teaching images
Sep. 30th, 2003 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Still nervous about teaching the cool boys on Thursday and shamelessly using LJ as a sounding board. Would the following course outline interest you if you were presented with it? And if not, what would seem boring to you, or irrelevant?
Images Today
1. Intro to visual analysis. Newspaper images 1.
2. Newspaper images 2. Photography and reality. Words and images 1.
3. Words and images 2. Comics and cartoon imagery
4. Intro to film analysis.
5. Screening of film.
6. Television and reality.
7. Analysis of art. Paintings and their contexts.
8. Visit to art gallery.
9. Student choice: design/websites/video games/MTV/packaging.
10. Words and images 3. Ads.
11. Visit to local mall.
12. Student presentation of an ad (tv or magazine).
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 09:35 am (UTC)n.x :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 09:39 am (UTC)Thank you for these worrying comments.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 09:43 am (UTC)oh!! don't be worried!
*is worried*
*i'd* be interested - i'd be interested in the film too.
it seems to be increasingly hard to engage students these days though - possibly because most of them have the intellectual capacity of goldfish. ;)
n.x :)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:13 am (UTC)There's the desire, otoh, to rise to the challenge of having to be "cool" and to give them something dazzling; otoh, there's the need to rise above their goldfishness and force them to do things they wouldn't normally contemplate. Finally, they may not be goldfish at all because look at the students on LJ!!
Oh, if only my students were like my Friends. Perhaps they are but they go into shy-mode in class.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 09:49 am (UTC)"Intro to film analysis" doesn't sound all that fascinating, but imagine what it might be like if you added something funny and clever after it. I don't know anything about film analysis so I can't really come up with a specific example, but if I were to, say, give a lecture about the medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I could write:
Week 2: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Constructions of masculinity; Or What To Do When a Big, Green Guy Bursts into Your Court.
Just a suggestion. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:15 am (UTC)I'm still intrigued by what you said earlier. Why do often find teaching theory a "bitch"?
teach me! teach me!
Date: 2003-09-30 09:54 am (UTC)The only thing that would have turned me off is the student presentation, and that's just a pet peeve. I resented anything that implied that a student had more to teach me than the actual teacher (this included class discussion and group projects, so I am admittedly extreme in this view).
Re: teach me! teach me!
Date: 2003-10-01 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 10:05 am (UTC)I think that just about anyone, cool or not, can be "roped" into a topic, though. You only need to pander to the lowest common denominator to the extent that you need to catch their interest. Once you've got it, it shouldn't be too hard to keep them interested. Someone's already suggested humour, and that seems like a good idea. Anything that makes your course look different from the same old same old.
Good luck on Thursday!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 10:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:22 am (UTC)Bwuahahahahha. *mind spins*
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 10:42 am (UTC)SO. with that said, and having already gone through a lot of material, to see your outline engages past discussion i've had, red flags certain ideas and artists, etc, that i carry around in my brain, so THAT's probably what's making me so keen on it.
i don't know much about the context in which you're teaching this topic, what kind of images you're using, etc. i think
it's tough because sometimes, since this is a topic i like to prattle about to people when they ask me about my work, a topic like this can come off as something very dry or theoretical (which it's not). i think the best way to engage the students right off the bat by relating it to their everyday lives. images exist EVERYWHERE, we are an image saturated culture. and we base a lot of our understanding of ourselves and the rest of the world ON images, mainly photographs. like, to me, that's fascinating.
is there a course synopsis that goes with it? cause for me, it's always the course description that gets me, though the syllabus helps. usually, it's the reading that'll make or break my enthusiasm about a class, actually.
what kind of art are you going to look at?
i'm also interested to see how comics fit in. i understand the relevancy to the image/text thing. but what is the overall theme of the course? imagery and reality? image text? both? i would move advertising up, actually, before art but that could be just me. newspapers and television and magazines and adverts seem to all be related to one another. art, i feel, operates in a different way, a little bit, because i feel it's function deals less with cycles of consumption (although it doesn't operate independently from them).
oof...i'm sorry i'm wibbling at you. i'm just college hungry for my alma mater and art history classes. *eyes grad school applications*
i hope *something* in this longass post has been helpful. *chews lip*
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:48 am (UTC)The suggestion of moving ads to an earlier slot is especially intriguing and I'm already pondering it and how to fit the art bit into an exhibition at our local gallery that's actually opening *later* in the semester. There is a little course syllabus but the students won't have read it because this is a compulsory first-year course so the idea is to keep them there once they're in it (because they can always decided to drop out or change degrees). It's not so much a case of luring them in as of keeping them in.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:49 am (UTC)Kind of art? My colleague who taught this last year did installation art. I'm more comfortable with paintings which is why I substituted but I will think about this. If art is on later, this also gives me a chance to prepare more, and it's never bad to branch out. I do think, though , that no other art form has as precise and elaborate a vocabulary of description as does painting, so that it is useful to know at least something of this rich vocabulary (which is why I chose painting).
And thanks so much for the overall theme! I guess it was both words/images and reality but I hadn't really spelled it out anywhere.
*smooches again*
Hah, and I might have known about the photography connection, you Bellaminger!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 02:05 pm (UTC)Apologies if you have already seen these. And I think your class sounds fascinating!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:52 am (UTC)Where have you been? *giggles and rolls eyes*
Orli is clearly a total and utter fanboy of his cool cuz. And it's the only photo I've ever seen where it's the other man who does the hugging and the fondling while Orlando just stands there, looking sheepish and glowing in the reflected coolness.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 09:33 am (UTC)And it's the only photo I've ever seen where it's the other man who does the hugging and the fondling while Orlando just stands there, looking sheepish and glowing in the reflected coolness.
Indeed, except the hugs and fondles look quite possessive, don't you think? Maybe it's just because the "other guy" isn't usually so much bigger than Orlando. It still makes me think that you should include Bast in a story, because you'd do something interesting with the glint in his eye and fuzzy in his coat - and sheepish glowing Orlando too. I wish I had cousins who wore faux snakeskin and leopardprint!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 11:21 am (UTC)Except I'm not sure, he's not really in the public eye as such so am having ethical (??? wtf 11!!) qualms.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 11:38 am (UTC)but if you did happen to write something in a weak moment, maybe you could just show it to me???
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:10 pm (UTC)Yes, okay!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 02:18 pm (UTC)You've seen Orlando on the new Graham Norton, right? Talking about kissing - "to tongue or not to tongue"?
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-02 12:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-30 02:20 pm (UTC)I have decided that the most important aspect for me was how clearly presented the course was, and how good at teaching the academic was. Any course is interesting if it is well taught.
How you teach depends largely on how much time you have available and the nature of the course. All my options were two hour long sessions. Theoretical courses were split up into one hour of student seminars, including imput from the lecturer and student questions, followed by a one hour lecture, including student questions at the end. Practical courses were one hour of practical work followed by a one hour lecture. I think this division of tasks works well. Discussion with the lecturer was mainly left for tutorials.
What I would want from the lecture would be, firstly, a course summary that gave me every lecture title, a summary of the important points of every lecture, a large reading list that covered the main academic papers and books, and that the lecturer had agreed with the library that every academic paper and book for the course was kept in the reserved section of the library so that I could get access to the study matter within four hours of needing it. In addition to this, a good course would have each lecture topic built around a specific area that may come up as an exam question.
In addition to this, the lecturer in the actual lecture should stick to the point, cover each point in equal depth, and give all the sides to a debate, not putting excess emphasis on their own view point. It doesn't really matter how difficult the subject matter is, as long as it is clear what the focus is.
At college I would choose a course that were sometimes less interesting than others on offer, purely because I knew the lecturer, and that his courses were clearly presented. Trying to work out for myself exactly what it was that I was meant to be covering, and where to get the neccessary information from to cover it properly were a waste of my time; time that could have been better used exploring the actual ideas. There was even a lecturer I personally loathed, but I still did all his courses because he was an excellent teacher. There have been times when I have entirely disagreed with the Phd work of a professor, said so in an essay, and still been given a good mark. The impartiality of the lecturer is essential for learning, or the student is learning how to please the lecturer, not learning how to think.
You're not there to entertain them, and you're not there to be liked; You're there to enable them to think, and help them pass an exam.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 01:58 am (UTC)Can you divide yourself into 22 and be all my students?
Actually, I am so relieved because nearly everything you say I have thought at some point in the past and actually do in my courses. I do agree that it's more important that they learn rather than they like me -- although in practice that is sometimes a bit hard to remember. But it's why I make them do presentations and actually a lot of assignments (which I didn't list in the LJ post).
And for all my courses I have a detailed booklet with study questions, topics, readings, week-by-week tasks and so forth - except this one is new so I haven't made one yet. But your comment is galvanising me into it, not least because it helps *me* to know what's going on every week.
*smooches you again like a madwoman from the swamps*
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-01 02:00 am (UTC)Somehow the LJ culture is much more one of dissent than the classroom culture where issues of power and authority and fear of being marked down and peer group pressure conspire to make students diffident and shy *or* macho and spouting jargon.