Luna P. Won't Stop Drinking My Coffee (and wine)!

At the start of this week's class, we looked at the upcoming schedule for the remainder of the semester-WHERE DID THIS SEMESTER GO? I feel like summer is still so far away, but I also feel like this year FLEW by! 

One of the main points we discussed with Kelli's upcoming installation of her thesis, which I'm stoked to see! As someone who hasn't thought about her thesis in a while, and knows that she should start, this girl cannot wait to see all the work someone did for theirs!

We also continued to think about our final project-the field guide for surviving the darkness of the internet! We spent some time looking back over past posts and conversing with our group about topics we are specifically passionate about!

We reflected on the following:

• What discussions in class have caught your attention most?  
• What concerns have felt most urgent?
• Try to make a list of “internet challenges” that you are most confused, worried, or even scared about.

I feel most passionately about how teenagers are interacting in the digital age. I know we said that was too broad, so I’m going to try to narrow that down.

I don’t believe that I can change their minds in terms of using social media. I think they are too involved in this digital age to just say, “Yeah, you’re right we’ll totally stop using it.” I mean I am using it now. But I’m thinking that maybe through some poetic activities, I can shed light on their perspective? If anything, get them thinking about their own thoughts...CRAZY stuff right?

The IRL Fetish  may be a good place to start in thinking about dualism and “F-Instas” which truthfully horrified me. The concept of "loss of logged-off real life" is frightening to me. Ernest Cline showed us the dangers of this. Ready Player One anyone?

In trying to get my students to do this work, I was thinking of our upcoming poetry unit, and how I could infuse this work. As I type this, I can hear my coworker down the hall playing one of my favorite Slam Poems-"Touch Screen".

This poem does a beautiful job of showing the dangers of technology and how, if we're not careful, we could turn even more like robots than we already are.

I was also thinking of bringing in the "Selfie, Unselfie" idea into my classroom, or maybe an image, like self-image of Brooke Davis from "One Tree Hill" below. One image where they showed how social media makes them feel and one about how they truly feel or want to feel. 

Or maybe working through Found Poetry. Like maybe having them reflect on how they use technology and feel about technology. But then picking out lines that stand out to them.

I was also thinking that then maybe I could pull their lines and do a sort of digital project with it, to convey how the incoming generation feels and use that to support what the research shows.

I would also be interested in maybe looking into memes and selfies but at the younger generation. How do they view it as a representation of self vs. how adults do? Haven't fleshed it out yet, but I can feel the ideas starting to take hold!

In other news, one of our tasks for the week was to create a Twitter handle and hypothes.is account for our avatar, which I did! While I haven't gotten the hang of tweeting back and forth with my avator (Twitter is dumb and giving me a hard time about switching back and forth between the two since they're sorta kinda on the same account-all these smart techie people in the world and we can't figure this out-come on people) but I actually really enjoyed the back and forth conversation I had with Luna P. on Twitter! She's got some really interesting points and I'm happy I have her as a guide! I'm looking forward to getting to know her more and learning from her!