The Parable of Summer Camp

Bear with me as I spew my thoughts out onto this blog post. One thing about this project that has been in the back of my mind and I can't seem to get over is how the final project will actually look. How the final piece will actually be accessed and connected.

As I mentioned in the comments in Amber's post, seeing things helps me to better understand them. While I served my mission in the Philippines, one way we helped our investigators better understand what we were teaching was through parables. Although, I'm not teaching myself a moral lesson with the "Parable of Summer Camp," I found it helpful for me anyway. So I'm going to attempt to put into words what has been on my mind concerning our project; hopefully it will help someone else other than  myself.

I never attended any sort of summer camps in the mountains, where the participants lived in little cabins, and did all sorts of team building activities (although I was in Boy Scouts).  So, my image of summer camps comes from the 1995 family comedy, Heavy Weights.

It might work better if I first make a list for all to see:

lake = internet
swimmers = our 6 themes
swimsuits, floaties, etc. = I'll call these "theme extras" (i.e. videos, intros, etc.)
a rope that the swimmers can hold onto = some way to connect the 6 themes
floating platform on the lake = a platform (like a website) that we can use to connect all of the themes & theme extras

So, I imagine our project like 6 little swimmers out there with their swimsuits and floaties.  The swimmers are treading water, in order for the swimmers to stay together, they need either a rope or to stay on the platform together.  Honestly, I don't care either way how the swimmers stick together.  But they have to stick together (at least in my mind).  Is this making sense?

So do we use a rope or a platform?

Rental Computers, Southern Baptists, and Hurtles

Boy oh boy was I nervous at first about including video as part of our project. First of all, I like standing behind the camera, not in front of it.  But then when we viewed everyone's videos and I saw how some students had really great introductory videos both being on screen and off, I felt a lot more comfortable with the idea.

I agree that there are a lot of problems that go along with including videos (or any sort of multimedia).  It's time consuming.  We have varying skills with videos, video-editing, etc.  Some of us don't have the technology to work easily with videos at home (for example, my laptop kicked-the-bucket a couple of weeks ago and I've been using a rental computer... the webcam doesn't even work).

HOWEVER.  Opening ourselves up to using multimedia is brilliant because, as someone pointed out in class, it gives us a greater potential audience.  Some people would rather read through material.  Some would rather watch a video. We can provide both.  And knowing that we have video editing software available to us on campus solves the problem of personal computers lacking that capability.  The key, I think, to keep from getting stressed out is to set and adhere to time limits.  Now this doesn't mean you close your computer after working two hours on a project regardless of whether or not it's finished, but we have to set general limits.  It's easy to go overboard.  The results can be fantastic, but we also have to look realistically at what we need to accomplish.

Thinking about videos and multimedia in regard to the themes I am working on, I think both could benefit greatly from this idea.  Brave New Worlds is rather obvious.  There is a lot you can do there with the theme of exploration.  In addition, the idea of using multimedia is, in and of itself, a Brave New World.  The way we are going about the project is already an exemplification of the theme.

Plough Boys was a little harder to think about.  You say reformation, I think old men haranguing congregations about Hell fire and damnation.  Maybe that's just the ghosts of my Southern-Baptist ancestors clinging to my mind though.  But the more I thought about it, this idea totally works.  The Reformation was all about making things more accessible to the common man.  Multimedia is one way our project becomes more accessible.  But even more than that, think about it.  Sure, a big part of the Reformation was people reading the Word of God.  An even bigger part though?  Hearing it!  They weren't just reading.  They were going to church and listening to preachers.  What a better way to exemplify this that actually have an audio/visual component???

Anyway, that's the skinny on my thinking as we move ahead in the project.  There are a lot of hurtles to jump, but I'm excited to see where this goes.

Cereal Course in Renaissance Literature

How would you like to be introduced to Renaissance literature by way of the six sides of a cereal box?

The thing about genuine cultural innovations is that they are disruptive of the status quo. They don't look serious compared to what has been authoritative in the past. When those foolish folks of the mid-1400s thought they could actually perform machine writing with their repurposed grape press, the "books" they would "write" would not be the serious sorts of things that authoritative manuscripts had been for centuries. That's why some people would have printed books properly recopied by hand into their legitimate format.

Morons.

But of course, that sort of thing is easy to judge in retrospect. And as much as it is true that groundbreaking inventions may have appeared ridiculous to the powers that be, this does not mean that everything that looks ridiculous is automatically a hidden treasure just unrecognized. Still, a Renaissance requires some experimentation, and that means you end up with a few Frankensteins along with your Rembrandts and Shakespeares.

And besides, in the Reformation, it was all about taking it to the people. Don't you think that if Martin Luther or William Tyndale could've tapped into something as popular as the cereal market, that they would have put Bible verses on the back of Cheerios boxes?

Do you think a "course" in Renaissance literature through cereal boxes is an idea that's gone soft in its milk, or does it have the fiber and vitamins to go the distance?

Make your own box of Shrew Shreddies!