A World Without Walls...

Will Richardson explores the idea of teaching and learning through the internet in his article, "World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others." He explains that it is important to interconnect students with each other and experts that may help them and that teachers can become "connectors." By utilizing online tools such as blogs, wikis, and Skype, students are able to find people with similar passions as they have and learn from them. Richardson does mention that by posting and blogging school work online, we are facilitating cheating; however, he weighs in that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Richardson explains that "social tools like wikis, blogs, and social-bookmarking sites make working with others across time and space easier than it's ever been. They are indeed 'weapons of mass collaboration.'" I feel as though blogs are, indeed, a great way to collaborate with peers and experts who you may otherwise never connect to; however, I feel as though Richardson does not touch upon or acknowledge the amount of unreliable sources on the internet. If students were to learn primarily through the internet, how could they be sure that they are citing credible sources?

Learning over the internet is an interesting concept and I think it could be very useful to our own classroom; it it not vital. I find that learning directly from the teacher is better than trying to navigate along through the interwebs. Teachers should not be our connectors, they are supposed to be our content experts. I think that minor reflections or reviews should be posted here on our blogs, but the majority of our learning should take place in class, through hands-on activities.

I have begun to become rather interested in present-day politics and economy. I have always told myself that I would hate to be involved in politics; however, I am finding it increasingly important to understand right now. Let's face it- the economy is in the gutters and neither candidates for presidency seem to have much idea what they are going to do to alleviate the U.S. debt. I would like to see what experts are saying on the topic, other than my parents.

The Dark Knight Rises...

Why must he be so dreamy? Christian Bale. Time to marry me.

To experiment with Diigo, I annotated a movie review by David Edelstein titled "As Class Warfare Brews, A 'Dark Knight Rises.'" The review mostly focuses on the themes, motifs and plot of the movie, rather than going into great detail concerning the dramatic cinematography and special effects.

The movie review begins by focusing on the parallels that Nolan, The Dark Knight's producer, drew between his movies and America today with an emphasis on the social hierarchy displayed in the movie. Then most of the body of the review is focused on the plot-line of the movie and how it relates tothe previous Dark Knight films- there is only a little room for discussion concerning Dramatic Aspects and close to none for discussion concerning Cinematic Aspects.
Other than praising Anne Hatheway in his depiction of Cat Woman, Edelstein rarely touches upon acting or costumes. I could not find even a couple sentences about Nolan's execution of cinematography, sound or special effects.
In the first phrase, the author sums up his feelings for the movie- that "the canvas is epic, the themes are profound, the execution is...clunky." The review does not recommend the movie; however, after reading it, I got the feeling that, rather than really opposing the movie, the author is simply indifferent to it.

In terms of our own quarterly movie reviews, I think that we should have a certain amount of creative freedom on what we write. Each movie is an individual production, thus not every question or qualification may apply to it. Of course, we should have a very basic structure to follow- such as touching upon each film aspect in the review; however, we should be allowed to choose how much we focus on each one and what we write about each one. I'm sure that if we were allowed to write the review as we see fit, the assignment would be a lot more interesting for all of us- I know I'd be more motivated!