After reading this article, I was made aware that there is another literacy called "anime-inspired fantiction." (All of this new jargon is hard to keep straight in this new Web 2.0 world.)
I was excited about the author's idea of taking media as a starting point for writing especially since my students are turned on to media. This could be a great way to motivate them to write. So many of my students are great illustrators and a lot of my Asian students draw manga characters already. I wonder what type anime I could use in the classroom as a writing prompt? I may just bring in a video and have them watch it for a few minutes and ask them to predict what happens next and create their own endings. I would model this to the class first before I would expect them to do this. Another idea would be to show a video's ending and ask them to write the beginning and middle of the story. They could create a story board first and add dialogue later.
I found out this month just how much my students love comics when they created them in conjuction with our WordMasters lessons. We discussed the elements of a good comic strip, read various comic strips (which they loved doing), and they created their own comics using WordMaster words.
What surprised me about this article was that Eileen and Rhiannon had their own small fanfiction world outside of school where only a few trusted people could enter. Their drawings and stories were not part of the classroom. School was kept separate from this fanfic world. Their personal writing was much more important to them. It's sad that the two worlds couldn't come together. The article mentions that the students would have benefitted from their teacher's help because they could have been composing in Word instead of emailing their stories to save them. (I went off track here.)
I'm starting to see a common theme in these articles that we are reading for our graduate course. We seem to have two separate worlds: school and home use of technology. I'm hoping that by our district using Moodle (similar to Blackboard) that the two shall become one. Students should be able to communicate with various types of technology and opportunities for "literacy learning." I agree with the author that teachers need to think about fanfiction. I liked the idea about bringing an example of your best personal writing at the beginning of the school year. It's a good ice breaker and a way to get to know your students. I think I'm going to discuss this with my colleagues and ask for a writing sample for the first day of school with an illustration. This course definitely has me thinking about new methods of literacy instruction.
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How is your school using Moodle and for what? What grade do you teach and are your using it?
We are in the process of creating our moodle page. I teach 4th grade and I will be using it to communicate with parents about events, special assignments, trips, or anything else that I feel they should be informed of. The students can use it for to check homework assignments and links to sites for projects. I can post a discussion question similar to a chat room. I can add to it and update it at any time. I will learn as I go along. We are taking a workshop at the high school to help us get started. The 8th grade students are using it thoroughly with their science teacher similar to the way we use blackboard.
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