FOOT: "I (heart) Novels"

"'I visit a bookstore two or three times a week, but I never stop in the cell-phone-novel area.'

Toyozaki concurred. 'Once you stop there, you feel sick,' she said."

From the article "I (heart) Novels" by Dana Goodyear, this is a quote that really resonated with me. Even after reading this article, I have mixed feelings about this genre of literature.

On one hand, I find it very interesting that literature has evolved in that direction. Authors became more resourceful and changed their medium for writing. On the other hand, I personally am not interested in that genre of literature at all. I hold some what of the same viewpoint as expressed in that quote above.

Still, I realize as a future teacher that just because I don't like a certain genre does not mean that my students will hold the same opinion. I think that it is really important for pre-service teachers to really take that into consideration. I believe that if you can get a student reading and get them to find their niche, you have done them a world of good. As of right now, I haven't really experienced having a student who doesn't like to read. This is a genre I will totally keep in mind to recommend to future students who might struggle with certain genres. Books such as TTYL by Lauren Myracle are an example of books written in text/instant message.

FOOT: Twilight and its Internet Connections

First off, let me begin by saying I might be addicted to Twilight. Yes, I know Twilight is a polarizing topic and yes, I know that the movies feature very low quality acting, but I just can't help it.



I was reading this article and was thinking about I started reading the books. It was sophomore year of high school (so right as the books were coming out) and the girl behind me in my Honors Chemistry class had her nose buried in the book before class had started. She started talking to my friend Laura, who was also reading the book, they were discussing Edward's character. That was my first experience with Twilight. Later through the semester, the pair started talking about their fan fictions that they were working on. So while I was reading this article, it brought back a lot of memories and it made a lot of sense. When an author is accessible to his or her fans, it gives them a "personal" connection.



After reading this article, I also decided to check out the Twilight website that was mentioned: http://www.twilightlexicon.com/. It's actually a pretty cool fountain of knowledge on the Twilight saga. Personally, Harry Potter and MuggleNet will always be top in my book. (J.K. Rowling has a pretty cool interactive website too) It was interesting because on the website, they had a blog posting about what might be the Next Twilight.

In the future, I was just thinking about how I would relate this to my classroom. I think an interesting project might be to try to contact authors and interview them. I think that might be something I would do if I were teaching a journalism course. Perhaps I would have the students find a YA novel that they enjoy and have them interview the authors if they can get a hold of them. It might be a nice semester long assignment to pair reading a YA novel with interviewing the author.

(ALSO: If you love Twilight, I would suggest checking out Midnight Sun. It is essentially Twilight from Edward's perspective. It is just a draft and not complete but I hope one day she does finish it.)

FOOT: I'm So Totally, Digitally Close To You

While I was reading this article, I found myself agreeing with most of what the author had to say. It made me think about how often I have multiple tabs open in the background, almost perpetually having Facebook open. I like how the author called it ambient intimacy. I feel that it is an appropriate term for it. I feel closer to my friends because of the technology that I use (though I only really use Facebook). Yet, at the same time, I’m skimming and scanning my news feed and like the author said “reading the headlines.”

It made me remember when there was no such thing as a news feed. I remember when I first logged in and saw the new addition to the website and I think I joined that group that was anti-news feed. Yet, I feel that now I have grown to like the news feed because I can be more connected to friends that I am not super geographically close to. This has helped a ton with keeping in contact with friends at different colleges or friends studying abroad.

One part of the article that really stood out to me was this quote that I found on Page 2:

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

It really is like a pointillist painting; each update is a dot and when you combine all those dots together, its the online digital "painting" of life.

FOOT: Great Films and How To Teach Them (Part 1)

I find this book pretty interesting so far. The whole time I've been reading it, I keep thinking to myself how much I loved video projects in high school (and even college).



This is a video project that I created in Educational Technology with my group. (We won the "prize" of bonus points for having the best video in the class as voted by our classmates.) I think it would be a really neat idea to combine teaching a "great film" and teach some of the technical terms involved with the movie. Then afterward, have the students create their own movie adaptations of a text we have discussed in class or from a list and have some of the grading critera be based off their demonstration of their knowledge of technical terms. For example, the students could be graded on their use of transitions (page 8), the shots and angles used (page 28), the soundtrack (page 30), and the editing (page 37).

PYTASH: How Poems Work

Once again, I love this book! I absolutely LOVE Figure 5.1 "Sensory Images" on page 91. This could be something that totally helps students "get" poetry. This is something I can totally see myself using in my future classroom. I feel that all too often, some teachers just assume the students understand the images in the text. By spelling it out in a way that students can see a physical list of images can really help make that connection. I really like how she started the chapter with showing how some students dislike poetry but love music. Using music in the classroom and analyzing lyrics as poetry can really help turn some students on to poetry.
Thinking of music got me thinking of multimodality. I think an interesting project would be to have the students make videos (even though this is a non-reading activity) to illustrate the meaning of a poem. It wouldn't have to be too elaborate but could be just acting it out or something. Another idea would be to have students, after reading a text or a poem, to turn it into a song or poem of their own design. It would kind of be like how MC Lars transforms some texts into a rap song. Personally in high school, I loved video projects because we were allowed to be creative but also demonstrate what we had learned in a fun way.



Below is one of the poems Jago talked about in the chapter too.

PYTASH: Choosing Which Books to Teach

I not-so-secretly love this textbook. That is something very hard for me to say. I LOVE that Jago has decided to really PUSH her students. She injects a little bit of humor into her writing when she says, "My sophomore students read a total of twenty books. Do students struggle to keep up? Of course they do! We are not working in the Zone of Minimal Effort." This is TOTALLY something I want to keep in mind as a future teacher!!! I loved her lists of books and her outside class reading assignments.
I feel that if I would have had Jago as a teacher I would have really disliked her in the beginning but at the end of the year I would have loved her. I would have thought, "Wow, I had a teacher who expected me to act like an adult and really pushed me. I learned so much more in her classroom than I would have learned in another."
I also really liked that she wanted to see if she could get a program in place where the students track their reading over the 4 years at high school. I feel that would have a tremendous impact on students so that way when they graduated, they would be able to see how much they did learn and maybe revisit some of the things they may have forgotten about later on in life.
While perusing Youtube, I found this little video of Carol Jago talking about papers.

PYTASH: Seven Guiding Principles for Literature Teachers

Is it just me or do I feel that the first page of Chapter 1 has, for lack of a better word, negated what we are learning in multimodals. "Too many students are doing everything but reading" (Jago 1). I literally giggled just a little after reading that first guiding principle. I am glad, however, that it was followed up with "While these projects may help to engage students in their reading, they must be used sparingly and should always be accompanied by a writing assignment" (Jago 1-2). This whole guiding principle reminds me of a teacher I had in high school whose idea of an assessment on Poe was "Draw a family crest for the Usher family and present it to the class" and that was all. I remembered even as a student being outraged that I was going to do something that was not engaging me at a higher level, especially since it was HONORS English!




Something else I really found to resonate with me about this chapter was in the 5th principle. Jago wrote something to the effect about how she showed her students a short clip of the 1939 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame and never finished watching the rest of the movie. She said it was just to help the students start having a visual image about the text they were reading. I think this is a tactic I would want to use in my own classroom because I know some students may have a hard time creating visual images in their head.

FOOT: Video Games In the Classroom

I have really mixed feelings about this article. Part of me thinks that it is really neat that they are able to use a game format in the school setting. I'm sure that the kids are really interested in this format because of its multimodality. It is in a format that the student's are really able to connect to. When I was reading this, I thought of the computer games I played as a child. This was something I left out of my autobiography and I wish I would have included!
When I was younger, my sister Mary and I used to play these games on the computer. I always wanted to try and get ahead of the grade level that I was at to really challenge myself. It was in video game format so it was similar to what they were talking about in the article. Yet, my mom got me these as a supplemental material. I think because I want to be a teacher, I really like the traditional school idea slightly more. I would love to be able to incorporate video games as supplemental material but I'm still unsure how I feel about a school where video games play such an important role. It's probably because I am the type of person who can't stare at a screen for hours without getting a headache.

A quote that stood out to me was: "Doyle leaned back in his chair. Had he taught anything? Had they learned anything?" I feel like there are some classrooms that you might go into and ask "Had they learned anything?" and to have to apply it to another level where kids are playing with video games might be an even tougher question to answer.

FOOT: Little Brother (Part 2)

I was really disappointed with the way Little Brother ended. The fact that Severe Haircut got off really made me upset. I feel slightly let down. Even though the ending wasn't to my taste, I feel that there are really good discussion ideas from the themes in this book. Overall, it has some really good ideas, but the whole sex thing threw me for a loop and I didn't feel it was totally necessary because it neither added or subtracted to the plot. Since the sex thing is in the book, I could see it presenting possible problems with readers or parents of students in my class.
The whole censorship thing might make this a book that would be hard to teach. I'm sure that there are parents out there who would really disagree with reading a book that featured 2 teenagers having sex, even though it wasn't overly graphic. I would really like to use this book in my future classroom, I'm just afraid that the sex thing will really put it on the censorship chopping block.

ALSO: I AM SO HAPPY THAT LARPING ACTUALLY CAME INTO PLAY WITH THE PLOT!!!
(I know, I'm such a nerd :-D)

FOOT: Pleasure Watching of the Packers Beating the Steelers

So as most people know, last night was the Superbowl. The Green Bay Packers won over the Pittsburg Steelers. Being a Browns fan, I rooted for the Packers. Yet, as I checked my Facebook during halftime (because I do not like the Black Eyed Peas) I couldn't help notice all of the status updates about the game, the commercials, and even twitter updates that are linked to facebook about the game. I saw that at least 5 friends had posted at roughly the same time about Christina Agulera missing a line of the national anthem criticizing her. They said things like "how could you be so stupid and mess up one song that everyone knows, I could have sung it better" and other variations of such. At first, I sided with them considering pretty much every sporting event in America will sing the national anthem before hand. Yet, as I thought more about it, I put myself in her position. MILLIONS of people are watching and she might have been nervous or something.
I felt almost angry at my friends for making remarks about her messing up once when they probably couldn't have done it at all if they were in her position. People may make fun of the times people forget things on "Jay Walking" on the Jay Leno Show but I'm sure if they had the same pressure on them, they probably couldn't have done any better.

Anyway, unrelated to the Steelers or Packers, I hope next year the Browns have a winning season. I have no idea if they will make it to the superbowl (in all reality probably not but its' always nice to hope) but I do hope next year will be better.

FOOT: Autobiography Update (Part 2: We're going to need another Timmy)

Here is another thing I found when searching Youtube for things to include in my multigenre autobiography. The more I search, the more I realize two things. One is that some of the things I used to watch as a kid was crazy and some of it has a totally different meaning now. Another thing is that the TV that is on now it boring in comparison. Granted there are the TV shows that I like but I feel nothing can really compare to what used to be on. Now TV is filled with reality and game shows. As I was thinking about it, there are really only 3 TV shows that are not reality show based: Chuck, Being Human (the US version...Sorry!), and The Office. Otherwise it is shows like Say Yes to the Dress, Real Housewives (Beverly Hills), TLC, Discovery, and History Channel shows. I feel compelled to find all of my favorite shows from the 90s on DVD to show my future children because some of the stuff that is on today scares me.

ALSO I need to find this movie somewhere! I remember watching it when I was younger and I want to watch it again!

FOOT: Socially Networked Classroom

As I am reading through the Kist book, I find myself liking the ideas presented in the text. Around page 12, Dr. Kist wrote about the Multigenre Autobiography. While making my own for class and reading this book, I think this would be a great tool to use in my future classroom. Since at the beginning of the year, many people are hesitant about being in a new class with a new teacher and new students. I think that it is a great way for people to get to know a little more about each other. Also, I remember talking in one of the prior education courses I've taken about sharing appropriate information about yourself with the class. By modeling this activity with my own Multigenre Autobiography, I think it would be a way for my future class to see a little about what I like to read and other texts I enjoy.
Another thing I am noticing while reading is the way the book is formatted. I know it might seem silly that this is something that sticks out to me but it is. I find it much easier to read this text because the activities are boxed off and little key phrases or questions are in shaded boxes. If this book was just 100% text throughout the page without the areas being sectioned off, I would probably have a much harder time reading this text since it is non-fiction.
On page 62 and 63, I really enjoy the literature circle section and rubric. I personally really enjoyed literature circles when we used them in Dr. Pytash's class last semester. Last semester we were participating in them and this section kind of helps to establish how to uses them from the teacher side of things.