In addition to more critical efforts to conduct inquiries into history as it intersects with our present landscape, the TALONS class has come to embrace dramatic efforts to enact and recreate history in their social(s) learning. Whether engaging in a mock trial of King Charles II, or making impassioned speeches as characters in the French […]
Read more "Social Media/Studies"Leading up to our first performances in #IntroGuitar, for credit students were asked to prepare brief introductions to their goals in these first efforts. Here is my introduction to the song I selected to perform, an original entitled “Judy and the Town.” While the song is a few years old, I have elected to focus […]
Read more "Learning Project: Performance Goals"Italy, Spain, Cuba – half the world is filled with the places that he appropriated simply by mentioning them. In Cojimar, a little village near Havana where the solitary fisherman of ”The Old Man and the Sea” lived, there is a plaque commemorating his heroic exploits, with a gilded bust of Hemingway. In Finca […]
Read more "With Hemingway"Hey (#IntroGuitar) folks! Here’s a brief example of how you might contribute a course introduction during our first few weeks of class this semester. You can see many others here. While open online participants are free to jump in and begin on any particular assignment they like, even a short video introduction to yourself and […]
Read more "#IntroGuitar Course Welcome & Introduction"“…ds106 is not just ‘on’ the web—it is ‘of’ the web.” Alan Levine The advent of the web enables a type of individual inquiry and collective synthesis that makes new experiments in constructivism possible. But creating the conditions for such epistemological emergence can be a challenging possibility to consider. As Osberg and Biesta note, “…if […]
Read more "Learning on (and of) the Web"I have to thank TALONS (and #introguitar) alum Clayton for recommending the MelodyLab app that allows you to make multi-part video-harmonies with your phone. It might be a ways from replicating Matt Mulholland’s epic multi-part Ghostbusters theme song, but the free app introduces aspects of the loop pedal to video editing, offering this semester’s #introguitar crowd an exciting way […]
Read more "Split-Screen Storytelling"Before the new year, I compiled a host of the TALONS‘ responses to reflective prompts on their work created during the Eminent Person Study, highlighting the means and methods they employed to create stellar examples of public speaking in their Eminent Addresses. Being able to have each of these reflections assembled in one place – […]
Read more "Room for Improvement: If and when we do Eminent again…"Each spring the TALONS undertake an In-Depth Study, a five month “passion project” wherein they are asked to document their growth and learning toward personalized goals in learning a skill or craft. There are two universal goals for the In-Depth Study: 1. Know something about everything and everything about something. In school you are usually […]
Read more "An Open Learning Project"Upon completing my undergraduate education, I toyed briefly with the idea of heading directly into my Master’s, though at the time it would have likely been in American literature or an MFA program in fiction writing than the course I’m currently following. Then again during my course work to obtain my teaching certificate, I […]
Read more "Blog as Prologue"Almost without fail, the Eminent Person Speech reigns supreme as the element of the annual project that produces – in the estimation of teachers, peers, and self-assessment – the highest quality work. While there are inevitably remarkable pieces of work contributed to various aspects of the study, whether in Night of the Notables learning centers, […]
Read more "Rising to meet the Eminent Speech"