A New Respect For Animation

My group recently finished our final project for Ecmp 355. It started as an idea to use magnets on a fridge and make a quick stop motion video on it. This turned into a tale about a girl who developed a struggle with an eating disorder, namely anorexia. And of course, if we were going that far, we had to make a website surrounding eating disorders and our video.  I had no idea how much time was put into these stop motion videos. We spent all day taking pictures and manouvering the magnets, then even more time figuring out the time for each frame and putting music to it. We put a lot of effort into it, but the results were very pleasing. I really hope that our video can touch someone who has gone through this. Yes, it was just a project for a computer class, but we wanted to take it to a new level. We have already been discovered by someone who Twittered it out to their dept at a certain college, and hope we can reach many more, or possibly be used as a resource for a video in a classroom. Either way, we are pleased, and hope it can help.

Through this project I learned many things:

1. Stop motion animation is hard. But do-able. Involving yourself in technology is worth the effort.

2. Never underestimate the power of social networking. We were discovered via Twitter. This finally convinced me to cave and join the Twitter revolution.

3. Technology can go to great lengths if only we put our minds to it. There are no limits! A simple stop motion video can tell a grand story, and may have the power to touch somebody. As teachers, we need to harness this power and use it at any chance we get!

Please check out our website, which includes the video, at health335.wikispaces.com

Or, if you just want to check out our video, here it is:

Can schools brainwash children?

The education system is a powerful structure.

Less than one hundred years ago, students in Germany from grades one and two onward were taught that Jews were fat, wealthy people who lived off the backs of the poor Germans. Students studied characatures of Jews, who were often portrayed as rats. Mixing with these people would only contribute to the “bastardization of society,” as Decoste and Schwartz wrote in their book, The Holocaust’s Ghost.

Students were given assignments to observe the Jews, how they talked, walked, etc., the work the Jews engaged in, and the ways Jews were portrayed in stories. Of course, teachers were looking for specific answers. Those who objected were punished. In History, the students studied men who did great things for their countries, and learned that “the ‘blood’ of Nordic imigrants had been the foundation of the great Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. The disappearance of Nordic bloodlines, on the other hand, had eventually sealed the fate on these great civilizations.” In Biology, the students learned about eugenics, and that improving their race would indeed benefit the growth and health of the community.

What? Thats what I thought. Schools fed their students this ridiculous information, and punished those who were intellectual. Of course, a student who has heard this information from the moment he or she has entered a school will eventually take it as absolute truth. These students grew up to be some of Hitler’s greatest Nazis.

The education system holds a great deal of responsibility and power in their hands. We can simply tell our children to believe something, or gently push them to learn the facts for themselves. The problem with the schools I spoke of above was that they were anti-intellectual. Although our schools today strive to produce intellectual students, few of them actually question what is spoken to them by their peers, media, and schools. Students should learn to question, and teachers need to embrace this.

I was a student who questioned my teachers. I never bought the theory of evolution, and I thought Charles Darwin had some good ideas, but should be pointed towards a Bible. My teachers, of course, told me I was wrong. They were great teachers, but did not like the fact that I was searching for my own answers. I still don’t really know these answers, but does anyone, really? The greatest scientists still debate over this (See the National Geographic’s latest: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design). I think there needs to be a shift in the education system – one from where children go from being told, to actually learning. There is a huge difference there. Teachers need to be aware of the responsibility they have in their classrooms, because, to their students, they seem to be wise role models who have figured out all the answers. We need to encourage our children to be intellectual. We do not know where technology and society will take us in the future, and we need to produce unique individuals, not robots, to solve the problems we will face there. Encourage them to learn. Encourage them to go beyond. Be….intellectual.

Social Media: Who Can We Trust Online?

Similar to the majority of society, when I hear something via the news, gossip, radio, etc and want to know more, the first place I head to is Google. I am true to Google, and I find that it rarely lets me down and is very helpful. Number 2 on my list? Wikipedia. These sites make information easy to access and have great readability. Of course, I can usually discern between helpful information and information that may not be true. But, to some degree, I have a great deal of trust in the internet. Like many people, I believe that people are mostly good, and that many things on the internet can actually aid me in my daily life.

Unfortunately, not all of society is good. Of course, the danger of the internet is completely overblown. Not every teenage girl who enters a chat room is going to be a victim of some gruesome kidnapping spree. In fact, that girl is more in danger from her own family than an internet. The fact is that children using the internet are going to excel in many ways. What we, as teachers and parents, need to do, is to teach responsibility while using the internet. There are places children should not go, and the majority know that.  They have to exert responsibility while using the internet, knowing that not everything they read is true and that they cannot act out whatever they read on posts. For example, check out this news story that happened on Friday on CNN about Facebook and a 12-year-old. Basically, someone made a Facebook page called “Kick a Ginger Day,” and a bunch of boys in California got together and beat up a 12 year-old redhead at their school. Is this Facebook’s fault? or is this the result of teenage boys not using their accessibility to the internet responsibly? There are many who blame Facebook. Maybe there should be stronger rules guarding what can get placed onto Facebook, but that gets into the whole concept of censorship. No one likes to be controlled my censors, and it takes away people’s rights and freedoms to post. It really all comes down to responsibility. I am responsible to know what Im reading on Google or Wikipedia, and we need to ensure that the future generations can use that same responsibility when they are on the web.

Creativity vs Consumerism

I found that a lot of my classes lately have been talking about consumerism. We have watched videos on Disney, and how conglomerations such as this affect children. The conclusion that I have come to is that the society in which we live in is addicted to consuming, which produces more consuming, which produces more and more. We are never satisfied, but always strive to have more, and fill the void in our lives by consuming whatever we can. The term “shop until you drop” has never been more real, or more widespread. Marketing catches our eye, convinces us that our lives will be better when we purchase what they say we “need.”

This literally scares me. I have been thinking on this a lot lately, and recently I even had a dream that was all about consumerism. In my dream I was working at a camp. This camp was not your typical, out-in-the-wilderness type of camp, but it looked more like a mall featuring a lot of cement and glass. My job was to teach drama, but the kids refused to try. They had these lives where their imaginations went out the window, video games and toys showing them how to play, and parents who bought them everything. The drama program kept buying more things to make the program better. We had top-of-the-line lights, amazing sets and costumes, a gorgeous stage, cameras, etc. The more the kids struggled, the more stuff the adults would buy for the program, trying to make it better with their money. As the teacher, I kept trying to stress that if they put effort into acting, they would succeed. When I tried to teach them plays, or to do improv, they literally stood around playing their video games, on their cell phones, and fixing their hair and make-up.  They would not do anything for themselves, but wanted to be given more, hoping that this would produce good actors.  When I woke up I was still concerned for our world. We NEED creativity. Imaginations are irreplaceable. They can not be purchased at any store or created electronically, no matter how much money people put into it. We need to stress that being imaginative is of the greatest importance. In our classroom, we must let the creativity flow. No amount of consuming can replace what our children are capable of.