Comrades! Join me in my new quest to rule the universe! OK, that might be taking it a bit far, however, I would sincerely appreciate it if you’d drop some kuai in my jar in the middle school office for the “Sumo for Haiti” relief event that will happen this coming Thursday. Heck, drop it in anyone’s jar and help us to raise money for relief. We are the change that we make and the people that we can help while we’re on this planet. Our power is not in our ability to control people: it’s in our ability to help people to live better lives. Carpe diem! Seize the day!
ASA challenge for next week: play this song flawlessly in GarageBand by touch typing using correct fingering:
THE ENTERTAINER
sedkdkdk klp;kl;jlk
sedkdkdk hgthk;lkhl
sedkdkdk klp;kl;jlk
kl;kl;klk;kl;klk;kl;jlk
Students in our Movie Making elective will be able to use our new centralized resource and collaboration space: The SAS Movie Making Wiki. Watch our movie plans and teams unfold online!
This week Bill Gates launched a website, “Gates Notes”, where you can follow his ideas and his passion for solving global issues.
You can follow what Bill is currently learning, where he’s traveling, and there’s even a section for students to ask him questions.
Today in ESOL we structured an “open conversation” across two classes at two different times by using Chatzy. The chat was designed to request student input for our 3rd quarter classes, and there were four dominant suggestions across the classes:
1. We will create a ‘Cooperative Classroom Calendar’ that will be used by both classes to map out Core assignments and quizzes so we can plan and prepare for them more effectively together.
2. We will view and respond to a movie that connects to themes in Humanities. So far we have the concept of watching “The Boy With The Striped Pajamas” that links to human rights and the holocaust.
3. We will address some of the history prior to WWII because some students are really curious about why and how it happened.
4. We will spend some of our SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) lessons in the library so we can browse/select from all of the resources there.
07
Jan
Lights, Cameras, Action!
Today Mr. Kulikowski and I started our new elective season of “Movie Making”. What’s special about the 3rd quarter version of the movie making elective? Aside from getting access to two very unique “executive producers” (that would be Mr. K and me) you’ll be able to take an idea for a film and then turn it into reality that you can share with the world. If you’re seriously adventurous, then we hope that you’ll submit your movie to the S2F2 Student Film Festival, which is a collaboration between the major international schools in Shanghai. I know you have the talent – now we just have to have the vision, the discipline, and the collaboration that we need to have so that we can produce some fine films together.
Today we started by looking at the S2F2 website. We looked at the categories and rules, and it’s important to note that some of the rules of the festival have changed this year. One noteworthy change is that the competition now demands more originality, and that may force you to step outside of your comfort zone a little. Never fear, we’re going to learn how to score/compose our own music in GarageBand, but before we even get to the technical side of movie making we need to focus squarely on developing good ideas!
The example that I gave you today of screenwriting was prepared in an online software tool, Adobe Story, but you can use any Word Processor to start getting your ideas and script together. Remember, the main genres for the student film festival are:
Documentary – up to 4 minutes
Narrative – up to 4 minutes
Video Art (including music videos) – up to 4 minutes
P.S.A. (Public Service Announcements) – 45 seconds
We’re looking forward to seeing you all again on Monday afternoon, when we’ll start to ‘workshop’ the ideas that you might have worked on over the weekend, and we’ll start to look at your production teams and the next steps that we need to take so we can make some winning movies!
Today I was in the city working with SAS’s Professional Development Committee, but Senora Salim was kind enough to take my Creative Communication class in the afternoon. She also generously took some photos of our students working on their wiki writing. I imported her photos into Comic Life to give you some reminders of a few concepts that you need to focus on as you’re finishing up your pieces. Thanks, Senora Salim!
As we’ve been reading “The Giver” we’ve been looking at a society that has completely different rules and structures to our own. Take a look at the kinds of ideas that futurist Jacque Fresco has been working on for most of his life. For more information, check out The Venus Project.
14
Dec
What’s an analogy?
Recently in our investigation of literary devices we’ve revisted a few old friends, such as metaphors and similes. So what’s an analogy? An analogy is a type of reasoning or explaining from parallel cases. Both similes and metaphors are types of analogies, because they both compare one thing to another. A simile is an expressed analogy (because we say that something is directly like something else), whereas a metaphor is an implied analogy (because we usually get more abstract when we create metaphors, such as “he was a an icycle.”)
Here are a few examples of analogies:
- “MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken.”
(Lewis Black) - “Memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.”
(Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1949)
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