I could not decide how I felt about the Shafer reading on literate movies. The teacher in the article take five weeks and lets their students take an author, story, or event and portray it through a movie. At first, I loved the idea because it was a new and creative way to look at literature. Then I started to change my mind. Are all five weeks solely devoted to this project? The students can pick any topic which makes the five weeks very unstructured, you could only really give class time for the project. Then it was mentioned that class time was used to learn how to work the video camera and how to edit. Is this worth it? That most certainly is not in the curriculum and takes up a lot of time that could be devoted to literature.
I like the idea of this project because its a new spin on just a normal research paper but is it worth the time and energy? Is it worth taking time out of the class to devote to the teaching of video camera and production? I'm not convinced.
It's difficult, too, because it would probably HAVE to take place in class, because they may not have the resources at home. So, I definitely agree that there are problems with it. Maybe if the teacher required a shorter video, it could be shorted in the amount of weeks, and they could be reading a novel at home for homework. Discussion for the book could take place cumulatively after the projects were finalized. I'm not sure if that's too much all at the same time, though.
ReplyDeleteVery true, but that's not to say a balance can't be found.
ReplyDeletelike Heather was getting at, different factors are going to have to be regulated properly and monitored carefully to make sure everything proceeds smoothly. In the end, though, whether it lasts five weeks or two days, it has to be worth all the effort. Five weeks devoted to one particular thing could, in theory, be beneficial, but if the students didn't take anything from it or it was lost on them, then it's an entire waste of time.