First, I have not finished my research paper. It’s been so long since I’ve written a substantial research paper of any kind that my “procrastination impulse” is soaring through the roof. I’ve tried several strategies to fight the desire to get out of my desk chair.
The first strategy was chewing gum. I try to only buy Trident because it’s good for your teeth. I’m one of those orally fixated people who can reduce the amount they fidget if their mouth is occupied (get your mind out of the gutters) generally with food or gum. Since this desire for “flight” is so strong, I chew almost manically. Result: gum loses flavor and pliability in record time. End product: I am out of gum.
Second strategy, keep typing even without editing until you just have no words left in you. This produced several paragraphs of nonsense. After I was done, it was hard work trimming back and finding the nuggets of research and my comprehension of them.
My last and current strategy has yielded much better results. For a reason I will probably never research, I can talk about my research topic at length. I can explain it to someone competently. My mind does what it has to in order to make sense to the person I am talking to. However, if I try to type this out onto screen, my mind becomes preoccupied and distracted by the words I see on the screen, everything I just typed. So, I put on my headphones with the microphone. I opened Audacity. I started to talk.
I imagined there was someone in the room with me. Better yet, I imagined I was actually chatting with my boyfriend online like I occasionally do. I recorded what I said. Then I readied my hands on the keyboard with my word processor before me as I played back my recording. Voila! I had fairly understandable sentences. These aren’t sophisticated by any means, but they’re better than what I had before.
I would give you a sampling of my ramblings so far, but I would first have to make a Space Upgrade that would cost me money. I could make a lame video on YouTube with a static image and my voice in the background, but that’s too much effort. I still have a research paper to finish.
At some point today, I am going to treat myself to some dessert. I DESERVE IT.
While wandering through the library, I see that Teri Lesesne may have more to say about English Education than I have seen previously. Also: she works with Kylene Beers frequently. I might read some of her work, too. I did find some work by James Paul Gee that addresses the education aspect of his study on social discourse. I have 3, maybe 4 leads now.
And… no time to read any of them. I much better like the idea of picking a topic and researching it rather than reading until a topic emerges. There’s no time to read! I have the onset of a cold and I need to sleep for another hour. Bah.
While working on my Personal Literacy Evaluation for ENGL7750, I got to thinking about my own “unconventional” literacies. The only one that I could come up with that I could talk about at length was video games. Mind you, I’m not a great player, but I do love to play. I’ll try anything… except Madden.
I researched several authors who have made connections among video games, learning, literacy, etc. to come up with two main authors that seem to share most of the articles/topics I have found: Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee. Although this endeavor has completely sidetracked my Literacy Evaluation (I was so close to being done!) I feel that this might be the better topic/authors for me to investigate for my research topic in ENED6414. I read some of Teri Lesesne’s work and I couldn’t come up with any strong theme that I could really talk about for the length of a research paper. She likes YA books. She thinks it’s important for children to be matched up to the right book… then for teachers to not kill the joy of reading. So on, so forth.
But there is a lively debate about the role of video games as a vehicle for learning. To focus it to English Education: literacy. Reading literacy, sure, but the more recently added categories of media literacy and digital literacy as well. I’ve just started to scratch the surface there, but between the two of them, they have had a lot to say about literacy, video games, learning, and contexts for all of the above. I’m going to keep reading, even if there’s no time to do it.
I mean, seriously. Internship, class, homework for class, “homework” for internship. If I’m not doing any of those things, I am eating or I am sleeping OR drinking coffee to keep from sleeping.
I think I’ve already got an idea for a topic I want to research for ENED6414. Rather, I already found a person who has written about my topic: YA lit and teen literacy. Adolescent Literacy features a chapter authored by Teri Lesesne. She’s written a lot on the subject or related areas it seems. I’m not sure if I’m going to stick to my topic. If she’s written more of something else, it might turn out to be more interesting.
As far as research goes, I may have a lead on a Capstone topic. I love my journal. I do. I use it for personal thoughts and I use it for reminder notes. I occasionally doodle in it. I also have one long grocery list in there. Not all typical uses of the journal, but I carry it with me to many places.
So the middle school class in which I am interning will start a journal this week. I have interviewed a few students just to find out if they already like to write or if they have kept a journal before. Most have kept journals before for school but the journals were more concerned with grammar and topics the students did not like. Some students did say they enjoyed writing creatively when they got the chance. One or two have stated they actually like writing and sharing about themselves.
When it’s my turn to take over a class for two weeks, I would like to start giving them prompts that can be interpreted many ways as well as the normal prompts that their teacher would give them. I’ll try to interview the same students later on about liking writing and journaling. We’ll see where this gets me. I want to know if their comfort level goes up at all or if they find themselves more fluent writers.
You guys let me know if you have any leads for me on this possible Capstone.
Take care
Today starts the next semester in my MAT program. I have actually been taking everyone’s advice by being completely unproductive and sluggish the second half of my short summer break. I never did get to reread the Iliad, but I am still interested in making a digital film for it.
I want to continue this blog even though I’ve neglected it. I’m still brainstorming something to do for my Capstone. I should have a better idea of what I want to do once I get into the classroom. This blog will mainly be concerned with my brainstorming as a result of my new adventures in the education world.
Until I have more to post, here‘s how I spent my last day of vacation. Thumbs up.
I am rereading The Iliad along with several other books from the “Required Reading” shelves at the nearest public library. I should have another digital film done before too long. If any of you have requests for more of my stick drawings, let me know.
In the meantime, I just discovered this and had to share it.
This is my digital film. I decided to do a Who’s Who in The Odyssey. It’s not like a cheat-sheet study guide. It’s just to help you keep names straight. I had that problem briefly in high school. Hopefully this helps!
Check out my Visual Media Literacy project that my group, Team Awesome, worked on. We decided to analyze the Got Milk? campaign.
