Reflections of a new blogger

Having gone through and reread my sixteen postings, I find that none of them would be in the running for a People's Choice award. My voice (not to mention bias and emotions) is quite clear on most entries, but I wouldn't award myself many points for design or embedded references. I'm very glad I can go to others for that choice. Usually I was among the first people to post in my curriculum group, so I would check out others' entries over the weekend or Monday nights. I also blogged about things I read which weren't on that week's topic list (for example, my Appropriation entry).



I have also been ruminating about the purpose of blogging which we discussed in Week 8. I certainly used my entries to think and inquire of others. I did a little bit of sifting--my seashell icon refers to that--and more of archiving. Candance nominated my blog as an example of networking and I have tried very hard to respond to as many entries as I can. And I am certainly using the blog as a place to play (although I think the NING was more fun).



DESIGN

I didn't spend a lot of time making my blog fancy and most entries do not have a visual component. I do, however, like my Multiple Meaning Words, posted on September 19. Sparked by a term in our reading, I jumped to one of the most difficult aspects of English for language learners--figuring out words in context when they don't mean what the first dictionary entry said. I think my visuals for 'land' were quite good, although certainly not exhaustive. I have been much more concerned about content than appearance.



PROFESSIONALISM

In terms of thinking and process, I think my response to our collaborative multimodal, multigenre multimedia project is exemplary. I responded both on a personal and professional level to the experience. In rereading my entry, I think I spoke for many members of the class. Another posting that demonstrates professionalism is Checking the Blogs, which produced four responses. It certainly demonstrates that I was doing my homework! (:-)



CREATIVITY

None of my entries strikes me as particularly clever, but I did respond to readings and events that weren't on the syllabus. Appropriation drew on articles in the StarTribune the week after we had discussed this in class. It's Everywhere is another example of an additional posting in response to non-assigned material I read. No one responded to I LOVE TONY ROMANO, although that certainly has my voice loud and clear!

PEOPLE'S CHOICE

It's hard to choose the 'best' entries for this category. I love what Elizabeth B. is doing with The Things They Carried on her blog. I like the visual appearance or Natasha's blog and the hatching of a rock story. Consistently, Mary K. and Isa have written about rich resources and research that were new to me. I love how Janice is using her blog to try out ideas for her class, too.

Collaborative writing

I really liked the Bledsoe article because it was an excellent yet realistic example of collaborative writing process. Note, though, that he said I will teach the curriculum my way, which is collaborative for students but not for teachers. I see the focus in the school district now as being one of teacher-share: small mixed-class reading groups, collaborative SMARTBOARD lessons, required team meetings, for example. I see the curriculum being jammed into short, fragmented days which don't allow the freedom to create over the length of time Bledsoe takes with his projects. We can 'do it,' 'make it happen', but the more compressed and compartmentalized and skill-driven teaching becomes, the less viable an authentic collaborative writing workshop may be.

Over the years, I have participated in both cross-grade and intra-class collaborations. For several years, I paired my fifth graders with a primary class for a poetry unit. The big kids were amazed by the imagination of the little kids and the little kids were impressed by the attention and writing skills of the fifth graders. One of the favorite types was color poems. The fifth and first or second graders would alternate images a la HAILSTONES AND HALIBUT BONES. One year my fourth graders wrote and acted in 'animal plays' that they wrote in small groups. It was an act of faith on my part to give the students so much freedom, but they rose to the occasion and made everyone proud. I haven't done anything electronically, but I see a variety of potential explorations.

On a personal level, I do a lot of newsletter articles for a variety of groups of which I am a member. Sometimes people like what I've written, but other times I really have worked collaboratively with another person not just as editor but as co-author. Two heads are usually better than one.

Appropriation

Two articles in the StarTribune this week caused me to think more deeply about remixing and appropriation. One was the review of the show "Afterword" at Thomas Barry Fine Arts. The artist, Thomas Allen, cuts up pulp novel covers from the postwar era, then remixes the images to create new scenes. He explores perspective, 'leveraging depth perception, shadow and the occasional blurred focus to punch up the intrigue,' according to Greg Scott, the reviewer. I expect that the copyright has expired on the old novels, so Allen is free to use them in his new work. Scott thinks that Allen's work is more 'camp' than art, but it caused me to wonder how artists have been using appropriation for many years. (I remember a music teacher criticizing Resphigi for being un-original since all he did was 'remix' some ancient airs and dances and call it new music).

The other article was on the editorial page, an ongoing conversation about Shephard Fairey's use of an AP image of Obama to make his famous HOPE illustration. Stephen Bergerson, a trademark attorney, says that the issue is one of copyright--the original photo was taken by an Associated Press photographer, but it was Fairey (and Obama) who benefitted from the photo. Mina Leierwood, a Minneapolis artist and activist, had previously written that the HOPE image had become so iconic that it belongs to the people, not the AP. The question that is raised for me is: did Fairey transform the image deliberately to make money or fame or did he use it as a starting point to make new art? The link above cites some online comments from others as well. I would think that other people had similar photos of Obama, but that the AP one was most readily available. Does intent matter? If Fairey hadn't been so artistic/creative would the appropriation have really mattered? I honestly haven't been following the ins and outs of this discussion, but it raises some of those questions of fair use and copyright new technology is causing us to ponder.

Digital literature

Deb S. used the phrase 'crossing over' and I think I am on the same bridge. This week's resources were so inspiring, I'm not sure where to start. I viewed all the examples that Candance suggested and also CRUISING (amazing!) that Janice recommended on her blog, plus the Crayola video Deb mentioned. I'm beginning to see how creation of multimodal, multigenre pieces could be considered writing. For weeks, I was much more comfortable calling 'composing' since to me writing must include words. Then, especially in Jester's article, I began to see how tools such as storyboards, combined with strong visual images, could offer both structure and feedom. And once you call a graphic organizer a storyboard, well, they're used in movie and cartoon making and we're into new media. Chris Jensen's images tell a story once he explains the setting. I'm not sure where the documentary/creativity line is (I'm sure it's blurred), but I wonder if images alone are digital literature. Not being a gamer, I had no idea how powerful and lifelike the images in a video game can be; Heavy Rain, the Origami Killer looked realistic at some times and in some angles. I think this can be harnessed for good or evil.

I had a conversation last night with my daughter, who is in the MFA creative writing program at Syracuse. She was going on about how none of her novels would ever be on Kindle and how she wanted to work for a small PRINT press when she graduates. For her, visual images are something to be created in the mind, not handed to people so they don't have to visualize and use their own imaginations.

And I had a conversation today with a fourth grade teacher who said she was having to revamp one of her units that has a strong computer component because the labs were given over to testing. Now that I want to bring more digital work to my students, 20th century roadblocks seem to be multiplying. The school district has a way to go to make 21st century learning a reality.

Collaborative 5M plus G project

Our collaborative digital writing project Thursday night was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had as a student. To begin, Candance brought images of soldiers to the group with the story of how she had seen all these young people in camouflage at the University and how she began to think about all those who would not return home from war alive or whole or innocent. Then someone told of hearing the news that President Obama had made a secret trip to Dover AFB that night to see the caskets of soldiers returning home and talk with the families who had come to greet them. Once the class digested this information, Candance then broke us up into random groups to design and produce six multimodal, multimedia, multigenre pieces. I honestly thought I could not do that, the pain in my gut was so intense--like a rock, I said--just due to the content.

My group of three included a woman who is my friend and shares many of my values about war and peace; she is also a 'smoother.' The other woman in my group is someone who I don't know except through her blog and class participation. It is a testimony both to the quality of the individuals who chose to participate in this class and the trust level that has been built as we struggle together that we were able to work through my recalcitrance. We came to a consensus about genre (a letter from a child to father about what is going on at home) and media (voice thread, which two of the three of us had struggled with for our last assignment) and how we would have three voices so each of us had ownership and input. And we did all this in an hour.

What was also amazing was the depth of every other group's responses to the challenge. The variety didn't surprise me; I expected that. And you could tell that some voices were very near the surface--a letter to a baby yet unborn by a new dad, another to a child explaining why mom isn't home for her first birthday, a postcard home. How moving the poetry of the piece on memories! And then, the Recipe for a Soldier, Entry #5, for which, the group explained, they deliberately found images of people from many different races and places. It is haunting and aching and beautiful and sad. A wonderful creation.

Thank you to whoever suggested we end the class with the voice thread about the Peace Garden Bridge on this blog as a transition to the outside world. I think it was good to end with hope.

I have been sharing the experience with everyone--my husband, my student teacher, my girlfriends at coffee this morning. Thank you, Candance, for giving us both the tools and the climate in which to use them, when some of our souls were being laid bare.

I LOVE TONY ROMANO

I was so excited to read this article; it articulates and echoes my experience as a teacher and even to some extent as a student. As I read the Unfinished Music #1--John poem, I flashed back to my sophomore English lit class at Gustavus. In an effort to be multi-cultural, I guess, we were reading Crime and Punishment. My emotional response was so deep that a regular essay wouldn't do, so I wrote poems about each of the main characters. The professor accepted them (I still had to write the essay, but it wasn't docked for being late). This certainly wasn't my first piece of authentic writing, nor was it deliberately multi-genre, but it is one that sticks in my mind until today.

As a writing teacher for intermediate age students, I encouraged students to explore writing in a variety of forms and used a variety of models with them. One form we used for several years was creative non-fiction about an animal. Students could choose from many styles such as picture and description, narrative plus details, or non-fiction text plus poems. For the teacher, was hard to keep track of what each student was doing--where in the writing process they were, authenticating their voices--after their research was done, but the final products were all keepsakes. I think this kind of project using visual storytelling tools would be even richer.

Another section I enjoyed was Interview with a Skeptic. I haven't read Billy the Kid, but Ondaatje is probably better known for The English Patient. This is one of the few movies that I saw before reading the book. The book was rich with poetry and deliberate ambiguity. I didn't finish it, it was too "maddening," as Romano suggests Ondaatje can be. Romano has me interested in reading Ondaantje. I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and enjoying its lists of tools that read like poetry. And I still use a piece of advice the author gave his student who thought there was nothing to write about in the little college town: begin with one brick in the building across the road. Get down to the nitty gritty, the particular, the basic building block, then write your story.

I think that a digital component or two will enhance and make more real the multi-genre experience for today's students. Reading Romano, I get it.

Peace Garden Bridge Dedication I