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Posts tagged ‘pop goes the classroom’

The Steampunk Scientific Exhibition

It’s taken us several years of exploration into the phenomena of Steampunk to figure out its place in classroom instruction. We have opted not to go the traditional route via literature and rather to embrace the science and pseudoscience of a bygone era to help today’s students gain the foundations of scientific method from a different perspective. I’m proud of the work the Pop Goes the Classroom team has done to create what we are calling the Steampunk Scientific Exhibition.  

Over the next weeks, we’ll be talking about how we envision different aspects of the experience to support community knowledge of scientific inquiry and method. 

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Educator Resources

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What Does Game-based Learning Offer Higher Education?

By 

As someone interested in learning and video games, one of the most inspirational things I have seen, read, or heard lately, is the TED talk by game designer Jane McGonigal, “Gaming can make a better world.” You can watch the entire video below, but here is a brief summary. McGonigal’s hypothesis is that, if we can create engaging and fun games based on meaningful real world problems, we have the ability to leverage an incredible amount of energy and passion to solve the world’s biggest problems. As an example, one such problem was recently solved by players of the online science game Foldit, who unlocked the secrets of a protein associated with AIDS (Rooney, Sept 27, 2011). According to McGonigal, leveraging the combined knowledge, energy and enthusiasm of gamers is the next logical step in creating a world worth living in. Higher education needs to begin to seriously consider gaming not only as an area of inquiry, but also as a means for engaging students and pushing learning beyond its current state. Effective use of gaming will help to reinvent the college experience in a way that makes its value to the individual and society unassailable.

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Games

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Psychology Today: Can Television Shows Become Classics?

by William Irwin, Ph.D., and David Kyle Johnson, Ph.D.

Popular culture has the bad reputation of being disposable junk that is used and forgotten. In 1954 when the Marxist critic Theodor Adorno dismissed the medium of television he didn’t even reference the titles of shows, never mind the names of the shows’ writers and producers.1 We’ve come a long way in our appreciation of television since Adorno, but still the vast majority of television is disposable. Can some of it, though, survive to become classic?

Finish the Article on Psychology Today

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Educator Resources, Outside Source

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Psychology Today: Inception and Philosophy

Plato on Pop

Philosophy and pop culture
by William Irwin, Ph.D., and David Kyle Johnson, Ph.D.

The movie Inception still fascinates me; I suppose that is why my colleague (and co-blogger) William Irwin asked me to edit the Wiley/Blackwell Pop Culture series book on the movie—Inception andPhilosophy: Because It’s Never Just a Dream. The book came out this month and my Pop Culture and Philosophy class is about to dive into it. As a result I’ve really got Inception on the brain and I’d like to do a few posts on it. Although it’s been about a year and half since the movie was released in theaters, people are still talking about it—so I’d like to start out by settling a debate over a question that overtook the internet in the summer of 2010, and is still alive and well today:

Did the top fall?

Inception is a movie about dreams—shared dreams specifically. The protagonist, Cobb, is an “extractor” who can share your dreams and steal your ideas. He carries a totem with him—a top—that he uses to tell dreams from reality. Whenever he is unsure whether he is awake or still dreaming, he takes out his top and spins it. If it continually spins, that indicates that he is still dreaming, but if it falls that is supposed to assure him that he is awake. At the end of the film, when he returns to his children, Cobb spins his top one final time to see if he is awake—but his kids distract him, and the film cuts to black before we see whether or not it falls.

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Educator Resources, Outside Source

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Know Your Meme

by KellyAnn Bonnell

Teaching means learning a new vocabulary every few years. Keeping up with what is relevant in the lives of today’s student can be a challenge. Here’s a great resource that will keep you on top of what’s happening on the web. It’s a blog called Know Your Meme.

According to Wikipedia (I’ve finally figured out how to view Wikipedia. I consider it a resource but not a source), a meme (play /ˈmiːm/[1]) is “an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.[3]

The word ‘meme’ is a shortening (modeled on ‘gene’) of ‘mimeme’ (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, “something imitated”, from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai, “to imitate”, from μῖμος mimos “mime”)[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion and the technology of building arches.[6]

I highly recommend you take a look. You’ll be hip, cool and totally in the know before you know it…lol.

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Educator Resources, New Media

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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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Syfy’s Eureka Season 4 Teacher’s Media Guide is here

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.

Syfy’s Eureka Season 4 Teacher’s Media Guide

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Filmmaking, Media Guide, Media literacy

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Comics in the Classroom: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teachers

Comics in the Classroom: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teachers

By Kelsey Allen

Gone are the days of children sneaking comics past diligent parents and teachers watching out for sub-par literature. The comics of today not only have plenty to offer, they are gaining well-deserved recognition and awards. Take advantage of the natural affinity children have for comics and use them as a powerful teaching tool in your classroom. The following tips, tools, and resources will get you started.

Understanding Benefits and Usage in the Classroom

Understand how comics are beneficial in schools and ways they can be used.

  1. Eek! Comics in the Classroom!. This article describes many of the benefits of using comics and graphic novels in education and also includes resources for places to find appropriate materials for class.
  2. Comic Books in the Classroom. This news story outlines why comic books may be a great way to promote reading in reluctant readers as well as help teach writing, emotions, and more.
  3. Comics in the Classroom. Take an in depth look at the recent trend of using comics in the classroom, whether it is appropriate for the classroom, and resources for teaching with comics and graphic novels.
  4. Using Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom. Understand how using comics and graphic novels can help teach complex reading skills, punctuation, outlining, paragraphing, and literary terms.
  5. Comic Book Science in the Classroom. Listen to this NPR report about teaching with comics, including both benefits and concerns as seen by educators.
  6. Maryland Comic Book Initiative. Read about this initiative in Maryland elementary schools, then read the research behind it, get sample lessons, and watch videos of students in action.
  7. MSP#101: Comics in the Classroom. The last half of this podcast features Dr. Peter Coogan, Director of the institute for Comic Studies as he discusses comics in the classroom.
  8. Thoughts About Comics #2 My Comics Classroom. This teacher describes the value of comics in his fourth grade classroom.
  9. Comics in the Classroom. This informative article examines some of the reasons why comics and graphic novels are fast growing in school libraries, but a bit slower to reach the classrooms.
  10. Comic Books in the Classroom. The New York Times takes a look at the value of using comics in education and the success of The Comic Book Project.
  11. Gurney Journey: Comics in the Classroom. Illustrator James Gurney describes a tour of a class using comic books as inspiration. Be sure to read the comments section to hear from the teacher of the class.
  12. Hamlet too hard? Try a comic book. This article describes some of the benefits of using graphic novels in class to help struggling readers and to boost interest in subjects.

Resources for Using Comics in the Classroom

These resources are all valuable sources of information, tools, community, and more to help you use comics in your classroom.

  1. Comics in the Classroom. This site is all about promoting the use of comics in the classroom and includes news and reviews, lesson plans, forums, a blog, and much more.
  2. Teachingcomics.org. This organization helps promote quality teaching through comics and offers such resources as lesson plans, study guides, handouts, connections with other teachers, and featured schools using comics in the classroom.
  3. Comics in Education. This website is the final project for a teacher working on his Master’s degree and includes many resources for using comics in school.
  4. Drawing Cartoons Theme Page. This site offers tons of links to resources ranging from creating cartoons to learning about the profession of cartoonist to teacher resources.
  5. Toon Books. Keep abreast of the latest comic and graphic novels for emerging readers and also find lesson plans here.
  6. Educational Comic Books for the Classroom. This helpful article includes a list of comic books for elementary aged children, tips for using comics in the classroom, and resources for teachers.
  7. Comic Books as Curriculum. This interview with Richard Jenkins, co-author of Comics in Your Curriculum, offers a peek at the book written to help teachers learn how to incorporate comics into their lessons.

Suggested Comics for the Classroom

If you need a little help knowing what comics are both high-quality and age-appropriate, then check out these lists.

  1. Graphic Novels for (Really) Young Readers. Written by an elementary school librarian, this article offers excellent suggestions for beginning readers through more accomplished elementary readers–and a reminder of the powerful effects of using graphic novels in education.
  2. The Best Comics for Your Classroom: A List for All Grade Levels. This resource features lists of highly recommended and recommended comics categorized by age group.
  3. Comics in the Classroom. This PDF lists several comics and includes age ranges, including a “mature teen” rating, and publication information.
  4. Top 20 Children’s Comics. This listing offers descriptions, awards won, and any potentially objectionable material that might be in any of them.
  5. The Twelve Best Comic Books for the Classroom. This list includes five books for grades 2-6 and seven books for grades 7-12.
  6. Comics in the Classroom. This article, despite the numerous grammatical mistakes, does offer a wealth of information as to specific comics and the grade levels at which they may be used.
  7. Comics in the Classroom – The Course in Computer Games. Sent on a mission to discover which comics students could read that might make a good computer game like Second Life, this writer investigates and reports her findings.
  8. Reading, Writing, and Inquiry in the Science Classroom, Grades 6-12. This excerpt from the book includes a brief history of comics, a look at why comics are appealing to children, and a listing of comics and graphic novels that can be useful in teaching science.
  9. Top 10 Superhero Comic Books Your Kids Should Be Reading. This list is from a parent and only focuses on superhero comics, but browse through the comments for more recommendations, including many outside the superhero realm.

Continue this article here

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Comics, Educator Resources, Media literacy, Outside Source

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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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