Presentation Ideas

Ideas on presentation:

Ad Fontes:

• Since this is the “back to the sources” group, is it possible to discuss our original thoughts on what the project would look like in comparison to how it actually turned out? (eBook vs. youtube channel, or even individual thoughts when first signing up for the class in comparison to final thoughts now that the class is over)
• How to incorporate the sources into our video, whether by a separate video with just quotes, a link to the actual text, or a summary of the text.
• How did we incorporate current teaching ideas (the source) into our revolutionary youTeach idea?

Plough Boys and Bibles:  

• I was talking to Dr. Burton last Friday because I realized that I hadn’t even thought about my grade in this class since our first midterm evaluation with him back in February where we discussed our knowledge on the 6 themes. I thought that was interesting, especially considering that I am one of those people who need to know where they stand grade-wise in a traditional class. Did any of you have this same experience? This actually ties in well with the Plough Boys and Bibles theme when you examine the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Catholics are focused on outward ordinances (in our case, that would be a syllabus and solid grading system) whereas Protestants aren’t (our class, no real syllabus and no set grading system, we were focused on the project itself and not our grade for the project). How did this focus help us in our project, and what are the positives and negatives that go along with this sort of learning when it comes to grades? (Hopefully I explained that well enough for you to understand what I’m talking about.)
• The role of religion in our class
•  Our class had different ideas when it came to this project. We could talk about the collaborative nature of our project and how that mimics the importance of the individual in the reformation (this might go better with humanism).

Thoughts from Project Guinea Pigs

• 13 year old boy – It was hard to read some things, but the quizzes were more fun than my class tests even though I got most of the questions wrong.
• 17 year old girl – She liked the storylines for every theme group. The links worked. I liked it being online because I was able to take breaks and not need to worry about missing anything.

Hey guys! Julie Anne and I put this outline together for Plough Boys. Hopefully it can generate some thought and conversation. It mostly follows Amber's outline with a few changes and tie ins.

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?

Man and HIS Magic in the Tempest

In the Renaissance, humanists championed the power and intricacies of mankind. In the Tempest, Shakespeare explores what makes a human, what makes education worthwhile and why language and learning is so powerful.

This extract from BBC's The Tempest shows the characters Prospero (sorcerer and Miranda's father, now ruler of the island), Miranda (Prospero's daughter, shipwrecked with him as a baby), Ariel (air/water spirit, good, native of the island) and Caliban (earth/fire spirit, evil, child of a sea witch, Sycorax who was left on the island by sailors and whose evil rule was later overturned by Prospero). Watch the clip with these ideas in mind:

Level One (Adventurer):
How do Prospero and Miranda deal with Caliban? 
What does he say "his only profit" of learning to speak is (at 5:57)?
Do you see any other good things about learning about other people or other languages?

Level Two (Explorer): answer the previous questions, plus...
How is Prospero able to control Caliban? 
How do knowledge and language indicate power and station? 
Thus, how does learning make a man?

Level Three (Courier?): answer the previous questions, plus...
Was Prospero right to enslave Caliban, and how does the answer depend on different interpretations of the actors' lines?
Just from these short minutes, what might be some contrasting views of mankind, learning, colonialism and slavery in the Renaissance?

START AT 4:01

START AT 4:01

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.

End-Product of Our Class

So, I am really sorry for missing class yesterday.  I was feeling rather under the weather.

Having downloaded the recording of the class discussion and listened to it on iTunes (how great is modern technology?), I have to say that I'm excited by the idea of a major, multi-media collaborative project.  I'm still terrified of the idea of having to make another video, because good LORD those things are time-consuming.  But molding an introduction to Renaissance literature through video, audio, blogs, wikis, and so forth sounds really worthwhile.

The problem is that this class is geared towards creating an end-product, and we have a mere handful of weeks left to determine the shape of that end-product, delegate tasks, and build it.

Thus, I'm going to through out some ideas for the two groups to which I have been assigned:

Brave New World

Although it kills me to say it, I think video would be a great entry point for Brave New World texts.  It is--aside from video games and interactive fiction, neither of which have much cultural respect as art at this time--the newest art form in existence.  Groping our way through creating some sort of video product that introduces and expounds upon travel literature, scientific treatises, the novel, and proto-science fiction would most certainly mimic the journey of Renaissance writers, while making the texts relevant and interesting to a modern audience.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of a frame story, for several reasons.  First, I worry that not all of our texts would be able to slot easily into any kind of frame story, whether it be astronauts in the far future rediscovering the Renaissance or a time-traveling explorer meeting the authors of important texts.  Second, I think the video should be kept simple enough that large chunks of it can be created by individual students while at home.  We just do no have the time at this point to try to juggle 3+ people's schedules to allow for meeting and filming outside of class.  Third, we don't have any good costumes, and I have my artistic integrity to uphold!

Having said all that, I think it could be really interesting to, for example, create a mockumentary about students learning about Renaissance texts.  We could get some footage of our class time, with Professor Burton lecturing, the students in the back of the class dozing off or browsing Facebook, and a group of four students getting really excited and diving into the texts. 

We could create cut-away interview shots such as seen on The Office and Parks and Recreation where we discuss the texts and how we have engaged with them.  Those could be created at home on our respective webcams without a great deal of trouble, as we have already seen.  And we could script them or just do them free-form and cut together the best bits.

And we could tie it all together with an explanation of how to find out more about our class project or about the texts we reference.

Just a thought.

Sprezzatura

Audio drama, anyone?

One of the things that fascinated me about The Courtier was how the life of a courtier was demonstrated through the conversations and interactions between the characters as much as it was revealed through the discussions, themselves.  So a good, well-scripted audio drama might be able to do the same thing.

There are a bunch of ways to take this.  We could have an audio drama of courtiers discussing what life will be like in the future, with some "impromptu" poetry thrown in.  That would allow us to demonstrate sprezzatura while commenting on modern life and how it ties in with Renaissance movements.  Or we could have caricatures of ourselves haughtily discussing Renaissance court life as if we possessed sprezzatura.  Or we could have a fictional discussion between cyberpunk avatars in a virtual world discussing how the ideas of sprezzatura were integrated into the American culture during the early 21st century.  I don't know, I just think that an audio drama would really work for this theme.


I hope that my fellow classmates come to class tomorrow ready to lock down what our end-product should be.  See you then!

A Post-Apocalyptic Frame for our Renaissance Project?

So, my students came through with their video segments for today. They were supposed to do something in 90 seconds to engage readers in one of the primary texts of Renaissance literature.

After enjoying the liveliness of these presentations (which you look at in prior posts), it is hard to go back to the prospect of creating a mere eBook, a set of mute and colorless texts lacking the vibrancy of my students' personalities and creativity.

What to do?

Well, I have an idea, and I'm interested to see how much my students like it. It's stemming from the hilarious Zombie Apocalypse video journal created by Dia Darcey. Dia did a fantastic job of representing Michel de Montaigne's "Of Cannibals" as she slowly became a zombie in the year 2800.

So here's my idea. Rather than merely assembling a brief but rather traditional set of texts to put into an eBook about Renaissance literature, what if we created a fictional frame, a master story, to which we could attach a short series of videos, the eBook, and some interactive features? We would interest our audience in Renaissance literature by giving them a fictional, interactive pretext for doing so. Here's what I have in mind: