6/8/08

    To continue on from my last post, my group's main accomplishment has been completing the script. After editing down to just enough lines, I feel as if we successfully are portraying the plot and illustrating our theme in a 10-page script. It’s funny that it’s possible to edit down that entire play and manage to get everything that matters into 10 pages. Shakespeare apparently liked to drag things out a lot.
    I also feel like my group managed to work efficiently together. I think we all did a really good job of staying on task during our work times and each putting forth our best effort. Hopefully, our presentation comes out just as well. Our puppets have not been created yet, but our background for the show is looking good.
    The most frustrating part of the script’s composition was copying and pasting the lines into the right places. Certain parts got mixed up and I ended up putting a line into our script in two different locations. Luckily, editing helped remove that.
    Our presentation date is Tuesday, so we have one more day to practice. Hopefully, all goes well.

  The script is on its way! Lines are pretty much all pulled, and now it’s on to the editing stage so it makes sense. It’s ridiculously long. The original play is probably three hours long or so, and we have to do it in seven minutes. That will be interesting. Our script is twenty-five pages long, before editing. There’s a lot of editing to do. The finished script should be around ten pages or less.

In line-pulling, I tried to weed out unimportant events. I pulled from Act three. So, I kept a lot of the handkerchief drama in, but tried to edit out as much meaningless banter as possible. Iago says lots of random things just to get a reaction, and now a lot of that is gone. However, you can’t just cut out the important lines and forget the rest. It has to make sense and flow. I pulled important events, yes, but connecting lines that weren’t directly plot-related had to be kept as well, for the scene to make sense.

Honestly, my understanding of Othello really hasn’t deepened because of line-pulling, because I’m not reading for understanding or meaning when deciding what stays and goes. I’m just looking for what events are important to our theme, entering the line into the google doc, and moving on. I think we should be thinking more about our theme, though, because I’m not sure we really have an idea of what in Othello really relates to betrayal. We’re kind of just pulling general important parts.

Our group dynamic is still pretty good. We’re chill people for the most part, so we quietly do our work and get on with it. Most of our group is a bit slow, too, so line-pulling took longer than expected, and these blog posts are a bit late from all of us. Oh well. It’s getting done!

Tomorrow we’ll be making puppets! Twill be exciting. Hopefully I remember the felt.

Right now in the unit of studyin Othello we are in groups for a project. The group i have is really good. I have Autumn, Moriah, and Vince. Together we are working well and have divided up the work evenly and without any fuss. Each person has about 4 scenes to look up and find themes and quotes about manipulation. From donig this i have read the book over and saw it more in a prespective of people manipulating everyone around them to make them fit in their better interest. Looking at the book from another view gives you a broader prespective on how it was written and what Shakespear might be trying to get across.

5/30/08

    So far, in the progress of this project, my group and I have been doing some good work. We have identified our theme and began searching for lines that illustrate both the theme and the plot. The theme we chose to show is loyalty. It pretty much comes up as an issue for every character in the book and is the prelude to many of the events. We have also narrowed down on how we are going to present our script. We have decided between either a sock puppet show or a paper bag puppet show. So far, I would say my group and I are working well together. Our personalities and work habits mesh pretty well and cause for few conflict.
    One success we have had so far is working with the GoogleDoc. I personally, am in love with how easy it is making it to collaborate with the rest of my group. Also, I’m just a huge geek and I think it’s quite cool. We set it up in a chart, one row being the act/scene, the other being the person responsible for that section and the final row being the lines found that will be put into our script. We have color-coded each of our names, so we know who it is when someone writes in blue, red, ect. We even have a section for questions or conversations to have about different group decisions. Basically, we are talking about what to do over the GoogleDoc and either answering it then or later. Like I said, huge geek about it.
    As of now, the only difficulties I have reached are finding the perfect lines. It is really hard summing up an entire play into seven minutes. It is really teaching me how to sort through the text and find exactly where the most important and needed parts are.

Through out my time here in the Classroom of Love, I have been exposed to a different style of teaching. My teachers Mr.Chase and Ms. Weinrob strive to make their students engaged in learing by being very demonstrative, hands on and humorous. I never get bored in English class because I always know there will be something hilarious, interesting and something worth hearing. It is great knowing that I am able to discuss important ideas with my class.

Right now, I have been reading Hamlet. The book has an amazing story behind it and wornderful old english language in it. If I had to read it and figure out all the words by myself I would be lost, not to mention incrediably bored. Mr. Chase and Ms. Weinrob have found a way to teach the book through acting, reading with personailty, and group discussions that are worth hearing.

I am happy to be in the Classroom of Love, I look forward going to English all the time! I feel like I have a family here with people who won't judge me for my style of learning and who will listen to my ideas. Oh and I can't forgot they call me mmdoe!

    Recently we have entered into the world of Shakespeare. Filled with disguises insults spying and backstabbing. Yes of course I’m talking about "Hamlet" the story of a boy who kills a king to avenge his dad. Though the fact that his father WAS the king and the new king in his brother makes it kind of awkward. Hamlet is a prince and was held up from leaving after his father’s funeral because his mother needed him to stay. The mother also married at the funeral, which again adds to the awkwardness.The more we delve into Hamlet the more insane it seems to become. Hamlet has killed his Polonius by mistake attempting to kill his uncle while he hid behind a tapestry. I’ll keep updating this the further we delve into chaos

                    Our every day work since the Hamlet adventure began seems to consist of class discussions, quizzes, and reduced if not any journal time. Although Hamlet is a very exciting and educational venture it seems to stop the Journal time, which I’ve converted to writing my book. its kind of annoying  that i lost my journal time but the book is enertaining enough.

English class so far. Hmm.

Othello. We've started reading Othello! I love Shakespeare. I love the language. But, I don't love the plot of Othello. I find it a bit dull. The characters seem fairly flat. We've made it to the turning point, yet I don't really care. Hopefully it improves by the end. 

I think I am doing well with this project so far. I have emailed my change agent more than once to fill him in on my progress, and I have everything done that needs to be done right now. The next thing for me to do is the action plan.

What was easy for me this time was getting quotes and incorporating them into my blog posts. What was difficult was finding more information for the second scientific and historical posts, but this was only slightly difficult. I think I should be okay for the rest of the project. 

One of the surprises that I had was a question that kept bugging me. The question was what exactly do I want to change? If I had 5 minutes of the Director of Philadelphia Student Union, what exactly would I say? What exactly would I want her to change? She knows and understands the problems with the School District of Philadelphia better then I do. Is there anything I can tell her that would actually assist her on her mission to change the schools in Philadelphia. This would be the biggest question in my book, and its been bugging me for the past two weeks.
Though besides that everything has been going well, every article I read I gear myself with more knowledge of the system as well as different opinions and points of view. I’ll be writing my last and final two blogs in the aspects of the school districts.
My plan is to finish what I started and help progress the road to better education. I honestly do believe that anyone is capable of doing so if they care enough.

Hannah Feldman
Reflective Post 4

There is still quite a bit that needs to get done for this project. The list piles up. One downfall of having the project broken down into pieces is backlog. When I fell behind on blog posts, I then fell behind on subsequent assignments, because I was working on the posts instead of the newer assignments. The other option would be to just forge ahead with the new assignments, but with that the original late piece would be forgotten and never get done.

A combination of both is what happened to make me behind. At first, when my elevator pitch was first late, I focused on finishing that and therefore ignored the other deadlines coming up. Then, I realized I needed to do those. So, I started catching up with the blog posts (no, I’m not fully caught up with those) and the elevator pitch was put lower on the to-do list.

On top of all that, there are the technical difficulties. I am making an iMovie for my elevator pitch, and I have video clips that I would like to incorporate into it, but whatever format they are in isn’t compatible with iMovie, and I have no idea what formats are and how to change the format. I really want my pitch to be professional and effective, and I’m not willing to compromise on that.

Change agent: I know who I want. I hope they respond. PECO is a powerful company that can easily help with my issue, and I hope they listen.