New Year - New Blog

Hi all. We've moved our blog to a new page so we can provide a better format for our lesson ideas and resource downloads. Please visit us at: http://www.tickingmind.com.au/lesson-blog/ and find an archive of all our lesson ideas from 2011.

Short Films / Big Ideas #10 2011

This week we're looking at satire. There are plenty of great examples out there (we've featured Plot Device recently as a hilarious satire of genre films), but today we want to focus on something not just funny, but also topical: Facebook. What Facebook Is For is an animation by English film maker Mike Booth and is part of his Some Grey Bloke series. The short film (3 minutes), features an ordinary, middle aged guy, talking about the reasons he uses Facebook. In the process it pokes fun at all of us for why we use it.

This film can be a good starting point for talking about satire. Why is it important to make fun of people and institutions in our society? Why is this an important part of living in a democracy? What Facebook is For can also be the starting point for students to do their own satirical writing in response to satirical newspaper headlines about Facebook such as: 'Shock Discovery! Person the same in real life as their Facebook profile'. There are a number of others. Students can choose a heading they like or find funny, and write a mock newspaper article to go with it. As an example of satirical newspaper articles, you might like to show your students The Onion - a mock US newspaper site.

Ticking Mind Bulletin #16 2011

Why should we use micro blogging tools in the classroom? One powerful reason is that students spend a considerable amount of time microblogging each day. While there are currently no Australian statistics available, US statistics show that teenagers between 13-17 send and receive over 3000 texts each month (it's higher for girls) and spend upwards of 2 hours each day on the web (most of it on facebook - you can read a report about it online here. You might also look at it with your class and ask them to compare their experience with what is being documented in the research). That's a lot of time essentially being spent reading and writing micro blogs - short pieces of text recording the author's views about whatever is the hot topic of the moment. So if our kids are producing and reading all this writing, why aren't we trying to harness some of this enthusiasm in our class?

Over our next couple of blogs we want to look at micro blogging tools you can use in your classroom. Many teachers already use micro blogs in their classroom to get students to keep:

*Learning journals

*Create pages on areas of interest

*Create pages on a topic / theme being studied

*To work collaboratively

*To write for an authentic audience

Today we're looking at 'disposable' pages. These can be a good starting point for blogging in the classroom, because they are tools that allow you to create pages without requiring a sign up or login, and aren't designed to keep forever.

One of the easiest tools to use is Jottit. This tool allows you to create an instant, short web page without needing to sign up and create an account. Later, if you want, you can add a password to the page so you can revisit it and add to or change it. Another web tool in the same vein is Penio, a more attractively presented version of Jottit.

These two tools make great ways for doing some blogging on the fly, getting groups to collaborate on or present their work, or to get stuck into some micro blogging without any hassle. In future weeks we'll review tools with more advance options for microblogging.

Short Films / Big Ideas #9 2011

There's many terrific Australian short films out there. In the past we've blogged about Tropfest winners - one of our favourites being Lucky. This week we're looking at another award winning Australian short film - Zero. Like another of the films we've looked at, Bottle, this film is a stop motion animation that uses unusual material for the figurines in its story. Bottle uses snow and sand for its characters. Zero uses string.

The film is set in a repressive world where people are numbered according to social status. Zero marks the people on the bottom rung of society, 9 is for those who are on top. Our hero of the film is a zero. He spends the first half of this short film mocked, excluded and vilified by those around him for being a zero and wondering how he can make "something out of nothing." When he meets another zero, however, and falls in love, things turn around. What we won't tell you what happens at the end, but there's smiles all round.

There's a range of things you can do with this film. After watching it and discussing it, we can get students to think about: What is something really unfair about the world today and how would you change it if you were in charge.

We can also ask students to pick out key quotes. You can watch half the film, get them two write down two important things that have been said, watch the rest of the film and then repeat the step. After discussing it, we can then get our students to write a summary of what happens using quotes as a way of practising integrating quotes into writing.

But what we're most interested in is getting students to think about genre. Available for download at our resource page is a list of different genres. Get students into pairs, give each pair a copy of this sheet and ask them to rank the genres. Which genre does this film most belong to and why.

Ticking Mind Bulletin #15

The best web 2.0 tools to use for education are those that require no sign ups, are quick to access and genuinely contribute to the sharing and discussing of ideas in the classroom. We spend hours each week looking at different web 2.0 sites out there, and dismissing most of them. But here's a little gem we found just recently. It's called Tricider and ticks all the boxes.

Tricider is partly a brainstorming tool, partly a debating tool, and partly a discussion tool. It starts out with a user simply jumping onto Tricider's home page and posing a question in the question box. This generates a unique page with a URL which the user can then share with others. Once others have this URL they can visit this new Tricider page and add ideas about this question, arguments, pictures and vote on what others have said. It's a terrific little tool to promote and extend discussion. We could start by asking a question about:

*Why a character does something in a text?

*What should be done about a certain issue?

*How we could make the world a better place....

We've set up an example one for you to look at on the question: How can we use social media more effectively in the classroom? Find it here.

Short Films / Big Ideas #8 2011

A few blogs ago we talked about the short film Plot Device - a great example of a meta-textual text about genre. Plot Device is also part of a growing body of films called 'brand films'. What are these? Brand films are films that are sponsored by a brand name - such as Coke, BMW or Gucci. Plot Device was sponsored by American software company Red Giant. The idea of branded films is that they tell a story about a core product value or idea. The focus of these films is to be entertaining and tell a story, rather than 'in your face' about consuming the product. Essentially, it a response to our increasing disengagement with traditional advertising formats.

Today I want to look at a short, entertaining animated example of a branded film. It's called Back To The Start and is sponsored by American fast food chain Chipotle (It's Mexican fast food). The point of the short film is to focus on the sustainable, organic way the produce Chipotle uses for its food is grown. It's an interesting film to use as the basis for a discussion with your students about the effectiveness of advertising. We can ask our students a series of questions:

*Do you think fast food advertising makes a difference to what fast food you buy?
*Do you think people care about how their fast food has been produced?
*After watching the Chipotle ad what do you think is most likely:
1) People who already eat at Chipotle just feel better about eating there
2) People who may not have eaten at Chipotle are more likely to eat there

Last of all, we can ask our students - are these sorts of short films are good trend or a bad trend? Advertising is more entertaining like this - but it's difficult to tell it's an ad. Is this a bad thing? What is brand names started make feature length brand films. Would this be a good idea?