Multigenre Literacy Autobiography

ST: New Literacies in Practice.

Right now I'm waiting for my video to load and be approved to School Tube , so let me reflect on the creation of my Autobiography.

I decided to use Mac's Keynote for the framework of my presentation. The program has better transitions between slides and nice animations. I then located images for the different areas of the autobiography. Instead of doing a picture per slide, I stacked the images, adding animation directions as I went. This helped me not have too many slides and group information too. I rehearsed the timings so that the show would play by itself. I exported this presentation file as a Quicktime movie at the CD ROM (medium) file size.

I wanted to include videos of the TV shows I watched instead of static pictures. I used Screentoaster to record a portion of the opening titles to shows I could find on You Tube. Generally the quality of the video was good. Once I screencasted the episodes I needed, I downloaded the TV shows as a separate video.

I then used iMovie to edit the two videos together. I placed my TVs in the middle of the Autobiography. I was able to easily access iTunes to add song clips into the presentation. If I didn't have a song, I could find it online and use the record feature in iMovie to add it to the show. I also used the record feature to add my narration. I exported the completed video as a Quicktime movie for web streaming. This lessened some of the quality of the video I am sure.

I have a School Tube account, so once I had my video done, I logged in and uploaded the video. It was under 1 GB, so I hoped I had no problems with video length. Then I had to wait for a moderator to approve the video. Once it is approved, I can attach it to this blog!

Reflections/ Critique

• Apparently my rehearsed times were sped up when exporting Keynote to video. I will need to add extra time next time so I don't have to speak so fast!

• There were many things I thought about adding upon completion of the presentation:

1. Movies like "Dune" and "Bladerunner" were great High School Sci-Fi influences. They got me reading some great Sci-Fi that wasn't all about technology.
2. Movies like "Momento" which challenged my concepts of linear storytelling and "Sleepy Hollow" which showed that you could reinterpret a story and not stick to the literary source.
3. Comic Books and graphic novels. I read some of my brother's initially, and probably knew more about the characters than really the storylines. Have read many of Alan Moore's Graphic Novels and Gaiman's Sandman series.
4. Totally forgot Fantasia (one of my favorites as a child) and Beethoven, Chopin, Copland, Bernstein, and other Classical music interests.
5. Would have liked a more modern "update"of where I am now to close the show.
6. Would like to add more on comics I read that had ties to literature like "Fables" or ones about storytelling like "Unwritten" or nonlinear plots like "Planetary" and how the Iron Man movie gave me my favorite superhero. (It was Batman, but Bruce Wayne can be kind of depressing at times.) It's interesting that both of my "superheroes" have no superpowers but are detectives and inventors. Perhaps this traces back to MacGuyver?
7. I would have liked to revisit how my childhood is being reinvented: GI Joe, Transformers, Tron, She-Ra, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, A-Team, Knight Rider, and the list goes on and on. Some of these are marketed for new, younger children, but I think many (like the She-Ra collector figures) are targeted at my age group because we'll remember them!
8. I would have liked to talk more about how these media affected me as a teacher. I incorporate a lot of movies, artwork, and music into my classes as they fit into topics (like looking at Elvis' music and the Beatles' music while studying the difference between the Greasers and Socs in "The Outsiders" or making predictions with Harold Loyd silent movies.

• I liked the way the video selections showed up. I think I might try exporting the iMovie as a CD ROM category to see if the quality can improve while file size doesn't go up too much.

• Liked the way the music fit in those sections and blended together.

• I was really surprised how much literature affected me. Literature informed my art interests and many of my favorite movies. It affected my travel, and I often liked song lyrics that told stories or had allusions. Does this mean I valued the printed text over other media? I don't think so, but it is interesting to see how one medium interprets another.

This project is something that is never finished but only abandoned. I like its reflective nature. I was surprised to see how many times different texts were tied to literature. Yet in many cases, the other medium change or reinterpreted the original text (like Rossetti's Double Works of art.) Good techniques in storytelling are present in whatever text you pursue!

Thursday, July 22nd: Interaction with Multiple Texts

ST: New Literacies in Practice

Today in class we were given a chance to interpret and react to visual images, sound, and finally print text.

I liked the way the texts included several genres within each genre. There were portraits, photographs, symbolic, and realistic visual images. Music ranged from classical to soundtracks and from quiet music to distorted music.

This activity made me feel proud of an activity I use with students. We would listen to a piece of music, and they would have to construct a story around the music (usually from a soundtrack). Students protested quite a bit and at first there are a lot of "dancing" stories. But with time, they get into the activity. They get specific about what certain sounds might represent. They understand that there isn't really one representation. Often we would then look at a clip from Disney's Fantasia like Beethoven's 5th to show mood of music and action

or Rhapsody in Blue (both from Fantasia 2000) to show more of a plot directed story line. This lead to discussions of how music in movies gives us cues as to what might happen next or how themes are created.

It always amazed me how students had a hard time jumping into the assignment. Part of that is that is that they are being asked to visualize. They are not having the visualization done for them as often is the case with video games, movies, and other graphic elements of their life. They have to be patient and creative. It seems rather shocking to see 8th graders who want to be TOLD what the song is about. They want to know what they should be writing about. They want to memorize why the author added this character into the story. For them making meaning is not about interpretation or connecting to the world, text, or themselves. 

But, then again I remember sitting in High School English and having my teacher explain all the symbols hidden in stories we were reading. He told us what all the poems we read meant too. I thought he was a genius because he knew all of these things that I didn't pick out. It wasn't until college when I started to research English papers that I realized experts often differ in opinions when interpreting texts. This recalls a quote I heard from Hemingway "“There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is wrong. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.” I like this quote because sometimes I think we read too much into everything instead of just enjoying a novel! It must stand for something else, right? It can't just be a great story. I also like it because although Hemingway had no significant symbols for his story, it may be that I interpret his story in a different way, and that too is perfectly ok.

If we consider ourselves educators, then we should be teaching not only curriculum, but skills a student needs-- not only for work or to be considered educated-- but skills that allow them to enjoy life. To listen to music or watch a movie and understand why and how the parts click together to work.

If we consider ourselves reading teachers (which we ALL are!) then our students need to have a chance to not only read and locate information in textbooks, but interpret primary documents, struggle with unfamiliar words and content, decipher artwork as well as charts, understand how to visualize information by creating their own graphic organizers or interpretations, and debating and defending their ideas. 

Because reading is about making meaning from different texts. But if we teach as if there is only one answer to reading, then who will explain our lives to us when we graduate from school?

Web 2.0 in Elementary Classroom: Portraits of Possibilities

ST: New Literacies in Practice

Kelly's portion of this article focuses on the use of blogs in a first grade classroom. Her goal in using the blog is to allow students to share stories. She uses 21classes.com. She starts with basic blogging to allow her students to feel comfortable. She takes time to read the posts during her morning meetings. She can then add more categories-- especially for book talks, responses, and book recommendations. It seems like students are given time in class for assessments, but the blog also offers an outlet for student communication any time they are near the internet.

Kelly brings several points out about the usefulness of using a blog to do this instead of the "traditional" journal. The blog is informal, so students feel less pressure to worry about spelling or editing issues. They truly love reading and commenting on other students' posts and information. She is able to keep in touch with previous students and allow parents a place to write a message to their students. Besides the positive affects on writing, some reluctant readers used the blog to improve their reading too as they enjoyed the text. Students feel a sense of importance since they are "published" and assignments take on a "real world" aspect. It also seems like this would allow a class to feel more connected due to reading text that is content based and informal and sharing their responses to that text.

I really like this idea of using a blog with classes. Our district provides a blog on our website, so we even have the ability to check comments and approve them before they are published. The only major issue is computer access. Many students do not have internet access at home. They can get online for activities they "like" such as Facebook. But many, especially in Middle School, are not able to always get to the library on their own to do computer work. I guess that puts the challenge to the teacher to make the interaction powerful enough to get those students involved. Computer use in school can be tricky depending on how computer labs are signed out. However, if students know there is a post, they should be able to use 5 or less mins of their lab time with another teacher to respond if teachers team correctly.

It is exciting to think that these students are given an opportunity to interact and use technology like this in first grade!