Whitman – “America”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Whitman audio clip

Whitman – “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Smithsonian audio clip

Thomas – “Under Milk Wood”

VW commercial

Text

Even though I hate the commercialism of it, preferring to make the classroom as free of advertising as possible, what if you set students loose with a small snippet of a poem and had them create an ad campaign using it? They’d have to understand the poem enough to see how it would relate to a product. Have them set images to it and there’s a whole other layer of interpretation. Use this as prewriting to some larger analysis of the poem and this could be gold. You could give them copies of poems that are game for this project along with a list of products they could choose to advertise. That would certainly help those students who struggle with too much freedom in these matters.

Team up with an Economics teacher. Most Econ teachers I’ve talked to have a project where students create their own businesses. As part of that project, they also pick a poem to use as ad copy for their ad campaign.

Do you know of any other commercials that use poems? Have any ideas what to do with all this in the classroom? Do tell!Similar Posts:

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Possibilities

Have students look through the comments on this video to see what they agree or disagree with. Asking for feedback about a set of comments you select would be a good idea, too.

Someone on YouTube threw this out: “For all the moments of life to catch, why were so many of them manufactured in this piece?” That could be a great discussion starter, a nice way into a critical viewing of this video. “Support your answers with evidence from the text” works for more than the written word. Which moments are staged? Which moments are real? How can you tell? Examining what works and what doesn’t could also be a way for your students to create their own version of this video.

Whether or not the music is needed could be another point to debate. Perhaps you should talk about the selection of a piece of music that fits more into the background, instead of one that steals the thunder of so many of these visuals like the current song does. I wonder if this piece would be stronger with a more subtle score.

Background

This video is the culmination of a week-long set of Radiolab segments about death. The regular-length broadcast called “After Life” was followed up by short audio pieces each day until Friday, when this video was released as a way to wrap up the whole thing. Radiolab never ceases to amaze me; just about each week is better than the one before it.

Download

Is YouTube blocked where you are? Then download the video and decide if a piece of Radiolab is worth showing to your students (answer: yes).

Warning: There is a “moment” of someone holding a condom (found at 1:17-19). There’s also a shot of a surgical cutting (2:45-47). I’m still mulling over whether or not the condom thing is a deal breaker. I’ll almost certainly show it to my all-senior Speech class.

P.S. Thanks for the Radiolab reminder, Emily. Yup, it is brilliant.Similar Posts:

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I showed this AFI video to Support for our note-taking session yesterday and will show it to Speech after Spring Break when they start to storyboard. It moves through the ten final shots pretty quickly, a good challenge for my Support kids who are just learning to take notes, but also makes it easy to understand what the shots are.

The American Film Institute (AFI) put together a series of videos that walk you through movie production. They have lesson plans, handouts, and audio/video resources that actually aren’t too shabby, at the very least providing a good skeleton for you to expand on. I heard about this curriculum a few years ago and am happy to have found it all. And it’s free, something I worried would be true back when it first caught my attention.

Links And Handouts

There are a few ways to get to all this stuff:

• AFI:
  • AFI ScreenNation – The Lights, Camera, Education channel is where I spend most of my time, though some user submitted videos are in my list of favorites, soon to shine in my classroom. These will be some examples of documentaries for Speech to use as models.
  • AFI Screen Education – This is all the same content, from what I gather. I just found this tonight when looking closer at a few URLs.
• Mike Phillips
  • The Mike Phillips Blog – Found in the Digital Film category, Mike has slightly revamped the AFI stuff and I like his approach a bit more.
• The Jewel: Storyboard Glossary Of Common Film Shots – This is what grabbed me when I first heard of the curriculum. Sure, it’s also on pages fifty to sixty-one of AFI’s Educator’s Handbook, but I like it when I don’t have to scroll through a bunch of stuff I don’t need right now.

So there’s at least two sites…Similar Posts:

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My plan here is to show a step at a time, then pause the video to extrapolate on the ideas a bit more. I’ll create some scenarios and ask for participation, then move on to the next step. At the end, we’ll talk about who got what information and how the notes look. We’ll then move to giving our notes the Cornell treatment and create possible test questions in the left margin.

I looked through a lot of possibilities, but narrowed to this one because I want to keep it short and at least moderately fun here at the beginning. That lecture about why the earth has seasons, though a bit dry, is certainly coming because that’s good practice, too. I aim to get videos about several different disciplines, so suggestions for other quality videos are welcome. I’ll be delivering some of these lectures myself, too, PowerPoint on some and no visuals on others.

Handouts

• How To Be Assertive Notes (PDF) (Word)
• Video

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On occasion, you’ll find an explanation that’s a bit confusing (the lack of an apostrophe to show possession for names like Socrates or “Context” as the tenth place to capitalize). Walk students through those bits and things should be fine. These are solid works by and large. I showed my Support class the one about capital letters today. With just a tiny bit of set up and debriefing, they got everything they needed from it. I wish I had created these. In fact, I’d like to do a few of these over again for American audiences; “favourite” and examples using pounds can be off putting for some students.

VideoJug has some interesting videos about education, though that’s about as far as I’d send a student into that site. Pick your links carefully. Better yet, create an account in order to download the videos for local use. The videos I looked at have full scripts, too, in case that’s your thing.Similar Posts:

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