We began day two by writing into the day. Simply, writing into the day is a time for students to respond to a prompt, quote, song, video, or otherwise by writing. The great part is there is no limitation. For example, when I responded to today's video, I began at point A and ended up somewhere around W.
Today we watched Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk titled "The Danger of One Story". Adichie's entire talk completely grabbed my attention, however there is one such part of her story that especially halted me. Adichie said:
I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called American Psycho--and that it was such a shame that young americans were serial murderers.
How sad is it when we don't take the time to hear and learn someone's entire story or all of his stories? As Adichie shows, the result is narrowed judgement; Mexicans are all illegal labor workers, Africans are AIDS-ridden, poverty-stricken beings waiting for the white man to save them, Asians are people confined to strict, conservative tradition.
Adichie's message made me aware that as a teacher, and portal for my students to the world, I need to be more aware of ensuring I provide opportunities for students to hear all stories and not just one.
Also, some great resources I've discovered for digital media and storytelling that you must check-out:
Storify and a sample of what you can create with this bad boy
Screencast-O-Matic which essentially lets you take a video of what you are currently doing on your screen. A great tool for how-to tutorial for various digital tools you may want students to use OR a tool for flipped classrooms.
Kinetic Text an alternative tool to text based presentations (powerpoint?
Adichie's message made me aware that as a teacher, and portal for my students to the world, I need to be more aware of ensuring I provide opportunities for students to hear all stories and not just one.
Also, some great resources I've discovered for digital media and storytelling that you must check-out:
Storify and a sample of what you can create with this bad boy
Screencast-O-Matic which essentially lets you take a video of what you are currently doing on your screen. A great tool for how-to tutorial for various digital tools you may want students to use OR a tool for flipped classrooms.
Kinetic Text an alternative tool to text based presentations (powerpoint?
Kim,
ReplyDeleteI think we basically just wrote the same blog without knowing! I wrote about the same video that we watched this morning, and about how I want my students to read lots of stories and not fall into the habit of reading the same story about the same characters with different names. (Great minds...)
P.S. How wonderful is Storify? Just saw it today and I'm already in love. Have you used it personally?
It really is crazy that we all wrote on the same thing considering how much we did yesterday! I was also really struck by Adichie's thoughts on the single story and I LOVE how you wrote that it "results in narrow judgment." I think that you are so right on with that--rather than adding new perspectives with different stories, the single story compounds one image until it becomes a distorted, small-minded mess.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks for the tips on the technology--I will definitely check them out!