Kist Chapters

I just finished reading chapters 1, 6, 7, & 8 from Dr. Kist's book. I wanted to blog about one aspect of each chapter that I found interesting.

Chapter 1. On page three Dr. Kist takes readers back to a time before computers, cell phones, and DVR's. He mentioned that if he wanted to type a paper, it would have to be on a typewriter, or else written in long hand. This made me think of my 10th grade English teacher. She was not the type to integrate technology into the classroom. I'm not even sure we watched a movie in her class. Anyway, for our first paper of the semester she insisted that we write the paper out in long hand, and in cursive. This had been the first time we had been asked to do this in years, and many of us were not happy. Many doubted they even remembered how to write cursive. However, we all wrote our papers in cursive in blue or black ink. After this assignment my teacher allowed us to type the rest of our assignments She said that our handwriting was so poor that she could hardly read them. (I have to wonder if this is a result of technology.)

Chapter 8. On page 135/136 Dr. Kist includes som opinions aboutt he works that is involved in new literacy projects. Like Dr. Kist mentions Ialways had the belief that new literacy projects were easy. After reading about some of the assignments these students were doing, I realized that they were a lot more involved than anything I had done in high school. They are interpretting and analyzing movies just as they would do with a novel, and maybe even more so. When I watched movies in high school, it was mainly "OK now compare and contrast the book and the movie"...boring and obvious. All of the movies we watched were based on books, too. I think I would have enjoyed doing other types of lessons using movies, such as something to do with characterization or foreshadowing.

Chapter 7. I wanted to comment about the use of "fluff" projects in the classroom that are mentioned on page 123. Obviously, these are not fluff projects. A lot time, effort, and thinking go into the creation of new literacy projects. I had a teacher who always allowed us to repsond to literature using these types of projects. She hardly gave us regular quizzes or tests and I loved it. I felt that this was a way to better gage our understanding of the text. We were not simply memorizing and reciting, we getting involved with the literature.

Chapter 6. A student in this chapter talked about how he learned to "read movies" from the new literacy course he was taking. This made me think of my own experiences now that we have been analyzing films in class. When I attended the film festival I found myself looking at camera angles and different shots to see how they were affecting to picture. I have to say that I really saw the power that was created from the close up shots of peoples faces. I was even listening to the music in the background in relation to what was happening on the screen. I am ruined for movies now :) kidding kidding