I believe that I have learned a lot in this class because of the feel of the class. I would look forward to gong to class because we got to talk about fairy tales and what underlying meaning they have. It was interesting to me when we dove deeper into them and looks at gender roles in specific fairy tales and what they are teaching kids these days. I thought all the activities were interactive and able to get me thinking. I especially enjoyed the blog we did for bluebeard which I wrote, “This story has no beards or keys, Nor tales of eggs if you please. But, this story involves a ring, Of course not with diamonds ‘cuz thats too much bling.”

The gallery walks were very cool to observe and participate in. I feel like my group and I could have come up with something more interactive and something that captured the audience’s attention more than it did. I feel like this from looking at other groups work, which was either some type of board game or interactive gallery.

I also really enjoyed how Kim gave us little tips for teaching here and there. The poetry video was really cool with the older man who taught his elementary school students Shakespeare. I will walk away from this class with tons and tons of resources for teaching english and I am very glad we read a variety of novels.

This text is different fro any text that I have read. It seems to want its readers to think about what it would be like to have a continuous stream of information running through their minds. While I was reading this book I came to the realization that the technology world is coming closer and closer to this idea of having a constant stream of information running through our minds. Technology has come a long way from even when I was little. When I was about five years old I still remember my dad telling me I had to get off the phone because someone was sending him a fax for work and the phone line was connected to the fax line. I also remember the internet taking at least ten or fifteen minutes to start up. Then there was gameboys and blackberry phones that everyone wanted. Texting was the thing to do throughout middle school and I didn’t even have a phone that was capable of doing so. Then came the earliest version of the iphone. People mostly used it for its games and applications, but not so much for the internet because it was so slow. Then the droids and newer iphones came out that allowed people to search the internet much faster. Now we have our phones and tablets and even google glasses that can get us information with a touch of a finger or a verbal command. We are moving toward this constant stream of information. The only thing separating us from the world of “Feed” is that we don’t yet have chips that we can attach to our nervous system in our bodies. Scary to think about.

I think this book would be a great tool in a high school or even middle school classroom these days. I wouldn’t have said middle school ten years ago, but now I think it would be appropriate. Tween and teenagers need to wrap their head around the idea that technology is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. It is causing us to read less, to put less effort into certain things and is just making us lazy in general. If you asked a bunch of middle school students to write a paper on a personal war story from WWII what do you think most of them would do? Ask their friends or family if they know anyone who is still living from WWII and maybe interview them? Or google “personal WWII stories”? I can bet you they would choose the second option, no doubt. It is not because they are uncreative or stupid, but because they have been using the internet their whole life to obtain information. They have not done it any other way. I think this book would be a great tool to teach middle school and high school students that they should make an effort to not go through their lives relying on technology.

I thought it was really cool how McCloud explained about how there are three types of vision: vision based on what one cannot see, the vision of that which has already been proven, and vision of what can be true but is unproven. He also mentioned how life comes down to four basic principles: learn from everyone, follow no one, watch for patterns and work like hell. He mention that he fell far from the tree in regards to his dad and his siblings because they are super smart biologists and chemists and he is just a comic book artist. Later in his talk he tells us that he actually didn’t fall far from the tree because him and his brothers and sisters are all embracing their nature.

I read “Feed” for my genre series and it is very different than the books I have read for this class. It is the kind of book that starts off throwing you into the deep in and hopefully you will understand what is going on. The characters have their own language which is not explained so you have to figure it out for yourself which leaves you lost in much of the first couple chapters. This book allowed me to get deeper into the novel and understand it before I could give up.

I could imagine using comics in the classroom to reiterate creativity. Even if the students in my class are not artists or do not enjoy drawing they are given the task of creating their own story. Their pictures can be stick figures if they would like but they would need to create dialogue and a story line for this assignment. I’m not sure how I would use drama in the classroom except to act out a book or a scene from a book that the class is reading. Maybe it could be a scene they are having trouble understanding so the visualization would help them in their cognition of the material.

1. I think Williams sees a scene from a farm or somewhere out in the country. He is looking around and noticing that there is a red wheel barrow sitting on the ground after a night of rain. I think he feels that this wheel barrow is essential to farm life because it is what transports certain materials from one spot to another.

2. So much depends upon

an empty white dress

covered in tears

laying beside a farewell note.