February is Teen DV Awareness Month. In recognition of the seriousness of this issue our next Pop Goes the Classroom Teacher Media Guide is for the Lifetime Original Movie Reviving Ophelia. It is free to download here.
Pop Goes the Classroom Teacher Media Guide: Reviving Ophelia
The Syfy Channel has several series that engage our youth population with their fanciful story lines. One of my favorites is Eureka. Now that I’ve started to do Teacher Media Guides for television series Eureka was a logical next choice. Eureka is now in its 4th season. At its core, the show is about emotional relationships against the backdrop of a company town. Eureka allows us to use popular culture to introduce STEAM studies. It’s timely, relevant and fun. Check out the new media guide.
We don’t usually do series because they can rarely be viewed in their entirety in the classroom but the whole Falling Skies/War of the Worlds alignment was just too much fun to pass up. So without further ado here is the new Pop Goes the Classroom Media Guide for Falling Skies.
In April, Disney released the TRON Legacy 3-D/TRON Collection. TRON was addressing net neutrality before the world knew what the net was. This combo pack is the perfect classroom tool to begin the conversation. Yes, I get that Legacy was a not the best plot line but who cares. When you think about the “cutting edge” special effects that are now quaint in the first film and the fact that they actually had to do R&D for the costumes in the second, there’s a conversation to be had about how quickly technology changes in a few short years. And don’t forget the…um parallels…to Star Wars. Come on I know you’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce the Star Wars Films into your classroom. Now you can compare and contrast plot lines. Maybe I’ll get around to doing a Star Wars Media Guide one of these days. In the mean time the media integration guide for the original TRON will have to do.
And by the way, I’d like to hear what you all are doing with your students.
On November 16, 2010, the 3-Disc Extended Collectors Edition Blue-ray of James Cameron’s AVATAR will be available to the public. It is a tool that can support learning in middle and high school classrooms for educators willing to embrace pop culture as a learning tool. Let’s take a look at how it can be used by educators.
The first disk includes the original theatrical release, the special edition re-release and the exclusive extended cut edition not seen in theaters. A special family audio track is included that removes objectionable language making it ideal for classroom viewing. The Avatar story is a modernization of Costner’s “Dances with Wolves”. It gives English teachers an opportunity to engage students in critical thinking by allowing them to compare and contrast the two films. History teachers exploring the impact of exploration and colonization on native populations can use the film as a tool for discussion. Science educators can use the film to discuss conservation and ecological systems.
The second disk holds “Capturing Avatar”, a feature length documentary with James Cameron, Jon Landau, and the cast and crew. This documentary will help meet CTE requirements regarding the impact of digital technology on the audio/visual industry.
Open Pandora’s Box with the third disk and find a treasure trove of additional resources including the original scriptment, the 300 page screenplay and the Pandorapedia. There are featurettes including the 3d fusion camera and performance capture. These tools allow you to go beyond the storyline of the film to integrate Avatar into a wide variety of academic content areas.
For ideas on how to incorporate Avatar into your classroom check out our Pop Goes the Classroom Media Guide available for free download.
Films released on DVD offer a wealth of resources that can be harnessed for the classroom. The Diamond Edition of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a fine example of this. The blue ray edition offers teachers a plethora of resources including:
Many reviewers don’t see the value in some of the resources in the Diamond Edition but for those of in the classroom, its a powerful tool that allows us to incorporate pop culture into our lesson plans.
Pop Goes the Classroom Media Guide:
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
Like Frankenstein and Dracula, Sherlock Holmes is a character so fundamental to his genre that although he was not the first fictional detective, he is widely considered the best. And like is counterparts in horror and suspense he is also flexible enough to be reinvented from time to time. That is exactly what Guy Ritchie attempts in this most recent installation of the Sherlock Holmes tales currently available on blue-ray and DVD.
Themes addressed in this story include technology and modernization and women and feminism although the greatest strength for integration of this film is English and the exploration of pastiche tales for creative writing.
For ideas across multiple academic content areas check out our media guide available for free download.
