Grammar & The Internet

                 Jacksfilms reads terribly-written comments aloud to illustrate bad grammar on the internet

                The use of text-speak on social media sites is alarmingly popular. The Youtube video series “Your Grammar Sucks” by jacksfilms illustrates just how ridiculous poor grammar sounds by reading real comments made by Youtube users and occasionally offering revisions with proper grammar. At the end of most of these videos, the speaker asks for the viewers help in “cleaning up Youtube” from terrible grammar by sending him screenshots of poorly-phrased comments for him to critique in a future episode.                                                            

               

              Given that poor grammar is so prevalent on the internet, this video series offers an interesting idea that can be implemented in the classroom. Social media sites are so prevalent that it is more than likely students use them and come across comments with terrible grammar all the time. Why not use these encounters for an educational lesson? If students were asked to bring in examples of poor grammar they found on a social media site like Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter with a revision of proper grammar, then students would be interacting with technology they already use to reach an educational purpose.  This exercise would be a prime example of using technology to transform teaching by using social media networks in place of work books. This would allow students to see grammar applied in real social situations, giving them a greater appreciation for what is generally perceived as a dull topic. 

Computer Games in the Classroom

                 Do educational computer games still exist? I remember in the third grade I was in a classroom that had its own computer. Once we finished with our work, we were permitted to play on the computer under the condition that we played an educational game. Some of my favorites were: Reader Rabbit, Super Solvers: Gizmos and Gadgets, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.  

                Now that I think about, I haven’t seen an educational game since I graduated grammar school.  Even in my ninth grade computer class, the closest thing I saw to an educational game was a bland how-to-type program that was nowhere near as exciting as the Rollertyping software used at my grammar school. 

                While I haven’t seen any games specifically labeled as educational since my grammar school days, I have seen numerous articles discussing video games in the classroom ranging from Wii Sports in Gym class to SimCity in Sociology. Perhaps video games could be valuable in the English classroom as well.  If SimCity can be used to test problem-solving skills, maybe The Sims 3 (or 2) could be used in an exercise on characterization or story-telling. With The Sims, students can create a character (or a household of characters) to control their daily life/lives. In The Sims 3, these characters called Sims can also be customized to have specific personality traits, likes, dislikes, and lifelong goals. This game could be used as a tool for students to re-create characters from novels and try to re-enact their story, or create their own original characters and create their own story in a visual, interactive manner. This exercise would be a fun way for students to explore characters and stories with the use of a popular game that would keep them engaged in the topic.

A Shout Out to Older Technologies

The most surprising thing I encountered in my reading for this course was the mentioning of the ball-point pen as a technology. Really? The ball-point pen? That’s something that’s just always been there, it’s not technology! Except, oh wait, it hasn’t always been there and it is technology. 

The word “technology” tends to hold connotations to modern or futuristic devices that wow us into believing we may not be that far off from a Jetsons-esque world of jet-packs and living in space after all.  Our culture is so oriented toward the future that we tend to forget that items that have become standard were once new and wow-inducing, too. The ball-point pen hadn’t been invented until 1888 and hadn’t gained popularity until around the mid 1900s.  Given how commonplace ball-point pens are today and how easy they are to overlook completely, it is difficult to imagine a time where they did not exist. 

In light of that realization, this blog post is dedicated to the older technologies that may be overlooked, but remain valuable assets in a classroom:

·         The ball-point pen

·         Chalkboard

·         Pencils

·         Highlighters

·         Sticky tac

·         Perforated paper

·         Overhead projectors

·         White-out

          These items have existed long enough to become either so standard they’re overlooked, or so outdated they’re being replaced.  The chalkboard might be replaced by smartboards and overhead projectors might be substituted with digital projectors, but both remain to be fully-functioning technologies utilized in classrooms throughout the country. So here’s to all the old technology that has become so standard we no longer recognize them as technology.

Vidding as an Educational Project

 Produced by the Organization for Transformative Works, this video explains vidding in the words of vidders.

 

I’m a huge fan of the vidding community on Youtube. Vidders take clips of a movie or television show and edit them to music in order to interpret the events or characters in a new way. Contrary to what one of the commentators in the video believes, vidding is more than just a stupid hobby; it involves a deep analysis into motives, meanings, and motifs present in movie/tv shows and music. While watching one video, it suddenly struck me that vidding could serve as an interesting school project.

 It’s fairly common for English classes to watch a film adaptation for a novel read in class, but (in my experience) most teachers use films as a fun break rather than a learning exercise. For a project on a book and movie adaption, students could use video-editing software (such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, which both come installed on PC or Mac, respectfully) to create a video illustrating a theme, important relationship development, or character study. This exercise would require students to analyze the film and the song used in their video, reinforcing an educational lesson through film and technology. A video-editing project would also teach students editing skills that can be useful in the world beyond the classroom.

Currently, this idea would have to be compromised to due to difficulties providing students with the access to movie clips. An alternate lesson could be a paper based on a song that can used to highlight an aspect of either the book or movie adaptation. Maybe in a few more years, as digital access to movie clips increases, a project like this would become more feasible.

Making Stories out of Music

There was an exercise conducted in my READ 411 class that I thought was an excellent example of both an interdisciplinary lesson and integration of technology in the classroom. First, the students leading the lesson used a laptop hooked up to a projector to show the class a Youtube video of a piece of classical music. The first time they played the video, the minimized the screen so that we could hear the video without seeing it. They asked us to visualize what the music sounded like. Based on the music, we were asked to write a short story to accompany the tune. Afterward, we discussed the music more in-depth and saw the video of an aquarium the reflected what the musical artist was trying to convey through his song.

This was a really interesting exercise because it uses Youtube in a unique manner. The popular video-publishing site is often associated with viral videos, but this lesson shows that it also contains useful audio clips that can be integrated into a lesson. I thought that this lesson was really great and share-worthy because it integrated music and English seamlessly while using technology in a way that wasn’t superfluous. Since audio-playing technology was an essential material for the lesson, I thought this lesson was the perfect example of how to integrate technology in the classroom.