"Creating my own license in creative commons." - Interesting, cool and slightly confusing.
"It's about helping students find open source media to utilize."
Google images has a" usage rights" option to filter out licensed media. *Mind blown. "Fair use is a complicated topic, but that isn't a reason or an excuse not to share information about it with your students and to understand it better yourself."
Today, I found myself thinking more in depth about the dialogic nature of writing and how that can be further facilitated inside and outside of the classroom. As our teaching demo instructor noted today, writing is best learned through the process of actually writing. I must admit that I at once concur and also challenge that statement... at least to some extent. I think writing is also best learned in dialogue with others, sometimes that dialogue is internal (i.e. a conversation between self and audience) and sometimes it is external (i.e. a conversation between self and other individuals). Regardless, I agree that both of these "conversations" constitute writing, because the process of writing is not just when one types or puts pencil to paper. It is also the process of thinking, mapping and engaging. So, yes, writing is best learned in the process of writing, but that process is not limited to the physicality of writing alone.
Today, groups completed their remediation videos of Romeo and Juliet (the legendary play by Shakespeare). Is it even fair to still refer to Romeo and Juliet simply as a play by Shakespeare? I'm not sure. Perhaps it is better, as we discussed today, to consider this epic love story/tragedy to be a part of the collective consciousness. These two characters have come to represent a common meaning that is so widespread it no longer requires knowledge of the actual details in the narrative. It now universally represents eternal love, a force that is so strong it cannot be stopped. However, there seemed to be a general consensus among the institution participants, that the story is pretty freaking crazy and as such lends itself pretty easily to remediation (as evidenced by the many reinterpretations it has undergone in society). I found the videos to be extremely creative and was interested in further understanding the processes of how each group made particular decision based on the original story, popular notions of they play they were previously exposed to and their own creative freedoms.
As a PhD student, I will likely not have a classroom to implement the knowledge I have gained during the institute in the coming academic year. I will, however, be researching, and this institute has truly helped me to further understand the importance of bridging the gap between research and practice. The institute participants are doing wonderful work in their classrooms, which I have been exposed to through the dynamic teaching demos and many discussions we participate in amongst ourselves. A broad theme seems to be making helping students make connections and building on their funds of knowledge that they bring with them to the classroom (social and cultural). There are many exercises and activities that I believe can be implemented in the classroom. However, as a researcher, each individual instructor's contentions about writing education and their beliefs have made me think deeply about rationales behind why teachers are choosing specific learning activities. In the future, I would like to keep learning about these foundational justifications and rationales and how they inform teaching and learning of writing.
This week was greater than I imagined. I've been working through new ideas, sharing my writing and gaining feedback from other participants in the institute. Perhaps, most importantly through teaching demos and other collaborative activities, I am learning more about innovative and effective writing instruction. Understanding how students are making meaning of writing, how they believe writing skills are acquired and their justifications/rationales for the functions of writing will guide my research in the coming year. As a researcher, being in a collaborative space with intelligent and experienced practitioners is not a privilege that I have often. That, in and of itself, being in this environment with these people has changed my thinking about what is practical, what is useful and what is viable in the writing classroom. I'm hoping to explore my inquiry topic more and to be able to communicate my theoretical angles about writing in a way that is concrete and relatable.
Today turned out to be very extremely unsettling (in a good way) for me. I realized through the process of developing my "thing" that my thought process during creation is characteristically narrative in nature. My composing process is all about the story I am telling, both in art and in writing. When I originally began, I had no clue about what I would make. I originally assumed by the instructions that I was supposed to make something functional from these miscellaneous things...like a shoe box or a pencil holder. Instead, I began to understand that I could make something, anything, with a purpose. As I pulled my materials together, other UIWP participants began coming over to inquire about what I was making. One person explained that what I was making looked "nostalgic". This began to make me think about creating a board to post memories. One of our writing coaches then pushed me to think about memories in a less typical way. This resulted in me trying to represent memories that I wish I could hold on to but am unfortunately losing over time...such as what it feels like to be in love and be loved...
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