wiki+assignment+4.5.11

Read the following excerpt taken from “Why use technology in the English classroom?” by Michael Umphrey

When publication meant printed books and magazines there was little incentive for most people to commit the time and energy needed to become skillful writers, because opportunities for publishing were limited. No more. An increasing portion of the information available to us will be created not by professionals but by ourselves. The decline of literary reviews in newspapers received a lot of attention last year, and while this caused real dismay, we should not ignore the fact that new forms of reviewing, such as the thousands of user-written reviews on Amazon, are becoming widespread. Manufacturers report that, increasingly, user reviews of their goods and services are driving sales. Apparently, lots of ordinary people are willing to write reviews and provide information. Like cowboys around the campfire, we’re getting our culture back. It will be what we make of it. And it will be a lot more than reviews and reports. The world has always had great private literature--the letter from a father to a son that changed a life, the memoir of a grandmother that inspired generations of descendants, the heartfelt expression of an honest emotion that cemented a friendship--and the quality of life in the digital age will be closely related to the amount and quality of private literature that we create. Most people and most families will maintain an archive of words and images, accumulating through lifetimes. Lots of kids are already their own publishers, posting whatever they want on My Space. For many families the family photo album has already migrated to the web and has become a primary venue for creative expression. Where once we had occasional images with one-line captions, we now have multimedia libraries. Lots of young people will do much of their reading not in the mass media and not in the library but on the web sites of families and friends. Already, many young people would rather spend an hour watching homemade videos on You Tube than watching commercial television. Not just kids. I often spend a free hour watching You Tube but it’s been years since I’ve watched any television except the news. The range of offerings is dazzling. Some people have their own television shows with episodes posted weekly. Some people make poetry videos featuring clever animation. Many videos are answered by other videos, creating a new form of dialogue. It’s not hard to find things more compelling than commercial television, which, by its nature is bland and predictable. English teachers should be excited by the prospect of a culture of writing consisting of more than a few “stars” and the bestseller lists. We only need a few //New York Times// bestsellers-two or three every other year or so would satisfy me--but we need as many intelligent and well-crafted Powerpoints celebrating fiftieth anniversaries and movies sent to sons away at war and reflections by young mothers as we can get. We need millions of them. Whenever possible, school work should be real work. A digital album of a trip told in words and images can be great literature. So can a movie of a family’s response to a sudden storm, or a Powerpoint commemorating the death of a grandmother, or a video tribute to a ranch family’s relationship to the landscape, or a slideshow giving a personal response to a favorite literary work. Great writers have always known that everyday life is the source of powerful writing. I watched a Powerpoint done by a sophomore girl in Phil Leonardi’s class in Corvallis telling the story of a decades old murder in Corvallis, researched in microfilm of old newspapers, that was as compelling as an episode of //Unsolved Mysteries//. The production values were a little lower, but it was about //here//. I watched an interview-based movie made by students in Renee Rasmussen’s class in Chester about the impact on Joplin of closing their high school in a consolidation move. It was stunningly evocative. It will become a permanent part of the history of that community. It was real work.  ** __Assignment __ **: Look online for an intelligent and well-crafted piece of private literature. This can be in the form of a blog, YouTube video, PowerPoint, zine, wiki (other than our class), or any other website that contains a personal response. Create a new page on your wiki and include the following: the link to the source, a response to the source, and a picture that relates. Your response should 1. Describe the private literature that you chose 2. Explain why you chose it  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3. Analyze the value and/or affect it has in society (either on a small community level or a larger scale such as nationwide or worldwide).