Category Archives: DG13E
Response Paper #6: Digital Essay
The digital essay seems like fun. The Lonely Cloud video was interesting. I’ve always wanted to try something like that.
I never thought having a group made a project easier due to past experiences. Since everyone chooses which poem they like, it’s probably going to be difficult representing their main point into the digital essay? Also the type of media they want to use is going to be hard to agree on?
Question
Is Response Paper 6 supposed to be Preparation #2 for the Digital Essay Project? Or is it something else?
POETRY RESOURCES
This site has a huge amount of information–full texts of poems, articles and essays, and a searchable database (search by poet, title, subject, keywords, etc).
Another site that has a ton of different kinds of poets and poems (both contemporary and more traditional). The search features are a little less flexible than the Poetry Foundation’s.
This site is devoted to much more contemporary and experimental writers.
This site has full texts of many out of print contemporary poetry books.
A site devoted to recordings of readings and talks by writers old and new.
The Mission
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Charlotte Iserbyt was Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Department of Education during the first Reagan administration.
Creativity and critical thinking are very important. Kids are being conditioned to be workers, who follow orders and the methods of teaching in elementary and high school show this. There is a lack of creative and critical thinking in schools today, as well as a lack of traditional education of the founding fathers, Constitutional Law, classic literature, and basically all of the educational tools which this country was originally founded upon. To create separate class structures, the majority of the population, the bottom poorer part, is taught this workforce training version of education, where creativity is looked down upon. The advances in technology are also to blame for this, there is no more privacy, a student cannot formulate his own creative view or opinion because they are so inundated with what to think and when from all outside forces including and not limited to the tv, internet, social networking, advertising, corporate run media, and every other outside stimulus imaginable.
This is an excerpt from Jim Marrs’ book “The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy” where he quotes Beverly Eakman a former educator, government speech writer, and author of “Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks”: “Rugged individualism encompassed a range of characteristics — independence, self-sufficiency, thinking for oneself. In the 1970’s the axe was laid to all three. Negative terminologies like “loner” and “misfit” redefined the individualist. Independence was scrapped for interdependency, self-sufficiency for redistribution, and thinking for oneself was equated with intolerance. Today any close reading of the newspaper reminds us daily that the loner requires psychiatric intervention, and maybe drugs as well….”
I believe that we need to have children learn the basics, about english, math, and history, but achieving a higher level and mastery of all three, while reinforcing creativity and individual thinking. To be creative is not enough, and a creative mind easily falls into the world of getting a gold star and a pat on the back, without attaining a level of intelligence needed to be a driving and positive force in the world.
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The Marley kids know, in order to pull ourselves up, and not become the downtrodden victims of class warfare, we must educate ourselves and the youths with creativity, knowledge, science, research, math, true history, language, and all of the other foundations of intelligence. The other option is to be a worker who’s back is used to get someone else rich. Anyone reading this who thinks that they may come from an upper class family with money and this doesn’t apply to them. You don’t, we are talking about the global top 1%, and none of us are apart of it!
Creativity Haiku
Education is
key. I have a law degree.
Creativity.
This is one of my all time favorite inspirational songs. The moral of the song is that you should be honest with yourself in a world that isn’t. By trying to be someone else, you are forsaking your identity and living a lie.
Happiness=Love?
Just putting it out there. How come so many people find happiness directly related to being accepted and loved? And how come every song on the Radio now-a-days is about finding love, or how to ‘get into some bitches pants’, or being rich and famous. Why do people try so hard to fit in, be apart of the norm? It kind of aggravates me to be honest. I find these types of ‘standards of life’ so passé. Since when did life become so boring. Life is meant to be extra ordinary, after all you only live it once right? Even if you are re-incarnated and then become someone else, you’re never going to be who you are right now in this moment ever again.
Live life to the fullest and take as much out of it as you can. At least thats my mentality on things.
“It only ends once, every thing before that is just progress”-Jacob (LOST)
Ps. I don’t know why, but I really got into the whole Blog thing. 🙂
Greetings & Creativity
Hi all,
Greetings from Atlanta, where it is 85 degrees and humid, and I have spent the past two days thinking and talking about education, creativity, writing, and, of course, happiness.
A few links to new things I’ve learned/discovered/heard about:
“Education and the Changing World of Work”
So, my questions to you are…how often do you feel that you are able to be creative? How does that manifest itself? What does it look like?
And, how comfortable do you feel “living with ambiguity”? Do you feel okay not understanding something from time to time? Is it exciting to be confused? Why?
These questions are coming from a talk I just heard a former teacher of mine give–he said that one of the problems with the way education works in America (specifically when thinking about testing and assessment) is that one of the biggest parts of being human and being a “grown up” is that our “lived experience is ambiguous”–but the way that schools work doesn’t seem to reflect that…so, curious to hear your thoughts!
LOST
Hello Students of English. I have recently come across this amazing show, it is called LOST. I don’t think that anyone, including myself, can understand why I am so enamored with this TV show. But I feel as though it is my responsibility to spread the word. I am almost 100% sure that a lot of people on this blog have heard of Netflix, and that a number of you have it. Well Guess what? All Six Seasons and beautiful 114 episodes of LOST are on Netflix!!!!! Great News? I think so. If you have nothing to do over spring break, and you happen to have Netflix, I am asking you, try to start watching LOST. It really is a great show. While it was playing on TV I kept thinking to myself, what is this stupid show that everyone is OBSESSED with, and I had never really bothered to watch it. But a few weeks ago I was bored and i was surfing “watch instantly” on netflix and there it was, LOST Season One. So I thought to myself, “oh, what the hell lets give it a shot”. Thank the Lord that I did, because it has been the best decision i have ever made in my 18 and a half years of life.
Lost is a great show, it has really everything that appeals to every audience. It has a bit of romance, a lot of action, some supernatural things(nothing too crazy though). Not to mention, almost all of the actors are one step past extra ordinary. I know my opinion doesn’t matter. BUT THIS IS THE BEST SHOW MADE IN THE HISTORY OF SHOWS!!!!!!!!!!!
Have you ever heard the saying, ‘theres always light at the end of the tunnel?’ well this show is pretty much all about that. you’re probably not going to understand unless you watch the final season. But im not ruining anything so don’t worry. and also a lot of ‘ what was meant to happen will happen’ and kismet plays a lot of part in the show. Its about a bunch of people who survive a plane crash and land on a mysterious island and they need to survive. Sort of like “Lord of the Flies” but the grown ups version. And the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 cannot find any way to communicate with the rest of the word and get back home.
Also you meet new characters through out the show so its not boring, and its such a suspenseful show that you keep questioning everything that happens. Everything you think you know about the show is more or less wrong. And you find that out in the end of season 5. Season 5 by far is the best season. Even though im done with watching the show i cannot wait to start watching it again. Also, i am the most unemotional person when it comes to movies, let me tell you this, when i was watching the series Finale(season 6 episode 17 which was a total of one hour and twenty three minutes) i was crying like a baby. Not to mention lastly, that 90% of ththe people who survived the plane crash just happened to be very aesthetically pleasing. (good job jacob, you really know how to pick ’em)(<-you wont understand that joke unless you watch the show, so WATCH IT!)
BEST SHOW EVER <3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IMPORTANT UPDATES
Hi everyone,
As you all know, there have been some changes to the syllabus.
PAPER 2 is now due on Monday, April 11.
Rewrites of Paper 1 are due on Wednesday, April 13.
AND, please read Rebecca Brown’s “Forgiveness” for Monday, April 11.
EJK
