A happy New Media Birthday to me.

I am a big believe in celebrating birthday weeks. One day is just not enough for recognizing the day a person was born. My birthday is November 18th and the past week was devoted to celebrating it. On Monday I took three wonderful Peabody women to a Regina Spektor concert. As girls do, we drank cocktails, bitched about men, and enjoyed laughing with each other. As we made our way into the Ryman, we happened upon an unfamiliar opening act. The band used an old television set as an advertisement for their name. One of my new media classmates leaned over and shared, "what a great use of technology. We should totally blog about this!" I could not agree more.

Tuesday, I ran to my best friend in Nashville's house after a long night of work in order to bring in the actually birth day with some beer and bad TV. While I was watching trashy reality television. All through the program, the reality stars used abbreviated language to indicated feelings and words, "OMG! Did you just see that?!" My friend and I turned to each other and simultaneously exclaimed, "New Media!" Then we fell over in drunken giggles at our revelation.

Wednesday. My actual birthday. It consisted of class, more class, a tattoo, and a party. I figured it was time to cross another thing off my 101 things to do in 1001 days list and finally get the tattoo that I wanted. As I was clenching onto my friend's hand for dear life I could not help but wonder how a person begins to learn how to do tattoo art. Imagine the different literacy that goes along with learning the trade of implementing permeant ink on a person's body. Not only do you have to learn how to use the tools, but you also have to learn how to create the design in a way that fits the person's personality. For the pussy that I am, my artist knew to outline the easy stuff first in order to get me acclimated to the process before moving onto more complicated things. Thankfully, it is in a place that I will never have to explain to a future employer.

Thursday and Friday passed. Saturday I journeyed to Atlanta with a friend in order to catch another birthday concert. All along the way I was joined with a recognition of new media.

Sunday rolled around and three of my favorite people came with me to see one of my favorite indie musicians, Imogen Heap. The greatest thing about her is that she uses overlapping sound-bites in order to create the background for her music. Her whole concert is filled with technology because that is the only way to make the type of music she makes with only one person. A friend and I looked at each other and I knew what we were both thinking - New Media! I kept wondering how does one learn how to make music like that using those tools. There were sound boards everywhere and the music had to be played at just the right time in order to make it all work. Not to mention, one must learn the literacy of the actual instruments before every creating music with it. Imogen Heap knew I whole different language that I was not even remotely familiar - the language of sound editing.

New Media is all around us. The more I look around, the more I understand the importance of teaching it in the classroom. As I put the finishing touches on my inquiry project, I have discovered that it is not enough to teach using new media. A good teacher must teach the literacy surrounding new media. We must teach this new language that comes with the technology. I can make all of the powerpoints I want about books we are learning in class, but I need to know how to use and teach the language of powerpoint. I need to be able to teach the language of technology along with the English language. Book literacy and new literacy go hand-in-hand now. It is up to us as teachers to recognize that and pass that on to our students, so that one day we might be able to celebrate our birthday at a concert where a former student is creating music with the written and technological language that we taught them.

Where's YOUR head, Sir!

I must tell a story, and I promise that it pertains to literacy. It was Friday night and for some reason the band at the bar decided that this was a good night to continue playing past midnight, which meant that all of the people who went to the JayZ concert and all of the UKentucky people who went out drinking decided to come back to the hotel just before we had a chance to do last call. There are very few things that make me fuming angry. Coming to my bar as I am moping and expecting a drink is one of them. This massive flood of people come storming into the joint, demanding a drink. I was tired, cranky, my feet hurt, and honestly I could not justify staying open for an extra ten dollars. However, the other bartender thought differently and decided to starting handing out the drinks like they were free. So I was stuck serving for a whole hour on top of the previous hour I endured with the band. Mind you, we are supposed to be closed by 11:00pm. "Woopsie," is what the band told me when I explained why I was giving them dirty looks.

Finally, the crowd eased so I thought if I started mopping then the Jayz people and the Kentucky people would get the hint and leave. No one wants nasty mop water splashing on them. Unfortunately, both groups were too drunk to care, causing me to curse them silently while I tried to mop around them as best as I could. A Kentucky man walked up to me and asked me, "where is your head?" I gave him the "what the hell?" look, which proceeded to translate back to him, "keep repeating until I figure it out."

"Your head, your head, your head lady. Where's your head." Finally, with clenched fists and a clenched mouth and said, "Sir! Repeating the word 'head' back to me a hundred times is clearly NOT going to make understand. Please use another synonym."

"Your John, Lady. Where is your bathroom." For F-ing reals! You really could not say that in the first place?! No, instead you had to be all unique on me in hopes that I figure out your country ways. Shaking in anger I pointed him to the restroom. The JayZ people were laughing and telling each other about the strange interaction between me and the man, using another language entirely because I didn't understand a word they said. They kept laughing and pointing, and I kept mentally giving them the finger. (Sorry for the crudeness, but at 2 in the morning, after a ten hour shift my lady-like charm vanishes completely).

The next day I was telling my mother the story. In her loving motherly way she said, "Kimberly, you know that if you plan to continue residing in the South you need to learn these types of slang." Wow! I thought I was getting by with knowing what Sears-suckers and meat and threes are, now I have to learn a whole new language? I found it interesting that the way I felt towards the man was the same way I felt towards the help forums when I was trying to figure out a program to create my video essay and all I was coming up against was advanced and unnecessary technical jargon. Can you please just use plain English and I will understand? But, what is plain English anymore? What is plain teaching anymore? All of the southisms are nothing compared to the language of technology as it pertains to everyday life and the classroom. What if a student informs me of a new program I had never heard of, does he have to repeat it a hundred times for me to understand or reach into his memory for an ancient terms that compares hypertext to a type-writer on speed (yes, I have heard this comparison before). Also, where do we as teachers draw the line when it comes to slang? At what exhausting point do I flip the mental finger and internally scream, "learn English!"? I hope that it never gets to that point, but I can guarantee there is going to be a large Old School Thesaurus in hand and my students are going to learn how to use it well.

Reach the ah ha!

The reason this post is a little late is because I wanted to capture the whole experience of making our video essay for class. At exactly 11:52am my partner and I finished our projects. Fourteen hours staring at a computer screen produced a product that is more meaningful to me than any essay I have ever written. I have also never felt more like a student in my life.

Three weeks ago we were given a daunting assignment: create a video essay about new media. The look on every face in the classroom was shear terror. We are all graduate students, who got into the top education program in the country, and yet the thought of facing something new broke out the cold sweats. Periodically throughout the weeks, everyone stubbly asked our classmates how their videos were coming. The same look of "girl, please!" answered back from every face. One thing was clear, we were all lost and no one wanted to start drowning just yet. Therefore, the weekend before the project was due caused a wide-spread panic. We have to do this video NOW! It is amazing how people put off the scary or unfamiliar. Not facing whatever it is that has us in a panic is better than diving in head first. Unfortunately, when something is left to the last minute, diving in is the only solution.

On Saturday morning, two bright-eyed girls faced each other and said, "let's do this." The first few frames were a piece of cake. The animation went smoothly, and we were so enthralled in the process that we completely lost track of time. Both of us are products of the computer generation, yet we still have a fascination for what can be done. At one time it was said, "the mac is only as limited as the imagination." I guess our imaginations turned off because our once clear vision turned into a massive blur. We were hitting roadblock after roadblock. Every minute was a new frustration. You know it is bad when you start actually talking to your technology, begging it for help, "PLEASE work with me!" One of us would think of something brilliant only to find out that you have to jump through twenty hoops to make it happen. Apple support became our best friend. Also, why is it that the coolest and easiest applications cost an arm and a leg? After eight straight hours of working we decided to treat ourselves to some trashy television and pizza.

Sunday came along and two glazed-eyed girls dragged their feet back to the project. The progress of the day before seemed irrelevant. New roadblocks formed and old ones still were not resolved. They started asking friends, relatives, the entire internet for advice. Facebook statuses included, "does anyone know how to download a youtube file onto imovie?" Slowly, the movie came along but it still wasn't up to par. Unfortunately, I had to go to work that night. We vowed to meet for two hours Monday morning and get everything accomplished.

The bar was slow so I decided to use the time to figure some things out. Slowly, everything started making sense. Maybe it was the change of scenery, but things became easy again. Not wanted to jinx the good luck, I showed up this morning with written out directions on how I figured everything out the night before. In two hours we had a movie. After a few fine tunes and some voice over, me and my partner sat back watching our creation with an overwhelming sense of pride. We created this video from nothing: no background knowledge, no prior experience. We were not only proud of ourselves, but of each other. When one of us got frustrated, the other would calm the storm. When one of us was too tired to type correctly, the other took over. It was a collaboration unlike any other I have ever experienced. Both of us brought our strengths and weaknesses and it worked out. No matter what happens, we made a movie and we are proud of it.

Now that I have had a little time to reflect I realized that this project replaced me back to the position of student. For the last few months we have been taking about teaching. We are teachers. We are leaders. We are capable of reading theories and understanding them, discussing them, writing about them; but it is rare that we place ourselves back in student mode. As I student, I remember things coming easily to me. The only subject I really struggled in was math. I made it up to Algebra II and then goodbye easy street. No matter how hard I tried I hit roadblocks that were impossible, at the time, to overcome. Everyone once in a while I would finally "get" something and once I did, I never forgot. Making this video was similar to that feeling of accomplishment. I forgot how good it feels to get the "ah ha!" moment when the youtube video downloads perfectly as an mp4. I forgot how amazing it is when you know that you created something great. Most of all, I forgot how much I learn from figuring out puzzles. Although my eyes are now crossed from staring at the computer, and I am pretty sure I destroyed my kidneys from all of the Tylenol, this was an experience I will never forget. It is also a tool that I will take with me into the classroom, because I now know what the potential roadblocks are so that students are relieved of some of the major frustrations when given an assignment like this one.

I can't wait to share our video with the class. I will post it on the blog after we get feedback.

Read. Write. Think

I was searching through several websites this week, trying to find ones that connected nicely with my inquiry project. I didn't realize how much material there is for English teachers. One website would lead me to the next. With each click of the mouse, I was creating my own research story. I don't even remember what I googled, but I ended up coming across TEWT (Teaching English with Technology), a fantastic website for English teachers.

For those of you who want to play around with it now, here is the link:

http://tewt.org/lessonplansites.html

I searched through the numerous lesson plans the site offers for numerous common texts that are taught in English classrooms. There is information for poetry, ESL, grammar, and other links for more lesson plans. I had a choice: do I continue on this site or explore some more? I ended up following the link to another site called read.write.think. It is a collaborative website created by the International Reading Association and NCTE. This specific website concentrates on connecting technological lessons to the standards. It is great for public school teachers.

Of course, I immediately clicked on the Student Materials tab and started playing all of the interactive games. Who knew that there is an actual website that helps you create book covers! My favorite was the fractured fairy tale tool. It first helps define a fractured fairy tale, and then helps the student create a fractured fairy tale of their own. By entering information, the tool produces a hilarious fractured fairy tale. The student can decide what to keep, change, or discard so the story becomes their own. It would be interesting to see if students learn fractured fairy tales as effectively using the tool as they would sitting in a group with a pen and paper, writing out their own tale.

After wasting a significant amount of my "school work time" I decided to move on to the lesson plans. They are set up by grade level, making it easy to sift through the elementary lessons. I came across a specific lesson that really caught my attention. The topic is "Protest Songs" and the lesson included students looking through Wiki pages for specific songs. The students are required to write down the sources the author used, located at the end of each wiki page. Then the students do their own research and see what materials were used (scholarly/popular). This is a great lesson when it comes to Wikipedia because as the lesson specifically states, almost every student will run across one or two sources that are not very good for research and informative purposes. However, this is not a lesson on why students should never site Wikipedia, it is a lesson about understanding protest songs through research. Long lesson short, the students eventually write their own wiki page on a pre-established class wiki about their specific protest song. Then the students classify each song in order to find the significance of the general protest song. What a fantastic lesson!

I think the reason behind my excitement is because this lesson allows students to take control of their own lesson. We all search wikipedia in order to find the latest information about our topic, but most of us don't actually write responses to the wiki's or correct information we know to be false. This lesson proves to students that even they can participate in an information gathering site. They can be the authors of their own Wikis just as the protestors of authors of their own songs. Any lesson that causes a students to read, write, and think is a great lesson. The three components of English are not separate so they should not be treated as such. Sometimes I find teachers organizing class lessons in such a way that each time slot is compartmentalized - Reading. Writing. Thinking. Instead, this website encourages English teachers to mesh the three components of learning into one - ReadWriteThink. Every lesson incorporates all three, so that students are engaged in numerous activities at once without realizing that they are reaching higher levels of thinking for an extended period of time. I highly recommend this website for that reason, not to mention the easy step-by-step lesson plans that are easy to understand and accessible to all teachers. This is definitely one site that I am keeping bookmarked for future use.

I don't wanna grow up... What do you mean I already have?

It is official, I am old. The two wrinkles I found in the mirror the other day is just the beginning. What was I thinking when I decided that doing a teen podcast was a good idea?! I have not been a teen in, well, okay three years, but really nineteen and eighteen don't count so five whole years! When did I grow up and completely miss the fact that young adult literature is no longer beautiful and innocent? When did I become so OLD!

I finished four podcasts so that the library could launch an entire month without worrying about delays. I finished the facebook page, the twitter page, and the layout for our weekly polls that go along with the podcast. I thought I was the coolest, hippest, new media-ist teen podcast host in town only to have my sixteen year old brother explain that I was totally lame when it came to teens. I believe his exact words were, "you just sound too old." Well, shoot me in the face now because I am not getting any younger, pal!

Nevertheless, my brothers words got me thinking, do I really understand teenagers today? Sure they have the same relationship issues I had (I love him so much...DUMP!) and acne, low self-esteem, and self-doubting have not gone away with time. So why is it that whenever I read a new young adult book I cringe a little? The Twilight series was not just bad writing it was, in my opinion, way too mature for a middle school audience. I recently read a book called Last Night I Sang to the Monster which displayed the f-word numerous times. A great book, but I kept asking myself if it is appropriate for the group it is aimed towards. Oh dear, not only am I old but I am also a prude! Me! Miss anti censor is wondering about the appropriateness of young adult books! And if I feel this way about books, how do I really feel about the big bad scary internet? Have I gotten older or have teens finally figured out that they are one of the largest consumer groups, therefore authors and publishers now have to present actual themes that teens want read about and deal with on a daily basis. Looking back, my teenage life was not Anne of Green Gables perfect. Nor was there always a Little House on the Prairie moral every time I was faced with a difficult choice. I guess teens finally got smart and said, "sorry, but we aren't going to read if you don't start writing for us."

That is exactly what I now have to do: write my podcast for teen. It is out with the old and in with the new. I may be grown up but so are teens and they are capable of dealing with the same issues that I deal with regularly. It is not as if the teenage brain stops developing in literacy because parents, and teachers, and certain groups of people don't think they are capable of dealing with adult themes. I say, if you are able to understand what you are reading, go ahead and read. I guess we all have to go through a bit of READ-hab, even the old farts like me.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told

I wonder what would happen if Shakespeare was given the opportunity to return to the world of the living for a day in order to see what has become of his work. What would he think about the abundance of adaptations of his work that are floating around? Would he want to kill Kenneth Branagh for his musical interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost or congratulate him for his creativity while asking for a share of the profit? Would he have stormed on stage during this years Shakespeare in the park's seventies interpretation of Taming of the Shrew and demanded that the entire production be shut down? Worse, would Shakespeare walk into any middle or high school classroom in America and start crying? See Occupation Romeo

Shakespeare is one of the most, if not the most popular author taught in schools today. It is expected that every American child walk away from school with a least the ability to summarize Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is so much material out there for teaching Shakespeare that a teacher can go an entire career without coming up with his/her original lesson plans. Ironically, Shakespeare is also one of the least understood authors. Because there is so much material (including video renditions, graphic novels, abridged text and adaptations) that many teachers see Shakespeare as an easy teach. Plop in a movie and the kids are set AND bonus! you get points for using technology. WOOT! All I have to say is shame on you teachers!

The works of Shakespeare is one area I am looking into for my inquiry project. The best thing about Shakespeare's work is that most of it is very similar. He recycled many of the themes and character traits so one lesson for one play can be transfered to another without much modification. The English Journal is very interested in the use of Technology in the classroom, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. Joshua Cabat gives several unique and interesting technologically centered exercises that correlate with Shakespeare. (I will discuss them in detail in my project presentation.) One aspect of his article, "The lash of film: New Paradigms of Visuality in Teaching Shakespeare"that I found interesting was his quotation,

The arrival of visuality means that students are now able to manipulate images as easily as text. The first is that the use of images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental or ancillary literacy: it is literacy... (p57)

The reason this was so interesting to me was because we had talked about some of the questions that came to my mind after reading that quotation in class. First, what happens with copyright? If my students take a version of Shakespeare and manipulate the visual to fit the assignment, and then post it to youtube are they plagiarizing? Does the school need to pay royalties to the original production company of the chosen film? Can other teachers use what my students created as a tool or model in their own classroom? These are questions we as teachers need to ask ourselves and copyright issues become more and more relevant to public domain texts, visuals, and website like youtube.

I also really had to wonder about the idea that "images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental literacy." That is my whole project--How can technology supplement classical texts. If I am forced to think of technology as its own text, its own literacy then that is a whole new can of worms we are dealing with in education. It is easy for teachers to see technology as a supplement. It takes the pressure off of teachers if they don't feel like they need to literate in another form of literacy. Technology is for the technology classes not English. However, what Cabat is suggesting that visual literacy is in fact its own standing component within the subject of English, which means English teachers are going to have to teach visual literacy instead of just incorporating it as a supplement to classical literacy.

Although this is something to consider, I think I am going to stick with my topic of technology as a supplement. We cannot ignore the fact that Shakespeare is still going to be taught in classrooms regardless of the fact that visuals may be a part of the next generation of English standards. As teachers we need to suck it up and teach Shakespeare, but it doesn't have to be a chore. With technology we can create unique and fun exercises that engage students into understanding Shakespeare, not just summarize the plot of Hamlet. The technological tale may not be plainly told, but it definitely speeds best.

The power of Youtube

The two articles "Youtube vs. Boob Tube" and "Youtube and the Cultural Studies Classroom" bring up important issues regarding online video (specifically youtube) use in the classroom. The article in Wired, "Youtube vs. Boob tube" doesn't explicitly comment on youtube in schools, but it raises questions that pertain to teachers. The focus is on youtube as a social medium; an instantaneous world that elicits popularity through what others deem as entertainment. The article points out that 65,000 videos are uploaded every single day, but only a fraction of those videos collect enough views to be considered a meme. The first video it presents is "boom goes the Dynamite," a painful sportscast from a college freshman. I don't know what was worse, watching the entire 3:45 hoping that things would get better or reading the especially lame comments such as, "he must be a virgin." Like Wired, I too find it interesting what becomes popular. Who would have thought an obese teenager dancing to a Romanian song would become one of the most viewed videos on the internet. It just goes to show that the line between quality and popular entertainment is obscure.

The question is, what place do these pop culture youtube videos have in the classroom? Am I the cool teacher for knowing the entire Numa Numa dance, or will I be viewed as another lame adult trying to be "cool"? What place do memes have in the classroom? I really cannot come up with a lesson that can incorporate a tumble video. It is funny, but now appropriate for the classroom. Students can create their own youtube videos for assignments, but that brings up permission issues. Do teachers need to get permission from parents to publish a student's video on youtube?

The article also brings up another great question: With 65,000 video uploads a day, how long do these meme videos continue to be memes? What is the life expectancy of a youtube video? I wonder what percentage of my first classroom of students will even know about the Numa Numa dance. One minute, a youtuber is a star for uploading a video about a baby brother biting the finger of an older brother, and the next minute youtube viewers have moved on to funnier material. Is there ever going to be a time when the material has run out of entertainment? Youtube is an exploding world of shared content. Whenever a vast amount of people are constricted to one place, there is bound to be some issues. The second article touches on those issues.

Christopher Conway's article matches the content on youtube with classroom content. His article focuses on Higher Ed, but there is a lot that translates over to secondary education as well. The first is the idea that teachers can use youtube videos as a supplement to lessons. He gives examples of videos that he used in some of his classes. Ironically, as I clicked on the links in the article I found that a number of the videos he uses have been taken down because of copy-right infringement. If I want to show a clip from a Shakespeare film, am I going to have a problem accessing the clip because of copy-right? Conway was able to show videos to his college students without any problems, but as a secondary education teacher in a public school am I going to have to get parental permission for every youtube video clip I show? It is not like youtube videos have ratings and many school districts mandate that teachers can only show 'G' ratings without parental permission, so how will I deal with youtube. Also, many school have firewalls that prevent sites like youtube from being accessed. Am I even going to be able to get the clips at school?

After reading the article I began searching for videos in my content area. It struck me as funny that I had never actually searched youtube for readings of poetry or animated novel clips before. Usually my experience with youtube involved funny clips that were shared with me or hours of searching for "best TV bloopers" in order to save myself from boredom. Conway is correct in the fact that youtube is a place with rich materials for teachers. You can find anything on the site. I can show not one but hundreds of clips from different versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And the clip of the woman reciting her Ode to Dickinson is an incredible way to show students how to mimic poets. Youtube is a great source for visual supplements for classroom lessons, but there are many issues that go along with the open social network. Conway brings up many of these issues at the end of his article.

I especially appreciated his pointing out that copy-right is going to be an on-going issue for youtube users, especially now that google owns it. I also don't want to show my students a clip only to have advertisements scrolled all over the page, or deal with obnoxious comments that distract from the overall content (see Yo comments are Whak!). I think Conway is right, there is a place for youtube in the classroom, but there are also going to be some major changes that we must acknowledge and deal with in order to fully take advantage of the opportunities that youtube provides.