Does Visual Design Belong in English Class?

by Mr. Quale on January 24, 2012

Shot from Whale Rider

Oftentimes, teachers speak highly of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), the idea being that all teachers should be in some way teachers of writing, encouraging students to communicate their ideas effectively in writing in every specific subject area. For many, including me, this makes perfect sense, and many schools have found success by implementing this simple philosophy. The case study of Brockton High School, a school of 4,100 students in the United States, found lasting success in part because of their adoption of WAC strategies.

However when it comes to how we communicate visually, and how we teach and study these skills, there seems to be less of a consensus, and more of a stigma. The attitude of some students and teachers seems to be that visual communication should be relegated to visual and performing arts. But more recently technology courses are now incorporating design instruction into their curriculum design, specifically with the use of multimedia technology like Keynote or PowerPoint, and web design.

In English class, we talk about contrast in literature, via the use of juxtaposition in T.S. Eliot’s poetry or Steinbeck’s prose, but rarely do we talk about creating visual contrast. The same can be said for visual imagery, by far the type of imagery that we spend the most time discussing, and the type of imagery that students spend the most time writing about. The question, “How does an author describe it?” always comes back to, “How does it look?” and this, to me, sounds first and foremost like a design question, even if we don’t address it as such.

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Reason and Statistics

by Mr. Quale on January 16, 2012

In TOK we began to investigate Reason as our Way of Knowing, and how statistics relates to this.  Two people came to mind:

Hans Rosling and his website Gapminder.org.  Here is an analysis of statistics by Rosling using his website that is similar to the TED Talk we watched in class:

YouTube Preview Image

Chris Jordan and his Running the Numbers (An American Self-Portrait) Project. On his website he describes the project:

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Below is one example, but the experience is best navigated on this website, where you can zoom in on every picture for the full effect.

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J.L. Borges Discussions and Reflections

by Mr. Quale on January 12, 2012

Infinite Swans

As we begin our discussions on the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, I wanted to post some clarifications, and a location–this post–where we can add our reflections.  Please feel free to also add your discussion questions to this post ahead of time, if you would like your classmates to see them before your discussion time.

First, the clarifications as to what your discussion topics should include:

  • Analysis of time and place in the story.
  • What was easy to understand and what was difficult in relation to social and cultural context and issues.
  • Connections between issues in the work and our own culture(s) and experiences.
  • Aspects of style and technique
  • Insights that you have researched / Supplemental discussion ideas (see handout)
  • Ideas or visuals that will further our understanding and discussion of the short story.

In addition to leading one discussion over the course of our Borges unit, every student will write and post two reflections below. These reflections will each be between 300-400 words in length. One reflection needs to be posted immediately after the discussion of the short story your are responsible for, and one needs to be posted after our concluding discussion of the unit. Both should address the following question:

How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the discussion?

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Presentation Resources

by Mr. Quale on January 5, 2012

In order to avoid the dreaded curse of slideuments (presentations that are basically word documents pasted into a PowerPoint and helpful to no one), I wanted to point my students to some handy resources and ideas for creating presentations that are effective, memorable, and visually stimulating.

Two helpful websites that write about and compile presentation ideas are Garr Reynold’s Blog Presentation Zen, which expands on his book of the same name, and Note & Point, which is an online gallery of effective presentations. Presentations included on this site such as “7 Tips to Create Visual Presentations” (embedded below) and “How to Create Slides that Rock” practice what they preach.

Nancy Duarte’s company and her books, Slideology in particular, always provide helpful resources for communicating our ideas clearly to one another.  Just ask Al Gore, whose presentation An Inconvenient Truth was designed by Duarte’s crew.

We watched brief excerpts of two TED presentations, one on by Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity, and one by Wade Davis on worldwide web of belief and ritual. Both highlight different–yet highly effective–presentation styles.

Lastly, two related videos concerning the power of language as a tool for communication: Taylor Mali’s poem “Totally like Whatever, you Know” (It’s nice to see he gave up on the ponytail) and Stephen Fry’s “Language.”

Thanks to Mr. Nilsen for pointing me to some of these resources.

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Behold the third and final part of a podcast series titled “Some Thoughts on Writing and Life.” In this part, Sarah, Aidyn and Christina make some conclusions about Anne Lamott’s book Bird By Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life and relate it to their own experiences with writing. I have been pleased with how these podcasting experiments have turned out, and my hope is that my classes will do more of these next semester, especially now that we have figured out how easy Garageband is to use as a tool to record them.

Enjoy Part Three:

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Discussion Links:

“How to Tell a True War Story,” from The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

Bird By Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott’s Biography & Links

Interview with Anne Lamott from Studio 360.

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Here is the second part of a three part podcast series titled “Some Thoughts on Writing and Life.” In Part 2, Rachel, Selma, Cinthiya further investigate aspects of Anne Lamott’s book Bird By Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life with a critical eye. They also relate Lamott’s ideas to their own writing strategies and practices.

Enjoy Part Two (the third and final part will be posted shortly) :

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Discussion Links:

In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim O’Brien

Bird By Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

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Language Colloquium

6 December 2011

We have been having some interesting discussions and presentations in TOK class investigating language as a way of knowing, and we have also begun to explore the differences between written and spoken language, as well as whether or not we should preserve our current language structures, or let them evolve naturally over time.
The idea of [...]

Some Thoughts on Writing and Life: Episode Two (Part 1)

4 December 2011

I am finally uploading the first part of a three part podcast series titled “Some Thoughts on Writing and Life” that my 11th grade English Literature class completed after reading and working with Anne Lamott’s book Bird By Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life. This text was one of three that we studied this [...]

Songs of Constant Sorrow

20 October 2011

“I’ll Fly Away” is my favorite song in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? This version was recorded by the wonderful Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss.

Art Trip to Italy: Venice

6 October 2011

Not only are students lucky and fortunate to participate in an art trip to Italy, but also an art trip to Italy that coincides with La Biennale di Venezia, referred to simply as “La Biennale,” which is a contemporary and avant-garde art exhibition hosted by Venice every two years.  Today we visited the part of [...]

Art Trip to Italy: Florence & Venice

6 October 2011

Our last day in Florence was an eventful one, which began by crossing the river Arno over the Ponte Vecchio, walking through the ancient city walls and up the hillside for a magnificent view of the city.  This view provided the unique opportunity for students to sketch the cityscape that we have been exploring for [...]

Art Trip to Italy: Enjoying Florence

4 October 2011

The beautiful weather continued in Florence as we spent the morning exploring the Uffizi Museum, which houses works by Da Vinci, Botticelli, Lippi and Raphael, among others.  Students spent time sketching works in detail and learning from the Italian masters.  We then visited the tranquil San Marco Monastery, discovering the beautiful frescos painted directly on [...]

Art Trip to Italy: Florence

3 October 2011

Upon our arrival last evening, we were welcomed to Florence with beautiful weather and delicious traditional Tuscan cuisine.  Today we were on a mission to experience as many churches as time and energy would allow us.  We started with a climb up the cupola (dome) of the Duomo–the Cathedral of Santa Maria di Fiore–where we [...]

Our Brains and Our Perceptions

25 September 2011

I wanted to provide a few “visual illusion” links to some of the example we have been looking at in TOK class (like the illusion above, which is in fact not an animation, except that our mind creates one).  This website has quite an impressive collection of them. Below I’ve also embedded a link [...]

53 Creative Source Book Suggestions

21 September 2011

The English and TOK Source Books are intended to be a source of students’ own thinking.  In addition to the contents and entries I assign, students should be exploring the Texts we study in new, personal and unique ways.  I am using Text with a capital “T,” meaning a novel, poem, film, commercial, advertisement, short [...]

Perception, The Matrix, and Augmented Realities

8 September 2011

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside and look around. . . What do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. . . The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do. . . These people are still part of that system. [...]