Performing The Tempest through Skype

I had the opportunity last week to help Cara with her dramatic reading of Act 5 Scene 1 from the Tempest.  She wanted to integrate a digital mediation in the performance so we read the play via Skype and the class listened in.  I think that it was an interesting experience.  There were several technological difficulties, but in the end I think that it was cool.  The students would have had a unique time because they only heard the play, they couldn’t see us reading it, and there were no physical actors.  It would be like “watching” a youtube video with your monitor turned off.  So the experience was completely linguistic.  This meant that the feeling designed by the syntax and the flow of dialogue completely controlled the performance, and when someone forgot a line or took too long a different cast member had to step in because the flow was essential to keeping the tone and “realism” of the play alive. 

I think that it was entertaining, and was a good way of getting into the text maybe even more, because stage fright was extremely minimized.  If I had the time I think it would be great to do more analysis of this maybe looking back at radio performances done prior to the “video killed the radio stars” era.  Thanks for the opportunity Cara.  

Renaissance Learning: My Personal Findings

This course has been challenging and rewarding at the same time.  The learning curve was substantially high at the beginning of the course, yet rather than being daunting, I feel that the experience has inspired me.  This post is a summation of my observations about the academic blog, and my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  I have built a personal learning plan that reached the following working thesis.  I call it working because while it does make a specific claim, that claim is mostly based on my learning process thus far, and given additional time, would likely further adjust becoming even more specific.  Here is that thesis:

Returning to the Renaissance Teaching Methods employed to teach English, particularly the practice of the Imitation of subject and form, will help students develop a system of analysis that they can apply to texts in visual, audio, tactile, and written formats.

Let me explain how I got here:

Kindred Blog's Outside Our Class

After today’s class I thought that it would be a good idea to check out the www.icerocket.com website and see if anyone else was addressing the same issues that I am on my blog.  I thought I would find something, but didn’t really believe that it would be directly related to my blog.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a post by Rebecca, a student at Kansas City Art Institute, which did a close reading of the Brutus-Marc Anthony speech from Julius Caesar.  It was a good post where she examined the appearance of the classical models (logos, ethos, pathos) in the speech.  It was interesting to read, and to see that the same subject is being discussed elsewhere via the blog interface.  I left a comment on her post that I will reiterate below.  It was cool to make this connection.

Rhetorical Exercise-Imitation

In this post I will be engaging in a few Rhetorical Exercises to demonstrate what I have learned thus far in my study of the Renaissance Teaching Method.  I will be following the four categories of change defined in Dr. Burtons summary.  While engaging in these practice segments has been a part of my plan for some time now, I was reading in Brooke K’s recent blog regarding the art of Imitation and felt a greater desire to engage the subject directly.  I will be demonstrating the art of Imitation in the two forms described in my post Critical Definitions 2.  I will be basing my derivatives From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:

Notes on the Technology Forum

While organizing my notes from the Technology Forum from last Friday, I wanted to include a video clip from the event.  When I went to the BYU homepage to find a clip, I saw that their article closely mirrors the things that I found intriguing.  So, rather than list all my notes here, i suggest reading their article for a summary.  In this post i will go over some of the things that seemed most applicable to this blog that i did not see in that article.  

BYU Technology Forum: Zuckerberg and Senator Hatch

Today I am writing this blog from a Forum on technology at Brigham Young University.  The forum speakers are Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Orin Hatch.  My Previous post about the changing Literary Canon addressed a few questions about the new reader audience that is developing as a product of the advancement of technology.  Zuckerberg has been able to successfully capitalize on this new readership through his invention of Facebook.  Because the nature of this blog deals directly with utilizing technology to communication information of an academic nature, while attending the forum I’m looking for the methods employed in the creation of Facebook that helped to maintain participant interest.  This is a great opportunity, and I am grateful to Dr. Burton for suggesting our attendance as a class.


The Forum was excellent and I will post my notes once I have them better organized.  There were a few key moments when subjects were addressed that have a clear application to my focus on teaching.  

The Literary Canon: Comics, and Blogs Included?

Are we stepping up the information ladder to reach the plateau of information exchange?  I have an observation that I would like to take the time to share.  This is a break from my regular focus on teaching methods and models.  In this post I will map out a transition that I have noticed and how that transition should be affecting the idea of the modern literary canon.