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Posts tagged ‘Pop culture Education’

Phoenix Comicon Retrospective Pop Style: Utopian/Dystopian Societies

Phoenix Comicon 2013 has come to an end. It was another year of great experiences. The highlight of the event for us at Pop Goes the Classroom was the Utopian/Dystopian Societies facilitated discussion on Sunday afternoon. We started this last year and I think we’ll be doing it for some time to come. What makes it such a great event is that there is no panel, there is no presenter, there is only the fans. We toss out a couple of questions and let them go.

I’m always impressed how respectful fans are to one another. This is a topic that can easily turn south if we aren’t careful with the tangents of religion and politics. A facilitated discussion tends to tangent. We ran the discussion for an hour and new voices came forward time and again. 

We spend the entire weekend listening to the opinions and thoughts of others, asking questions, and getting our geek on. This discussion allows us to challenge ourselves and one another and is a great model of a facilitated discussion for the educators in the room. Thank you to everyone who joined us.

 

We presented STEAM to Screen on Friday afternoon at Phoenix Comicon

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Educator Resources

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ISSUES OF U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW RELATING TO THE USE OF MOVIES IN THE CLASSROOM

Classrooms in Public Schools and Nonprofit Educational Institutions:

Rented or Purchased Movies May Be Played By Teachers Without a License

by James A. Frieden, Esq.

www.teachwithmovies.org

Section 110(1) of Title 17 of the United States Code grants a specific exemption from the copyright laws for:

performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction, unless, in the case of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, the performance, or the display of individual images, is given by means of a copy that was not lawfully made under this title, and that the person responsible for the performance knew or had reason to believe was not lawfully made ….

This means that no license from the copyright holder is required when a teacher at a public school or non-profit educational institution uses a lawfully purchased or rented copy of a movie in classroom instruction. It doesn’t matter who purchased or rented the film, so long as it was legally obtained. The exemption is granted for “face-to-face” teaching activities only. This means that the teacher (or a substitute teacher) must be present. The exemption covers a “classroom or similar place devoted to instruction.” This gives teachers some flexibility. For example, it is likely that a gymnasium used for large educational presentations in which several classes are convened together would be covered so long as a teacher presented the film. Note that remotely accessing a film from a central memory storage facility is probably not permitted. See 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a).

It is illegal to circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works, such as digital locks, to make compilations of scenes from various movies. Title 17 U.S. Code § 1201(a)(1)(A). However renting or purchasing a movie and showing a small portion of it and then taking it out of the DVD or VHS player and putting in another does not involve circumventing any type of lock.

Snippets: Fair Use in Any Context

Snippets of movies can be shown in the classrooms of public schools and non-profit educational institutions without a license pursuant to Section 110(1) of Title 17 quoted above. In other contexts, short snippets of films may be used under the Fair Use Doctrine. Section 107 of Title 17 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair use” and, as such, does not require a license. “Fair Use” is limited to relatively small portions of copyrighted materials used for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The statute sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The distinction between “fair use” (which is permitted) and infringement (which is not permitted) is unclear and is not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission. Adapted from: Article on Fair Use by the U.S. Copyright Office. Click on the link for more about fair use.

Fair use does not entitle a person to break any electronic locks.

Snippets: Breaking Electronic Locks

Most copies of movies (DVDs, electronic copies, etc.) have digital locks that prevent the use of snippets and, except in a few specific circumstances, it is illegal to circumvent those locks. 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A). The only exception relating to the classroom is for the film or media studies department of a university.

In Title 17 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Section 201.40 the Librarian of Congress determined that “during the period from November 27, 2006 through October 27, 2009, the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works set forth in 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A) shall not apply to persons who engage in noninfringing uses of . . .

(1) Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.”

There is an exception in 17 U.S.C. 201(d) which provides that “A nonprofit library, archives, or educational institution which gains access to a commercially exploited copyrighted work solely in order to make a good faith determination of whether to acquire a copy of that work for the sole purpose of engaging in conduct permitted under this title [17 U.S.C.A. S 1 et seq.].” This would include the educational use permitted by Section 110(1) or fair use. However, the exception only applies to making a determination of “whether to acquire a copy” of the work, not to the use of the work.

N.B.: The analysis on this web page applies only to copyrights in the U.S. and we are informed that in other countries, Canada for instance, a license must be obtained for the uses permitted in the U.S. This analysis should not be construed as legal advice and, any person, before acting on it should seek advice from their own attorney.

Authorities: 17 United States Code, Sections 110(1) and 1201; Public Performance Rights for Movies and the Face to Face Teaching Exemption from the College of St. Benedict, St. John’s University; “Use of Video Cassettes in the Classroom,” by Ralph D. Mawdsley; 32 Education Law Reporter 1163; West Publishing Company, 1986; and “Copyrights, Cassettes and Classrooms: The Performance Puzzle,” by Francis M. Nevins, 43 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 1 (1995).

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Educator Resources, Filmmaking, Media literacy, Outside Source

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San Diego Comic Con 2011 Retrospective

San Diego Comic Con 2011 Retrospective

“Don’t let it be forgotten that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment…”

Fandom Conventions are about community and San Diego Comic Con is the largest gathering of the fandom community in the US. This year, fans of all shapes and sizes joined the fray. Hotels sold out, cell phone carriers were overburdened and controlled chaos was the name of the game. This year we were housed at the Horton Grande in the Gas Lamp district, just a few short blocks from the convention center. The staff and service were excellent and the room was spacious. If given the choice, I’d stay there again next year.

The online calendar allowed me to plan my schedule weeks in advance. This was a nice feature that took a great deal of stress out of my mornings. My goal this year was to build relationships with as many academics as I could. As luck would have it, there is an academic track at Comic-Con that adds a formal learning component to the typically informal learning environment. Known as the Comics Arts Conference, I was amazed at the caliber of the papers presented during panels and the poster session was a unique opportunity to spend time with academics discussing their research in a variety of topics.

The guest for this year’s Comic Arts Conference was David Lloyd of “V for Vendetta” fame. I had the opportunity to learn more about his UK academic initiative, Comics Classroom. David is very committed to bringing sequential art to children in schools as a way to increase literacy. However the Comics Classroom goes beyond the UK equivalent of K-12 education. They are also working on building opportunities to learn about sequential art into the higher education system. I highly encourage you to visit this amazing initiative.

I could go on for days about the great academic work presented in panels and poster sessions but it would only pale in comparison. Perhaps with some coaxing I can get some of them to share their papers with us. I certainly hope so. I’d like to thank Dr. Peter Coogan and his cohorts for their dedication to the Comic Arts Conference each year. I look forward to next year.

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Comics, Educator Resources

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San Diego Comic Con and the Comic Arts Convention

San Diego is the premier pop culture arts convention in the United States. Preview night is tonight. Everyone attends San Diego Comic Con for different reasons. For me it’s because of the Comic Arts Convention that runs concurrently with the rest of the convention. The CAC brings some of the country’s foremost experts on Pop Culture Education to share their insights. I’m looking forward to meeting some great minds and hopefully to cultivate a few guest bloggers for Pop Goes the Classroom. Here is the schedule for the CAC at San Diego Comic Con.

2011 Comics Arts Conference Schedule

Thursday

10:30-12:00: Comics Arts Conference Session #1: Fan Studies—Scott Daniel Boras (Arizona State University) relates his experiences as “Ethnography Man” researching the world of cosplay at Comic-Con and investigating how cosplay both subverts and reinforces codes of conduct, and in the end is more about transcendence than escape.  Beverly Taylor (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) presents her research into how the culture of physique athletes—body builders, figure, and fitness athletes—is influenced and inspired by superheroes, even to the point of considering their lives outside the gym to be their secret identities.  Lincoln Geraghty (University of Portsmouth) looks at the culture of collectables, focusing specifically on Comic-Con, to argue that these lunchboxes, toys, video games, and websites are such a part of the meaning-making process that they becomes texts to study in their own right. Room 26AB

 

 

12:00-1:00: Comics Arts Conference Session #2: Graphic Representations of Otherness—Authors such as Scott McCloud and W.J.T. Mitchell have argued for the ways in which graphic narratives manipulate ideas through both image and language, highlighting the way that these elements may work cooperatively or in disjunction to present robust depictions of subjectivity.  Anne Cong-huyen (University of California, Santa Barbara), Caroline Kyungah Hong (Queens College), Kim Knight (University of Texas at Dallas), Amanda Phillips (University of California, Santa Barbara), Melissa Stevenson (Stanford University), Elizabeth Swanstrom (Florida Atlantic University), and Candace West (University of California, Santa Cruz) examine representations of Otherness in graphic media, including comics, television, and video games, focusing on the ways in which representations of otherness in graphic narratives and other media can either solidify stereotypes or undermine cultural assumptions—or both.  The roundtable will consider a variety of forms of “Otherness” including gender, race, and sexuality, as well as metaphors of Otherness, including the animal, the monstrous, and the heroic. Room 26AB

 

1:00-2:30: Comics Arts Conference Session #3: Digital Comics—Nick Langley and Ron Richards (Graphicaly) ask whether the move to digital comics will doom paper or help comics reach a new audience. Thomas Thrash (National Park Community College) and Tommy Cash (Henderson State University) discusses the balance that digital comics strike between being a necessity to continued publication of comics and an existential threat to comic book stores. Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (University of Hertfordshire) considers the different directions potential explorers of digital comics—locative, sonic, generative, game, architectural, and AR comics—might pursue. Room 26AB

2:30-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #4: Inventing Iron Man—Author E. Paul Zehr (University of Victoria) discusses his book Inventing Iron Man, physically deconstructing Iron Man to find out how we could use modern-day technology to create a suit of armor similar to Stark’s.  Examining contemporary brain-machine interfaces and the meeting of neurology and neural plasticity, Zehr finds that science is nearing the point where such a suit is possible, but observes that “superherodom is not just about technology.”  He also considers our own physical limitations to ask whether a living human could truly become Iron Man. Room 26AB

 

Friday

10:30-11:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #5:  Critical Approaches to Comics: An Introduction to Theories and Methods—Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (powerofcomics.com), co-editors of the forthcoming textbook Critical Approaches to Comics (Routledge 2011), moderate a panel of contributors: David A. Berona (Plymouth State University), Andrei Molotiu (Indiana University), Stanford Carpenter (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Jennifer K. Stuller (ink-stainedamazon.com), Peter M. Coogan (Washington University), and Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California) explain methodologies that can be employed to analyze meanings in comics and comics culture, and engage in an interactive exchange with the audience members about how they can incorporate these approaches into their teaching of comics. Room 26AB

 

11:30-1:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #6:  Wordless Comics—Andrei Molotiu (Indiana University) makes the case that the sequential dynamics of abstract comics echo complex self-organizing systems such as occur in biological, mathematical, and sociological processes, and that the same trans-media values underlie more traditional, storytelling comics.  Dietrich Grünewald (Universität Koblenz-Landau) examines the picture story principle and why it is not advisable to refer to what Rodolphe Töpffer called “literature in pictures” with a fixed general term.  David A. Berona (Plymouth State University) investigates social, personal, and literary themes in contemporary woodcut novels. Room 26AB

 

1:00-2:00: Comics Arts Conference Session #7: Focus on David Lloyd—Guest of the Comic-Con David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Kickback) discusses the nature of sequential art and the methods of its production, considering his own methods, and how those methods have changed over time, as well as the creation of comics more generally in various genres and national and historical traditions.  He will also look at the teaching of sequential art, both to practitioners and to audiences, discussing his time at the London Cartoon Centre and the Cartoon Classroom project.  Kathleen McClancy (Wake Forest University) moderates. Room 26AB

 

2:00-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #8:  Transmedia, Comics Form, and Contemporary Adaptations—Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago) considers what implications the co-mingling of comics and digital games might have for the future of transmedia storytelling in what Henry Jenkins has called our contemporary “convergence culture.”  Hillary Chute (University of Chicago) examines how recent adaptations of independent comics provoke and stage conversations among forms from film to live performance.  Liam Burke (Huston School of Film & Digital Media) explores what impact the unprecedented period of modern comic book film adaptation has had on mainstream American comic books, from diminishing the specificity of their form to publishers making comics more amenable to film adaptation.  Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California) responds. Room 26AB

 

7:30-8:30 Comics Arts Conference Session: Comics Studies Forum

The Comics Studies Forum is an annual gathering of comics scholars to discuss the current and future state of the field.  This year the topic is teaching comics with guest of the Comic-Con David Lloyd (Cartoon Classroom).  The CSF is open to all Comics Arts Conference presenters, and includes scholars specifically attending the Forum: Scholars specifically attending the Forum include: Andrew Friedenthal (University of Texas at Austin), Kevin Degnan (Southwestern College), Andrew Rempt (Southwestern College), Jeffrey Martin (Southwestern College), Matt Yockey (University of Toledo), Richard Harrison (Mount Royal University), Jeff Brain (San Francisco State University), Christina Blanch (Ball State University), Schuyler Kerby (University of Central Florida), Jeff Barbanell (Arizona State University), Lesley Farmer (California State University Long Beach), Alec Hosterman (Indiana University South Bend), Benjamin Villarreal (New Mexico Highlands University), and Gina Misiroglu (Visible Ink Press). Come prepared to discuss David Lloyd’s career and the Cartoon Classroom (www.cartoonclassroom.co.uk). Room 26AB

 

8:30-    Graphic Novel Reporter After Dinner

John Hogan at Graphic Novel Reporter has invited CAC participants to attend a dinner (which starts at 7:30) at Buca di Beppo, 705 Sixth Ave. (at G Street).  We’ll head over after the forum (If you want to attend the dinner, email him at john@bookreporter.com  The deadline was Friday July 15, but ask him).

 

Saturday

10:30-12:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #9: Sequential Artistry—Keegan Lannon (Southern Illinois University) uses Craig Thompson’s Blankets as a case study to analyze how the relationship between the frame and the gutter, and individual frames themselves, can suggest duration and create the passage of time.  Fabio Luiz Carneiro Mourilhe Silva (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) applies Gaston Bachelard’s concept of rupture to comics, showing the evolution of comics along with their evaluation in terms of the instant and the articulation of time.  Tof Eklund (Full Sail University) turns the work of Thierry Groensteen, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Donald Ault onto Alex Robinson’s Too Cool to be Forgotten, revealing a narrative that is by turns eerie, enlightening, and wrenching, and, most of all, illustrative of the function and potential of time in comics.  Martin Schuewer (German Society for Comics Research) explores how the graphic construction of space contributes to the narrative in comics, looking particularly at perspective drawing and at how spatial fragments are linked to form a coherent narrative in the work of such experimental artists as Windsor McCay and in more conventionally narrative comics. Room 26AB

 

12:00-1:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #10: The Wit, Whimsy, & Wisdom Of Weisinger—Comic book historian and illustrator Arlen Schumer (The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) presents the work of Mort Weisinger, editor of the Superman line for 30 years (1940-70), told in Weisinger’s own words and artist Curt Swan’s images. Room 26AB

 

1:00-2:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #11: Psychology of the Dark Knight: How Trauma Formed the Batman and Why He’s Got a Thing for “Bad Girls”—How realistic is it that a young Bruce Wayne would vow to spend the rest of his life avenging his parents’ murders and “warring on all criminals”? How did these seminal events shape the man Wayne becomes? And why is he attracted to “bad girls?” For answers to these and other questions, psychologists Travis Langley (Henderson State University) and Robin Rosenberg (Psychology of Superheroes) ask Batman writers Dennis O’Neil and Grant Morrison, one-time Catwoman Lee Meriwether (Batman: The Movie), journalist Jill Pantozzi (Newsarama), and executive producer Michael Uslan (The Dark Knight Rises). Room 26AB

 

2:00-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #12: Poster Session—Want to go in depth with a comics scholar? Or a whole room of comics scholars?  Rather than presenting from the stage, the Poster Session scholars will be ranged around the room to discuss their presentations in small-group and one-on-one discussions.  Marko Head and Nicole Smith (Henderson State University) present “The Workday Comic,” an 8-hour student-project variation on Scott McCloud’s 24-Hour Comic, including the daunting task of painting original art drawn by special guest contributor Kabuki artist David Mack. Real-World Consequences Poster Group—Kalani Largusa (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) explores the significance of Kato in his role as the Green Hornet’s sidekick and the shaping of Asian identity; Nathan Wilson (Graphic Novel Reporter) looks at the real-world consequences of the representation of Native Americans in comics.  Adriana Estrada (University of Houston) uses moral panic theory and labeling theory to investigate the social construction of deviance that became associated with comic books in the anti-comics crusade of the 1940s and 1950s.  Medical Issues Poster Group—Erica Ash (Henderson State University) traces the history of addiction and drug use in comics in the context of the Comics Code; Brian Lott (Henderson State University) outlines how Harvey Dent/Two-Face changed to meet criteria for dissociative identity when he became The Judge. Adaptation Poster Group—Joyce Havstad (University of California, San Diego) charts the role of comics as a hybrid medium in facilitating adaptation to and from other media; David Mitchell (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) critically reads Enki Bilal’s epic Nikopol Trilogy and its film adaptation Immortal to consider how the comic seamlessly integrates the unreal with the real, whereas the film separates the real and unreal between live-action and CGI.  Superheroes Poster Group—Lauren Penick (Henderson State University) surveyed college students, prison inmates, and fan convention attendees to examine correlations between respondents’ self concepts and their character preferences; Evan Moreno-Davis (University of Southern California) examines the assumptions of the genre that drive role-playing game designers; Dana Anderson (Maine Maritime Academy) defines the superhero phenomenologically through the visceral experience of “superheroness” in the world. Queer Poster Group—Courtney Schneider (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) compares the treatment of homosexuality in mainstream and nonmainstream serialized media; Ashley Pitcock (Henderson State University) asks whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s movement into bisexuality was a sign of the times or a gimmick to sell Season Eight comics; Michael Harrison (Monmouth College) investigates how Spanish comics authors La Penya in Mondo Lirondo and Ivan Garcia in Capitan Eclipse use fantasy in distinct ways to communicate a 21st century queer Spanish identity.  Gender Poster Group—April Murphy (University of North Texas) seeks to examine how fears of female power, depicted in the new Batwoman and the relaunched Wonder Woman, are tied to a pattern of historical uneasiness with same-sex bonding; Independent scholar Ariel Schudson argues that the figure of Hit-Girl in Kick Ass maintains more positive iconography than negative and is really only behaving in a kind of “teen super hero normalcy,” even if it does seem a bit violent.  Manga Poster Group—George Tsouris (Touro College) examines shared features of Yokoyama’s manga and interviews to imagine what his manifesto for neomanga might look like; Kotaro Nakagaki (Daito Bunka University) focuses on the viewpoints of shojo in Sirato Sanpei’s A Vanishing Girl and Kono Fumiyo At the Corner of This World to examine war representations, reconstruction and economic growth, and racial/social minorities and discriminations in war manga. Room 26AB

 

7:00-9:00 Comics Arts Conference 10th Panel Dinner

Join us for the annual Comics Arts Conference 10th Panel Dinner at Hennessey’s Tavern (708 4th Avenue). It’s a chance to get together with the other conference participants outside of the conference.  Show up, eat, drink, talk.

 

Sunday

10:30-12:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #13:  Monsters, Somnambulism, and Anarchy:  Romantic Vertigo in the Modern Age—Kristy Boney (University of Central Missouri) delves into the influence of German Romanticism on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.  Alex Boney (thepanelists.org) explores the Romantic themes and central worldview that guide the works of Grant Morrison, from The Invisibles to Seven Soldiers, to his Batman run. Allison DuShane (University of Arizona) considers how Grant Morrison, in We3, employs formal elements unique to the medium of comics to critique the ways in which animals have been appropriated by culture to serve human interests. Room 26AB

 

 

12:00-1:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #14: Manga Censorship—Yukari Fujimoto (City University of New York) discusses the regulations concerning the specific characteristics of Japanese comics.  Attorney Takashi Yamaguchi addresses the problem of these regulations from a legal point of view.  Makoto Daniel Kanemitsu (Translativearts.com) examines the issue of censorship by comparing Japanese manga and American comics. Shige (CJ) Suzuki (City University of New York) investigates how the avant-garde gekiga comics appearing the in the 1960s alternative magazine Garo created a space not only for experimental artistic expression, but also for social criticism.  Room 26AB

 

 

1:30-2:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #15: The Comic Book Project: Creativity, Comics, and Academic Success in the Imperial Valley—Over the past three years, students in grades K-12 from Imperial County, California, have been creating comics in their social studies, science, English, and math classrooms as part of a US Department of Education grant.  They are using the Comic Book Project to boost academic skills, test scores, and individual success. This presentation features the work of participating students alongside demos from students, teachers, and coordinators.  Lori Campos (Imperial County, CA Office of Education), Anthony Arevalo (Imperial County, CA Office of Education), Juan Campos (The Comic Book Project), Imperial County student Hallie Campos, and Shaila Mulholland (San Diego State University) will introduce the process and products of this unique educational model, and provide tools and strategies for replication in any other school. Michael Bitz (Center for Educational Pathways), founder of the Comic Book Project, will be present to introduce the program and describe the successes and challenges of comics in school classrooms. Room 26AB

 

2:30-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #16:  The Culture of Comic-Con: Field Studies of Fans and Marketing—Matthew J. Smith (Wittenberg University) moderates a panel of graduate and undergraduate students—Kane Anderson (University of California Santa Barbara), Alissa Armstrong (Wittenberg University), Austin Bragg (Wittenberg University), David Erickson (Wittenberg University), Jonathan Judy (Kent State University), Kamuela Kaneshiro (Hawaii Pacific University), Leah Michaels (Hawaii Pacific University), Melissa Miller (Georgia State University), Jonathan Rupert (Wittenberg University)—who present initial findings of a week-long field study of the intersection of fan practice at the nexus of cultural marketing and fan culture at Comic-Con. Discussion with the audience follows the presentations. Room 26AB

 

6:30- Movie Night

It’s Sunday night after the Con, it’s time for a superhero movie.  This year Captain America: The First Avenger.  Gather in the lobby of the Westin Gaslamp (next to the Horton Plaza Mall) at 6:30-7, then we’ll get some dinner, and see a 9-something showing.  No showtimes yet, but it’ll be showing in one of the two Gaslamps movie theaters (the United Artists Horton Plaza and the Pacific Gaslamp on 5th).

 

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Comics, Educator Resources, Outside Source

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New York Times: Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom 9/15/2010

Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Class Media Nicole Dodson, Dakota Jerome Solbakken and Nadine Clements, students at Quest to Learn, a New York City public school, play a game they designed.

By SARA CORBETT
Published: September 15, 2010

One morning last winter I watched a middle-school teacher named Al Doyle give a lesson, though not your typical lesson. This was New York City, a noncharter public school in an old building on a nondescript street near Gramercy Park, inside an ordinary room that looked a lot like all the other rooms around it, with fluorescent lights and linoleum floors and steam-driven radiators that hissed and clanked endlessly.

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Screen Test A Sports for the Mind class. Instead of grades, students receive report cards with levels of expertise like ‘‘novice’’ and ‘‘master.’’

 Doyle was, at 54, a veteran teacher and had logged 32 years in schools all over Manhattan, where he primarily taught art and computer graphics. In the school, which was called Quest to Learn, he was teaching a class, Sports for the Mind, which every student attended three times a week. It was described in a jargony flourish on the school’s Web site as “a primary space of practice attuned to new media literacies, which are multimodal and multicultural, operating as they do within specific contexts for specific purposes.” What it was, really, was a class in technology and game design.

The lesson that day was on enemy movement, and the enemy was a dastardly collection of spiky-headed robots roving inside a computer game. The students — a pack of about 20 boisterous sixth graders — were meant to observe how the robots moved, then chart any patterns they saw on pieces of graph paper. Later in the class period, working on laptops, they would design their own games. For the moment, though, they were spectators.

Doyle, who is thin and gray-haired with a neatly trimmed goatee, sat at a desk in the center of the room, his eyeglasses perched low on his nose, his fingers frenetically tapping the keyboard of a MacBook. The laptop was connected to a wall-mounted interactive whiteboard, giving the students who were sprawled on the floor in front of it an excellent view of his computer screen. Which was a good thing, because at least as they saw it, Doyle was going to die an embarrassing death without their help. Doyle had 60 seconds to steer a little bubble-shaped sprite — a toddling avatar dressed in a royal blue cape and matching helmet — through a two-dimensional maze without bumping into the proliferating robots. In order to win, he would need to gobble up some number of yellow reward points, Pac-Man style.

“Go right! Go right! Go right!” the students were shouting. “Now down, down, down, downdowndown!” A few had lifted themselves onto their knees and were pounding invisible keyboards in front of them. “Whoa!” they yelled in unison, some of them instinctively ducking as Doyle’s sprite narrowly avoided a patrolling enemy.

Beauchamp, a round-faced boy wearing a dark sweatshirt, watched Doyle backtrack to snap up more points and calmly offered a piece of advice. “That extra movement cost you some precious time, Al,” he said, sounding almost professorial. “There are more points up there than what you need to finish.”

“How much time do I have?” Doyle asked.

“Nineteen seconds.”

“Thanks,” said Doyle, his eyes not leaving the screen. He added, “See, us older people, we don’t have the peripheral vision to check the time because we didn’t grow up with these games.”

For a few seconds, it was quiet. Doyle pinged through a row of reward points and then, hitting a little cul-de-sac in the maze, he paused. His avatar’s tiny yellow feet pedaled uselessly against a wall. The students began to yowl. A girl named Shianne pressed her hand to her forehead in faux anguish.

“Go! Go! Turn around. Don’t slow down. What are you waiting for?” someone called out.

“How much time do I have left?”

“Thirteen seconds!”

Doyle smiled. “All the time in the world,” he said, before taking his sprite on a deliberate detour to get even more reward points. The move, like a premature touchdown dance, put his students in agony.

“To the goal! To the goal! Al, run to the goal!”

And as the clock wound down and the students hollered and the steam radiator in the corner let out another long hiss, Doyle’s little blue self rounded a final corner, waited out a passing robot and charged into the goal at the end of the maze with less than two seconds to spare. This caused a microriot in the classroom. Cheers erupted. Fists pumped. A few kids lay back on the floor as if knocked out by the drama. Several made notes on their graph paper. Doyle leaned back in his chair. Had he taught anything? Had they learned anything? It depended, really, on how you wanted to think about teaching and learning.

WHAT IF TEACHERS GAVE UP the vestiges of their educational past, threw away the worksheets, burned the canon and reconfigured the foundation upon which a century of learning has been built? What if we blurred the lines between academic subjects and reimagined the typical American classroom so that, at least in theory, it came to resemble a typical American living room or a child’s bedroom or even a child’s pocket, circa 2010 — if, in other words, the slipstream of broadband and always-on technology that fuels our world became the source and organizing principle of our children’s learning? What if, instead of seeing school the way we’ve known it, we saw it for what our children dreamed it might be: a big, delicious video game?

Continue the Article at the New York Times.com

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Educator Resources, Games, Outside Source

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Hermione Granger: The Heroine Women Have Been Waiting For

Laura Hibbard

Assistant Editor, Social News, Huffington Post

2011-07-14-rHERMIONElarge570.jpg
Back in the day, I thought Belle was hardcore. Before you make your judgments, let’s take a look at some of the only other women role models I had to choose from at the time:

Behind door number one: Snow White, the beautiful princess forced into exile by her jealous evil stepmother, who decides to live with seven strange men, spends her spare time cleaning a house with stray animals, is dumb enough to eat food from a creepy stranger, and is saved only by a prince, who for some reason thinks kissing a sleeping girl is totally acceptable.

Behind door number two: Sleeping Beauty, another beautiful princess who did nothing wrong, but still suffered from the jealousy of another woman (I’m seeing a theme here), pricks her finger on an “irresistible” spinning needle (sewing is really just so irresistible to us), and falls into a deep sleep (again with the themes!). She stays like that the rest of the story while her prince fights dragons and saves the day and blah blah blah.

The list, unfortunately, could go on and on. So forgive me if I thought Belle, with her books and her bravery, was a badass. Sure, she had Stockholm syndrome, but she was the best thing going.

For a while it seemed little girls like me were doomed to idolize women who slept through all the action and rode off into the sunset with their handsome soon-to-be husbands.

Then J.K. Rowling, in her infinite wisdom, rocked my princess-and-glitter-obsessed world with her first novel Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Through it, the world fell in love with a new kind of heroine: the bushy-haired, average-looking, extremely intelligent Hermione Granger.

(“Actually I’m highly logical, which allows me to look past extraneous detail. And perceive clearly that which others overlook,” she corrected in Deathly Hallows.)

Coming into my own as a woman has been a rocky road. The insecurity and damage of adolescence took a while to shake off, and one thing in particular held on tight: the fear of expressing my opinion. Through no fault of those who raised me (relax, Mom) somewhere along the line I was imprinted with the idea that accommodation is a prized feminine personality trait. Never make a scene, never make anyone feel bad, or worst of all, uncomfortable. Much like the metaphor in Teri Hatcher’s book Burnt Toast, (in which she discusses the memory of her mother eating the toast she burnt so that nobody else had to) somewhere early on I got the idea that women accept the way things were and don’t inconvenience anyone by changing it.

From the beginning, as a writer for BlogHer notes, it’s clear that’s something Hermione Granger couldn’t care less about.
The early books were full of her eagerly answering question after question in class, much to the annoyance of the other characters. In the later books, that unapologetic intelligence very obviously saves Harry Potter’s life on more than one occasion.

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Comic Books in the History Classroom | Teachinghistory.org


Comic Books in the History Classroom

Jul 9 2011 Cover to Green Lantern comic All-American Comics #16, Jul. 1940

Rwany Sibaja is a PhD student of History at George Mason University and a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center for History and New Media. He previously taught high school history (World and AP European) and Spanish, later working as a K-12 curriculum program manager in NC.

The summer of 2011 offers moviegoers several productions based on superheroes and comic books. Thor. X-Men: First Class. Green Lantern. Captain America: The First Avenger. Cowboys & Aliens. Hollywood has discovered that comic book movies are more than a passing fad, resonating with audiences who connect with the humanity behind the costumes. As a result, comic book-based films have grown over the last decade—both in production and ticket sales— with many more movies to be released over the next few years (The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-man, Iron Man 3, and The Avengers to name a few.)

Teachers can use the popularity of superhero films to expand students’ understanding of American culture. University of Idaho professor of history Katherine Aiken explored the use of comic books to teach U.S. history in a recent essay published by the Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of History (Vol.24, no.2-April 2010). Aiken concluded that because comic books reflect larger social issues in U.S. society, they can help students examine how U.S. artists addressed issues of race, gender, nationalism, and conflict in popular publications.

Some educational publishers, for their part, have produced illustrated history stories and graphic novels to capture younger readers’ attention, such as tales from the Revolutionary War. While history-based graphic novels are a useful supplement to course materials, studying comic books provides a different focus in the classroom. Analyzing U.S. popular culture can help teachers and students contextualize the origins of comic books, explore how events in history shaped the evolution of this medium, and assess the ability of comics to address larger social concerns.

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Comic Books in the History Classroom | Teachinghistory.org

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Comics, Outside Source

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Edutopia Summer Professional Development: Making Lessons Come Alive in the Classroom with the Xbox Kinect

By Dan Jones

6/1/11

Today’s guest blogger, Dan Jones, is a middle school social studies and language arts teacher in Mansfield, OH.

Something about movie magic intrigues me. It was fascinating, for instance, to find out that actors in my favorite movies often filmed entire scenes without ever leaving the studio. And when I watch the special effects in a movie, I wish I could use that technology.

So I was blown away when my wife gave me a green-screen system called Yoostar for my birthday — I had no idea this sort of technology was available for the general public. And after playing with my new gift, I realized that it actually had a classroom use: My students could use it to give presentations as if they were at the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, The Eye of London, The Great Wall of China, a farm, the moon, and many other locations.

Learn Something New This Summer. Click to see more

Since introducing it to my students, I have found that they are no longer terrified to stand up in front of their peers to do a presentation — they are interested and having fun — and they are amazed that they are able to use this type of technology in school. The students are also more focused, more diligent in finding factual information, and more energized about the material being studied when they know that they are going to use the green screen for their presentations.

Using Yoostar to Teach Social Studies

When my class was studying ancient Egypt, the students were assigned specific topics about ancient Egyptians’ daily life. I divided the class into groups of two so they could present with a partner. The students then typed out the vocabulary for their chapters in large font so that they could hold up the words as they presented in front of the Great Pyramid. (Some of the students even referenced and pointed to the Great Pyramid in the video background as they presented.) Using a similar presentation structure, I had students research the legacy of Rome. The students dressed in togas and wore olive leaf crowns as they presented in front of the Roman Colosseum.

By encouraging the students to dress up for their presentations — they wore hats, beards, and many other accessories — they felt a stronger connection to the content they were presenting, and it also helped them to take more ownership of their projects. They also created flags from the countries they were exploring (and because these students were fourth and fifth graders, they had their speeches written out on the back of the flag they were holding).

The Impact of Technology

Students are impacted beyond measure when classroom technology is keeping up with the technology of the world. I am no longer grading the nervousness of my students, for instance. When they are able to record, re-record, re-record, and re-record until they feel they have a presentation they could be proud of, this allows me to grade the content of the presentation much more accurately.

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Educator Resources, Games, Outside Source, Uncategorized

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