Kevin Hodgson showed up a few hours late to the party, but posted his anyway. ¶ Inspiration for / judge of this event, Nicholas Felton, posted his own last night and proves himself well worth the fuss. [via everyone]
Dan Meyer
Great show. We received as many entries here as in the first contest in spite of a significantly steeper learning curve. You people have heart.
Two things:
- Enjoy the entries. Please direct specific feedback to the linked blogs and general observations here. The judges will get back at you Wednesday, January 16, with their thoughts.
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Submit your candidate for People’s Choice Award. E-mail dan [at] mrmeyer [dot] com. Set your subject to “People’s Choice.”
The judges have ponied up a second prize (same subscription, same great magazine) for the candidate the crowd finds most deserving. The polls are open for 24-ish hours, until 23h59, Monday, January 14, Pacific Standard Time. One vote per person.
For your consideration:
I look forward to constructive feedback. I’m still not too sure about the colors.
Do you think the judges will notice that I have five slides in a four slide contest?
I’ve had sketches for a week and the deadline’s in two hours. Sneaking it in before getting the last grades in and getting some sleep.
My four slides represent the connectedness I’ve found through my blog; some of our home electronics; a quick snapshot of my school district; and, always at the center of it all, my family.
I liked this contest because it made me think about the year in a way that I hadn’t before. I think that is what we are always trying to do as teachers anyway.
I considered not posting my entry here because it takes a, shall we say, whimsical interpretation of the subject.
In an act of sleep-defiance unwise before an exam week I stayed up to make my annual report for Dan’s contest.
here is a more post 9-11 color scheme for the same graphics
I may not be the best entrant, but I’m guessing I’ll be the only to have actually done work on an annual report for a Fortune 500 company.
I will say that the more I do, the better I start to see ways to improve presenting what I want to say.
I choose to create an annual report about my media consumption.
The idea came together when I was miles above the earth somewhere over Siberia.
Initially, I was going to compare my running and watching habits. “Maybe there’ll be a pattern,” I thought. “Surely my running and watching are inversely proportional.” A few graphs later, that didn’t pan out.
It’s the result of a few days pondering, and more hours with photoshop than I would care to mention – or can really afford at the moment …
It was also inspired by A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario”.
Anyway, it really made me think – some parts I think turned out OK and other parts I know are as dodgy as can be.
I was amazed by how little I track what I do and, often, how little access I could get to my own data (which I know the companies are tracking).
Mathew Needleman hosts a new blog carnival to limited fanfare and an inexplicably shortened deadline. But I’m a sucker for carnivals.
A two-part submission, then. One part to take issue with Mathew himself, and another to offer a slick assignment for a class that isn’t mine.
A Story Is A Story
My original sleep-drunk post basically declared (without justification) storytelling the most common discipline between every 21st-century career, consequently declaring it the most common discipline between every classroom on your campus, as well as the most collaborative and the most important to teach.
Mathew took exception to my democratic optimism:
I still think that there is a particular language to film making that only a few will pick up just by osmosis. If you want to make good videos you have to be aware of certain film language in the same way that print design requires adherence to certain principles.
It’s true that editing a montage involves a different instrument than composing a paragraph but they descend from the same skill.
For reasons of time, I can only offer one other example but they are littered everywhere if you feel like looking:
In storytelling, it’s essential that you set the scene and lend your reader / viewer / listener (henceforth “audience”) some bearing
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Language. In writing, it’s an introductory/topic sentence, like the first from chapter three of Moby Dick:
Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old- fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.
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Math. In a proof, you first declare the given constraints:
- Music. In music, you often set the scene by layering your instruments, staggering their introductions. Like in Gimme Shelter, first the guitar, then the drums, then the piano, then the vocals, and then, after the audience has become comfortable, they rock.
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Film. In film/tv, you open a new sequence with a wide, establishing shot, letting the audience orient itself before you dig deeper with medium shots and close ups.
Like with last Friday’s Friday Night Lights, within the first few seconds of the episode, you’ve got this wide, exterior shot of Smash’s neighborhood:
Writing and film offer the most useful parallels and, honestly, they. just. don’t. stop. Everything – from transitional sentences to the rhythm of individual words to alliteration to concluding paragraphs – has an analog in film and vice versa. True to Mathew’s point, their executions vary, but execution is always secondary to conception.
I want to build students who can recognize common storytelling elements in these mediums and then move effortlessly between them.
Kant Attack Ad
To that end, it’s impossible to watch this mudslinging campaign ad without dreaming up a classroom assignment.
So you have your kids pick two opposing people, ideas, or concepts. Yeah, you could go with opposing philosophers as in the video, but my mind is elsewhere:
- metric v. imperial,
- hamlet v. laertes,
- basketball v. soccer,
- wii v. xbox 360,
- or, since in the states it’s a freakin’ election year, pick two candidates and go at it.
And by “go at it,” I mean:
- research the issues;
- pick a side;
- choose a limit on duration;
- research current campaign ads on youtube;
- gather images, video clips, sound bites from the opposition;
- distort and decontextualize them;
- get your menace on for the narration;
- use the ken burns effect a lot;
- host a classroom film festival;
- have the class vote on the issues based on the persuasiveness of the campaign ads.
Raise your hand if you wish you were teaching an elective right now.
*raises hand*
TMAO loosens the knot on his bag of tricks, detailing some strategies for turning not-readers into readers. He inspires commenter, math teacher, and dy/dan blogroller, H., to turn in her math credential:
Glorious. Makes you want to convert to teaching English so you can read the Onion in class. I’ll pass it on.
At the end of a strong list he writes:
These things take time — time to plan, time to gather realia, time out of lessons and periods that we sometimes feel is slipping away, time when either folks who don’t get it or our own internal clocks yell at us to get on with it already. This time is more than paid back in increased student interest and understanding, more than paid back when kids start getting far more out of text than before.
Which is absolutely true. There is no substitute for imaginative, thoughtful planning – no manipulative, no incentive, and no web app that will work as well as when someone sits, agonizes, and finally devises engaging activities for it.
