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.