CI5472: Entry 4.0 Summaries of Critical Approaches from Beach Ch. 4

Semiotics: Focus is on the meanings for signs and codes that are socially and culturally constructed. So, when we watch a Coors Light ad, what images suggest physical attractiveness? Wealth? Rock music?

Narrative Analysis: Focus is on identifying archetypal kinds of stories, like the “initiation into adulthood” story like Stand By Me, or the journey/quest story like Lord of the Rings. You might ask why a creator chooses to follow or deviate from the motif common to their subject matter or genre.

Post-Structuralist Analysis: This approach sounds a lot to me like what we refer to in literary analysis as “deconstruction.” It identifies binary opposites then details how those things play out – like good and evil, male and female, true and false.

Critical Discourse Analysis: Looks at the large, thematic discourses that happen. A discourse is something that has its own language set and community set, like a lawyer would engage in the discourse of law and a preacher would engage in spiritual discourse. Two main “discourses” to study could be race and class.

Psycho-Analytic Analysis: Everything is a dream world of penises and vaginas… obviously. Boys want to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers, girls will have oral fixations if something traumatic happens during the first year of life. I will likely never use this approach. Sorry Freud.

Gender Analysis: Asks the questions, Which gender has the power in this thing? Are characters under pressure to perform in a masculine or feminine way? How are the characters affected by gender issues? I never use the word feminism.

Post-Structuralist Analysis: This is what this critical approach says… “[Insert noun, any noun at all] is bunk.” Basically rejects stuff, especially stuff that was cool in the “modern” period like high art, master narratives, progress, truth. A post-structuralist writer might blend genres, tell a story backward, or explore different what ifs – think Memento and Run Lola Run.

Post-Colonialist Analysis: Asks the question, if someone/something were are colonizer here, who would it be? And who or what is being colonized?

CI5461: Entry 4.0 A Place for Electronic Grading?

Our reading this week brought up an interesting question. "Papers, Papers, Papers" explains new technology that actually grades student writing by computer -- shockingly for those of us who have never heard of this before, this method is used for scoring the writing section of the GMAT and correlates between 87 and 98% with human scores. The "robot" grader checks grades based on style, organization, and grammar and can keep track of a writer's most frequent grammar errors.

After reflecting a bit on whether or not this method of grading had a place in modern classrooms... I decided that the answer for me is yes. But here are the conditions. Never should the electronic grader be the only source of feedback -- every writer needs a human audience. Rather, if find that the electronic scorers can be used to reinforce teacher feedback and to do the time-consuming work of tallying a students most frequent errors.

An article we read recently suggested that grammar practice such as drill worksheets be individualized as much as possible. I agree with this because, why make the whole class work on using commas around non-essential phrases if only a small percentage of the class is still missing it? Electronic scoring could objectively point out mechanical errors, allowing teachers to quickly diagnose what needs focus for each individual student, and then prescribe practice based on students own weak points. I don't know about you but I love this!! Love love love.

On a similar note, check out this website -- it has mentor texts, writing prompts, mini-lessons, and suggestions for peer editing techniques: http://writingfix.com/index.htm

CI5461: Entry 3.0 Adapting the Writer's Notebook

For those of us who are teaching literature of the Vietnam war, these links may be useful. Check it.

http://www.vietnamwar.net/media/media.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/

After giving our lesson on Mechanically Inclined, I got the feeling that the writer's notebook would need adaptation for the secondary classroom. I have been wondering, now, what that might look like....

Brittany's Writer's Notebook

Section 1: Writer's Secrets
Writer's secrets will essentially be the mini-lessons that I give -- pronoun usage, semi-colons, hooks, etc etc. These will all appear on the left-hand pages.

Section 2: Writer's Process
The process section will occur on the right-hand side of pages. I will ask students to leave room for "playing" in the margins and at the bottom of each page (You might be able to clarify this by asking students to start a fresh page each time they do a draft or writing prompt).

Section 3: Gems
This section would be for beautiful "stalker sentences" -- purely a place for the work of others that the student finds sticks out to them; a space for the appreciation of language and nothing else.

So yeah, now that everyone has been exposed to the writer's notebook, how would you use it or not use it?

CI 5472: Entry 3.0 Commercial for Shot-by-Shot Analysis

This is a hilarious commercial for Axe body spray. It uses some film tropes for creating a "primal" feel, and you could totally go feminist on this thing too -- it clearly makes the claim that females who are sexual are savage and beastly. A woman can't just be sexual and normal in our society of course! ( I hope you can hear my dripping sarcasm here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU

Shot-by-Shot Analysis

Shot 1: Close up of a pair of bare feet running in natural environment. Gives the feeling of urgency and establishes a natural environment
Shot 2: Full length, wide shot of woman wearing bikini (she is the runner). She stops at the top of a hill and sniffs the air, a motif that suggests animals on the hunt.
Shot 3: Close up of woman’s face looking around intently gives the viewer the hint that she is hot on a trail – a predator near its prey.
Shot 4: Wide shot of woman running through jungle atmosphere, leaping fallen trees – suggests that she is strong and physically adept, also very vigilant.
Shot 5: Three-quarter-length shot has woman moving straight toward the camera, placing her breasts in the middle of the screen (for emphasis I am sure). The straight angle places the viewer in the position of the pursued beast.
Shots 3, 4, and 5 are repeated quickly to create a sense of panic or urgency
Shot 6: Close up of the savage beast (ahem… I mean woman) as she notices that she has competition, doubling her efforts.
Shot 7: Increasingly widening shot shows the beast to now be joined by many hunters, equally as physically adept and vigilant.
Shot 8: Starts at ground level at the peak of a hill, raises to reveal a whole valley of racing women
Shot 9: Three-quarter length shot of individual
Shot 10: Close up of woman swimming
Shot 11: Wide shot revealing many women swimming in with the waves
Shot 12: Very wide shot of women coming down a mountain in droves, just like the Wildebeast stampede in the Lion King.
Alternating shots of increasing speed of shots 9, 10, 11, 12.
Shot 13: Close-up of a bewildered but strangely happy average-looking guy
Alternating 9, 11, 12
Shot 14: Three-quarter-length view of dude spraying himself insanely with Axe
Alternating 4, 5, 9
Shot 15: Arms spread, still spraying, the average dude is swarmed by primal women from every direction. The true Average Joe American Dream…. Good luck with that.

CI5461: Entry 2.0 The Mystery of the Three-Part Thesis

This week we read essays both supporting and abashing the five paragraph essay. Overall, I felt that the two essays argued the same thing -- that we must teach students organization in papers, and make clear that they don't have to actually be five paragraphs but contain an introduction, conclusion, and several logically-ordered body paragraphs.

This is what I want to know... where did the idea of the three-part thesis come from? I find that the biggest problem that Kimberley Wesley points out, and yet it does not appear in the "definition" of the Five paragraph essay that she cites. Here is what I mean...

As the FPT requires, "an introductory paragraph moving from a generality to an explicit thesis statement and announcement of three points in support of that thesis."

But nowhere in that statement do we find "an explicit thesis that INCLUDES three subpoints"... and yet somehow tons of educators (including my own teachers) have gotten this idea, which leads to the problematic thesis statements that lead to summarization rather than argument; examples here...

"In all three books, protagonists suffer from a permanent character flaw of excessive pride which causes them to be separated from loved ones, closed to new ideas, and absorbed in self-pity."

"In all three books, the role of women within the novels is similar."

So, my point here is that the five paragraph theme is really moot, but this mysterious three-pronged thesis has got to go!"


Resource for this week is the old standby... PBS... gotta love it.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/

CI5472: Entry 2.0 Rationale for Media Studies

As an educator and an educated individual, I am thoroughly surprised whenever there is resistance to the teaching of new material. After all, if the purpose of education is to create citizens who work, live, and question, and grow in our society, should not the content of education grow with the world around it?

Kids need the tools. Our world requires attention to all kinds of media. Employers and clients expect a working knowledge of computer programs ranging from email to simple web design to blogs and wikis to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To deny our students the opportunity to practice with these skills is denying them the tools they will need in a competitive economy after high school.

Media study doesn't interfere with basics. Often, schools are afraid to take on media studies courses or to incorporate new literacies into curriculum for fear that "the basics" will be neglected. However, with 12 years provided to individuals in our public education system, it is doubtful that the basics would be neglected by the addition of a few classes, especially if offered at the secondary level on an elective basis. No advocate of media studies would advocate for books, spelling, or an effective paragraph to be eliminated from language arts education.

Education should be based on brain research. We often forget the important role of student engagement in the learning process. On a chemical level, the brain reacts to novelty in a positive, increasing memory and comprehension. Therefore, it is beneficial for students to receive information in new ways, such as through differing media sources like film, audio, internet, etc.

Diverse media gets students to make high-level connections. Just as with reading a printed text, other channels of communication need to be questioned. But media sources cannot be critiqued in the same manner as text. Like an English teacher may encourage a student to question the voice, perspective, and use of figurative language that an author employs, so do students need instruction on how to critique bias, reliability, and motivation for creators of media. Showing the connections between "reading a text," and "reading media" will show students also how to question and "read" the world around them.

The access issue only encourages media use. Often in discussions of media use, we hear the argument of access work against teachers who assign computer based assignments. This argument can be countered on two fronts. First, we cannot ignore the fact that the average young adult spends 6 1/2 hours with one or more types of media per day, with TV at the top of the list, followed by music, computer, video games, and reading for pleasure. As technology advances, individuals add more time devoted to new media, but not eliminating time from others, often engaging in more than one type of media at one time. So, to ignore media studies is to ignore the majority of communication that happens in the real lives of your students. Second, we must acknowledge the technology gap -- some students have more access and working knowledge of media usage than others. But if we are not teaching these tools in school, we are only widening the gap, creating a larger social problem.