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?
The best of the Web 2.0 for the innovative English teacher
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Ticking Mind Bulletin #14 2011
Using ridiculous words like "phantasmagorical" can be impressive and spice up your writing. We say this, because one of the things we're constantly talking to teachers about is the importance of teaching vocabulary. In previous posts we've written about web 2.0 tools such as wordle and visuwords which can be used as vocabulary stimulus and as extenders respectively. Today we're blogging about another interesting vocabulary tool we've just started playing around with recently. It's called Wordnik and can be found here: http://www.wordnik.com/
Wordnik is dedicated to creating lists and exploring the meanings of words. It can be used as a straight dictionary/thesaurus tool, where you can get students to simply look up words. Using it like this can be effective as the site offers not just a series of definitions for each word, but an extensive list of related words, examples of contextual uses (including how the word has been used in recent tweets and blogs), and the top images that come back for an image search for the term.
However, a more interesting way to use this site is to get students to create a profile. This is quick and easy. Once they have done this they can create their own word lists and comment on the lists of others, and even create collaborative lists. This means at the start of each unit (or as a unit progresses), students can create and refine word lists on the topic being studied. As the year progresses, students can create many new word lists. This encourages students to explore and take control over their vocabulary.
On the subject of vocabulary, here's a few quick activities to get students thinking about the nuances of meaning of words:
1) Give students two opposite words such as 'angry' and 'happy'. Using a tool such as Wordnik, get them to find synonyms for these words as well as related words. Get students to then create a word spectrum - with 'angry' and 'happy' at either end of a page, and five to seven words arranged along a line in between them depending on what students see as the exact nuance of their meaning. Where would 'upset' come along the line or 'jubilant' or ' calm'?
2) A related activity, is to get students to brainstorm words to describe a character in a text being studied. They pick one of these words, and then find as many synonyms/related words for this word as they can. After this, students look at the words carefully, and list them according to which one most precisely (through to least precisely), describes the character. Worknik is a great tool to use for this activity.
Wordnik is dedicated to creating lists and exploring the meanings of words. It can be used as a straight dictionary/thesaurus tool, where you can get students to simply look up words. Using it like this can be effective as the site offers not just a series of definitions for each word, but an extensive list of related words, examples of contextual uses (including how the word has been used in recent tweets and blogs), and the top images that come back for an image search for the term.
However, a more interesting way to use this site is to get students to create a profile. This is quick and easy. Once they have done this they can create their own word lists and comment on the lists of others, and even create collaborative lists. This means at the start of each unit (or as a unit progresses), students can create and refine word lists on the topic being studied. As the year progresses, students can create many new word lists. This encourages students to explore and take control over their vocabulary.
On the subject of vocabulary, here's a few quick activities to get students thinking about the nuances of meaning of words:
1) Give students two opposite words such as 'angry' and 'happy'. Using a tool such as Wordnik, get them to find synonyms for these words as well as related words. Get students to then create a word spectrum - with 'angry' and 'happy' at either end of a page, and five to seven words arranged along a line in between them depending on what students see as the exact nuance of their meaning. Where would 'upset' come along the line or 'jubilant' or ' calm'?
2) A related activity, is to get students to brainstorm words to describe a character in a text being studied. They pick one of these words, and then find as many synonyms/related words for this word as they can. After this, students look at the words carefully, and list them according to which one most precisely (through to least precisely), describes the character. Worknik is a great tool to use for this activity.
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