Putting Bright Ideas, Concepts, and Presentations into Motion

My experience at the Bright ideas conference was beneficial, that is, after I found the Union. I was shooting to catch Jacqueline Woodson’s keynote conversation, but unfortunately I didn’t know the area as well as I thought I did. So I spent tons of time driving around Lansing/Okimos/East Lansing. It’s alright though; when I got to the convention they gave me a name tag with a plastic sleeve which made me feel very cool and important!

The first presentation I attended at 11:00 was “Macbeth: Using Technology to Enhance the Teaching of Shakespeare.” The presenters included Lindsay Steenbergen and Jeff Patterson, both of whom are high school teachers at Portage Public Schools. The presentation was principally concerned with introducing new technology which can be used in the English classroom in order to help students relate to a given piece of literature. The introduction began by explaining the importance of three key concepts in understanding literature:

1. Motivation
Steenbergen and Patterson emphasized the fact that students often find the presentation of Shakespeare to be foreign and impersonal, and therefore are rarely able to hold an interest in it. In order to “facilitate connections between Shakespeare and students of today,” Steenbergen and Patterson suggested encouraging students to embody the literature and make it personal to them.
2. Embodiment
In order to better understand the text, students should be encouraged to “think critically about the character and place the character into real world situations” to which they are accustomed.
3. Textual Intervation
One of the most effective ways for students to understand a text is to rearrange what the author is saying in a way that makes since to him/her. Steenbergen and Patterson placed a great deal of emphasis on the helpfulness of textual intervention.

“The best way to understand how a test works is to change it to play around with it, to intervene in it in some way (large or small), and then try to account for the exact effect of what you have done. In practice- not just in theory- we have the option of making changes at all levels, from the merest nuance of punctuation or intonation to total recasting in terms of genre, time, place, participants, and medium” (Pope).

Source (from presentation): Pope, Rob. Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Students.

In order to put these concepts into motion, Steenbergen and Patterson suggested two methods that could be of use. The first was Steenbergen’s 10th grade class’s reenactment of “Macbeth” using video cameras and computer programs. She showed us a few examples of the videos, which were creative, entertaining, and appeared to portray the idea that the students had a decent understanding of the text. In addition to learning the text, students were also given the opportunity to use computer programs such as iMovie and Garageband (which Patterson gave us a short tutorial of) in order to create their videos. Steenbergen described a good method of organizing the creation of these videos in a time period of only 2-3 days:

1. Brainstorming
2. Creation of Script
3. Videotaping (home/school- Most high schools have at least one camera available for checkout in the AV department.)
4. Editing (iMovie, WMP)
5. Optional addition of music (Garageband, Fruit Loop)

Students were able to create some very entertaining adaptations of Macbeth such as “Real World: Scotland Edition,” “The Three Witches Psychic Hotline,” and “Jerry Springer feat. Macbeth.” Steenbergen also mentioned that she required her class to write a paper on Macbeth in order to evaluate students’ individual understanding of the text, the video project was simply a fun and refreshing way for students to gain interest in literature that might otherwise seem foreign to them.

Patterson’s English class is currently in the process of creating a networking bubble for the characters in Macbeth. Instead of using Myspace, Patterson created a Myspace-like template on Microsoft PowerPoint, in which he includes hyperlinks to other Macbeth characters on PowerPoint- ultimately giving it a Myspace-y feel which many students are able to relate to. The only downfall, however, was that the templates didn’t have a space for commenting between characters. Basically, the students could only post pictures and blog. Still effective, but definitely not as fun as using a real Myspace account!

The second session I attended at 1:45 was David and Bethany’s presentation “‘Whose space is it?’ Integrating Social Networking Sites into English Language Arts Instruction.” Like most young students, I am very familiar with Myspace, so I probably would have loved the opportunity to do an activity like this in high school. Unfortunately, most schools (currently) will not allow teachers to utilize Myspace as an educational tool based on the possibility that students may abuse that privilege by using their own personal Myspace pages during school hours. Though there are substitutes for using the actual online networking community, the other methods probably wouldn’t be nearly as effective as actually using Myspace. This is partially because Myspace offers the option to send secret messages between characters in addition to many features which are only featured on Myspace.

The presentation was not only convincing for me, but it seemed as though the individuals around me were responding well to it. I overheard a couple of people talking, one of which said he was the principal of a school. He spoke as though he was entirely convinced by the presentation, and insisted that he would like to allow the use of Myspace in English classes. If this idea could be proposed in a similar fashion to more individuals who dictate the standard methods used for English education, the decision to make Myspace unavailable in schools would probably be reversed. Although Myspace has been the root of danger for a few teenagers, English teachers can require privacy settings for their Myspace accounts, which will ultimately make the assignment 100% safe.

My favorite part of this presentation was Dave’s podcast regarding M.T. Anderson’s book, Feed. Creating audio trailers for books could potentially be a very effective way of advertising for authors and encouraging young readers to take interest in novels. If you haven’t already, you should check out the feed here. It’s really cute and gives great insight into the book, which I really want to read now!

You can also find the Myspace character communities developed by Dave and Bethany at these sites: The Great Gatsby, Feed . Kudos to Dave and Bethany on a job well done!

Lastly, I went to the 3:00 presentation entitled “Mini Lessons from Scratch.” Unfortunately, this particular conference was not of much benefit to me. The description said that the presentation was beneficial for all age groups, but I had a hard time making a connection based on the fact that the presenters related all three lessons to elementary school students.

During the first lesson we read a children’s poem and actively discussed what poetic methods the author used (alliteration, rhyming, etc). The lesson was incredibly rushed, and it seemed as though a great deal of time was wasted throughout because of side-talk and tangents.

The second lesson was on grammar. Basically, we read a portion of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, and worked in groups to turn the “informal language” (which was actually Ebonics) into “formal language.” I had a tough time with this particular exercise because I recently wrote a paper for my linguistics class regarding the idea that American society’s rejection of Ebonics in the classroom is actually not entirely ethical.

The last lesson concerned the methods which publishers use to make informative children’s books appealing (Using questions as headlines, colorful/thematic page layouts, intriguing illustrations, and bold-typed key topics within text.)
Unfortunately, this presentation wasn’t as interesting/beneficial as the previous two had been; it was very rushed, and very focused on students in elementary school. On a fun note, however, they gave us these cute little note cards which held the “Recipe for a Great Mini Lesson:”

Ingredients:
- 1 dab of connection
- cup of a single teaching point
- 1 scoop of active involvement
- 1 pinch of a link to taste
Directions
- Stir together.
- Let it marinate.
- Allow time for writers to write 20-30 minutes.
- Follow up with a dallop of share time.

Now that is something, with a little imagination and interpretation, that maybe I can use!

All in all, the Bright Ideas concert was very informative and beneficial. I learned about quite a few new concepts and ways of teaching which I had not considered before. I look forward to attending another conference in the future, but I next time I won’t miss the Keynote!