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Made by yours truly.

Where I’m From

I am from action figures and comic books,

from the Val Kilmer batman and radio-active spiders.

I am from an only childhood and a broken family,

from make-believe mermaids and playing outside.

 

I am from stolen lunches and broken bones.

I am from a place where I am the minority,

where I am the weirdo.

but from that hate, I became strong and caring.

 

I am from long drives and 60’s music,

from days with my mom who plays hookie.

I am from funerals and live childbirth,

from my sister’s first laugh and days of board games.

 

I am from dance and performing,

from the 100,000s of people watching.

I am from the adrenaline rush and pure happiness

from creativity and expression.

 

I am from the realizations of beauty and happiness,

that hides in the midst of sadness.

I am from the choice to be happy,

and all the paths you can take to find it.

 

Another Denzel Movie Poster DS106 #C

The assignment was to improve movie posters to make them more accurately reflect the content of the film. This poster is from the movie “Flight” which is the newest Denzel Washington movie where he is the good guy, but made to look like the bad guy but still comes out as the good guy/badass in the end. the photo editing was actually done in Photobucket’s editor. Its really easy to use and actually does a ton of things.

www.photobucket.com

News Comment

I chose this article, from the Huffington Post, because it is relivant to my field but its also an important problem to recognize. It happens in many fields however, our field is dealing directly with children and these kinds of issues can really disturb children emotionally and psychologically. I think staying educated on these kinds of issues will help teachers  to identify suspicious behavior and how important it is to speak up.

Below is my submitted comment and the few comments around it, when I commented it was a conversation of 440+ comments and still very active. There were comments as new as 3 minutes upon reading the article so I thought I would add to the dialoge. My biggest reason for picking this particular news article were the comments below. Some people were being serious but amny were many gross jokes are how they wished they had teachers like that when they were in school. I mentioned equal punishment for both genders as the effects on the students are the same no matter what their gender is.

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#EngChat reflection

It was very fast pace and hard to keep up however, I thought the amount of information and resources being thrown out to everyone is extremely helpful. Because communities such as #EngChat share resources and ideas, it helps to keep out the monotony of typical high school English classrooms.

During the chaotic stream of the twitter chat, I was able to jot down a couple resources that I would be interested in learning more about and potentially using them whenever I become a teacher…

• Kidblog
• Live Binder
• ThingLink

 

 

Affinity Space: Pinterest

Something I thought that was interesting was that instead of learning something “new”, my old knowledge sort of morphed. My prior knowledge of Pinterest got all new vocabulary like “generator” and “portal”. It helped me look further into the different categories and see these people that contribute to different spaces on Pinterest.

As far as making the video, I did the same process as the “This I Believe” multimodal essay. I wrote what I would say and then collect the pictures and videos I wanted to use. And finally, I put all of it together on iMovie which for me was very easy to use.

 

 

 

 

Teaching Network

I didn’t realize how many connections to other teacher I really had until I had to map it out. Because of my professional involvement in color guard- probably 90% of my friends are also color guard teachers. So I can and do use them as resources for new methods of teaching and techniques. As far as classroom teachers, I still have many connections there too. The two biggest being my mom and step dad. Both have been teaching for 20+ years. My mom taught economics for 14 years and then history now for several years; but she’s also been teaching color guard throughtout her entire teaching career. She was my color guard teacher in high school.  My stepdad, Mark, has been teaching music/Band the entirety of his career. He was my band director throughout high school. Many family friends are all teachers, including my moms best friends who I know very well.

I also have professors from my past university, Texas Woman’s University, that I believe I could contact if I needed advice or help with my teaching experience. I developed friendships with a couple of them after the class was complete and they are great examples to look up to.

Something I thought was interesting from the NetSmart book was that most people will take in the habits and emotions of the people they surround themselvs with. Someone with friends that are obese, smoke and are unhappy are just as likely to be obese, smoke and unhappy. This can definently apply to who I surround myself with when I am a teacher. If I chose to connect with teachers that are unhappy with their career and their students; I may become unhappy with my career and students. So I want to make sure I surround myself with teachers that are enthusiastic about their jobs and about their students so that I can become a strong, inspiring educator.

Collaboration

When I read the chapter about Collaboration in Rheingold’s book NetSmart, it made me think of the color guard that I teach. The Color Guard is the dancers, flags and weapons that perform in marching band shows. I did it professionally for a while and now I teach high school color guards. Anyways, the chapter was an immediate connection in my mind to my team. For them to spin together, they have to count together and do everything at the exact same time. Everything from where your flag is in space to when you breathe in and out. This requires Collaboration: “enhancing the capacity of other’s for mutual benefit and to achieve a common purpose by sharing risks, resources, responsibilities, and rewards.” They do all share a common purpose, which is to win competitions and entertain/impress their audience. And to do that they need to share their information but I also need to share all my information with them. Responsibility is also a HUGE part of color guard. Not only do we teach responsibility to help them in their lives; but its required for their immediate success. Its their responsibility to show up to every rehearsal, or they will miss information and hold back the entire group. Its their responsibility to bring all their equipment to rehearsal including water, so that they can appropriately participate in rehearsal.

“Attention is a fundamental building block of social cooperation.” You have to pay attention to each other. They have to pay attention to us, the instructors, but also each other. Sometimes performers will not pay attention to the other performers and not be in time with everyone else. They have to count, listen and watch to stay “clean” (spinning completely together). All aspects of attentions are required all at the same time. Which is challenging for high school girls, but they are learning!

Lyric Typography Poster

The assignment was to choose one of your favorite lines from a song and illustrate it using only typography. Consider how the font, color, sizes and placement of the typography can reflect or emphasize the meaning of the words. I’m not sure if I did this correctly, but I still think it came out kind of cool. I chose to do a poster for Coldplay’s song Fix You.

“This I Believe” Composing Log

My Composing Log for the ‘This I Believe’ Essay

Tuesday 8/28
Once I got home, I just sat at my computer for awhile thinking of what to write. I saw my camera next to a picture of my dad and thought I could write about my inspiration for photography.
I wrote a rough draft of what I would say
I went straight to Pandora radio, to find a good song: Drifting by Andy McKee.

Wednesday 8/29
I went through all my paper photographs, which I also have CD’s for and started saving all the photos I wanted to use.

Thursday 8/30
Edited my writing and practiced speaking it outloud.  Also added more photos to my file.

Here’s my Rough Draft (as of 8/30)

You learn so much about humanity, and family, and friends and definitely yourself when face-to-face with the realization that Death took someone away from you. But the biggest thing I learned, I learned too late. You need to celebrate Life, in itself,  …your life, and everyone’s life around you. I believe, in this context, that celebrating life really means….
Reminding the people closest to you that you love them…
And that you miss them.
You need to heal relationships that are broken.
Random acts of kindness big or small.
Holding together friendships that are really important to you rather than passively letting them fade.
Leave nothing left unsaid.
My dad’s passing was unexpected and I would give anything to talk to him- We didn’t truly leave anything unsaid. He knew how much he meant to me, and I knew how important I was to him.
I believe you can celebrate the lives of people that are gone.
Even though I understand now that a pain like grief never truly goes away, I decided to focus on his life. Not his death. I believe that I can still celebrate my dad’s life, just in a different way. That he can stay alive through my stories. And most of all, through my camera.
You see when I was in middle school, my dad got me a camera just like the one he had when he was a photographer. A Minolta FX-2. He taught me everything I needed to know and I was obsessed with that camera.
I wanted to be just like my dad. It was later in my life that I figured that I didn’t need to try to be like him, but in fact I already am a carbon copy.
I stuck with photography for a long time, following in my dads footsteps. Eventually that hobby faded. And it wasn’t until I had to go through all of my dad’s belongings that I found his box of photographs that he took. And his old Minolta.
Now I’m back out on the scene taking photographs with my dad’s Minolta. I’ve gone through numerous rolls of film. And every time I’m out photographing, I think of my dad and all the photos he’s taken with the same camera. How many times he’s held this camera and how many emotions he’s captured. The camera is like my connection to him; the device keeping us together as if we are both looking through the lens. I believe that I can celebrate how wonderful my dad was though stories but that I also celebrate my dad’s life, tell him how much I love him through our Minolta FX-2.

Notes (8/30)
– using voice memo on iphone
-audacity
-photo story

Tuesday 9/4
I didn’t do anything productive this weekend. For a bit, I wasn’t sure if I liked my subject. So I tried coming up with another subject that I might like more. But after talking about it with friends, I decided to stick with my original subject, mostly because I’m passionate about. But also because I have so much done for it.

Thursday 9/6
I watched youtube videos about how to use iMovie. And started to play around iMovie, just practicing with random photos and clips to get the hang of it.

Friday 9/7
In the morning, I worked for about 5 hours straight, putting together the iMovie. I started with just putting the photos on, and in the order that made sense with the essay. Then I added the music,after getting it off of iTunes. I then started to record myself. I did the voice recordings in small chunks so that it was easier to line up with the photos. It still took a lot of moving around .5 seconds or even .1 seconds to get it to look right. That was the most frustrating part. I stopped half way through the voice recording.
I came back to it at night, finished the voice recordings and finished the last bit of editting. Tweeking the last few half seconds. I ended up having to change my essay a little more when I started recording.

Final Draft

I believe that everyone should celebrate life, in itself… your life, and everyone else’s life around you. Because when death takes someone away from you, you are going to wish you had all that time back. And I believe, in this context, that celebrating life really means….
That you remind the people closest to you that you love them…
And that you miss them.
That you heal relationships that are broken.
And give random acts of kindness, even if its something small like holding a door open.
That you hold friendships together friendships that are really important to you rather than passively letting them fade and that you never leave anything unsaid.
I would give anything to talk to my dad again. And when I think about it- We didn’t truly leave anything unsaid. He knew how much he meant to me, and I knew how important I was to him.
I believe you can celebrate the lives of people that are gone.
Even though I understand now that a pain like grief never truly goes away, I decided to focus on his life. Not his death. I believe that I can still celebrate my dad’s life, just in a different way. That he can stay alive through my stories. And most of all, through my camera.
You see when I was in middle school, my dad got me a camera just like the one he had when he was a photographer. A Minolta FX-2. He taught me everything I needed to know and I was obsessed with that camera.
I wanted to be just like my dad. It was later in my life that I figured that I didn’t need to try to be like him, but in fact I already am a carbon copy.
I stuck with photography for a long time, following in my dads footsteps. Eventually that hobby faded. And it wasn’t until I had to go through all of my dad’s belongings that I found his box of photographs that he took. And his old Minolta.
Now I’m back out on the scene taking photographs with my dad’s Minolta. I’ve gone through numerous rolls of film. And every time I’m out photographing, I think of my dad and all the photos he’s taken with the same camera. How many times he’s held this camera and how many emotions he’s captured. The camera is like my connection to him; the device keeping us together as if we are both looking through the lens. I believe that I can celebrate how wonderful my dad was though stories but that I also celebrate my dad’s life, tell him how much I love him through our Minolta FX-2.

Final Video (uploaded to YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMYMMbwUqik&list=HL1347992239&feature=mh_lolz

Reflection on Multimodal composing:

I couldn’t start any other way than to start by writing the essay. I knew we had the option to start another way; but, I felt like I needed the essay in order to understand what pictures and song I might need. However, after writing my original rough draft I read it over and over while listening to different songs. Until I found a song that matched the tone I was imagining while reading. I would definitely encourage different ways to create a project, similar to this project, regardless of how I like to create my projects. For me, when I’m a teacher, I want to focus on creativity more than anything so multimodal composing is a great way to explore creativity.

Mission: Defamiliarize

The assignment was to “make a set of ten photos which take something familiar to you–a town, building, object, etc.–and defamiliarize it, make it seem foreign. Use a mix of extreme closeups, weird lighting, foreground/background focusing and odd angles and other effects to make something that you know very well seem like something you’ve never seen before, something spooky and/or luminous and/or magical.”