Project Plan: "Tweeting for Perspective"

I've been working on lesson plans involving new media that center around the class that I'm observing.  They read Beauty and the Beast recently, and I wanted to make a lesson using Twitter to teach perspective. 

The class will have to boil down the story of Beauty and the Beast into a series of “tweets” on a mock Twitter forum.  Students can choose to be Beauty or Beast, and in 18-25 “tweets,” tell the story (from the fairy tale, not the movie) from the perspective of their character.

I made one for an example, you can find it here. 

You can find the full text of the story here.

And finally, the worksheet:

TWEETING BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

You and a partner are going to get inside the mind of Beauty or Beast (after picking from the jar to see which you will be).  Create a 140 character profile, find a picture online, and create 18-25 “tweets” of no more that 140 characters each telling the story of Beauty and the Beast from your character’s perspective.  You can type or print this assignment.

Profile Pic:                    Profile:

Tweets:

Zine Articles from ELLEgirl magazine

Here's the article about zines that I shared with the class during the lesson:

(and yes, I wrote them and it is me looking super punk on the cover of Deviant Behavior, my old zine.)

Zine Project, Part 2

All right, the gone but not forgotten part 2 of 3 section on how the zine project progressed with the 7th graders!

This class, we really focused on getting all of their submissions in, and getting them into the actual zine itself.  I brought in an electric typewriter, which they all really enjoyed playing with!  They had to use their class laptops, finish writing and printing their submissions, then they could help me assemble their pages and use the typewriter to type their names, titles, and whatever else they felt like trying out.  They LOVED the typewriter.

Really, what a zine is is a literary magazine.  However, if students view it as a lit mag, they find it less appealing and more "normal."  So, a lit mag is reframed as a "zine," something much more counterculture.  The fastest way to make it more counterculture is to simply use black cardstock to make the zine, giving it a much edgier look and a "punk rock" appeal.

After the class, I scanned all of the pages and uploaded them.  We were thinking about making a blog with the submissions, but I preferred the idea of translating the actual aesthetic of the handmade zine into an online version.

Simple, but it was a great experience for the kids!  Today, I had one of them tell me that she was going to start her own zine.

GoodReads: my new best friend

(as a Teaching Tool and for Fun!)

I've said it before, I'm a huge book nerd.  So when I heard about GoodReads, I was instantly obsessed.  And I mean obsessed before I even actually signed on.    And once I did, I was even more obsessed!

The basic premise: you have bookshelves (to-read, read, currently-reading, and whatever ones you choose to add, like "graphic novels," "teaching," "nutrition," et cetera.)  Then, you search for books- they have almost everything!- and put them on their respective shelves in your "library."  After that, you can simply use it to catalog what you're reading, offer reviews, and find suggestions of other books to read.  Or, you can become "friends" with people and see what they're reading!  I love this function because it's led me to a bunch of great new finds, and reminded me about books I wanted to read and hadn't gotten around to reading.  For example, my friend (also boss and teacher) had The Three Musketeers on her list, which prompted me to bring it to the beach and finish it in a matter of days.  (Dumas Rules!)

Anyway, here's what it looks like:

You can also get the widget to put on your facebook, twitter, or like me, on your blog, which is neat.  I'm using it for fun, and also to keep track of all of the books I'm reading about education outside of class, and to remember what books I want to read at some point.  It's a great tool as a teacher, and I think it has potential to get students really interested in reading and using new technologies. 

A student can have an assignment, for example, that they have to post 10 different books (maybe books they have to read for class), and that way they can keep track of what they're reading, and so can the teacher! There's a function where you can put in what page you're on, so it would help keep track of how much students are reading.  I think it has a lot of cool ways to integrate it into the classroom, and I'm going to keep thinking on it and bringing up the new ideas.

Zine Project, Part 1

I'm doing fieldwork in a 7th grade class, and rather than just passively observing, I got involved in the class.  To preface this lesson, a "history lesson" about me is needed:
I was young and punk rock once. During that time, I thought it would be cool to publish a zine (a homemade magazine.)  I published it, full of photos, poems,  essays, stories, and letters to no one.  It was corny, but it was a great way of expressing myself.  It paid off though: I sent a copy to ELLEgirl magazine, a teen fashion magazine at the time, and they offered me an internship, despite the fact that I was just graduating high school and not in any journalism program.  I wrote articles for them including one about how cool  zines are.
When I started my fieldwork, my teacher looked at my resume and noticed the ELLEgirl thing and wondered if I would be willing to teach a lesson about what working there was like.  I thought about it, and decided to take it a step farther: I would talk about that, and then we would make a class zine.

First, the handout:

I talked to the class for a few minutes about how I got my job at ELLEgirl, showed them the article on zines, and talked about what zines are.  Then, I told them that they would be making one.  Before class started, I heard kids complaining about this new project that they were getting, but once I explained it, there was a shift int he room: kids seemed interested.  It was a new way of having a class literary magazine: it's more punk rock, creative, and do-it-yourself.  It's hands on, and it's gritty.  It's not laid out perfectly, it should look messy.  The title should be silly.  I told them they could have a poem, short story, or an essay- even one about why they hate homework, and that got them excited!

Then, we worked on finding a name.  I wasn't sure how this would play out: would hey be able to come up with something interesting or would they get stuck?  I didn't have to worry. Within 5 minutes, we had a huge list of names:
Clutch
Prototype
Alien Workshop
Breaking Apart
Neon Colors
Better than Joey's Magazine, Magazine
and a whole lot more.

We used the Smart Board to write them all up, then did a preliminary vote to get down to 6 titles- each student could vote three times.  Then, with the top 6, we had a final vote, and the winner was "Better than Joey's** Magazine, Magazine."  Joey is a hilarious kid, totally self-aware and he loved it.  The name was a joke between him and his group, since he had come up with a name option, their response to his was to create "Better than Joey's Magazine, Magazine."  I was originally a little uncomfortable with it, but the teacher, who knows the students, was ok with it, and clearly Joey was too, since he was the one who voted most emphatically for it.

While they talked about the title, I circulated with a mock zine I had made for Beauty and the Beast, the short story that they were reading in class the week before.  I also circulated the magazines I had articles in, so they could take a look at the kinds of things that I wrote.  I walked around and they asked me a lot of questions about the job and about the zine, and talked to me about their article ideas- everything from poems to video game reviews!

I'll write more on this later, but after we had my section of the class, the students got to work on another project, and this time, instead of me being an outsider and sort of suspicious to the students, they were eager to share their projects.  And I was amazed with the levels of technology used!  Some of the kids had made their own simple programs or video games, and while they didn't have as much to do with the subject of the project as they could have, their technological literacy was shocking to me.

I'm thinking that what really brought the project to life for them was the hook that I used to get them interested- showing them a view of me as a kid and what I was into, and the practical applications of it (a zine got me a really cool job!)  Teachers should definitely try to show kids that they can be "real people" too- though I think this is more effective if you don't do it all of the time, so it has "shock value" when you do utilize it.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come in with next week, and how it translates into a zine.  I have a few great tricks up my sleeve for it...


**Names have been changed