Learning Through Blogs

The article "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us" is about the idea that soon, with the abundant access to the internet among young people, teaching through that medium will become inevitable. It covers both the advantages and disadvantages of this development, ultimately giving instructions to the reader about what to do and what to avoid while conducting research through blogging. 

In the article, the author wrote, "personalizing learning means allowing students to choose their own paths through the curriculum," which was a quote that really spoke to me because this is the way I have always viewed the ideal of learning: having access to the tools necessary to succeed in doing whatever personally suits you, and what will help you learn and grow as a person. Standardizing curriculum is a concept that has never made sense to me in the way that education works in the United States. 

I like the idea of using the blogs to connect with others working on projects like the ones we're doing, because it adds another perspective. It's interesting to learn through both your teacher, your peers, and other sources, because you can find a variety of viewpoints on any one issue, which I find fascinating. 

I'm interested in writing and directing films in this class, so those might be things I could research through blogging. 

(Diigo isn't working on my computer right now for some reason, so I'll get the annotations up sometime this weekend, probably Monday.)

Diigo Movie Review Annotation Assignment

Movie Review

The movie I read a review of was The Amazing Spiderman, published in The New York Times by Manohla Dargis.

Dargis opens by introducing the history of Spiderman: the past movies, the comic books, and the reception that both have received. This is a theme that continues throughout the review as Dargis repeatedly compares and contrasts the new movie to the old. The review takes a lot of time talking about the past of the franchise and not much on the movie itself. When the review does speak about the new movie, it is mainly a plot synopsis, with added critiques of most changes. The author spends a little time lamenting the lack of acting expertise, but almost entirely forgets to talk about the cinematic aspects of the production, which are critiqued in their one line as superfluous and cheesy.

The review is written in a serious tone, but as though the author intends to be masking their personal opinion on the film while making slight digs at it. The reviewer does not recommend the film, although they do not explicitly state that. The reviewer does not rate the movie nor give away its ending.

I think that one of the major problems with the cinematic analyses last year was that we had to answer specific questions, and we weren't so much writing a review as talking about the various aspects of the film in relation to history and writing techniques. It was rather dull. It would be more interesting if we could choose any movie that we wanted to watch and be given the freedom to write a review focusing on what we wished to write about.

Filmmaking Introduction Post

Hello, my name is Katherine and this is my CAP 10 blog. I like traveling, music, and softball. I'm most interested in directing film because I like telling people what to do and bringing a vision to life. My favorite film projects were my Individual Media Project in eighth grade, where I was allowed to write, direct, and edit a short film on any topic. I decided to make mine about Alice In Wonderland, one of my favorite books. I loved this project because it allowed me to do anything I wanted, and I was given total creative control. Another project that I enjoyed was the New York Documentary Project, also in eighth grade, where we went to New York City for a week and conducted an interview with an artist, later making it into a documentary about the connection between art and its setting, in this case the city. We were given a lot of freedom to roam around the city and take b-roll, and I thought it was a lot of fun. I did all the editing in my group, and I also took a lot of the b-roll that we used.

Some ideas I have for using our blogs this year:

• We could use them to share our film projects once they're complete
• We could use them to brainstorm ideas for projects with our classmates and give each other advice on them
• We could use them to reflect on our projects