Pop Culture: Phrankenomenon Design Challenge: Day Two & Reflections

First, we will create Google Drive Pop Culture In Folders.

a.  Create a folder in Google Drive.
b.  Title It:  [Your name] Pop Culture Fall 2015 IN
c.   Share it with me and make me someone who can EDIT your Inbox.

From now on, including any materials for your Film Culture project, you will put anything you are turning in for class in this folder.  Remember that Pages documents still need to be exported as PDFs or copy and pasted into Google Docs.

Today your team of one, two, or three members will need to complete the Experiment and Production phases of your Phrankenomenon design challenge.

EXPERIMENT Phase.  Remix and mashup various features of other phenomena in order to create an original idea you believe capable of having the same degree of cultural impact.  

Demonstrate your ideas through a slide deck, sketchnote, video or Prezi.  This will make for excellent blog materail.

PRODUCTION Phase.  After sharing your ideas, we will conduct feedback rounds using the 4 Corners feedback form.

SHOW YOUR LEARNING.

Blog.

Critical Creativity Challenge: Phrankenomenon.

1+ Posts Due 11.20.15

And then you have three mandatory questions to answer.  You may want to blog them as evidence there or you may choose to submit them in your Pop Culture IN folder.  The extent to which you answer these questions will appear as a Media assessment in PowerSchool.

Question 1.  After seeing the various phrankenomena developed in class, what characteristics seem to surface most frequently?  Why do you think this is the case?

Question 2.  Based on your understanding of pop culture phenomena, which of the phrankenomena developed in class do you believe would have the great chance of becoming a real success story?  What understandings of the world around you lead you this conclusion?

Question 3.  How might understanding the features and characteristics of what makes a cultural phenomenon help you be successful in one of your possible future career paths?  How might you apply that knowledge to solve problems and achieve goals?  Be specific in your thinking.

Pop Culture: HMW Design a Phrankenomenon?

HMW Design a Phrankenomenon?

DISCOVER Phase.

EMPATHY Phase.

EXPERIMENT Phase.

PRODUCE Phase.

AP Lit: Design Challenge: Making the Ladies of The Hours

Today we ran a design challenge flashlab: How might we demonstrate our understanding of the protagonists in The Hours through physical representations?

I blogged about the day's events on my Medium blog so the Blue Day crew can see what's coming their way.

Making Meaning in Minutes

Show Your Thinking

Blog. Due Friday 11.20.15

Critical Creativity Challenge:  Score the Lit.   Choose any of our most recent readings and create an original score using either live instrumentation, Garage Band, Wolfram Tones, Beat Lab, or another online/digital music generator/creator.

Read.  The Hours.  Up to Page 80.

Identify a Key Paragraph for Each Protagonist.  

Ask yourself, "If Cunningham had only one paragraph per section, which would it be?"

Submission Draft.  Frankliners.

Due.  Wednesday/Thursday.  November 18 & 19.  

Pop Culture: Stars Wars: Still Relevant?

We have a very short class today due to the very cool career expo happening on campus today.

We'll focus on energy on looking at two different articles about Star Wars and the extent to which it is still relevant today.

Here's the example of the work we will do.  An article about Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer and its arrival on the internet from EW.com

We took just the opening paragraphs and made this blackout poem.

Now it's your turn.

Two articles, which gives you 15 minutes to work with each one.  I'll be holding you tight to that time. (You can always go back and revise your thinking later; it would make for glorious blog posting that would demonstrate your reading skills and potentially others as well.)

Article One. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/troy-campbell/why-star-wars-matters_b_5246549.html

Article Two. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-31/entertainment/ct-ae-0602-johnson-star-wars-20130531_1_naboo-millennium-falcon-star-wars


Here's your process:

1. Read one article with this question in mind?  "To what extent does this author feel Star Wars is important to our society today?"

2. Make a list of up to nine key words/phrases from the text.  It may be fewer than this.

3. Create a blackout poem from the article that captures the essence of what the author is trying to say.  (Use digital or analog means.  Highlight in black on Google docs/preview works well)

Then . . .

1. Read the other article.

2. Make a list of up to nine key words/phrases from the text.  Again, it may be fewer than this.

3. Create a blackout poem from this article that captures the essence of what the author is trying to say.

Then

1. Take pics of both blackout poems.

2. Post on your blog.

3. Compare and contrast your two blackout poems as well as the big ideas of the authors.

4.  What do you think?

Critical Creativity Challenges for the Week.

Blogging.

Due. Friday. 11.13.15. 

1. Blackout Poetry: Star Wars and Relevance. Use the process above.

or 

Create a blackout poem from article about a pop culture phenomenon that interests you

2. Infographic.  Use Piktochart or another infographic tool (Google Draw works well) to show the impact/role of Star Wars OR another pop culture phenomenon in your life.

3. Recut Trailer.  Take any Star Wars footage (or other pop culture phenomenon footage) and recut it/re-score it to change the mood and/or tone and create a trailer for a different genre of film.  An example is the Mary Poppins horror trailer or the Frozen horror trailer.

Eng 9: Tiny House: DISCOVERY Phase continues: Of Mice and Men

Tiny House Design Challenge:  DISCOVERY Phase

Today we continued reading Of Mice & Men as we are learning more and more about our tiny house users, Lennie & George.

OF MICE AND MEN.

I read aloud from page 30 to 44.

We used sketchnoting to identify key ideas and observations from this chunk of the text, doodling and noting and including the page numbers to point to the moment in the text that inspired the doodle.  On Thursday we will read a very healthy portion of the book -- about 20 pages.

We'll use sketchnoting again, but each of us with a particular focus.

VOCAB ROOTS.

We also have a quiz on Roots 1-4 on Thursday.   Remember, you can also make a roots-based word product (story, song, rap, game, poem, instruction manual, video, animation, comic, sketchnote, etc.) to demonstrate your understanding.  

BLOGGING.

The last thing we did today was focus on creating posts for our blogs and using the new blog tracker.

Each week you will have optional creative challenges that can help you to meet those standards. This week is to create a soundtrack for the men living in the bunkhouse from Of Mice & Men.

You can also start your own passion/interest driven blog and use your posts there to count toward meeting your standards.  Say you really love working with animals or creating art or rebuilding engines.  Blog about it.  Put it in the blog tracker.  Boom.

After writing your post, you will need to choose which standards to count it toward and also self-assess the extent to which you met those standards.   You have the new blogging rubric and the blogging anchor pack to help you with that self-assessment.

SHOW YOUR LEARNING.

Blog.

Post(s) Due Friday.  11.13.15

Post & Self-Assess on the Blog Tracker.

Study.  Roots Quiz 4 (1-4)

Quiz.  Thursday 11.12.15

AP Lit: Dubliners & Frankliners, Where We've Been, Where We're Going

Phew.

A very cool week and a very nutty week all at the same time.  Lots and lots of goings on of all different sorts.

We explored Dubliners via Literary 3x3s and crafting thesis statements.  We are doing much more deliberate work around thesis statements next week alongside our work with our Frankliners project that begins in earnest next week as well.  We will be balancing the analytical and the creative, the prose and the verse.

We've also given blogging an overhaul with revised expectations, a new rubric, and I think a much better all around experience for you folks.  To be clear: these changes are not because I'm disappointed in the work you've done on your blogs.  Quite to the contrary, I LOVE reading your work.  There have been several outstanding, highest of quality posts this fall already.  And there are more to come.

No, this change is to put emphasis on that quality and less on quantity.


Now, this week was paved with other good intentions of mine.  Let's try to rectify this now that we are at Friday.   Though I said in class, I never posted here, so now here it is:

This week Indie Book Projects are due.  (Thursday and Friday.)  As they come in, I'd love for people to share them.  It won't be a graded presentation, but a way to honor the thinking and creating and to also help us collectively experience the texts you are choosing.  

Also this week was a How to Read Lit Like a Prof Week.  We're a little behind in that regards, so we'll be doing two in a row here.  This week and next will both be How to Read Lit Like a Prof Weeks.   This week?  "Geography Matters." 

Next week?  "So Does Season."

For next class, and this is just stupid degrees of important, read Joyce's "The Dead", the last story in Dubliners.  We will see how well that one story functions as the end result of the others we have read, to see if the circuit holds true, to see if folk tales continue, to see if that one word (ssshhhh still a secret until end of the day on Friday)

Humanities: Test Driving the New Blog

Friday in Humanities . . .

We'll open with DreamTime.

Fill an index card with titles of movies that have never been made that you would love to see.

Fill the other side of the index card with titles of movies that have never been made that you NEVER want to see.

That'll warm up our brains to dive further into blogging today.  Your goal is to get a blog post up and choose which standards you'd like assessed.  Remember, you must also self assess before I will assess your work.

Here's the new blogging rubric.

Here's your creative blog post challenge for the week: Casting Call.

Soledad Pictures has announced a new version of Of Mice and Men to come out in the damn hot summer of 2017.  They are still casting.  Who should be in it?  Amplify your thinking by including clips to prove your casting choices are up to the task.  Amplify your demonstration of the reading by including a line of dialogue from the book that captures the character. Consider how images and links can help demonstrate your thinking.

In addition to your class blog, you may want to start your own passion-driven blog.  This may be entries from your current blog.  I recommend starting a new one, however, so you may try to build an audience.

SHOW YOUR LEARNING.

Blogging.

Due. Friday. 11.6.2015.

Study. Roots Quiz 1-4.

Due.  Thursday.  11.12.2015

Optional.  Roots-Based Word Product.

Due. Thursday. 11.12.2015