I'm not sure how much everyone watches the news. I know I don't, much. It's just too depressing and scary. I'm not even sure if this made the news. But here, it did.
Thursday, we in the Pacific NW were hit with a massive ice storm. I woke up to our power being out, trees crashing down around us. A tree in my neighbor's yard had lost a limb, that fell into our yard, taking out our fence. I went over to their house to ask what they wanted to do about it. They have dogs, and I have chickens and ducks. It's important that the two don't meet. I noticed they had a lot more trees down than we did, and they had a giant tree that was already mostly dead, and could fall into their house. I offered them our chain saw, which they used to chop up the tree limb that had taken out our fence.
While this ice storm has been quite the inconvenience (we're still out of power, water, and internet service; I'm using my phone to access the internet), it was quite the opportunity for me to take some photographs for this unit. While I read everything on Monday night, I am still having difficulty with the photography thing.
What makes a picture more or less compelling? According to our readings, things like lighting, framing, the law of thirds, intersecting lines, and lines leading into or out of a picture. Speaking of which, how can you tell whether a line is leading into or out of a picture? Seems to me lines can go either way.
But in reality, also according to the readings, those "rules" are just guidelines, and what really matters is what works. Which leaves me questioning, again, what works? I'm just not sure I have the eye for it, at least not yet.
But, I went out there, and got several pictures of the disaster. My first set of pictures were from Tuesday. I thought, "how cool, we actually have snow, this will be really pretty, and maybe compelling." I was hoping for the "aww, how beautiful" effect. Then on Friday, I think it was, maybe it was Thursday, I went out and got pictures of some of the carnage. We have whole trees down in our backyard. My big tree in the front yard had several limbs start to break under the strain, though they're still attached to the tree. It'll be interesting to see how much, if any, of that tree survives till spring.
Did I get some compelling pictures? I'm not sure, honestly. They seem compelling to me, but maybe that's because this is a place I know and love for its beauty, and its purity. To see so much damage, so quickly, had quite the effect on me.
How does this relate to teaching? One way to create a compelling lesson is to include great tragedy or destruction. As much as I hated it, I'll never forget my units on the holocaust. I would say those were compelling, merely by content. Another way is in presentation, much the way photos are supposed to be compelling. For this unit, we're supposed to present two photographs, one more compelling than the other. The way I understand it, they're supposed to be of the same thing, so the compelling part comes from presentation.
Much the same way, I could present a lesson on classification in animals, and it could be pretty boring. Or I could present it in such a way, to make it more compelling. One way to make something compelling (I think) is to make it relevant to the audience. So if I can get my students to connect with the idea of classification, it will make it more compelling. I could do that by having them group several different animals into different groups, and then explain their classification system. Afterward, I would present the "correct" classification system, and see how closely students' classification systems matched the "real" one. I could also point out that humans, too, belong in the class mammalia.
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