Scul Daz

Ds10t n dun
Bel ringz n ear
SumrX ovr
Scul dazr here
Tchr mouz rulz
Lyk latr day Mozs
Frosh cnt w8
2 gro n2 thr nozs
Iz sht tyt
Kds cnt b waknd
Scul dazr here
Thrs no mstakn


-M. Hoban




If I could submit a txt mssge poem to The Guardian, this would be my entry. Working on this project took many hours (maybe 4) to hammer out. The sensory/facial imagery was the first anchor point on which to build this poem about moments during the first days of the new school year. (Thanks to a freshman early riser walking ahead of me just after he was dropped off at the Heart of Hun--nozs and Mozs became the first rhyming pair that determined the structure of the piece.) The rest of the content came swiftly. The majority of my time was dedicated to squeezing the poem into the extreme limits of text messaging culture: no more than 160 characters, spacing included in that count! This is where real thinking and creativity came into play:


After a couple days of solitary work on my iPod Touch, I wrote the poem on the board for some feedback from the students. I originally thought that '+r' was a clever shortening of 'summer', but the kids weren't buying it. So I had to invest a few more letters by expanding the word back up to 'sumr.' I originally had the word 'time's' as part of the compound word 'summertime's' written as 'tymz', but that along with 'mouthz' and the two 'ther's needed to be compressed further since the 160 character limit was well maxed out. So 'summertime's' became 'sumrX', 'mouthz' now 'mouz', and the 'ther's now 'thr'. (Note to reader: The author and his word processor have never allowed so many red dotted underlines, ie misspellings, to continue through to a final draft!)


After a few more spin cycles on the sophistic centrifuge, the poem clocked in at a staggering 170 characters (including spaces). In an act of sheer desperation, I had to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze the air out of this jibber-jabber jaunt. Away I say, to three spaces! This done at the expense of putting two words together that sound fine when spoken, but are grammatically incorrect when written. Then 'like' became 'lyk' and 'time' became 'tym'. Further stamping off spaces and gnashing of keystrokes brought us to the final entry. Finally! I was able to wrangle the thing down to 160 characters exactly. (Count 'em if you doubt me!)


Weekend Homework Assignment (entered on blog at 2:09 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25th):

Using the comment function on this blog post, write a review of Mr. Hoban's poem 'Scul Daz" in SMS shorthand. You must use no fewer than 50 characters (NOT including spaces!!!) and no more than 160 characters (NOT including spaces!!!) in your review.

Your comment post must be entered before class time on Tuesday Sept. 29th.

If you are the LAST PERSON TO POST you must write a review on everyone else's post!! (Go through the list of comments from classmates in your Intro to Media Arts section to see if you are the last one!)

Also, make sure you include your name in the post.


--Mr. Hoban

The answers for tomorrow's quiz are:

Numbers 1 - 4 from my Saturday September 19th post

The line from a Jay-Z song I used in my first blog post

rock, paper, scissors

That's all!

-Mr. Hoban

The Weekend...She Is Here (Finally!)

Stemming from our text messaging readings, discussions and activities I guided the classes through a study of--what I consider to be--the very first examples of text messaging in the history of modern society: vanity license plates.

We first defined what it means to "text" someone and then determined the basic elements of this form of communication, which are:

1. The use of text (letters, numbers)

2. The need for it to be short (abbreviated)

3. A quick method to send/receive information

4. Ability to communicate over some distance.

Do vanity plates do this? They sure do!!

Through the dozens (and dozens and even more dozens!) of examples of vanity plates that I "gathered" over the last several months during my daily commute (with a few side trips to parking lots at malls and work complexes), the students had a great time guessing the messages from my presentation (made using Keynote). Once I figure out how to add it to this blog, I will post the piece.

This week coming up, we'll continue our exploration of ancient media--more on text, a new topic on writing implements and our workshops this week will focus on drawing and collage creation.

There ya go! Have a great weekend!!

--Mr. Hoban

Text Message Class

Today's Media Arts classes were the best of the week...certainly a step up from yesterday's. What's really great is we only got to half of what I had planned to do!! So the week of discussions/activities will bleed into next week. (A little sigh of relief heard here.)

Because I didn't have my cell phone yesterday, today was the day to receive text messages from the students. The first "interaction" was for everyone to text me one thing I didn't know about themselves. I then turned these messages into content for a little guessing game. This was a good bonding moment for the kids, to get to know one another a little better during this first week of school.

Here is a sampling of messages received in my inbox. (Pretty unexceptional, if you ask me, but fine.):

Msg 1: I love golf.
Msg 2: I love hockey.
Msg 3: I'm not wearing socks right now
Msg 4: I don't txt much

Playing this little guessing game reminded me of a potential "connection-to-be-made" to another type of lo-tech yet very creative example of self-expression through messaging. I will show The All-America Rejects' music video for their song "Dirty Little Secret" and then talk about the web site that inspired the video--PostSecret. (I wonder if this is appropriate material to show a class of freshman...I think so, but I will make my final determination before tomorrow's classes.) From this, the students will then create their own mixed-media postcards to send somewhere. More on this later.


Next, I expanded the in-class, online activity and delved into a more involved texting assignment--SMS shorthand poetry as first done by The Guardian newspaper some eight years ago. Click on the link above, it's quite an interesting read about this newsprint poetry contest driven by text messages sent to the editors by Guardian readers.

The following are two examples of what was texted to me during class:

Sitin her media clss
w8 4 the time 2 pass
i hope ths isnt read


Even my beats are funny.
I can get you to jump
like the easter bunny...grr


Though poetry is certainly not my strong suit, I believe I was able to discuss/explain one of the winning entries as if I were a part of the English department! I found this to be a really great example...perhaps the first in the class...of media and arts coming together. And having students involved made it all the better!

The adventure continues tomorrow...


-Mr. Hoban

Mid-First Week

Three days feels like two weeks!! What is up with this school year's first few, eh? It's all good, though. Things do seem to be settling into a routine, even though we have two more days to "figure out" before the weekend!

In today's Intro class, we unfortunately only glanced at the short handout I gave the students to read, an excerpt from William Powers's: Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal. I believe my expectations were a bit on the high side--eager freshmen pouring over six pages of a Shorenstein fellow's dissertation...on the 2nd day of a fine arts elective class! It wasn't happening. Not meant to be, I guess. I bagged the planned discussion, mere minutes after attempting to break through their early morning sleepy headed looks (this was, mind you, 1st then 2nd period class). Instead we played with cell phones! Wa-hoo!!

After quickly surveying the types of phones and services each student had in both classes, we began to experiment with sharing files (photos and video clips) of the class with each other. A few students emailed movie and photo files to my gmail account and I performed a test to see if the file formats were compatible with Final Cut Pro. I will ultimately use much of what the students shoot on their cell phones to document the progress of the class in an end of semester video. This little exercise, today, proved very enjoyable (to them) and valuable (to me).

Starting tomorrow and going into early next week, we get back to basics in Media Arts and devote some attention to another ancient form of media--text. But with a modern day twist.

--Mr. Hoban

Note to reader: I announced to all Media Arts students that, contrary to school policy, cell phone use during this class was acceptable...in fact encouraged. At first they were shocked to hear this proclamation coming from a teacher. But their questioning gazes gave way to widening smiles when I cited examples of approved behavior: taking calls, texting, snapping photos/videos, even playing games (of all things!!). Then I provided one small caveat to the excited hordes: any use of cell phones during class time will be documented by me for future use. That is to say, any videos/photos shot must be emailed to me. Any text messaging or phone conversations are to be recorded or transcripts provided to me. Any games played must be demonstrated to me and if I find it impossible, boring or beneath me they are to never play that game in my presence again.

I will of course, amend this policy, throughout the year, where I deem it necessary.

First Day of School...In The Can

Whew! What a day. My head is still spinning a bit. I chatted with one of Hun's illustrious foreign language teachers in the parking lot at the end of the day. Her groans matched mine...long day! (Give us another day or two, then we'll be back at the top of our game, kids!)

Media Arts: we met during 7th and 8th periods, though during the mid day as opposed to the end. The flip-flop schedule was due to the convocation/installation of the new Headmaster--Mr. Jon Brougham at the beginning of the day. Nice event. Well received, I believe.

Since classes were only 25 minutes in length, I determined the best possible activity to get the kids "kinetically thinking" along the lines of media...and messages...was to construct--what else?--paper airplanes. After a crash course in aerodynamic design, we marched up the hill and proceeded to zing 'em into the Headmaster's office through his open windows looking out over the Mall!!

I know, I know. It sounds a bit too "Dead Poets Society"-esque, right? Teacher sneaking his charges out of class to do the whole "carpe diem" thing out on campus. Could this be a prank potentially fraught with calamitous ruin? Kids throwing paper airplanes into the Headmaster's office!! Tsk, tsk. Or is this exercise merely a demonstration of the limits and strengths that paper embodies in our digital world? Of course, it was the latter (since Mr. Brougham was in on the event from the start and threw open the windows himself before we readied, aimed and fired!)

I'll back up a bit on our story: the students were given the assignment to write a short message to the new Headmaster on regular letter sized paper. Then, without any prior knowledge, they individually constructed a paper airplane out of their letter, guided by the design developed by "alphageek" Takua Toda as seen in the September '09 issue of Wired magazine. With the remaining time (mere minutes) in the class periods, we trekked up the hill and launched our flyers! A fun time had by all, including Ms. Sherry Roberts (Assistant to the Headmaster) who couldn't stop laughing at the many failed attempts at getting the planes "off the ground/into the window", shall we say!!

Tomorrow's class: "Why Paper is Eternal"

For Week One

This first week of Intro to Media Arts will focus on getting to know one another, having fun with the stuff in the room and exploring "ancient" forms of technology that allow us to communicate, collaborate and create.

The aged implements of choice will be, of course: paper & pen. We will write. We will draw. We will re-examine the obvious and build a new platform of understanding from which we can launch into an exploration of media and arts for the remainder of the semester.

--Mr. Hoban

note to reader: Each Sunday I plan to lay out the agenda for the upcoming week. Stay tuned!

The New School Year Starts In Two Days

There is, as always, quite a bit more work to get done before Monday AM. This will be a whole new beginning of the new school year for me with (currently) two sections of Intro to Media Arts scheduled and only one section of Video Production I (of course there is also Video II...but who cares about them!! (tee hee, just kidding)).

Syllabus, etc. for the Intro Class is good to go...can always use a polishing up here and there, but that's what the next day is for! We'll see. Looking very much forward to how this class goes. Another great experiment about to get underway.

More during the week.