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Escola: Escola Estadual Francisco Pires Machado
Overview | How can online media like Twitter posts, Facebook status updates and text messages be harnessed to inspire and guide concise writing? In this lesson, students read, respond to and write brief fiction and nonfiction stories, and reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of “writing short.”
Materials | Slips of paper with brief stories (see below; one per student), computers with Internet access
Warm-Up | Before class, select six-word love stories from The Times’s Well blog, in the post itself and in the reader comments, to share with students. (You can find more stories in the same vein at the Web site Dear Old Love and Smith Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs.)
To use fictional stories instead of or alongside memoirs, include the following “short short story” by Ernest Hemingway, along with stories posted on the Web site inspired by it, Six Word Stories:
For sale: baby shoes, never used.
Print your selected stories on slips of paper and distribute them to each student. Whip around, with each student reading aloud the story on his or her slip. Tell each reader to pause before beginning, to allow classmates to absorb what the previous reader shared.
Then lead a discussion, using questions like these: What do these stories have in common? Which one caught your attention most? Why? Who are the speakers? What tones did these stories strike? How did it feel to hear stories that are only six words long? Do you think it would be easier or more difficult to write a six-word tale as opposed to a more developed memoir or story? Why?
Next, have students get into pairs and rewrite a familiar story, like a fairy tale or nursery rhyme, a classic novel, a popular film or a text they read in class, in six words. Can they do it? How many words do they need? Ten? Twenty? Are their creations humorous, or direct summaries?
After five minutes, have the pairs share their writing with the whole group. Wrap up by discussing the process and the effect: What is lost, and gained, by adhering to strict and brief word limits? What skills are engaged in writing concisely as opposed to developing an idea? What choices did they have to make? How is the effect different on the reader? How easy or difficult was this task? Why?
Related | In the Op-Ed “Teaching to the Text Message,” Andy Selsberg of the Dear Old Love blog writes about the importance of mastering concision:
I’ve been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size manipulation, plagiarism and clichés. We need to set our sights not lower, but shorter.
I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. The photo caption has never been more vital.
And in “How Do I Love Thee? Count 140 Characters” by Randy Kennedy, the focus is on the literary potential of the Twitter post:
But there’s evidence that the literary flowering of Twitter may actually be taking place. The Twitter haiku movement — “twaiku” to its initiates — is well under way. Science fiction and mystery enthusiasts especially have gravitated to its communal immediacy. And even litterateurs, with a capital L, seem to be warming to it.
Read the articles with your class — both of which are brief! — using the questions below.
Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:
Personal Writing: Students write a series of Twitter-esque personal “essays” (140 characters maximum, including spaces and punctuation). Topic ideas include the school year, life lessons, relationships and personal goals. Each one can be stand-alone, or each post can be part of a series. They might do this, for example, for personal writing or in the context of developing college essay ideas. They then develop one or more selected posts into a longer piece. Afterward, debrief: How did starting off by writing brief expressions of their ideas contribute to their writing process?
Authentic Writing: Taking a page from Andy Selsberg, students find ways to contribute meaningfully and authentically to the world of the Web. Ideas include, as Mr. Selsberg suggests, writing descriptions to “sell” an item of used clothing on eBay, commenting on a YouTube video or contributing a product review on a site like Amazon, as well as participating in our daily Student Opinion discussions. Establish guidelines for good Web citizenship. Have students read each other’s posts and provide helpful feedback. How was this activity different from writing academic essays that only the teacher reads?
Poetry: Students read the Twitter poems by Billy Collins, Claudia Rankine, Elizabeth Alexander and Robert Pinsky. They then write their own original “Twitter poems” or rewrite a classic poem or one of their own poems in 140 characters or fewer. They can also look further into the history and impact of brief poems, like Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” and William Carlos Williams’s “So Much Depends.”
Creative Writing: Students write pieces inspired by so-called Twitter novels and cellphone novels, either by writing the equivalent of an original story or novella 140 characters at a time, or by “crowd-sourcing” the work, by having each student contribute a line, in turn, to a class novel.
Literature: As they read a literary text, students compose and share brief related online posts. To do this, have the class sign up for Twitter (note that they can “protect their tweets” so that only approved Twitter users can see their posts) or use a class blog, like a Ning, or Facebook page. Options for how to do this include the following:
Going Further | Students continue to experiment with how to use Twitter, Facebook, text messaging and other digital resources as writing format, writing fodder or both. Sources of inspiration for this might include The Times’s “Missed Connections” series, in which posts on Craigslist are presented as found poems.
Students might also follow selected writers and poets on Twitter, like Judy Blume.
And for more ways to integrate technology into your practice, see our page on teaching with and about technology.
Standards | This lesson is correlated to McREL’s national standards (it can also be aligned to the new Common Core State Standards):
Language Arts
1. Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process
2. Uses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing
3. Uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions
5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process
6. Uses skills and strategies to read a variety of literary texts
7. Uses skills and strategies to read a variety of informational texts
8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes
10. Understands the characteristics and components of the media
Technology
3. Understands the relationships among science, technology, society and the individual
4. Understands the nature of technological design
5. Understands the nature and operation of systems
6. Understands the nature and uses of different forms of technology
Overview | How are food and beverage marketers blurring the line between advertising and entertainment to engage young consumers, and why does this concern nutrition experts and children’s advocates? To what extent are product-related games, quizzes and apps making children both recipients and tools of marketing? In this lesson, students consider various forms of advertising, then keep logs of the ads and other branded content they encounter in a specified period, and reflect on their experiences with marketing.
Materials | Computers with Internet access, copies of or links to examples of advertisements and commercials (see below for details)
Warm-Up | Before class, display the following three-question quiz on the board or distribute it in a handout:
1. It is conservatively estimated that children influence more than $_______________ in food and beverage purchases each year in the United States.
a. 10 million
b. 50 million
c. 50 billion
d. 100 billion
2. In February, the McDonald’s sites HappyMeal.com and McWorld.com received a total of ______________ visitors, around half of whom were under 12.
a. 7,000
b. 70,000
c. 700,000
d. 7 million
3. General Mills’s Lucky Charms site, with virtual adventures starring Lucky the Leprechaun, had __________ visitors in February.
a. 27,000
b. 57,000
c. 157, 000
d. 227,000
Have students answer the questions individually or with a partner. Call on several to volunteer their guesses, and then share the correct responses (1. d; 2. c; 3. d), and then explain that these sentences were all taken from the article they will be reading in class. Ask students if they find any of these numbers surprising.
Next, poll the class. Ask for a show of hands for each of these questions, and tally responses on the board: Have you ever played a game, taken a quiz or used an app related to a food, drink or other product? Have you ever “liked” a product on Facebook? Ask some students to share which products they have engaged with in interactive ways online, and why. List them on the board.
Ask: What do you notice about the list? Have you been more apt to buy, or ask your parents to buy, products associated with these interactive features? Or were you already dedicated consumers of these products?
You might also ask them to speculate on how students their age interacted with products, so to speak, 10 or 20 years ago, and explain that while many companies have had product-related Web sites for the last decade, interactive games, online quizzes and apps geared to children, and product pages on Facebook, are much more recent creations. (Note that Facebook started up in 2004 and the iPhone went on the market in 2007, and that their parents may well have grown up, largely, before the Internet became part of mass culture.)
Ask: How do you think things are different today than they were when ads were limited largely to print, display, radio and television? Tell students to keep this contrast in technology in mind as they read today’s article.
Related | In the Business Day article “In Online Games, a Path to Young Consumers,” Matt Richtel reports on the way food and beverage companies are advertising their products using interactive media to build deep ties with young consumers:
Critics say the ads, from major companies like Unilever and Post Foods, let marketers engage children in a way they cannot on television, where rules limit commercial time during children’s programming. With hundreds of thousands of visits monthly to many of these sites, the ads are becoming part of children’s daily digital journeys, often flying under the radar of parents and policy makers, the critics argue.
“Food marketers have tried to reach children since the age of the carnival barker, but they’ve never had so much access to them and never been able to bypass parents so successfully,” said Susan Linn, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy coalition. Ms. Linn and others point to many studies that show the link between junk-food marketing and poor diets, which are implicated in childhood obesity.
Read the entire article with your class, using the questions below.
Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:
Activity | Break the class into small groups and give each group one kind of product advertisement to peruse, with one or two examples. Here are suggestions:
Each group should prepare to introduce the advertising form to the class and provide a brief overview of how the advertiser uses the form to appeal to the audience. How compelling did the class find each ad? Why?
When students are familiar with various types of ads, tell them that they will track, individually, the frequency with which they encounter advertising, by keeping a log of all ads in all forms that they encounter in a specified time period. Suggestions include one afternoon and evening, from when school lets out until they go to bed; a 24-hour period; or over the course of a weekend.
For each one, they should note:
Going Further | When logs are complete, students write reflection papers on the advertising they encountered, noting the patterns they noticed with respect to number, frequency, type of ad and type of product, and their own reactions to the ads of their choice.
Questions for students to consider include these: Did any put them off for any reason? Did any particularly compel or engage them? Did they find themselves wanting to purchase or experience any of the products or services? If so, can they figure out why? How did the ads “target” them? Which engaged them as “tools”?
They might include a section on food and drink advertising, and the connection they see between the ads they encounter and their personal nutrition habits.
Finally, they might note whether, after this experience, they think they will be more likely, less likely, or just as likely to use product-related games, quizzes or apps or visit product pages at social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, and why.
If desired, students can share their thoughts on our Student Opinion question “How Much Are You Influenced by Advertising?”
To go even further, they might also check out Morgan Spurlock’s documentary “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” which looks at the blurred line between advertising and entertainment, or the 2001 PBS report “The Merchants of Cool” to see just how much youth marketing has changed over the last decade, and write a review.
And to go in a slightly different direction, move beyond advertising to personal media habits and have students track their use of digital media. How much of their total personal media consumption consists of engagement with advertising versus interpersonal communication, entertainment, learning and other activities? Can they definitively separate engagements with advertising from other activities? When and were are the lines blurred? Have they considered “unplugging” and going “screen free” for, say, a week?
Standards | This lesson is correlated to McREL’s national standards (it can also be aligned to the new Common Core State Standards):
Language Arts
1. Uses the general skills and strategies of the writing process
5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process
7. Uses general skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts
8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes
Arts and Communication
1. Understands the principles, processes and products associated with arts and communication media
2. Knows and applies appropriate criteria to arts and communication products
3. Uses critical and creative thinking in various arts and communication settings
4. Understands ways in which the human experience is transmitted and reflected in the arts and communication
Behavioral Studies
1. Understands that group and cultural influences contribute to human development, identity and behavior
Business Education
43. Understands the roles of marketing and the impact of marketing on the individual, business and society
44. Understands how external factors and competition influence or dictate marketing decisions
46. Understands characteristics of a market and strategies used to deal with a diversified marketplace
Life Skills: Working With Others
1. Contributes to the overall effort of a group
4. Displays effective interpersonal communication skills
Technology
6. Understands the nature and uses of different forms of technology
Health
1. Knows the availability and effective use of health services, products and information
2. Knows environmental and external factors that affect individual and community health
6. Understands essential concepts about nutrition and diet
7. Knows how to maintain and promote personal health
Não dá para dizer qual seja a maior dificuldade da escrita, mas é possível perceber que se tornar em sujeito-autor do próprio texto, tanto para um adulto quanto para uma criança, é um trabalho árduo de encontro consigo mesmo e de liberação. Uma das maiores dificuldades em escrever, segundo Eliane Aguiar, doutora em Educação, “é se libertar dos padrões escolares tanto no aprendizado quanto no momento da escrita”.
Em sua tese Eliane procura estabelecer um diálogo que envolva escrita,autoria e ensino a fim de estabelecer como se constitui o sujeito autor dentro do contexto escolar. Para ela, “a questão da autoria não se refere apenas a como o autor se posiciona em relação a um ou outro assunto, mas como ele coloca em palavras, por meio de um processo árduo e de grande responsabilidade, o que ele mesmo vê do mundo.”
Para realizar sua pesquisa a educadora reuniu estudantes, de sexto a oitavo anos de uma escola particular de São Paulo. A escolha dos alunos ficou por conta dos professores, porém, para dar início a qualquer atividade, a anuência de cada um dos participantes foi essencial. “A liberdade deveria começar do querer estar ali”, conta a educadora.
Durante o estudo foram feitas perguntas relacionadas à produção textual desenvolvida pelos professores de língua portuguesa em sala de aula. Como eram feitas essas atividades, quais as dificuldades encontradas, além de outras atividades produtivas com a própria pesquisadora. Houve ainda entrevistas pessoais sobre todas as atividades dentro e fora da escola que tivessem relação com a escrita.
Ao longo da coleta de dados, porém, os participantes foram aos poucos desaparecendo. Alguns diziam que não tinham mais tempo para ir aos encontros, alegavam excesso de atividades escolares e extraescolares. Outros, simplesmente, sumiram.
Metodologia errada
“As desitências foram inquietantes”, relata a pesquisadora. “Entretanto, não puderam ser elucidadas, porque era necessário um afastamento para perceber que a escolha metodológica estava inadequada para a proposta da pesquisa.”
As metodologia utilizada por Eliane, não idêntica, mas parecida com as práticas de produção textual escolar, nem sempre conseguiram ser criativas e estimulantes de maneira que acabaram por gerar o desinteresse de muitos participantes.
O que atravanca o processo da escrita?
Livros didáticos que dividem os gêneros discursivos podem também trazer o passo a passo da escrita e incentivar a leitura. Porém, não conseguem conceder à criança a possibilidade de imprimir uma voz própria no texto, mesmo porque são atividades controladas.Faltam oficinas que envolvam o aluno no processo de redigir textos, que possibilitem reflexão e que, de alguma maneira, gerem interesse em escrever. Nesse contexto, sujeitos-autores genuínos podem passar ao automatismo das regras.
Dos sete participantes da pesquisa, apenas duas estudantes se destacaram como “sujeito-autor”. Uma delas, pela consciência que tinha sobre temas externos à escola, sobre o que viria a ser uma pesquisa, sobre o porquê participar e pelo prazer que já tinha de escrever. A segunda, devido ao gosto da escrita que desenvolveu para não se sentir tão sozinha, como filha única. “Esta aluna escrevia histórias em capítulos e a pesquisa serviu para estimular mais a escrita em casa, a que dava mais prazer.”
A tese Escrita, autoria e ensino: um diálogo necessário para pensar a constituição do sujeito-autor no contexto escolar, foi defendida, em 2010, na Faculdade de Educação e orientada pela professora Alice Vieira, do Departamento de Metodologia do Ensino e Educação Comparada. da FE.
Fonte: Agência USP de Notícias/ Por Sandra O. Monteiro - sandra.monteiro@usp.br
A Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) sediou o primeiro encontro do ano do Fórum Permanente de Desafios do Magistério, realizado pela Faculdade de Educação da instituição, Associação de Leitura do Brasil (ALB) e pelo projeto Correio Escola Multimídia, do Grupo RAC.
Cerca de 800 professores estiveram reunidos no Centro de Convenções para a discussão do tema Leitura e Convergência de Mídias. Os palestrantes enfatizaram a necessidade do uso de veículos de comunicação na escola, sempre acompanhados de uma reflexão sobre os modos de produção e a contextualização das informações.
“É preciso levar a reflexão aos alunos, pensar de que forma reafirmamos discursos e construímos outros em cada uma das mídias”, explicou Rosa Fischer, professora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). O coordenador de jornalismo do projeto Correio Escola Multimídia e professor da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas (PUC-Campinas), Fabiano Ormaneze, lembrou a potencialidade da internet na construção da democracia, desde que associada ao diálogo entre várias fontes de informação.
“O ambiente multimídia só será um espaço cidadão quando o internauta estiver formado para comparar visões e abordagens, em diferentes sites informativos.” O projeto foi representado também pela professora Elizena Cortez, da equipe pedagógica, que mediou palestra de Andréa Pimentel Karan.
Fonte: Correio Escola
Estão abertas as inscrições para o 6º Prêmio Fundação BB de Tecnologia Social. Podem participar instituições sem fins lucrativos, de direito público ou privado.
Ao todo são nove prêmios de R$ 80 mil cada, sendo que cinco serão para as categorias regionais (um para cada região do País) e um para cada categoria especial a seguir:
Até agora, 114 tecnologias já foram inscritas, destas, 18 estão concluídas e 96 em andamento.
As inscrições podem ser feitas por meio do portal www.fbb.org.br/tecnologiasocial até o dia 30 de junho e o Prêmio conta com o patrocínio da Petrobrás e o apoio do Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, da Unesco e da KPMG Auditores Independentes.
O Prêmio é concedido a cada dois anos e tem por objetivo identificar, certificar, premiar e difundir Tecnologias Sociais já aplicadas, implementadas em âmbito local, regional ou nacional e que sejam efetivas na solução de questões relativas à alimentação, educação, energia, habitação, meio ambiente, recursos hídricos, renda e saúde.
Serão três etapas:
Certificação - Todas as inscrições recebidas até o dia 30 de junho de 2011 participarão desta etapa. As tecnologias certificadas serão inseridas no Banco de Tecnologias Sociais, receberão um Certificado de Tecnologia Social e passarão, automaticamente, a concorrer à etapa de Seleção das Finalistas do Prêmio.
Seleção das Finalistas - As tecnologias sociais certificadas serão pontuadas segundo os critérios de efetividade, nível de sistematização da tecnologia e resultados qualitativos e quantitativos. Serão declaradas finalistas as 3 tecnologias, por categoria, que obtiverem as médias mais elevadas.
Julgamento das Vencedoras - As tecnologias sociais finalistas, selecionadas na etapa anterior, serão pontuadas segundo os critérios de inovação, nível de envolvimento da comunidade, transformação social e potencial de reaplicabilidade. A tecnologia com maior pontuação média, em cada categoria, será declarada vencedora. Cada uma das 9 (nove) instituições responsáveis pelas Tecnologias Sociais vencedoras receberá um prêmio de R$ 80.000,00 (oitenta mil reais) para ser utilizado em atividades de aperfeiçoamento ou reaplicação da iniciativa.
A relação das Tecnologias Sociais certificadas será disponibilizada no site da Fundação Banco do Brasil na segunda quinzena de setembro de 2011 e os finalistas serão comunicados formalmente. A premiação das nove vencedoras acontecerá em novembro, em uma Cerimônia em Brasília/ DF.
Tecnologia Social
Tecnologia Social compreende produtos, técnicas ou metodologias reaplicáveis, desenvolvidas na interação com a comunidade e que representem efetivas soluções de transformação social. As Tecnologias Sociais certificadas pela Fundação Banco do Brasil passam a integrar o Banco de Tecnologias Sociais - BTS, base de dados on-line disponível no site www.tecnologiasocial.org.br contendo informações sobre as tecnologias e instituições que as desenvolveram. O BTS é o principal instrumento utilizado pela Fundação Banco do Brasil para disseminar, promover e fomentar a reaplicação de Tecnologias Sociais.
Informações: www.fbb.org.br/tecnologiasocial
Fonte: Fundação Banco do Brasil