Short Films / Big Ideas - Tropfest Edition

This week we're looking at some of the finalists from Tropfest - Australia's very own annual celebration of short film making, that bills itself as the world's biggest short film festival. Unlike previous weeks where we have focused on strategies to get students thinking about, discussing and writing on ideas in the films they have watched, in this post we are encouraging you to invite students to evaluate and pass judgement on the films they have watched. In short, you can watch through the films short listed for Tropfest's best short award, and ask students to pick out the one they thought best. All this year's Tropfest's finalists can be watched at the festival's Youtube channel here.

We don't recommend that you watch through all of them, but we do recommend that you watch through some of our favourites:

*Silencer

*The Applicant

*Animal Beatbox

Before you watch through the films, you can discuss what makes a good film - and what makes a good short film. After you watch them, students can share their responses to each film in terms of how they evaluate its quality. You could do this several ways - by making a heading for each film on the classroom's whiteboard, giving each student three post-it-notes, and asking them to share an evaluation about each film by writing a comment and sticking it under each heading. Alternatively, if you tuned into last week's web 2.0 post, you could use a virtual sticky board to do this activity - Wall  Wisher.

As students discuss and make comments about the films, ask them to rank them in terms of quality. Once they have done this, you can tell them that the winner was Animal Beatbox - it will be interesting to see if students had this as their first choice, and how they respond to it being the winner if they didn't (here at Ticking Mind we find Animal Beatbox annoying rather than interesting).

Finally, students can actually write up a review of all three films.

In our next post, we'll be looking at same great short films that have come out of another Australian short film festival - ACMI's Little Big Shots that has been screening this week.

Ticking Mind Bulletin #9 2011

Welcome to our latest bulletin on great web 2.0 tools to use in the English classroom. If you're new to our bulletin, or want to catch up on previous posts (including our last one on Megan Gale's twitter controversy, which you can look at in class with your students as an issue), click here. This week we actually want our post to be interactive: so we are using two interactive tools to both share ideas and demonstrate the effectiveness of the tools themselves.

Wall Wisher is a great way to get everyone participating in class discussion and sharing ideas. With this tool, a user can create a virtual 'sticky board' that other users can visit and post sticky notes on. No account is required to use this tool. When a user creates a new board, it has a unique URL which can be shared with others (the sharing can be restricted or totally public). This works well in class for brainstorming sessions where you want everyone to contribute ideas. As each student puts up a note, everyone else will be able to see it. We've created our own sticky board here  - http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/filmstostudy - and we'd love you all to visit and add a sticky about different films you are studying in your classroom. That way you see how the tool works and we can share some great ideas. All you need to do is click on the link, then click somewhere on the page and create a new sticky.

The next tool is similar. This is called 'Lino It.' Like Wall Wisher, this is a tool that creates virtual sticky note boards. The key difference between the tools is that Lino It allows users to write longer sticky notes and to colour code them. Lino It also requires the user who creates the board to have an account. Once an account holding user creates a board, they can then share it publicly with anyone in the same was as Wall Wisher. It's a great tool to use when you want students to share more detailed ideas or to share resources if they are all researching a similar topic or issue. Students can keep a track of the different websites they have visited by putting stickies on a class board with a link to the site and notes about what was good about it. Users can also stick documents, videos and images on the sticky board. We've set up a board here -  http://linoit.com/users/jpinnuck/canvases/Great%20websites%20. We'd like you to share on the board some ideas about great websites you've been using in your classroom. All you need to do is click on the link, then click somewhere on the page and create a new sticky.

Short Films / Big Ideas #5 2011

Here at Ticking Mind we're absolute suckers for romantic comedies. One of our favourites is 500 Days of Summer. We talk about this film in our 30 Great Films To Teach & How To Teach Them sessions as it's a terrific example of the romantic comedy narrative structure. This week we want to talk about an extremely popular Australian short romantic comedy - Signs. This 2009 short has now been watched by nearly seven million viewers on Youtube and once you watch it, you'll easily see why.

It tells the story of young, lonely man who works in an hum drum office job. The orientation phase of the film quickly establishes that our protagonist is keen for a relationship. This happens, but not in the conventional way. He looks out his window and across the street to the office next door one day, and locks eyes with a female office worker. From this point they begin to hold up large written messages for each other to read. It's a charming film, and, like 500 Days of Summer, a great example of the romantic comedy narrative. 

Here's some activities you can do on the film:

1. Watch through the first few minutes of the film until the protagonist begins to exchange signs with the officer worker in the next building. Ask students to predict what they think will happen next? Why do they think this? What do they know about the romantic comedy formula?

2. At the end of the film, give students the Romantic Comedy Narrative handout attached. Ask them to look through it and identify the stages that were represented in this short film.

3. Finally, you can ask students to think about the purpose of the romantic comedy formula. Ask them to write about this: Like other types of films, we enjoy watching romantic comedies because they make us feel good, but in no way do they actually represent real life...