Movies = Books?

My husband and I recently rented and watched the latest Cameron Diaz flop, Bad Teacher.  In it she plays an awful teacher who is pretty much only at school for a paycheck.  As a result she never does any real teaching in her class but instead just shows movies every day.  When her school principal calls her out on it, she tells him, "Movies are the new books."  This got me thinking - ARE movies becoming the new books?  I know there are numerous books where I've said, "I'll just wait and see the movie instead of taking the time to read the book."  It is a whole lot less time-consuming to sit and watch a 2 hour movie to experience a story that might otherwise take a couple of days to experience if you sat and actually read it.  And with so many books now being made into movies it's just a lot easier to do that.  Some movies I'm guilty of watching in lieu of the books?

The Harry Potter series

The Twilight Saga (which I've been told I need to actually read to understand the significance of the cover items)

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (I actually HAVE read The Hobbit believe it or not)

















Aside from the whole convenience/instant gratification movies are also a lot easier to understand.  They take away a lot of the processes our brain goes through when we are reading.  We no longer have to use inference or context clues to figure out what is going on.  We don't get to use our imaginations to create the characters.  Instead we are given a picture on a screen to tell us exactly what we are supposed the think.

So, is this phenomenon taking away from our literacy? (or at the very least our comprehension skills?)
Here is an article discussing whether or not some think it is.

Or are movies a good thing where literature is concerned?

Or are they just a part of life now that we need to learn to adapt to and change our teaching methods to reach the new generations who are being raised to be pro-media and suggested here?

I think that movies and media in general has its pros and cons (just like everything else) but if we are willing to be open-minded to it, accept that it's the way the world is going and take steps to remedy its shortcomings (such as using forms of media that encourage literacy or supplementing media with things that improve literacy) that media can be a very good thing and that our future generations will be able to learn the same things we've learned (but in a better way more suited to their upbringing) and then some.

Kinetic Poetry - Is it or ain't it?

Today in class we touched on the subject of kinetic poetry.  From what we viewed and discussed my understanding of the definition of kinetic poetry is poetry that is presented using animations.  The words themselves become animated or kinetic to further illustrate the author's point and give the reader (viewer) a deeper sense of what is being said.  I feel that with today's media-driven society, kinetic poetry also helps draw the "reader" in, it helps them really comprehend what is being said.  It is probably also much more appealing than traditionally printed poetry.

With all of that being said, why hasn't kinetic poetry really taken off?  Until we discussed it in class I had never even heard of it let alone seen any of it.  I feel that it's not very popular because the people who are responsible for teaching poetry either aren't allowed to give kinetic poetry as an example or they are stuck on old-school poetry and don't recognize this as a proper form of poetry themselves.  I know that many people are against the fact that media is quickly advancing to become a large part of literature.  I myself am one of those people in some respects (Kindles and Nooks may be great for accessibility and convenience but there's nothing that can replace the look, feel and smell of a good old-fashion book in my heart), but to me poetry is one the most avant-garde forms of literature.  It only makes sense that it would delve this deep into media this quickly.

My final question is whether or not this can truly be called "poetry".  By definition, poetry is "the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts".   Kinetic poetry is nothing more than a rhythmical composition that is being written in a more modern form.  I guess it's true what they say - beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Below are a few of my favorite kinetic poems.  What do you think?  Is it truly poetry?  Do you like it more than traditional forms of poetry?  If so why do YOU think it isn't very popular?

Rainy Day
I Wake up as From a Dream
Inception
I Statements

Technoliteracy Memoir Thoughts

For class we had to write a Technoliteracy Memoir - a memoir discussing or showing our growth in literacy
as it was affected by technology.  For our purposes we defined technology as most any device used to write (ex: pencil, paper, computer, etc)

Once our memoirs were near completion we were given some questions to answer about how we decided what to write about, the organization of our memoir, etc.  Below you will see my thoughts about the topic.


The organization of my memoir represents the growth of my literacy throughout my school years.  It starts with my elementary school experiences – which are carefully grouped into each grade level – then continues on to my junior high and high school learning – which is also presented chronologically – and ends with my higher learning in my college years up to this point.  The reader may start at any level they wish but they must always return to the timeline to choose the next level and they may not jump from level to level.


 I felt that the purpose of this project was to show our growth and development of literacy so I decided to show it with the organization of my information and the way that I presented each item. It goes from being extremely basic with just a list to somewhat advanced with links between each piece of information.


The determining factor for the organization of my memoir was that I wanted to present a theme of growth and advancement. I felt that having the reader return to the timeline after each level would prevent confusion by keeping each level contained within itself and also I felt that having more constraint would be fitting for the lower, less advanced levels.  Once the reader gets to the higher learning years they are able to move freely in any order they wish between the information provided but they must still return to the timeline to access a different level thus providing a nod toward my preference of order, control and linear print.


 I think there is a clear hierarchy to my memoir.  The timeline is presented in chronological order and each individual time period is presented in order – this includes the higher learning years, the reader is able to move freely between links and information but it is still presented in chronological order.  I wanted to give the reader some control to represent my growth thus far but I still wanted to maintain most of the control to show that while I have accepted many changes and new ideas, I am still not ready to let go and move away from traditional ways just yet.

Technoliteracy Memoir continued...

I haven't been at it very long, but I can already see improvement toward where my rhetoric used to be.  I will say (and I whole-heartedly attribute this to facebook) that the hardest part of blogging has been finding topics that I feel are blog-worthy and then finding enough words to discuss them.  This saddens me when I think about how I used to be able to write lengthy, meaningful posts, (back in my Xanga days) but now I find it hard to write 200 about a topic that I know well and am interested in.

What exactly is a memoir?

We see and/or use the word often enough.  Shouldn't we know?  If you Google "What exactly is a memoir?" you might find answers like:

• "A memoir is a part of a biography, autobiography or a part of someone's life in a story or a piece of writing."
• "Well, I was taught that a memoir is a specific part of your life. It is not an autobiography. A memoir focuses more on one specific event."
• "memoirs are simply memories"
• "memoir : a narrative composed from personal experience."
• "It is an accounting of a person's life, significant events that happened to them, and a self-acknowledgment of their life. You would usually hope that they would do it with some kind of awareness to demonstrate some wisdom."

To me a memoir is an account of a period of time in someone's life - whether it be one short, specific part of their life or the entire thing. There are many different ways you can create and share a memoir. It can be a book, like The Diary of Anne Frank, a  movie, like Memoirs of a Geisha, you can post it electronically or with ink and paper, it can be in diary format or story format. I think it very appropriate that our technoliteracy memoirs will be presented in a media format. I know my memoir will not be stellar but I think it will be cool.  A great example of an online diary-type memoir can be found here: Pine Point Web Documentary

To plagiarize, or not to plagiarize?

   In my Multimedia class (the purpose of this blog) on Thursday we discussed an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education which stated, "Plagiarism is running rampant on...college campuses" and that "...technology is partly to blame."  I can't say that I completely agree with these words.  I believe that, yes, the Internet has definitely made plagiarism much easier and more accessible, but I do not think it has led to an outbreak or rise in it.

   I believe that the main perpetrators in plagiarism are people who don't know what to do or what they are supposed to write about, and people who are lazy and just don't care to do the work themselves.  People have been stealing other people's work and passing it off for as long as literature has been around (and even before that if you count oral "literature", bards, etc.).

   The Internet has made it easier to plagiarize - all you have to do is Google your topic, find an article or a few quotes that please you then copy and paste them into a Word document.  Simple.  HOWEVER, when essays were still hand-written and researched in books or newspaper articles it was just as easy to copy down the information word for word.  As a matter of fact I think I can confidently say that I plagiarized once or twice in my past.  I'm certainly not proud of this fact, and yes it was due to laziness (and procrastination) but in my defense I must also tell you that I was in elementary school and while I did know it was wrong to just copy straight from a book I at least tried to not copy verbatim and tried to make it my own by re-arranging the information, paraphrasing it and adding my own little tidbits from class discussions.  (Besides, a 10-year old kid with A.D.D. who is up writing at midnight because she kept putting it off can only stare at hundreds of pages of 8-point font about the Caddo Indians for so long...)

   I guess if you consider all of the ways - search engines, software, etc. - that the Internet has it easier for Professors to discover plagiarism then yes, you can say it is responsible for a rise in it - but only because it makes it more know.  I'll relate it to something everyone can understand.  The World is round.  It has always been round.  Until someone went out and developed a way to study it, no one knew it, but after, everyone knew it (even if they didn't accept it right away).  Or take the air we breathe.  It's always been made up of oxygen and nitrogen and other gasses but again, until someone developed a way to take a closer look and study it... (need I continue?)

   So yes, the Internet has made it easier to plagiarize and yes it has made the fact that people plagiarize more well known but no, it has not made more people plagiarize.  Do you agree?

What's in a Name?

   For me the hardest part of blogging has always been choosing a name that represents not only my own quirks and personality but the purpose of my blog as well.  As a blog pertaining to the relationship between media and English Literature, finding a name for this particular blog proved especially difficult.  After some thoughtful consideration (and a little help from Steve Carell's character in the movie "Little Miss Sunshine") I finally decided on "English `a la mode".  I felt the term "`a la mode" was appropriate not because English is so divinely sweet but because this blog will (hopefully) represent English in one of its most current forms, or modes, as a type of multimedia. 

That being said...

Why do we put so much importance in names and titles anyway?  After all, they're just words, right?

Is it because we use them as identifiers and want to be as specific as possible?  Does it make us feel better or more important when we add that extra suffix to the end of our name to let people know about our accomplishments?  Is it a matter of letting them know what we accomplished or is it about showing ourselves better than them?  Perhaps it is a combination of several of these.  Perhaps it is none of these.  As William Shakespeare put it, "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet", but would it?  Have we made so many emotional and psychological word associations that were a rose called a skunk blossom it would no longer smell sweet to us but rather it would smell foul and putrid?  As words have become so important to us it is easy for me to believe that this may be the case.  I don't believe this to be a bad thing... within reason of course.  What do you think?