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This is so fun.  All these WordPress themes are free, so it’s like “legal stealing” of really nicely designed artworks.  Blog themes are examples of art and design, haven’t you noticed?

It’s like free shopping.  I’ve downloaded and installed 104 themes for you to choose from to give your blog a personal touch that you feel reflects your personality somehow.  I tested them all for comments working and stuff like that.

I hope some of you continue writing here over the summer.  They’re your blogs, after all.

Some nice ones.  I’m test-driving them all to make sure they’re scripts have no bugs.

There will be a small test about:

1. the first ten sentence pattern chapters: you will be given ONE question per chapter. It will have four examples of a pattern, and you will have to choose the correct or incorrect example in each question (multiple choice). Ten quick multiple choice questions. Easy.
2. the figures of speech listed in the appendix of the The Art of Styling Sentences pattern. I’ll give an example, and you will identify what type of figure of speech it is. Again, ten quick multiple choice or matching questions. Easy.
3. writing one paragraph comparing a passage from Animal Farm with a passage from V for Vendetta. You will be graded according to a) understanding of the main ideas of each novel; b) the quality of your comparison (ideas and insights); c) the correctness of your quotation integration.

After that, we’ll watch the Yahoo Projects. (More on where to post that when I figure it out. I think it will be Moodle.)

[UPDATE: Post your projects on this "Yahoo Project" wiki, and follow directions or suffer serious "grade degrading."]
Where will this be? Our classroom (not the cafeteria).

Remember to bring your textbooks and novels for turn-in.

Like I told you, you’ve already got your grades.  But if I told you to edit your stories for publication (and there’s no guarantee that means it will be published — we’re after real world quality here), you need to have those to me by Monday, June 1.  Have them on the wiki, and let me know (comment here) if you edited.

A few words about why I want you to do the “Yahoo Project.”

1. I want you to experience how using figurative language turns lifeless writing into magic “spells.” Don’t roll your eyes: everybody from Hitler to preachers to politicians to your favorite TV and song writers use language as a form of magic–figurative language transforms the world and always has. (It also transforms school papers from things marked “C+” to things marked “A+.”)

2. I want you to see if you have any power to improve this world, even in small ways. I’m letting you decide what thing you want to improve, to make it “real.” The rest is up to you–do you have anything inside of you to answer this challenge, or have you been educated to believe you have no power?

3. I want you to practice combining words, images, and sounds to communicate in the 21st century “language art” known as multimedia. You do have the ability, now, to freely communicate and connect to the world–in whatever real project you can dream up–via wikis and blogs. So this project is a chance to practice. I expect some of you will actually cook up something good enough to broadcast, something that might turn into action in different places around the world. I did it with the 1001 Flat World Tales. Now it’s your turn to try to do it. And multimedia–text, voice, photos, videos, music–is the way to go.

4. I want you to learn these new tools so you can embed them on the web to be seen online, rather than uploading ugly Powerpoint links that nobody wants to download.

5. I want to see you show me that you can learn–be a learner–by figuring this stuff out yourself, independent of a “teacher.” The future will demand that you know how to solve your own problems, teach yourself, and not run to some “parent-figure” for help. So practice independent learning here. Or help each other with teamwork–another real-world skill that’s growing in importance in your future.

Some Online Presentation Tools (Bye-bye, Powerpoint) for You to Explore:

[Update: If you want to go with Powerpoint for now, go ahead.  If your work is good enough to take out into the world, we can convert it later.  And if we had Macs, we wouldn't be having this problem.  ]

One True Media: From the website’s FAQ: Other online photo sites do not handle video and are therefore limited to sharing photos and making prints, albums, and other items related to still images only. If you have video and want to create something with it, One True Media is the premier site that not only lets you upload video and share it with others, but also allows you to edit your video online. We also take content in analog or digital form, so you can make a Montage or Slideshow using virtually any photo or type of video.

–note: This tool does not allow voice-overs. But as you say in “Animal School,” text captions can be effective.

Spresent.com: An online presentation-maker (think PowerPoint, but more powerful and less difficult). Images, slides, music, voice-recording, [Update: they seem to have disabled voice recording, darn it] text, video–it’s all possible. It’s easy to figure out by just playing with it, but if you need help, they’ve got tutorial videos on YouTube and a good help section here.

“School-y” Questions:

1. “How long should it be?”

The real-life answer: long enough to work well. Too short is as bad as too long. If you can’t tell by being your own audience, ask a friend. If you still need an authority figure to give you a rule, I’ll play Napoleon to your Sheep: 2-6 minutes is a reasonable range.

2. Do I have to include ALL the figures of speech in my project?

This is a good, real question. If you really think that some of them don’t fit, then leave them out. BUT I want you to write a brief explanation of why you left out any of these figures of speech.

3. “Do I have to have video, photos, music, voice, text, in my presentation?”

No. You DO, though, have to have either video OR photo, text OR voice–and I DO want music. And I want the volume levels to sound good to your audience. I ALSO want a good title and intro that hooks your audience. And credits at the end: names (first name and initial) of writers, visual editors, audio editors, speakers, any other roles, PLUS sources of any non-original images, video, and/or music.

4. Can I do this with a group?

Yes. BUT you must also hand me a script, with photos, that you already wrote showing that you practiced using the figures of speech and finding good photos to go with your words. THEN, if you think somebody else’s idea is better, you can work with them as a group.

5. When is it due?

Friday, June 1, 11.59 pm.

6. Where do I post it?

http://kismoodle.org , in our English class Moodle site. I’ll make a forum. Embed your work there. We’ll choose any that are worth showing and make a public home for them on a blog, wiki, or website afterwards. Then we can promote it over the summer and beyond.

6. Worst of all: What sort of grade is this?

A test grade. Effectiveness of communication, sincerity and maturity, and quality of work are key. This does NOT mean that you can’t be humorous. Note that Swift, Voltaire, and Orwell used hilarious satire to attack serious problems. I’d love to see some satire.

Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon float the bright yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells. Often they rise in a sheaf as they follow after an airman. We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning by quite drown it. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. The grasses sway their tall spears; the white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft warm wind of the late summer. We read letters and newspapers and smoke. We take off our caps and lay them down besides us. The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts. The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing, red field-poppies (9).

Mr. B’s response:
This passage is powerful on several levels.  First, the imagery is powerful because of its syntax.  Instead of using  normal subject-object order of his imagery—“The blue sky is over us . . . . The flower meadow stretches around us”(9)—Remarque inverts the syntax, placing prepositional phrases first, verbs second, and subjects last.  This places the reader inside the image first, which allows the reader to “see” the delayed subject in relation to his or her own position:  “Over us is the blue sky”; “On the horizon float the . . . observation balloons, and the many little white clouds”; “Around us stretches the flowery meadow” (9) [emphasis added].  In essence, this syntax choice causes the reader to mentally direct his or her eyes upwards, then over to the horizon, then to the ground all around—and experience the scene with the soldiers.

Still more powerful is the imagery itself, with its haunting mixture of summer daydream and war-time nightmare.  We see the classic “blue sky,” and the predictably sunny “yellow” in the midst of it.  But rather than that yellow being the sun itself, it is lurking death: the enemy’s “observation balloons.”  And the “white clouds,” too, are no summer postcard prettiness, but instead “anti-aircraft shells”—more lurking death.  The effect of these surreal “nature” details makes even the flowers sinister, lending to their “glowing . . . red” a hint of blood (9).  It’s a heartbreaking scene, because despite all of this nightmare, it’s still close enough to peace for these battle-broken boys to find it peaceful, joyous, beautiful.

The steps: First, remember “Animal School” as an example of how creative language makes all the difference in giving power to your idea.

1. Print out your last draft.

2. Pull out your The Art of Styling Sentences packet, pages 124-31, and use it to annotate your draft for the following forms of figurative language:

• allusion
• analogy (including “extended analogy”)
• hyperbole
• understatement
• irony
• metaphor
• personification

3. Re-write your draft including at least one example of these things.

4. Post it on your blog.

5. Insert pictures or videos in the parts of your speech where the words and pictures match (in other words, don’t just dump all the pictures at the end).

6. Print it out and underline and annotate the examples of the figurative language you added.

7. Bring the new draft to class next time, with annotations/underlining and your name.

 Reading:

1.  Read Animal Farm, pp. 25-60 (Chapters 1-4).

2. Find a passage that is about how the young are educated by authorities, and leave a comment here doing a close reading, with quotation integration, that discusses what Orwell shows about the “dark side” of youth and authority.  It should be one nice, fat paragraph.

Pola chose this quote, and it’s a great one. But she says she can’t explain why she likes it. I want all of you to try. Write a “close reading” response to this passage in “comments,” and integrate the words and phrases that give it power. See my “hints” after the quote:

Over us is the blue sky. On the horizon float the bright yellow, sunlit observation-balloons, and the many little white clouds of the anti-aircraft shells. Often they rise in a sheaf as they follow after an airman. We hear the muffled rumble of the front only as very distant thunder, bumble-bees droning by quite drown it. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. the grasses sway their tall spears; thw white butterflies flutter around and float on the soft watn wind of the late summer. We read letters and newspapers and smoke. We take off our caps and lay them down besides us. The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts. The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing, red field-poppies (9).

Pola said:  I thought this paragraph had a great imagery. It had all “feel, see, hear” inside. Eventhough I read it over and over I really feel like what the narrarator really feels. I especially like the quote:
“The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts”
I don’t know how to explain why I like it, but I like it how the author plays around with the words to make us go into this situation and really sense it. Also, I love the peaceful moment, although it is during the war and you could hear slight sounds of bombs going off at the front. I did not know that even during a war that they could have this quite moments where the author explains that even makes the readers relax.

I said: Try to explain it. Start with maybe looking at the most powerful details, and letting them show you why they’re powerful. You picked a beautiful scene–one of my early favorites as well. Here’s one possibility (but only as a riddle): What do these three details from your passage have in common? 1. Over us is the blue sky. 2. On the horizon float the . . . observation-balloons [and] shells. 3. Around us stretches the flowery meadow. There is a pattern there that seems obviously chosen; and have an effect on me it does. Why? (And did you notice my hint in the clause before “Why?”, above?

Where do I put it?  Start it on your blog, but copy and paste it here for hw.

Last week I told you to decide what it is in the world you want to change.

Now I want you to spend thirty minutes writing about why your topic bothers you. Your audience is the world–especially the people who are causing the problem, or not helping to solve it. Try to express your thoughts and feelings about this as forcefully as possible when you write. It’s a first draft, so just let it out.

But make sure you include a “call to action”–and the bolder and more ambitious, the better–for people to join you in helping create improvement.

Follow these instructions carefully:

1. Write your draft on your blog first.

2. Find pictures and videos that will help you communicate the problem and solution.  Put them on your blog.

3. When you’re finished with that draft, copy and paste it as a comment here. Only the text will paste, but that’s fine.

4.  This is due in 30 minutes.