Shortened schedule today, so here's the agenda.

• Print your Fairy Tale paper.  Number each sentence, one to fifty.  

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• Sometimes, technology fails us.  If the printer doesn't work for your machine, Email your paper to steven.hepler@fwcs.k12.in.us and put the name of each group member in the subject line.  Don't remember how?  Watch this video.  

TUESDAY

7:20-7:50        POWER
7:50-8:30        First Hour
8:35-9:15        Second Hour  Wobble for Riley
9:20-10:00      Third Hour      Wobble for Riley
10:05-11:35    Planning and Lunch
11:35-12:15    Sixth Hour (Seventh Grade only)
12:20-1:00      Seventh Hour
1:00                Talent Show - Wait to be called
​2:15                Dismissal

WEDNESDAY

7:20-7:50        POWER
7:50-8:30        First Hour
8:35-9:15        Second Hour  
9:20-10:00      Third Hour      
10:05-11:35    Planning and Lunch
11:35-12:15    Sixth Hour (Seventh Grade only)
12:20-1:00      Seventh Hour
1:00                Yearbook signing. Wait to be called, then return to POWER
2:15                Dismissal

Let's review the procedures for deleting all files from our computers, which we will do tomorrow.  The only thing to keep in mind is that if you're working on a video instead of your Fairy Tale paper, replace the words volleyball video with your current video.  If you are editing, I'll need to know its name on Tuesday.  It should fit one of the categories that we've quizzed over multiple times, and it should resemble the examples included on this website.

Today is our last regular day.  Here's my schedule for next week.  Yours may vary depending on whether you're a seventh or eighth grader.

TUESDAY

7:20-7:50       POWER
7:50-8:30       First Hour
8:35-9:15       Second Hour  Wobble for Riley
9:20-10:00     Third Hour      Wobble for Riley
10:05-11:35   Planning and Lunch
11:35-12:15   Sixth Hour (Seventh Grade only)
12:20-1:00    Seventh Hour
1:00              Talent Show - Wait to be called
​2:15              Dismissal

WEDNESDAY

7:20-7:50       POWER
7:50-8:30       First Hour
8:35-9:15       Second Hour  
9:20-10:00     Third Hour      
10:05-11:35   Planning and Lunch
11:35-12:15   Sixth Hour (Seventh Grade only)
12:20-1:00     Seventh Hour
1:00               Yearbook signing? Wait to be called, then return to POWER
2:15               Dismissal

Set the stage for your story.  Here's mine from Hook.  You'll notice that I've changed it since I made my first video.  Why?  IT WAS BORING.  I read it and thought, "Yuck.  That's awful.  I need more personality."  Then, I added it.  Read your stuff as you go.  Just because you have the right number of sentences doesn't mean it's interesting.  

Here's my second draft.

A wise woman once said, “Sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out.”  Most adults have felt this at one time or another.  “What happened to me?  I used to be so young and carefree.  Now I’m just one big ball of stress and anxiety.”  In the movie Hook, the same thing happens to Peter Pan.  He falls in love, leaves Neverland, and becomes Peter Banning, a stressed-out dad with no time for his wife kids.  The movie takes J.M. Barrie’s stage play from 1904, and brings it into the current day.  Just like the story, though, it teaches us that we should never lose our inner child.  Wendy, Toodles, Rufio, Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys are all waiting to bring Peter back to his rightful place as the boy who never grew up.  Hook has a lot to say about how we grow older, and colder, and gives us simple lessons about how to become more of the kid we wish we still were.  Steven Spielberg's film echoes this idea perfectly.

Notice I don't just say, "There are a lot of differences between Hook and Peter Pan, so here are the differences between Hook and Peter Pan."  Then for the last sentence of the introduction, I didn't write, "I hope you now understand all the differences between Hook and Peter Pan."  I mention how both the movie and the book teach us that enjoying life is important, which is my main idea.  Don't be so much of a grown-up that you never have any fun.

Storytelling is what we need for our introductions.  Here's another example.

As I look at the work we've done so far with our Fairy Tale project, many of us are great at pointing out the similarities and differences between our stories and their movie versions.

We're not so good at saying why they're important.  Don't forget the line in the assignment description that says Tell us which version you prefer, and why.  

Hi there.  I'm not at school today, so first, let's take our quiz from yesterday's notes.  With me gone, it's easier to use paper and pencil instead of Socrative.  

Once that's done, we'll move on to the day's lesson.  Yesterday, you saw me create my introduction.  Today, it's my conclusion.  Watch and take notes.

Once that's done, we'll have the rest of the hour to research and write.  Don't forget to bookmark any sources you may use.  I'll see you on Monday.

Let's take some notes.  We'll quiz on Friday.  Need to watch this again?  Go for it.

I'll be using Hook as my example presentation.  Here's the video that got me started.

The transcript for the video reads as follows:

Director Steven Spielberg is joined by Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, and Bob Hoskins to create the epic fantasy adventure inspired by author JM Barrie's classic 1904 stage play, Peter Pan.  Hook is the all-new story of Peter as a grown man with no memory of who he once was. Peter Banning is a man who's forgotten how to enjoy his life, a man who has no imagination and the twist of this story is he once was imagination personified.  He once was the Pan when he was 12 years old.  He grew up, lost his imagination, and he became a sort of face in the crowd, and his kids are kidnapped by Captain Hook and taken to NeverLand to seek his revenge.

What’s the point?  Peter Pan, the boy who couldn’t grow up, just like the rest of us, isn’t immune to waking up one day, looking in the mirror and realizing, “I’ve become everything I ever hated in life.”  Start with the Mom joke I’ve seen all over the internet and go from there.  Use the release date of the film, who wrote the play and when, then tell your own version of how Pan turned into Banning.
 
A wise woman once said, “Sometimes when I open my mouth, my mother comes out.”  Most adults have felt this at one time or another.  “What happened to me?  I used to be so young and carefree.  Now I’m just one big ball of stress and anxiety.”  It would probably make us feel better to know that our heroes do the same thing.  In 1991, Steven Spielberg released a film entitled Hook, where we see that Peter Pan himself has left Neverland, become mortal, then grown up to be a workaholic lawyer with no time for his wife and children, but all the time in the world for his job, which in this case, means clearing a forest to the ground for a multi-million dollar real estate deal.  The movie takes J.M. Barrie’s stage play from 1904, and brings it into the current day.  Even though you’ll see Peter with the biggest, clunkiest cell phone in current movie history, Hook has a lot to say about how we grow older, and colder, and gives us some simple lessons about how to become more of the child we wish we still were.
 
What does this paragraph make me want to learn about the original play?  How did J.M. Barrie look at the idea of staying eternally young?  How does Hook look at that same question?  That’s how I’ll compare the play with my movie, and that’s the paragraph I’ll seek out for tomorrow’s assignment.

As you put your paragraphs together, to make sure it's a true paraphrase, here's how to do it.

• Copy and paste your paragraph into a word document, with the web address of where you got it on the line above the paragraph itself.  
• Write your own summary of what it means AFTER the paragraph, like I did above in the section that starts with "What's the point."
• Press return a bajillion times until the original paragraph isn't on your screen anymore, then write from your summary.
• Repeat the process.  Our finished paper will be a standard five-paragraph essay: three bodies, plus an intro and conclusion. 

Good question.  Our original objectives read as follows:

• Compare an original story with its Disney remake.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?

• Compare any book, short story, comic or graphic novel to its movie version.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?

As I researched my choice, Peter Pan vs. the movie Hook, I noticed there are other routes we could take:

• Compare different movie versions of the same story, like Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast against its live-action remake from this year.

If you come up with another take on how you'd like to study your movie, ask me.  What we will do is review a film adaptation taken from a piece of literature and critique it in a speech presentation, including at least one clip from the movie on YouTube or DVD.  The movie should be rated G, PG or PG-13.  

We don't need to write our own papers from scratch, since we only have ten days of school left.  I would like us to find our information online, and spend the time re-reading and paraphrasing, a huge part of writing any research prompt.  

Our goals for today?  As a group, decide on which film you'd like to use, and begin your web search for at least three credible web sources.  Tomorrow, I'll have mine for you, and I'll model the paraphrasing process as we go.

One other requirement - each team should choose a different story from everyone else in their class.  We don't want 5 reports on Cinderella.  Variety is good, so lets mix our topics up.  We'll begin the writing process tomorrow.  Today, find your sources and bookmark them.  😀

Click here to review the elements of Fairy Tales before we finish The Princess Bride.

Objectives for this unit?  Each group will create a speech presentation where they do one of the following things:
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• Compare an original story with its Disney remake.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?
• Compare any book, short story, comic or graphic novel to its movie version.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?

Let's have some fun with film study as we move on to our next unit: Fairy Tales.

First of all, what are they?  Click here and take a few notes on their characteristics and see if some of your favorite movies aren't fairy tales, even if you don't see them that way.

​Two immediately come to mind. 

Just because Tinkerbell isn't flying around the screen doesn't mean that these kinds of stories aren't in the Fairy Tale neighborhood.

Together, we'll start by watching one of my favorites, then describing all of the story elements that prove it fits within the genre.

Then, each group will create a speech presentation where they do one of the following things:
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• Compare an original story with its Disney remake.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?
• Compare any book, short story, comic or graphic novel to its movie version.  How was it changed for the screen?  Which version do you prefer, and why?

Our color and font choices for our infographics were unfortunate at times.  Let's us the Canva templates instead.  Here's how.

Once your Infographic is done, download it and send it to me via Email.  Be sure to put your group members' names in the subject line, as you see below.

Copy and paste my Email address into your message: 

steven.hepler@fwcs.k12.in.us

Let's look at two paragraphs from Jose Picardo's article, Not All Screen Time is Equal.  Find the article online at http://www.josepicardo.com/education/not-all-screen-time-is-equal-some-considerations-for-schools-and-parents/

Maybe technology is not the problem. Maybe it’s just down to human behaviour. Consider again the parents of young children who worry about screen time but put their toddlers in from of an iPad for hours on end and then blame the technology. Consider the fact that teenagers have been locking themselves up in their rooms, avoiding talking to their parents and responding only with barely audible grunts to ‘how was school today?’ for, probably, centuries. Screens didn’t cause any of this. From this perspective, the mere existence of screens contributes to this problem in the same way that cars contribute to crashes. That’s right, car crashes wouldn’t happen if there weren’t any cars, but it is the person in control behind the wheel who causes them, not the car.
 
Here's my rewrite.

Our devices may not be the issue, but instead, how we use them.  How many times have you seen a toddler strapped into the child seat of a shopping cart, using Mom’s phone so she can buy groceries in peace?  When I was a teenager, I spend hundreds of hours locked in my room, listening to music.  Today, instead of firing up a cassette or DVD player, my son and daughter do the same thing with YouTube, Pandora or Spotify.  This isn’t a new problem that magically appeared with the birth of the internet.  Sure, our online habits contribute to our solitude, but they aren’t the sole cause of it, either. 
 
Let’s break it down.
 
He wrote: Maybe technology is not the problem. Maybe it’s just down to human behavior
I wrote: Our devices may not be the issue, but instead, how we use them.
 
Notice I said the same thing without using the same key words as the author, like technology, problem, or human behavior, nor did I hit the thesaurus and look for other words that meant the same thing.
 
He wrote: Consider again the parents of young children who worry about screen time but put their toddlers in front of an iPad for hours on end and then blame the technology.
 
I wrote: How many times have you seen a toddler strapped into the child seat of a shopping cart, using Mom’s phone so she can buy groceries in peace?
 
I switched the device from an iPad to a phone, and I used the same idea as the author, but I gave a personal example that I’d seen dozens of times before.  That’s another great way to avoid using the same words as the article.
 
Another example?  If ESPN writes: The Yankees and the Chicago Cubs are destined to meet in a World Series. If it is as good as Sunday-night-stretched-into-Monday-morning's game -- an 18-inning epic affair won by the Yankees 5-4 in 6 hours, 5 minutes -- then everyone will be in for a treat.
 
I might write this: Baseball fans are already drooling for a Cubs-Yankees World Series.  It’s only May, but they have a reason to be excited.  If Sunday’s 18-inning battle to the death was any indication, these two teams have come to play, and leave it all on the field at the end of the night.  Or the morning.  If the game goes on until sunrise, so be it.
 
Notice the things I did to really change it up.  I switched the order from Yankees-Cubs to Cubs- Yankees.  I used the word drooling to make the fans looks rabid and hungry.  Instead of giving the time of the game, I came up with a sentence that made them sound like crazy competitors, ready for anything, even playing straight through the night. 
 
What didn’t I do?  Use the same ideas, changing every fifth word.  I asked myself, “What do the words mean?”  Next, I used different words, instead of the ones the author gave me, to tell the story in a new way. 
                                              
Here’s another example from CNN regarding 13 Reasons Why
 
"Suicide contagion" describes when exposure to suicide within a family, within a group of friends or through the media may be associated with an increase in suicidal behaviors, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
 
Among 12- to 13-year-olds, being exposed to a classmate's suicide was associated with being five times more likely to have suicidal thoughts, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (PDF) in 2013.
 
However, it's unlikely that one show alone could trigger someone to attempt suicide, said Eric Beeson, a licensed professional counselor who serves as an online faculty member at The Family Institute at Northwestern University.
 
"Research clearly shows that these images have an influence on suicidal behaviors, but how this occurs is far more important to me," he said. "It is very possible that provocative experiences have a desensitizing effect that makes suicidal behaviors more likely."
 
My take on the first paragraph?  They wrote: "Suicide contagion" describes when exposure to suicide within a family, within a group of friends or through the media may be associated with an increase in suicidal behaviors, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
 
I wrote: Everyone from nervous parents to governmental agencies fear that when kids are exposed to graphic, realistic images of suicide, it might inspire them to consider it themselves. 

Many of us think this looks cool, but sorry, it goes against everything the pros teach us about graphic design.

Let's start assembling our images in Canva.  For those of us who haven't created our comparison lists yet, they're due at the end of the hour, and they're one per person.  Here's mine from yesterday.

How do we create our images?  Like this.  Objectives for today?

1. Copy down these notes for tomorrow's quiz.
2. If you have a video that's something you filmed at home, not a Foley or an Audiobook, edit it for the rest of the hour.  When it's ready for me to grade, grab a Grading Rubric for Video Projects from the camera cabinet.  Three people grade it before me, and they all need to leave written comments at the bottom.  All mistakes should be corrected before I do a final evaluation.
3. If you don't have a video, begin work on your Infographic.  Have one person in your group create their own individual Canva account and work from there.  Infographics are due at the beginning of class on Monday, May 8th.
4. Remember that first and third rows also have their first filming deadline for their documentaries on May 8th, as well.

Let's start off the week by reviewing the assignment and its objectives.  We'll be working in Canva, so start by creating your account.  Here's how.

Several people on Friday told me they didn't understand the assignment after the explanation, so today we will take notes over what to do and how to do it.  When that's done, play around in Canva and learn how the program works.  We'll have our first formal lesson on how to create our Infographics tomorrow.

Take a look at the image above.  I wanted to create a way to explain the difference between Realistic and Formalistic film theory without writing an essay.  My first thought was to use this meme.

The proportions were huge, though, and I wanted a tall, skinny, portrait image, like a magazine page.  Using the same image search, I found the brain picture that is centered on my infographic.

I also needed to explain the difference between the two theories, so I made a bullet list.

• What does each do with the camera?
• How does each school of thought edit a movie?
• What are the main tools used to captivate the audience?

Notice how I've personified each of them to add some flavor.  One side reads, "Realism - I am honest," but the other says, "Formalism - I am artistic."  Both are good things, so I wouldn't paint one theory as right, and the other one wrong.  They both have their place, and if you use one while never using the other, your audience will either be bored to tears, or so confused that they'll never watch another one of your films again.  

I also wanted a director to represent each.  Chaplin was my legend for realism because when he made his films anywhere from the 1920s to the 1950s, he was big with physical comedy that focused on him.  No fancy camera work or editing tricks; just a good story with a good laugh. Alfred Hitchcock was the opposite.  From the shower scene in Psycho in movies like Rear Window where we spend most of the time peeping into a neighbor's apartment through the lens of a news photographer's camera, Hitch was a master of using the media of film to mess with your head, and make you just as confused as the main character, trying to solve the mystery before it's too late.  

Our next assignment?  Create an infographic like the one you see above.  How do we do that? Click here to find out.  

Then come back, and start with a sheet of paper.  Draw a line down the middle of it from top to bottom.  If you want to do one by yourself, fine.  If you want to do one as a group, that's great, too.  It's your choice.

Write one side of your topic on the left, then list all of its characteristics below its name.  Next, do the same on the right with your second idea.  Google for information only today - no pictures.  If you finish before the end of class, grab a second sheet of paper and draw out how you want your image to look.  Monday, we'll start looking for images and using an online program to create our infographics.  

Movie Directors go back and forth between two philosophies.  The first, and most common, is called Realism, where you make your movie look like real life.  Camera shots and editing are basic and easy to understand.  The point is for you to forget you're watching a movie, and get caught up in the story.  The words the actors pull you in.

Here's a clip from Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho to illustrate what I mean.

• What did you notice about the performance?  Camera shots? Audio?  Video editing?  Why did it succeed or fail to communicate the wants of the characters?
• What do the characters want?  How do you know this?

Another style of direction is called Formalism, where you use the camera, the audio, and the editing of your film to heighten suspense, sadness, joy, or whatever emotion you want the audience to feel.  Here's a classic scene from Orson Welle's The Lady from Shanghai that illustrates this perfectly. 

We've spent twelve school days writing and re-writing our documentary paragraphs.  Here's how we'll finish the job today.

Grab two Peer Evaluation sheets - one for your paragraphs, and one for your storyboard.

Have at least two people read your paragraphs.  Start by numbering each sentence as it starts. We should have 36 in all.  Any missing punctuation mark should be added, then circled.  It's the same for misspellings - Write a capital SP next to them so we know what they are.  

If you have repeating words, circle them, too.  Any letter that should be capitalized, but isn't, underline it twice.  Each person should leave at least one constructive comment on the Peer Eval form, then sign it.  This doesn't mean to write, "Good job," but instead, give one comment on what could make the paper stronger.  

Next, have the storyboard evaluated by the same two people.  Are the words of the paragraphs the same as the words on the storyboard?  Apply the sentences above that are in orange to your storyboard, too.  Look at the drawings.  Are they the kind of shot you say we'll see in your description?  Do we have proper headroom where the person fills the frame, or tiny little people with tons of space at the top of the frame?  Are words written underneath a person's name?  If you find problems like these, it should change the Mechanics grade. Circle the appropriate comment that deals with Script or Storyboard format.

Once you have your feedback, check your paper and make as many corrections as you can. Staple everything together, and turn your work into the In Box.  Here's the order I'd like you to follow.

1. The eval sheet for your paragraphs goes on top.
2. The paragraphs themselves come next.
3. The Peer Eval for your storyboard is third.
4. The storyboard itself comes last.  

Let's start with a Quizlet.  Click here and match 'em up.

We often struggle with using the same words over and over again, usually the subject of our videos.  Here's how to fix that.

Final documentary papers and storyboards are due at the beginning of the hour tomorrow.  If you don't finish during class today, your homework for tonight is to do so, then bring everything with you for a full Peer Evaluation tomorrow.