More information on the making of our stop motion video, sUPer suffix
A link to the video…if you want to watch it again.
And…here are some photos of our filming process, including the awesome water bottle tripod!
Author: crelkov
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Good Video Games…Better Learning
As I started reading James Paul Gee’s article, Good Video Games and Good Learning, I was expecting some sort of general look at why playing video games can actually be good for learning. I am a gamer, so I didn’t anticipate any big revelations or ‘a-ha!’ moments about how video games aren’t actually the worst pastime you can have.
However, I was surprised to find the article so inspiring in terms of actual change that could be happening in the education system that so many of us are currently trying to find work in. I’m so intrigued by the idea, not that we should be having more video games, but that we should be using the “learning principles” (p. 34) that video games use to improve the way we teach students.
From Gee’s list of sixteen principles, there are a few that really stood out for me. The first on the list, Identity, is a hugely important concept for high school students. The comparison he makes between an in-game identity and the identity of a scientist or furniture-maker connects also to the idea that being a student is another form of identity that young people adopt while they are in school. The unfortunate part of this is that so much of that student identity is determined by outside forces – some of which can be actively hostile towards young people! How great it could be to have students proud of their educational identity and engaged in improving within it.
The fourth principle is Risk Taking and it put me in mind of the feedback provided to students by teachers. I’m thinking more specifically of English classes where students often submit work that isn’t marked by a simple ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. While I was on my practicum I often felt that there was not enough time to adequately use the feedback I had for students’ writing assignments in order to help them improve their writing. There were times that I had to just hope they would read and absorb my comments so that their next assignment could be better. Yet, the mark they received on that first assignment had consequences that might inhibit a student from doing just that. This is very much related to principle eight, Challenge and Consolidation. The learning that Gee describes sounds to me a lot like an apprenticeship – or, similar to experiences I’ve heard about graduate school. The anxiety of failure is lessened and students are encouraged to master a topic and are given the personal learning space in which to become dedicated to improvement.
There was definitely a great deal in this article that had me thinking twice about educational reform and from what arena the inspiration for it should come. In fact…I think I might head to the library and take a look at Gee’s book!
-Cristina R.
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Media Literacy in Action?
I came across this article yesterday about students in Brazil practicing their English grammar and spelling by correcting celebrity tweets. I don’t particularly approve of prescriptive grammar myself…but I thought it was interesting how polite the students were when they tweeted the corrections. I wonder if were they given explicit instruction in being nice on the internet. Is politeness something that should be a part of online literacy? What do you think?
-Cristina R.
What is the measurement of a successful adaptation?
Bortolotti and Hutcheon write that traditionally it has been the similarity or faithfulness of the adaptation to the source material, but that this kind of “reductive judgemental discourse” (444) does not take into account factors that might be more important such as artistic significance or cultural impact. Rather, the persistence of the narrative itself should be considered, along with diversity of media.
What I wondered when I read this article was, how can we measure the success of an adaptation in the classroom? Are there some adaptations that are used more than others, and if so, why?
The article discusses the fact that adaptations can also stand on their own as texts and achieve commercial or artistic success regardless of how closely they follow a source text (or texts). However, in using adaptations in the classroom, one thing a teacher would need to consider is appropriateness.
First, is the adaptation appropriate to the curriculum? A teacher may decide to use an adaptation because it closely follows the text being studied in class. For example, some teachers choose to show more ‘traditional’ films of Shakespeare plays that follow almost word for word the text. They want their students to follow along with the actors and expect that this will lead to a better understanding of the play.
Second, is the adaptation appropriate to the school setting? Of course, it needs to be mentioned that there are perhaps some adaptations that, no matter their fidelity or their appeal, might not be suitable in a classroom setting. I would think that teachers generally try not to be censors, but they do need to make the decisions about what films (or other texts) they present to their students.
Another factor that teachers will consider when choosing an adaptation is the overall appeal to their students. If there are several adaptations of a text available a teacher may worry less about fidelity and focus instead on how old the adaptation is (also dependent on the age of the students), whether or not it uses interesting settings or video conventions, or even how funny it might be. For many teachers, the reason to use a film adaptation in the first place may be to generate interest in the text. If the adaptation they choose does not engage the students, why use a film at all?
I think this leads to other questions for English classrooms, such as studying films as texts of their own and whether or not teachers should show whole movies or just clips when utilising adaptations.
Work Cited
Bortolotti, G. and Hutcheon, L. (2007). On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and “Success” — Biologically. New Literary History, 38(3), pp. 443-458.
-Cristina Relkov