10 minutes or less

According to Delicious, 667 people have tagged this one:


World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.


And 107 people have tagged this:


The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Feel free to be #668 or #108.

goat song film study

Do you show movies in your class? Entire feature-length films?

Here's how popcorn and Goobers wiggle their way into my class.

We read Aristotle's "Poetics". We cry boredom. We sweat death. I up my bi-weekly therapy sessions.

Welcome to Mr. Rodoff's unit on Tragedy.

There's talk of hubris, whispers of peripetia, and chatter about catharsis. The students wish for more existentialism, and then I really know that the unit is off to a poor start.

To keep any hope of unit longevity alive, we make millenial jumps in time and read the James Hurst short story, "The Scarlet Ibis". There's a deformed little boy, a bloodied bird, and a dead sibling. An adolescent reading dream come true!

Not quite.

The purpose of the story is to establish the timelessness of the tragic terms from "Poetics", but most of my students don't 'see' the connectivity between two thousand year old terms and a short story from the 60's.

So if they can't 'see' the connection through the short story, maybe they'll see it through film.

But film is time. Film is commitment. Film is darkness and administrative doubt.

However, I want my students to 'see' the connection. No, not just see the connection, but get the connection. In my unicorn-filled dreamscape, my students take up residence in a state where they are innately thinking about tragic elements in everything they read, watch, and experience.

Enter Robert Redford's film, Quiz Show.

I take the time. I make the commitment. I welcome darkness and administrative inquiry.

There is no viewing guide, no note-taking, no quiz.

And at the end of the two day viewing period, I start discussing the film. I ask that they create a PNI list, independently and collaboratively. We hold wiki-based discussions. They ask questions. They bring up "The Scarlet Ibis". They make connections.

From 'I' to 'they'.

The power and magic of film.

inspirational throw-away

How's that saying go? One man's detritus is another man's gem? Something like that, right?

But here's the point:

Over at Dan Meyer's tome, Christian Long posted a comment in response to the short film, People In Order:

My Hon Eng II (10th graders) classes will ALL be watching this video in the coming days.

They’ll be challenged with writing the ‘ad copy’ that will entice film festival goers to come see this wacky little idea-concept. Oh, and they’ll have to use this week’s vocab list — all from Act I of Macbeth, BTW — to help lift their text off of the generic floor.

Over at Ken Rodoff's sent email folder, Ken composed an email for an Algebra teacher in his building. After Ken moved past the metaphor and aesthetic of the film, he wondered if the video could work in a math classroom:

Here's a 3 minute video of people, ages 1 - 100, in order, banging on a drum.

It is a lot more dynamic than the above description.

Part of me wonders if it would fit in a math class.

Kids predict how many beats, total.
Kids predict which person, by age, will hit the drum the most.
Kids watch video.
Kids discuss the findings.
Kids could graph age / beats.
Kids could come up with some conclusions/findings.

Kids messin' around with numbers, probability, basic math.

What started out as distraction and menagerie turned out to jump-start some educational percolation.

Are we trying too hard to make something out of, as Dan labels it, 'show and tell'?

Or are we demonstrating the never settle-ness of innovative teaching?