Teaching Journal # 7

Monday we covered the Wysocki reading. It was clear from the beginning that the students were turned off by the density of the text, and I had a hard time even dragging out of them how Wysocki felt simultaneously pleased with and repulsed by the Peek  image.

 

I used Yavanna’s “gender-separation” activity as a means of starting discussion, and in that respect it was rather helpful. There wasn’t much of a dichotomy between the reactions of the sexes one might have supposed. Many students had a “non-reaction” to the Peek ad. However, those who noted that the picture could be perceived as sexist were girls and those who liked the ad tended more to be boys. In any case, I was able to work in conversation about form as well as aesthetics as I talked with each group and then with the whole class.

 

I asked students to tell me what Wysocki suggests we might need to do if we want to promote social change about how we perceive beauty. I read them some quotes, and asked them to name advertisements or people they thought of as not traditionally beautiful. I showed them some paintings by Peter Paul Reubens, and we agreed with Wysocki that showing nontraditional figures of womanhood is not going to fix the problem. I pointed out Wysocki’s term “particular beauty”.

 

We looked at the ways in which Wysocki’s article was a “visual” text, and compared the article to Bernhardt, who promoted many of the visual tools Wysocki used, but did not use any himself in his article. We also spoke of the ways in which Wysocki pushed at the boundaries of her discourse community with her numerous and inventive ways of visualizing text.

 

Wednesday Lauren was nice enough to teach my class for me, as I was ill. She followed my lesson plan, which had the students individually answering the questions on page 460-1 in WAW and then coming together as a group to discuss and find common themes.

 

The rest of the class involved students formulating their topics and arguments, with Lauren touching base with each group to ensure they were on the right track. She told them that they would have to have their arguments by next class.

 

Friday was very much a workshop day. I was jumping from group to group for most of the class, answering questions as they arose.

 

We explored Weebly and Prezi as a class. I introduced them via the overhead projector and encouraged my students to pick a medium through which they are going to present their projects. I have one PowerPoint, two Weeblys and two Prezis.

 

I wrote down all the elements they would need to include in their projects on the board. I am finding that there is no way around repeating myself in different ways when I talk about these projects if I want them to successfully include all the elements of the assignment.

I showed them writingspaces.org, from which they would read sections for homework and general help on design style and implementation.

 

Almost all my students started their storyboards in class and many got quite far in the process before we ended class. This was helpful because I was able to look at some of the story boards and nip certain problems in the bud. I overheard some groups making plans to meet over the weekend, so I am hoping to see some nice progress on Monday. If it seems like they are behind schedule on Monday I might consider requiring meetings outside of class in the future.

 

I had some problems with keeping the students on task. I think this is always going to be a problem in computer classrooms. I don’t really yell or get angry in these situations, but I do force the student to talk to me about the work at hand by asking them a ton of questions about the assignment, and thus they are forced to start working on the project.