yes Yes
Open Panel Yes Yes
Splash Yes Yes
I was impressed that both were so visually dynamic and, like studying film, would not have noticed it unless I took a closer, critical look.
Angles and Frames
Bleed Yes Yes
Close-up Yes Yes
Head shot Yes Yes
Head-shoulder shot Yes Yes
Full-figure shot Yes Yes
Longshot Yes Yes
Extreme longshot No Yes
Reverse Yes.. and it was hard to read. No
Rhetorical Techniques Applied in Text, Visuals, and Design
Exaggeration With facial expression
Yes, with situation
Empathy/identification The reader feels empathy
for the characters
Readers can identify with Pinocchio and his struggle
Mood/tone Playful, suspicious, action Serious Sarcastic
Simplicity/complexity Complex Complex
Irony/satire Satire regarding the government No
Realism/icons/symbolism Clan symbol means different village
very significant throughout work. The nose is symbolic. Vampires also need blood.
Order/disorder Order Disorder
Juxtaposition
Relationships Different people betray village
or other village attack. They are
rivals.
Vampires try to take over village for blood. Pinocchio tries to stop vampires avenging his father's death.
Point of View Omniscient, detached. Insider
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Text Speak
For my optional blog I'd like to write about text speak. Where I work we are selling little booklets with abbreviations and other text speak words in it. It terrifys me that students may write like that in formal writing assignments! I think that Language Arts teachers should explicitly teach the difference between informal and formal writing so that students can learn when it is (and is not) acceptable to use such language.
It seems like commonsense but I think it would benefit students!
It seems like commonsense but I think it would benefit students!
Monday, April 11, 2011
Lesson design for classical literature (Pytash)
It was interesting to learn more about Jago and the research that she did while teaching. I don’t know what the future holds for me but knowing how much I enjoy learning about social science and education, I can see myself researching as well. I do know that I’m determined to be more than a mediocre teacher. I liked that this chapter mentioned “teaching a lesson, revising the lesson, teaching the revised lesion, evaluating and reflecting once more,” (Jago 102). It shows that teachers do not stop trying to improve their lessons. I think that it is important for teachers to continue to evaluate themselves. Teachers know to evaluate students but I feel like they forget to repeatedly evaluate what they are doing. I know that when I teach I will end up doing things wrong or in an ineffective manner. I hope to notice these things quickly and mold that learning experience into success by trying new things and putting what I’ve discovered as ineffective away then moving on to something new. I think there should be an educational reform in this country because students are getting cheated out of a quality education in too many schools. Jago brings up a lot of ways to help in this chapter but the one way that I can do something is by learning from what she wrote and applying to my future classroom.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Contemporary Film Review of Self Made by Gillian Wearing
Personal Issues: The characters struck the most responsive chords in me. Because intimate truths were revealed about each person through the method acting workshops, I understood deeply-rooted factors about each person in the film. My strong emotional response was caused by the fact that the people in the film were so transparent and that I connected to some of their tragic memories that were revealed. I also tend to be empathetic so I felt deep sadness for the man that is counting the days until his suicide. I also was quite intellectually stimulated by the concept of identity and the redefinition of identity. I was intrigued to see how the deeply-rooted struggles that these characters experienced could surface and translate into how they act behind the camera and in everyday life. I’m very interested in social science. I can try to explain my response to the film with words but I don’t think that it can be simply generalized to other viewers. I think this because the only way that one could truly understand my response to the film would be for him or her to see it for themselves. It’s hard to articulate the thoughts and emotions that good art evokes.
Technique: I was impressed that there was little music in the film. There was a lot of dialogue and chanting from the method acting workshops that was used over B-roll— the result was powerful. The story took an interesting shape through dialogue. The participants in the film were chosen from a number of people that had responded to an advertisement that read, “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character.” The film showed a small group of people in a method acting session while they sat in chairs and rolled their heads around while screaming, crying, chanting, laughing, and even reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Through dialogue and sound the audience hears what these people say and how they express themselves while doing the method acting exercises. All of this led into the individual short scenes in which the participants in the film played fictional characters and tapped into real life experiences to convey genuine emotion and expression to a fictional script. After the short scenes were shown, the film showed a behind-the-scenes type viewpoint on what the actor or actress what thinking of while shooting. Dialogue played an imperative role in the film. The camera work was eloquent. Scenes were smooth and connective. Transitions were often cuts between shots— which worked effectively. There were no special effects. The strengths to the film were sound, lighting, dialogue, and content. I honestly did not see any weaknesses.
Acting: The principal roles were nameless people being truthful and open about who they are and what they’ve been through in life. The fictional characters that were performed by the participants in the film also had truthful elements to their portrayal. I saw a lot of truth in the film; this is why I was so responsive to it. The actors were typecast. Their performances were quite credible.
Plot: The plot was both layered and simple. Participants responded to an advertisement about being in a film. They went through many method acting exercises. Method acting is when “actors try to get in character by identifying personally with the role, making emotional connections between their character’s plight and events in their own lives, drawing on genuine feeling rather than relying on external acting techniques,” ( Costanzo 315). The deep emotions that surfaced along the way varied by each person’s individual identity and life experiences. Whatever was revealed through method acting was used to create a character in a short film segment. Each person in the film had their own short film segment where they played a fictional character based on something from their own life. They created the character they wanted to portray. One person channels his rage and past experience with child abuse by playing a character that randomly kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach on the street. Another person plays a role of an old spinster scared to fall in love. Another person plays the role of a man that goes outside to quiet some rowdy adolescents and ends up stabbed. There is no coherent plot but the film is connective in its form. Each person’s individual stories overlap and intertwine. The piece is layered and intricate. The concepts raised in the film were extremely compelling and powerful. Because the plot did not follow a traditional storyline, the film was completely original.
Themes: The main idea of the film surrounds the concept of identity and the ability to redefine identity. The film brings about the following things: child abuse, loneliness, heartache, suicide, depression, mundane work-life, suppression of emotion, unhappy marriages, longing for children, perception of self, perception of others, communication, expression, acting, psychology, random violence, violence in general, bullying, peer pressure, insecurities, hidden emotions and thoughts, and more. It makes more of a statement about oneself than about relationships with others. This film was so intriguing because the individuals got to know themselves better and the audience got to know them better as a result. There are hidden messages that the viewer constructs in their mind as they watch the film because there is a lot that is unsaid that the viewer must grapple with. The concept of identity was blatant in the film but fit well with the unique plot.
Genre: This film belongs to the conceptual art genre as well as the documentary genre. It deals a lot with identity and is told through a neutral omniscient lens. I don’t think that these genres tend to be the most popular but I enjoy them the most and I wish more people invested time and thought into films with these superb qualities.
Representation: The film has fairly equal representation of men and women in it. They are not particularly gendered but instead are shown as individuals with individual concerns and life experiences. The middle class is mentioned through one character’s perspective of what a middle class father, mother, and son are like. This was only included in the film to show more about the character that explained his perception of these people but this also raised some common thoughts regarding middle class people in general. I did not see a lot of diversity in the film. I do not know what the U.K. is like diversity wise, this is where the film was shot, so I do not know if the film gave equal representation to the real ethnic diversity in that region of the world. I think the over-arching goal of representation in the film was for the audience to understand the individual participants in the film and how they identify and project themselves.
Ideology: The ‘ideal’ middle class family is challenged as ‘ignorant’ in the film by how one person expressed how he perceived them. (It was an accurate portrayal of what many people perceive of middle class families.) This film did not deal a whole lot with culture, politics, or family but was more focused on individual people and their struggle to deal with their past, who they really are, what they really feel, and how they think of themselves, others, and life in general.
www.selfmade.org.uk
Technique: I was impressed that there was little music in the film. There was a lot of dialogue and chanting from the method acting workshops that was used over B-roll— the result was powerful. The story took an interesting shape through dialogue. The participants in the film were chosen from a number of people that had responded to an advertisement that read, “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character.” The film showed a small group of people in a method acting session while they sat in chairs and rolled their heads around while screaming, crying, chanting, laughing, and even reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Through dialogue and sound the audience hears what these people say and how they express themselves while doing the method acting exercises. All of this led into the individual short scenes in which the participants in the film played fictional characters and tapped into real life experiences to convey genuine emotion and expression to a fictional script. After the short scenes were shown, the film showed a behind-the-scenes type viewpoint on what the actor or actress what thinking of while shooting. Dialogue played an imperative role in the film. The camera work was eloquent. Scenes were smooth and connective. Transitions were often cuts between shots— which worked effectively. There were no special effects. The strengths to the film were sound, lighting, dialogue, and content. I honestly did not see any weaknesses.
Acting: The principal roles were nameless people being truthful and open about who they are and what they’ve been through in life. The fictional characters that were performed by the participants in the film also had truthful elements to their portrayal. I saw a lot of truth in the film; this is why I was so responsive to it. The actors were typecast. Their performances were quite credible.
Plot: The plot was both layered and simple. Participants responded to an advertisement about being in a film. They went through many method acting exercises. Method acting is when “actors try to get in character by identifying personally with the role, making emotional connections between their character’s plight and events in their own lives, drawing on genuine feeling rather than relying on external acting techniques,” ( Costanzo 315). The deep emotions that surfaced along the way varied by each person’s individual identity and life experiences. Whatever was revealed through method acting was used to create a character in a short film segment. Each person in the film had their own short film segment where they played a fictional character based on something from their own life. They created the character they wanted to portray. One person channels his rage and past experience with child abuse by playing a character that randomly kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach on the street. Another person plays a role of an old spinster scared to fall in love. Another person plays the role of a man that goes outside to quiet some rowdy adolescents and ends up stabbed. There is no coherent plot but the film is connective in its form. Each person’s individual stories overlap and intertwine. The piece is layered and intricate. The concepts raised in the film were extremely compelling and powerful. Because the plot did not follow a traditional storyline, the film was completely original.
Themes: The main idea of the film surrounds the concept of identity and the ability to redefine identity. The film brings about the following things: child abuse, loneliness, heartache, suicide, depression, mundane work-life, suppression of emotion, unhappy marriages, longing for children, perception of self, perception of others, communication, expression, acting, psychology, random violence, violence in general, bullying, peer pressure, insecurities, hidden emotions and thoughts, and more. It makes more of a statement about oneself than about relationships with others. This film was so intriguing because the individuals got to know themselves better and the audience got to know them better as a result. There are hidden messages that the viewer constructs in their mind as they watch the film because there is a lot that is unsaid that the viewer must grapple with. The concept of identity was blatant in the film but fit well with the unique plot.
Genre: This film belongs to the conceptual art genre as well as the documentary genre. It deals a lot with identity and is told through a neutral omniscient lens. I don’t think that these genres tend to be the most popular but I enjoy them the most and I wish more people invested time and thought into films with these superb qualities.
Representation: The film has fairly equal representation of men and women in it. They are not particularly gendered but instead are shown as individuals with individual concerns and life experiences. The middle class is mentioned through one character’s perspective of what a middle class father, mother, and son are like. This was only included in the film to show more about the character that explained his perception of these people but this also raised some common thoughts regarding middle class people in general. I did not see a lot of diversity in the film. I do not know what the U.K. is like diversity wise, this is where the film was shot, so I do not know if the film gave equal representation to the real ethnic diversity in that region of the world. I think the over-arching goal of representation in the film was for the audience to understand the individual participants in the film and how they identify and project themselves.
Ideology: The ‘ideal’ middle class family is challenged as ‘ignorant’ in the film by how one person expressed how he perceived them. (It was an accurate portrayal of what many people perceive of middle class families.) This film did not deal a whole lot with culture, politics, or family but was more focused on individual people and their struggle to deal with their past, who they really are, what they really feel, and how they think of themselves, others, and life in general.
www.selfmade.org.uk
35th Cleveland International Film Festival
I had a superb experience at the CIFF. I went to the April 3rd 9:45 AM showing of Self Made with my sister Brittany Ankrom. Brittany is a photojournalism major at Kent State so she appreciates film and the CIFF experience as well. The line was short, probably because it was quite early in the morning. We received a student discount on our tickets, which I really appreciated, and the cashier validated our parking pass from the Tower City lot. Even before the film began I was satisfied with the process.
The film Self Made was incredibly powerful! The characters were so transparent and the cinematography was sophisticated. The content of the film was beautifully orchestrated as well. I connected with the characters and was moved by this close analysis of perception and identity. I was unfamiliar with method acting until I saw this film. I’m not ashamed to admit that I went through a couple Kleenex during the film— it was so powerful! Overall I enjoyed the event and I will pursue the notion of bringing my future students to the CIFF. If I am unable to achieve this field trip (which I highly doubt because it is an esteemed, educational event) I will definitely be back. I’m seriously considering buying some sort of pass when next year’s festival rolls around.
The film Self Made was incredibly powerful! The characters were so transparent and the cinematography was sophisticated. The content of the film was beautifully orchestrated as well. I connected with the characters and was moved by this close analysis of perception and identity. I was unfamiliar with method acting until I saw this film. I’m not ashamed to admit that I went through a couple Kleenex during the film— it was so powerful! Overall I enjoyed the event and I will pursue the notion of bringing my future students to the CIFF. If I am unable to achieve this field trip (which I highly doubt because it is an esteemed, educational event) I will definitely be back. I’m seriously considering buying some sort of pass when next year’s festival rolls around.
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