Hopkins Green Frog was an internet meme that began to circulate throughout cyberspace in late 2004. According to Wikipedia, the original add was posted by a 17-year-old autistic boy in Seattle. The boy had actually created a poster for a lost toy frog. The posters with the child’s writing on it asked for people to return the toy if it was found. Several people noticed the drawing the child had made along with some of the text the child had written on the flier that was posted looking for the toy. Webusers started to use photoshop software to create versions of Hopkins Green Frog. The internet users would use the drawing they created of Hopkins and attach the new image to other pictures like, World War II propaganda posters and other images. A recent search of Google shows 572,000 entries for Hopkins. According to Richard Dawkins, a geneticist who created the term meme, and developed the successful conditions for why they become of interest to other people. Dawkins said that Hopkins retained fidelity, the ability to be copied easily. Also the image had fecundity, which was described as the rate at which an idea is copied and spread. Finally, the image showed longevity or the ability to remain relevant over time to the users.
While searching through YouTube I saw how the site uses videos to convey messages and information. I was interested in the presidential politics section that has to controversial videos on. One of the videos does a parody of an old commercial showing Senator Hillary Clinton speaking to a group of people who look paralyzed by her speech. The other is a parody of Sen. Barack Obama. These commercials have been written about by the media. This shows the influence that the site can have on the political races. I also was able to watch highlights from NCAA Tournament Basketball Games. It seems that YouTube can give you selective categories of information whenever you want to find something.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Being A Reader
I definitely consider myself a reader. Now that I find myself teaching reading I am very interested in understanding what makes reading click for middle school kids. I came to my interest in reading not directly I must admit. I became interested in journalism shortly after leaving college and always thought about writing more as a profession. But by writing, it seemed to lead be back to reading more and more things and trying to pattern what I was trying to say after writers that crafted their message well. I like the Star Ledger to see what's happening in New Jersey and the New York Times gives you a good perspective on world events. During the school year it seems I don't get a chance to read for my own enjoyment, but I always read something out of the NYT Book Review on Sunday and I like C-Span2 does BookTV on the weekend. Recently I've become a big fan of NPR and they always have some profile on a book or an interview on a writer that is interesting. The last two books I read for my own enjoyment were Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and Blink. Two books I read over the Summmer just to get ready for this school year were; The English Teacher's Companion, by Jim Burke and Meet Me in the Middle by Rick Wormeli.
I'm still trying to find myself being comfortable in the classroom and reaching reading. When I work with my students I have the best result when I have one-on-one exchanges with then about they are reading and what is going on with their comprehension. Using a Guided Reading technique is always fruitful because your working with text in manageable portions and supporting understanding of confusing words. Graphic organizers on stories are helpful also because many students need a visual representation or writer ideas.
I'm still trying to find myself being comfortable in the classroom and reaching reading. When I work with my students I have the best result when I have one-on-one exchanges with then about they are reading and what is going on with their comprehension. Using a Guided Reading technique is always fruitful because your working with text in manageable portions and supporting understanding of confusing words. Graphic organizers on stories are helpful also because many students need a visual representation or writer ideas.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Watching the Matrix
Watching the Matrix again and listening closely to the plot to follow the details of the storyline is very intriguing. The whole premise that scientists will be able to create artificial intelligence on a level that was portrayed in the movie is something that leaves me awestruck. There was an entry on Wikipedia that said the film borrowed heavily from Japanese anime (cartoon series) stories.
The plot which revolves around a group of humans that have escaped from the Matrix which controls the world and humans who are part of the world they seized control of. The movie have plenty references to cyperpunk and hacker subcultures. The film is known for popularizing and evolving the use of a visual effect known as bullet time, which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed, according to the Wikipedia page on the movie. This has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood.
The movie was given good reviews when it debuted and given praise for its special effects. The movie received Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects and sound. In 2001, the Matrix was placed 66th on the American Film Institutes, “100 Years …. 100 Thrills” list. When you Google Matrix “The movie Matrix you get over 5 million entries.
The plot which revolves around a group of humans that have escaped from the Matrix which controls the world and humans who are part of the world they seized control of. The movie have plenty references to cyperpunk and hacker subcultures. The film is known for popularizing and evolving the use of a visual effect known as bullet time, which allows the viewer to explore a moment progressing in slow-motion as the camera appears to orbit around the scene at normal speed, according to the Wikipedia page on the movie. This has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood.
The movie was given good reviews when it debuted and given praise for its special effects. The movie received Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects and sound. In 2001, the Matrix was placed 66th on the American Film Institutes, “100 Years …. 100 Thrills” list. When you Google Matrix “The movie Matrix you get over 5 million entries.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Assignment for Feb. 25
I tried to start a MySpace page but I didn’t get that far with it. I looked at a lot of different examples and I am trying to decide how I want to put my page together. On these MySpace pages there is so much tied together that explains who a person is. Besides the personal biographical information a lot of people use music.
Putting together videos also helps to show more about the person’s life and where they live and who are the important people in their lives. I am looking at some of the chat rooms on MySpace to see if there are topics that I can discuss with other people. It’s strange being able to speak with so many people around the country. Most of the profiles I read show people who are open to learning about new things and hearing what different people have to say.
I will continue to try to build up my page with things that reflect my personality and the things that I like.
Putting together videos also helps to show more about the person’s life and where they live and who are the important people in their lives. I am looking at some of the chat rooms on MySpace to see if there are topics that I can discuss with other people. It’s strange being able to speak with so many people around the country. Most of the profiles I read show people who are open to learning about new things and hearing what different people have to say.
I will continue to try to build up my page with things that reflect my personality and the things that I like.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Night Out at Theater Party
I had a wonderful night last night. My wife Ingrid and I went to a theater party in New Brunswick for the Crossroads Theater production of "Movin Man" by Glynn Turman. The actor and the director Woodie King Jr. who created the New Federal Theater in New York City was there. Both Turman and King were very friendly moving among the guest and talking about their experience working on this production and asking all of us to get tickets and tell friends about the play. One thing I found out that I didn't know was that Turman was in the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's "Rasin in the Sun" when he was 12 years old.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Assignment for Feb. 17
Class Assignments for Feb. 17
Teenagers are stripping away the utilitarian function of the web and are making the internet a sleeker and flashier technological tool.
This is the overview I came away with after reading the Pew Internet “Teen Content Creators and Consumer report and the article “Adolescents’ anime-inspired ‘fanfictions, ’ An exploration of Multiliteracies.”
In the Pew Internet report, researchers Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden’s primary finding is that more than half of online teens are content creators. The most popular activity is sharing of self-authored content and working web pages. A full third of these online teens are sharing artwork, photos, stories and videos. This finding is interesting for teachers who want to have students work on computers to complete class work or do larger projects. Nearly a quarter of these teens are keeping their own personal webpage, according to research by Lenhart and Madden for the Pew Internet project.
The researchers see these teens as tech-savvy and intrepid internet explorers. They are referred to as “omnivores who explore.” They help adults do things online and they have more technological tools such as cell phones and PDAs or personal digital assistants and are likely to use them to go online, according to the report.
Internet use is the norm among teenagers in the 12 year to 17 year old age span. Some 21 million teens in the age group use the internet and half of them use the internet daily and another third use it once a week or more.
One in five online teens keeps a blog and 38 percent or 8 million young people, say they read them. A quarter of online girls in the age range of 15 to 17 years of age say they blog, according to the report.
Blogging teens are more enthusiastic content creators, manipulators, and sharers than their non- blogging counterparts. Teens who blog are more than twice as likely to share content of their own creation and to remix content that they have found elsewhere into something new, according to the report.
Music holds a position of priority for teens’ lives, online as well as offline; in our society, half of online teens (51 percent) said they download music from the internet, the report revealed.
Teens who get music files online believe it is unrealistic to expect people to self-regulate and avoid free downloading and file-sharing altogether.
In the article on adolescents anime or Japanese fanfiction, the authors discuss research about two students who use this way of developing stories to show their creativity.
The two adolescent girls who were part of the study had become exposed to anime on the internet and were using it to develop their own stories with a Multiliteracy framework.
The students expressed that writing in this fashion allowed them to have fun, exercise imagination, and avoid boredom. Their fanficton allowed them to develop and solidify relationships with various friends, according to the article. Communicating among a group of friends mirrored Web 2.0 creativity.
The girls Multiliteracies framework included multimodality, which included designs such as visual, linguistic and audio in a text they produced. The authors also discuss intertextuality which is the linking of different stories or texts to preceding stories, according to the article. Finally, the students used hybridity which refers to the creation of new meaning and new genres through the design process.
The authors of the article said lack of knowledge by their teachers’ of fanfiction was a lost opportunity for literacy learning.
One of the key ideas I took from the readings is that teachers may not need to look for entirely new ways to give students assignments on the internet. Maybe teachers should look closer at what their students are already doing and mimic what they see their student doing and enjoying when they develop assignments from their curriculum. This would certainly eliminate any excuse about they don’t understand what they are being asked to do if you explain it as something they already do for fun and enjoyment.
I feel there is a lot happening right now in the world of Web 2.0 that offers teachers substantial content to explain to our students. If we mix in current affairs from the media and show how the internet can help embellish understanding this could offer students exciting and differentiated ways to grasp subject matter.
Teenagers are stripping away the utilitarian function of the web and are making the internet a sleeker and flashier technological tool.
This is the overview I came away with after reading the Pew Internet “Teen Content Creators and Consumer report and the article “Adolescents’ anime-inspired ‘fanfictions, ’ An exploration of Multiliteracies.”
In the Pew Internet report, researchers Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden’s primary finding is that more than half of online teens are content creators. The most popular activity is sharing of self-authored content and working web pages. A full third of these online teens are sharing artwork, photos, stories and videos. This finding is interesting for teachers who want to have students work on computers to complete class work or do larger projects. Nearly a quarter of these teens are keeping their own personal webpage, according to research by Lenhart and Madden for the Pew Internet project.
The researchers see these teens as tech-savvy and intrepid internet explorers. They are referred to as “omnivores who explore.” They help adults do things online and they have more technological tools such as cell phones and PDAs or personal digital assistants and are likely to use them to go online, according to the report.
Internet use is the norm among teenagers in the 12 year to 17 year old age span. Some 21 million teens in the age group use the internet and half of them use the internet daily and another third use it once a week or more.
One in five online teens keeps a blog and 38 percent or 8 million young people, say they read them. A quarter of online girls in the age range of 15 to 17 years of age say they blog, according to the report.
Blogging teens are more enthusiastic content creators, manipulators, and sharers than their non- blogging counterparts. Teens who blog are more than twice as likely to share content of their own creation and to remix content that they have found elsewhere into something new, according to the report.
Music holds a position of priority for teens’ lives, online as well as offline; in our society, half of online teens (51 percent) said they download music from the internet, the report revealed.
Teens who get music files online believe it is unrealistic to expect people to self-regulate and avoid free downloading and file-sharing altogether.
In the article on adolescents anime or Japanese fanfiction, the authors discuss research about two students who use this way of developing stories to show their creativity.
The two adolescent girls who were part of the study had become exposed to anime on the internet and were using it to develop their own stories with a Multiliteracy framework.
The students expressed that writing in this fashion allowed them to have fun, exercise imagination, and avoid boredom. Their fanficton allowed them to develop and solidify relationships with various friends, according to the article. Communicating among a group of friends mirrored Web 2.0 creativity.
The girls Multiliteracies framework included multimodality, which included designs such as visual, linguistic and audio in a text they produced. The authors also discuss intertextuality which is the linking of different stories or texts to preceding stories, according to the article. Finally, the students used hybridity which refers to the creation of new meaning and new genres through the design process.
The authors of the article said lack of knowledge by their teachers’ of fanfiction was a lost opportunity for literacy learning.
One of the key ideas I took from the readings is that teachers may not need to look for entirely new ways to give students assignments on the internet. Maybe teachers should look closer at what their students are already doing and mimic what they see their student doing and enjoying when they develop assignments from their curriculum. This would certainly eliminate any excuse about they don’t understand what they are being asked to do if you explain it as something they already do for fun and enjoyment.
I feel there is a lot happening right now in the world of Web 2.0 that offers teachers substantial content to explain to our students. If we mix in current affairs from the media and show how the internet can help embellish understanding this could offer students exciting and differentiated ways to grasp subject matter.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Preparing for CAPA Visit
Out visit by the CAPA examiners is a little over a month away. At our staff meeting today we went over a list of things we must have in place in the classroom when they arrive. We have to show evidence of student centered learning, word wall, recent examples of student work, plus a list of other things all teachers are responsible for. It makes me very nervous to have people from outside the district visiting my classroom and asking questions about how I reach. But I understand this is how things are done when you have a school labeled as in need of improvement. I have a lot of work to do beside just teaching every day before the visit so I'm trying to get myself motivated to do what needs to be done in my classroom.
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