American Beauty Video Clip Project

 

Unknown Perspectives: American Beauty

          After watching this clip from the film American Beauty, students will be asked to write a short one-to-two paragraph response to the clip.  Then, they will be asked to write another paragraph cataloguing some (in)significant things that have happened in their lives that have been engrained into their minds that would be impossible for them to forget.  Next, they will be given the chance to share some of these moments that they thought of with a peer close by.  This exercise aims at getting students to think critically about their lives both broadly, i.e. their pasts and futures, and also specifically, e.g., right down to describing the feeling they felt the first time they learned to ride a bike.  I will ask the students to be as specific as possible in detailing the moments they choose from when they were younger.  This movie clip is one that will entertain the idea of writing in unusual perspectives in life and offer students the chance to recall significant moments in their lives to write about. 

          The film clip will also interrogate the usual dichotomy of existence/non-existence that high school students generally conceive, and will more than likely spark a discussion in respect to the value of realizing the balance of opposites, the value of realizing indeterminate things as well and determinate, intangible concepts as well as tangible objects.  The clip is also filled with a wealth of possibility for a literary approach.  I am currently reading the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold, and the correlation between the American Beauty clip and the protagonist in Seabold’s novel is one that is pertinent, as it a great way to show how interwoven literature and media are.  Even further, the clip is closely related to The Lovely Bones for obvious reasons: both protagonists are speaking from the voice of person who has been murdered.  If anything, the clip will help to reinforce the transient nature of the human experience that is often times glossed over due to our hectic schedules and our relentless demands imposed upon us daily. 

      Other concerns or comments will also be bubbling at the brim to be discussed after watching this clip.  For example, some topics might include: notions concerning our memories, our pasts, our futures, the possibility of life after death, the question of “what makes our lives significant”, and how should we lives if we knew we were going to die tomorrow.  All these topics, though I am conscious of the morbidity of this subject, are helpful towards expanding the minds of students who are possibly experiencing a death of a family member or a friend for the first time.  The viewing of this film clip helps students think outside of their general perspectives in life, and strives to get students to think about their lives as a blessing.  (And I don’t necessarily mean a blessing from God; I will steer away from any discussions about the existence of a God when an issue of life after death transpires, though I do realize I am asking for it with this topic.) 

Fun Thingy!

Hey…My cousin sent me this, and I thought that it was pretty cool.  It is a test to see if you can detect a “fake” smile in a person.  I got 15 out of 20 correct…see what you get!  Click the site: Smile Survey

Have fun!

Happy MLK Day!

January 21, 2008 | Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the August 28, 1963, march on Washington

Matt & Kim

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts by Will Richardson

Will Richardson provides an introduction to the Blogosphere, WikiWorld, and Podcast Planetarium and heavily stresses the importance of incorporating the Read/Write Internet into school systems nationwide.  His advocation for the Internet in the classroom setting is inaugurated most likely from similar assertions from organizations like The National Technology Plan who released a statement in January 2005 claiming that, “Students today, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy” (p. 6).  This growing gap between the internet savvy and the internet confused is a phenomenon that has been been in question for the last decade, for it is unavoidable and remarkably uncontrollable.  The way we have understood education in the past starkly contrasts the desire to be digitally connected with others through a medium which facilitates human connectivity beyond anything ever imagined only a decade prior.  But because this widening gap  is proving to spawn constant questions as to the pedogogical instruction that should be implemented in school systems, researchers have deemed it imperative to begin setting the tracks for a more digitized Web frontier for K-12 learners.

Digital Immigrants termed by educational theorist, Marc Pensky, is perhaps an accurate definition for older teachers who are out of touch with the digital world we live in today, not for reasons attributable to incompetency; rather,  age seems to be the most recognizable barrier, i.e., the internet is only approximately twelve years old.  Part of the Richardson’s research advocates the assimilation of older teachers into more Web-based method for instruction in order to act in accordance with young learners whose increase knowledge and dexterity in internet surfing has caused their minds to be less “suited with a linear progression of learning” (p. 7).  Generally accustomed to jumping around from page to page, blog to blog, young students have been developing a different way in which they apprehend information.  This awareness  has led many educational theorists to further argue for more internet based projects in classrooms.

Unfortunate for young learners, the move from non-internet based assignments, to assignments instructing students to write or read using a medium they are well adapted to, has been taken exteremly slow.  Protections against online predators, explicit content, and profane blogs and/or responses to student’s blogs are constantly being updated, and teachers should be in the practice of constantly reminding students of the dangers in web-browsing as far as identity preservation goes.  Still, parents, ones who are not readily accessing the internet or who strongly fear for their child’s security, are possible impediments to the rise of internet based teaching in classrooms.  I believe that we have only seen the spark to the explosive nature of the internet today, and we will definitely need to investigate the way children are accessing information.  The methods used to access information do have, as we have seen through history, a great influence on the acquisition of knowledge.