Well, I finally got my webpage online (thank you very much for your assistance Ray!) It’s been a pleasure blogging this semester. I hope to blog again with all of you very soon.
Jonathan
The Final Blog Prompt: reaching the ever expanding frontier of ELA
Well, if we haven’t gotten it yet, I don’t think we ever will. Doering et al. and Miller very nicely sum up the point that P. Stearns has been making all semester: the ELA classroom must be a multimodal classroom. There are many different ways to achieve this, from making digital stories to creating wikis, but the song remains the same. Our students live in the 21st century and so must we. Alas…but wherefore can we study the classics? Well, we still can. Take Miller’s example of digital poetry movies. There is still an opportunity to expose students to our favorite poems, but instead of simply reading and analyzing them, line by line, we can help our students to create and design works of their own using the poetry as inspiration. Isn’t this what artists and poets do in the real world? Unless all of all students are going to be literary critics (as if there aren’t enough already), we need to provide them with relevant tasks that people actually do in the real world. Perhaps this should be the litmus test for everything we teach in the classroom: is this a relevant task, or just “school work”? If the latter, junk the assignment. There are plenty of wonderful assignments to give, as outlined in the Doering et al. and Miller articles: assignemnts like mini-media ethnographies and digital narratives which have some real purpose to them. Within the context of these assignments, we will find that not only are students more interested in school, but that we can still teach much of what we love about English: irony, tragedy, comedy, theme, symbolism, story arc, etc.. Just because we work in a multimodal framework doesn’t change the fact that we are still primarily concerned with the telling of and interpretation of texts. I happen to love the classics, particularly because of their universal human themes. But these themes exist inside of all authentic literature. Even in the literature that our students create when they make digital stories about their own lives. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my students to tell the truth, but tell it “slant” like Emily Dickinson. Don’t always go for the most obvious choice. Make us think a little. Right now my students are making music videos, and I’ve been able to teach them the difference between denotation and connotation in the context of images. There are so many ways to incorporate what we’ve learned this semester into our daily teaching practices. We just need the courage to wade out into some potentially cold water, which at first might be shocking and uncomfortable, but will be so refreshing once we get used to it.
Jonathan
Making Original Music Videos Part II: How my students might do it
I think it’s prudent to start the process of making music videos by watching them. Music videos exist as an independent genre, combining music and images to create something that is more than the sum of its parts. I have already shown students my own video, but perhaps we should take a look at some professional music videos on MTV and VH1. This will help students consider the many ways in which musicians, filmmakers, artists, editors etc. shape music videos to convey a variety of messages. Perhaps I can have each of my students working on the project choose a music video to present to the class, and lead a discussion on it.
The next part of this process will be to have my students choose a song to put images to. Song choice will of course depend on the student, but I will encourage my students to choose songs with powerful lyrical content. I think this will provide an opportunity to not only interpret song lyrics, but to consider the ways in which we emotionally react to lyrics, and then to find images which reflect our responses.
I think it’s a good idea to have my students find as many images as they can. Fortunately, google images provides a seemingly indefinite number of options. I think my students should print out the lyrics to the song they are using, and then find images which they feel correlate to the specific lyrics. This is also a good opportunity to teach the difference between denotation and connotation. I’m sure my students will find images that work on a literal level, but I will encourage them to go beyond the literal and into the symbolic. This will hopefully lead into many discussions about the difference between the literal and the symbolic, and how to use both in different contexts.
Once my students have collected their images, they will begin the process of selecting images to use in each part of their song. This will be a great time to discuss the concept of how the images might flow with the music. Images can move quickly, in a rapid fire way, or slow down and zoom in. Images can blend into one another, as in my video where the image of an old woman transformed into the moon, or cut in jagged manner. Special effects can be added as well, but as Amanda and Mandy said during their presentation, sometimes less is more. Special effects should never be added for their own sake, but only in the context of what the artist wants to express.
I think there are probably a lot of unexpected ways in which my students will get creative with this project. As with any authentic educational activity, there will be opportunities for teachable moments every step of the way, and I will do my best to help them make connections in whatever context we find ourselves in. Part of teaching the creative process is encouraging students to take risks with their work, and to find their own way. I have to be careful not to interfere too much with how they go about making their videos. Once they’re finished, there will be plenty of opportunities for comments and revision.
The more I think about it, the more I believe writing an original song will be much harder for my students than I had imagined. The first part of this process will have to include just playing with the Band in a Box software, plugging in chords and styles and seeing what they sound like. Perhaps even before this I should talk with my students about what kind of music they like and what they like about it. As I did with the music video portion of the project, I could have my students bring in songs they like, and lead discussions on them. This will help all of us consider what elements go into a song: melody( sometimes), rhythm, lyrics, instrumentals, vocals, mood, subject matter, etc. Through a critical analysis of songs, they can start the process of deciding what types of songs they would want to write. As they play around with Band in a Box, I can help them choose chord changes that might reflect the kind of music they’re interested in.
As they experiment with writing music, they can begin to experiment with writing lyrics. Once again, modeling is in order. Students will choose lyrics that are meaningful to them and lead discussions about why. Perhaps I will bring in a Dylan song, maybe Subterranean Homesick Blues, and talk about how the lyric works both in a literary way, and a musical way in terms of where the beats lay out, and the inflection points. During these conversations, we might see how many different kinds of lyrics there are; some lyrics have choruses, others do not. Some lyrics tell stories, others seemingly have no linear form to them, but center around a common theme. Some lyrics rhyme, others don’t.
I might have my students use the form of their favorite lyric (the rhyme and meter) and insert their own words. Perhaps I’ll just have my students free write on a topic that evokes a strong reaction such as love, war, friendship, family, etc., and then use the free write to craft a lyric around what they feel is their best line. Maybe that best line could become part of the chorus. Once again, so much of what happens will be determined by how my students react to the assignment; I will no doubt have to improvise and find ways to connect the dots.
Putting music together with lyrics will be a tricky process. My students could always come up with raps for their songs, but I think some of them will actually want to invent melodies for their lyrics. Fortunately, Band in a Box has a feature that lets you write notes on a musical staff, which you can play back for immediate feedback. I think that by playing around enough with the ways notes can fit together, students will come up with musical ideas that they didn’t even know existed. They could potentially write songs that other people could then sing, if they happened to be shy about their voices.
Once students are finished with their songs, which might take weeks, or even months to complete, they can begin the process of making their videos, as outlined in the beginning of this blog. I know that this is not going to be easy, and that my students will no doubt get frustrated along the way; but I will do my best to explain the idea of ”process”, and communicate that one is never finished with an artistic work. I will also use my own songwriting and video making experience as a continual example of how many ways there are to shape a given work, and that there are really no right or wrong choices–only varying degrees of insight and interpretation.
Jonathan
Making Original Music Videos Part I: How I did it
Last week when I presented my original music video, I did not go into much detail on how I put this project together, and how I plan on organzing lessons related to this activity for my students. I guess I was so caught up in actually making the video, that I put all other things aside. It just goes to show that when you get inspired, it’s kind of hard to stop doing what you’re doing. So let me briefly outline my own creative process in this project, and then how I plan to transfer this knowledge to my students.
For the music writing and recording portion of the project, I used a program called Band in a Box. This software allows a person to make completely digital music, without having to play a real instrument. If you know some music basics, such as what notes and chords are, you can use this software pretty easily. Because I already had my song written, my first task was to write in the chords using the Band in a Box interface. This was an interesting process for me because I had never really thought about my song in terms of how many beats each chord had per measure and other musical considerations like that. It took me a little while to figure out how to make my chords change at the appropriate times, but once I understood how to do it, it was relatively easy to type out the entire chordal structure of the song in the interface.
After I had my chords written out, I then chose a style for my chords to be played in. Remember that Band in a Box completely digitizes music, so at this point, I hadn’t recorded a single thing into the microphone. The style option plays the chords that are entered with different types of accompaniment. You can choose your chords to played in any style you want, ranging from hip hop to country. I chose my chords to be played in a 70’s Bee Gees disco style. I just figured that kind of groove would work best in my song. Now I was ready to record my own instrumentals.
In the interface there is a button that allows you to record live audio. I didn’t know it then, but there is only one track available in the software. I recorded my rhythm guitar part first, and it took a few takes to get what I wanted. Next up were the lead vocals. It was at this point that I realized there was no second track I could record to using this software. Basically, I had to record onto my guitar track, and combine the two takes together in a process called overdubbing. The annoying part about this process is that once the takes are put together, there is no way to change or edit any of the separate parts. If I just wanted to redo my vocals, it would be impossible; I would have to redo the entire song. This was annoying, and I spent a while on the phone with pg music trying to get around this problem in other ways. Unfortunately, the support representative told me that for recording live audio, I was basically using the wrong software, and that he would recommend Power Tracks instead. Well, I was so caught up in what I was doing that I decided to go forward with the software I had, despite the annoyance. Maybe not being able to redo sections of my song would force me to play better on the first takes.
Well, it turns out that I ended up redoing the song a few times before I got a version I could live with. It seems that there was always something that bothered me about a specific take. I sang out of key in one part; I swallowed my words in another; the second guitar solo was slightly off beat; the fiddle part wasn’t loud enough; my back up vocal overpowered the lead vocal. I guess you can always make something better, but sooner or later, you just have to accept what you’ve done as being okay. Even though I wasn’t entirely satisfied, recording another take probably wouldn’t have helped. I just would have found another thing to be dissatisfied with.
Now that I had the audio recorded I was ready to convert what I had done to a WAV file so I could then import it into Windows Movie Maker and make my video. Much to my dismay, the digital part of my song (in essence, what Band in a Box had digitally created from the chords and style I entered) did not transfer to the WAV file. Only the audio I had recorded myself, into the microphone, came out. It turns out that in order to transfer the digital music of Band in a Box, you need to buy a separate piece of software called a Roland VSC which converts MIDI files into WAV files. This was a bummer, because I felt the digital music added a lot to the sound quality of the song, but at least I had my own audio which I could use in the video.
Over the previous two days I downloaded about a hundred images from google which I felt represented the lyrics and symbolic ideas of my song. I imported both these images and the music to my song into Windows Movie Maker and was now ready to begin making my video. Basically, I tried to weave images together which followed the plot to my song during the lyric sections, and which followed the thematic elements of my song during the instrumentals. I tried to be creative with transitions and effects, speeding up the transitions at some points, blending images at others. At some point in the process, I realized that the images I had taken with google were not giving me the emotional context I wanted, and I began looking for personal images. I decided to use images of my family because I felt like the subtext of my song conveyed ideas about the circle of life, and the ways in which we change, yet never truly change at all.
My final task was to change the format of my video from Windows to Apple. Luckily, I had some good converter software on my computer, and this process wasn’t nearly as tough as I expected. I simply dragged the movie file into the converter and within five minutes, it was changed to run on itunes.
All in all this was an incredible experience for me. I’ve shown this video to both students and friends, and it has been well received. My students are really excited to begin making their own music videos; they would like to first use one of their favorite songs before attempting an original. One student wants to use Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. In thinking about this specific song, there are just so many ways to use images to interpret both the musical and lyrical content. Hopefully my students will become as obsessed and inspired by this process as I was.
Jonathan
Coming soon-
Making Original Music Videos Part II: How my students might do it
Time to get selfish
Well, I have been trying to motivate my students to work on the podcast of the trip to see Joe Fab and they just don’t seem interested. They don’t want to have to “script” anything and I refuse to do work “for them”. I hoped it would be a collaborative process but it seems like they just want me to do all the work. I’m trying to take this with a grain of salt: hey, if they don’t want to work on it, there are plenty of other things we can work on. That leaves me with a project to get together.
I’ve decided to do my own podcast of a song that I’ve written entitled, Life Sails you round in Circles. I am using a program called Band in a Box which allows the user to arrange music digitally. Because I am so used to just recording my voice and a guitar, without all the bells and whistles, this has been a somewhat difficult process. The software is pretty complicated and it’s taking me a while to figure things out. That being said, I am enjoying the process and I look forward to presenting my work to the class.
I think I’ve learned an important lesson from this experience. Sometimes it’s worth it to do things only for yourself. I’m getting a certain gratification from doing a project that has nothing to do with my job and everything to do with who I am as an artist. I think my students could gain from this philosophy too. The bead project is wonderful, and my students have been amazing, but I need to give them a chance to work on themselves a little bit more. I have a few students who I am teaching music to, and who are interested in writing songs. Perhaps learning this new software will open up avenues of music and lyric composition that I didn’t know existed. There are so many different ways to create music with this software, and so many different genres available (almost like templates of music) that some of my students could spend hours playing around with it. I’m excited to see how opening this door might help motivate my students to be more creative, and consequently, more happy with their education.
Jonathan
English and Existentialism: responding to my own blog prompt
I think Applebee is on to something when he writes, ”The English classroom should be what it has always sought to become: the place where students learn to master the power of words and symbols–theirs and others” (73). The key here is the word symbols, because in essence, words are symbols. I think that Applebee gets the essence of what we should be focusing on; the platonic ideal of the English classroom– communication, in whatever form it comes in. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation, as it should. There are so many ways that human beings convey meaning it boggles the mind. As Amanda said in her blog, the whole world is a text. So what part of human existence, past present and future do we focus on in our classrooms? That indeed is the question. Answer? Well, whatever interests both teacher and student. A workshop approach is probably in order here. There needs to be room for students to explore, question, create, and design–but not necessarily about the same things. There needs to be opportunity to embrace “all of the tools and media available” (73) as Applebee says; opportunity to use the power of technology in order to transform both the individual and the community.
Descartes once said, Cogito Ergo Sum: “I think, therefore I am.” In whatever medium that we engage students, the act of thinking is primary. And with the act of thinking is a validation of existence itself. I am here, alive. I am the eyes of the world. Or invoking a Whitmanesque idea, everything that happens is filtered through me. That’s what I want my students to get. Here is the world ladies and gentlemen, now go ahead and start reading! It’s a fascinating place, there’s a helluva lot to learn- there’s a lot to choose from. What do you want to know? What are you curious about? What means something to you? Here’s what I’m into; let me share it with you. Oh, you think Bob Dylan’s corny? You like Eminem? Have you written any lyrics? Do you want to? Did you know you could get yourself some exposure on myspace and youtube? Oh, of course you already knew that. Do you read Rolling Stone? Go to their website and check it out; what did you think? You like reading about musicians? that’s great! How about writing about musicians? awesome! If you want to create your own music magazine as a project, I’d let you work on it everyday. We could even publish it online. Maybe some other students want to get involved.
Perhaps a classroom where students are in the forefront of creating the curriculum may seem potentially chaotic, but if the entire world is a text to be read and added to, our decisions about what part of this world students should engage in are just as arbitrary as theirs; perhaps even more arbitrary considering that we often times have no idea where our students are coming from, on many different levels. We can decide what part of the world we want to explore, but we should never assume that our students have the same interests. If we’re lucky, we can inspire them to love some of the same things we love, or at least understand why we might love them. But really, we should respect the fact that their existence is just as valid as ours, young though they may be. They furnish their part toward future. They furnish their part toward the soul.
Scrutinizing the Cybersell outside of the class context
First of all, I want to say how much I like the fact that all of our readings seem to converge in really interesting ways. As I was reading Crovit’s article, it made me think of many of the new media literacy skills that Jenkins lays out in the White Paper. For Jenkins, as well as Hobbs and Crovitz, thinking critically about the media is not enough: we must get our students to produce their own media in response to the media that they critically engage.
Although I really liked the fact that Crovitz has his students do projects which teach the class about deconstructing various student targeted websites, I think that they could take it to another level. What about developing an online magazine, akin to Adbusters, in which students could publish multimodal articles and media which will critique the cybersellers? How about creating satirical ads which lampoon those specific sites, and posting them on youtube?
There are just so many ways to get students involved in the world beyond the classroom that we should almost be embarrased if we just have our students working on projects to be done only in class.
More than Lifting the Veil: Exposing and re-dressing The Wizards of Media
I found Mandy’s statement to “consider the implications the media has on your values,” interesting because my wife and I have made a concious effort to be very selective about what media we look at or listen to. We don’t have cable or sattelite tv, do not have internet at home (although this is on the way), and much of our news comes from listening to NPR and alternative radio. That being said, because I have internet at school, I frequently visit a multitude of sites, ranging from The New York Times to Rolling Stone Magazine. When I was young, I used to spend countless hours parked in front of the tv, watching sitcom after sitcom, or playing video games; but the more my eyes were opened up to the manipulation of the media, and the superficiality of our culture at large, the more turned off I became to television. In my alternative high school program called SWAS (School Within A School), I had teachers who engaged me in the kinds of topics that Hobbs so often brings up: propaganda, consumption, target media audiences, and media manipulation. I remember how disgusted I felt that my innocent love of Mickey Mouse as a child was in fact engendered by ingenius marketing strategists at Disney. Furthermore, the fact that Disney was paying slave wages to workers in Haiti making cartoon t-shirts was enough to make me completely sick. It shocked me to find out that most of what I believed was manipulated by the media, that companies specifically targeted kids like me to buy G.I Joe figures, or He-Man, or Snickers, or Lucky Charms. I didn’t like being somebody’s tool of profit so I decided to tune out and disengage. In retrospect, I don’t think this was my teacher’s intention. Mr. Batamarco was trying to lift the veil; trying to make us see that the Wizards of Media were really just ordinary men and women pulling the strings of our minds and wallets. But I felt betrayed; I believed that the wizard was a wizard who would serve; I grew up with so many attachments to the consumerist world that when the bubble burst, I guess I just decided to turn my back on it completely.
Now that I’m a teacher, I think, along with Hobbs and Jenkins, that teaching media literacy is more than lifting the veil. Using a term by Hobbs, students must be taught to read the world, which is more than simply gaining an understanding that the media is manipulative. What Jenkins refers to as “participatory culture” is more than just critical discourse of media, it is involvement. Play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation, are all terms which reflect the active and social nature of new media literacy skills. If students become outraged by media manipulation, as I was, instead of turning off, they must engage and transform the media, thereby becoming empowered in the process.
In the poetry of William Blake, the world is broken up into three stages: innocence, experience, and higher innocence. When thinking about this concept in terms of my own media awareness, I can comfortably say that I moved from a state of innocence to experience and remained stuck for a while in a very negative place. I see myself now moving into a state of higher innocence, where I understand that the media is highly manipulative, but that there is a certain power that comes with having media literacy, and using that literacy to select and produce more inclusive and informative media. Hopefully, I will be able to communicate my new found enthusiasm and interest in media to my students, and not simply turn them off to the propaganda which surrounds them, but turn them on to doing something about it.
Students as Keymasters
Amanda and Sofia raise an important question about how the media’s role as gatekeeper is being altered in the face of more open source, on-line available texts. Hobbs very clearly points out the power of the media to manipulate the truth in whatever fashion they want, but also suggests that through a critical study of media, and involvement in media, our students can take some of that power back. To use a lame Ghostbusters reference, I think our students need to become keymasters, and unlock the flood of information that is available to them if they search for it. Not only must we help our students think critically about the media, as in the reality t.v show activity that Hobbs describes, but we must direct them to media sources that they wouldn’t ordinarily look for.
I don’t think that Hobbs believes that the media, or people for that matter, can ever be completely objective, but certainly we can come closer to the “truth” if we are able to engage in critical discourse about the media, and study it as if it were a text. As Professor Stearns likes to say, English classes no longer need to center around a novel; we can inquire into and evaluate the media as if it were a story.
As Amanda and Sofia point out, the fact that anyone can publish online profoundly changes the way information can be communicated. Although the larger media corporations still dominate, there is room for talented individuals to express their ideas, to tell their stories, and to shape their world. As far as how this changes the English classroom I think it’s somewhat obvious, although I wouldn’t have thought so three months ago. Students need to act as both critics and participants in the media which exerts so much influence over their lives. Teachers must find ways to help students look at the media they see everyday with a critical lense: t.v shows, news, movies, and video games are texts that can be interepreted in the same way as poems, novels, or short stories. Although a curriculum based upon the study of media is a drastic departure from the way the ELA curriculum is usually organized, I believe teachers can hit many of the same literacy standards as if they were teaching in the traditional manner. It is simply the text that is changing, not necessarily our methods of analyzing that text.
When considering how students can participate in the media, and help shape the attitudes and values of the culture at large, I can’t help but think about our genocide awareness project. When we traveled to Oneonta today, we were able to make significant contacts in the professional world, who will be able to help our project succeed. But I also know that if we are not able to communicate with them about our progress, through blogs, vlogs, e-mail, podcasts, etc., we will lose the audience that we have just gained. People are interested in what we’re doing, but we need to maintain that interest by continuing to publish what we are doing. In short, people need access to us- they need information and communication in order to be involved from a distance.
Today, Action News 12, WBNG, came to do a story on our meeting with Joe Fab. I believe that running this story will help us with the project, but I also believe that a sustained, independent, media effort on our part will do more for the project in the long run. We need to take ownership of our own media, not just to get the word out about our project, but to take control of what we want to express. I noticed today that the interviewer from Action 12 asked the most inane, ridiculous questions about our project, and made many of my students uncomfortable. It was difficult to watch this most inexperienced reporter put my students on the spot, but it made me think about what happens when the media takes control of a story and manipulates it in subtle and not so subtle ways. My lesson from this experience is that we cannot leave things to chance. Not only do we need to create our own media, but we need to rehearse our responses for media which might not understand where we are coming from. Now that we are in the public sphere, we will be at risk for misinterpretation on a variety of different levels. As new members of the media, we need to make sure that people get the point that we are trying to make. This will not only help us succeed in our project, but also help us clarify in our own minds, why we are doing the project in the first place.
A Brave New Visual World
I guess no one should be surprised that visual media is becoming dominant in 21st century culture. The eye is by far the most powerful and influential of the five senses, and it’s easy to see how our world is shaped by forces which capture our visual attention. I think the Kress article shows a basic cultural trend whereby older forms of literacy (reading and writing) are being transformed into multifaceted discources which are dominated by visual media. Furthermore, Kress points out that written language itself is tending toward a more informal structure, reflecting a social desire for more inclusive and easily understandable texts. In this new and future world, the majority of the information we share will be created and transmitted in the easiest, most appealing, and most marketable ways. This does not necessarily mean a dumbing down of culture and a reduction of our intellect to the lowest common denominator, ala Fox News. Programs like The Daily Show prove that the news can be told in funny, creative, intellectual, and satiric ways. If anything, people of this generation and beyond will have to be more and more creative to be able to market information that is both highly informative and entertaining at the same time. In an age where so many medias compete for our attention, I hope that there are enough progressive, conscientious, and humane individuals who see that the only way to get their messages across will be to basically outfox Fox news: beating them at their own game.
Kress correctly points out that this generation and beyond will have to become better designers. I see a lot of parallels here with Pink. Those who are able to create appealing and personal multimedia artifacts, whether they be e-businesses, software, websites, video games, tv shows, news channels, radio shows, movies, blogs, and even possibly, books, will be at an advantage in the global marketplace. Our students will need practice being creators and designers, and we should provide a space for this in the classroom. Bringing Second Life into the equation, I think there are many opportunities for students (18 and older of course) to gain experience with real world applications of design by building houses, gardens, opening up business, creating advertising etc. As the New York Times article, “Even in a Virtual World, ‘Stuff’ Matters” mentions, people in a virtual world engage in many of the same activities as the “real” world. Second Life gives people the opportunity to potentially fail at something, such as investing or starting a business, but suffer fewer consequences. Schools should be laboratories for life, where students practice being adults, but with a net.
