Thursday, April 21, 2011

AWNM Story Period 2

9 comments:

  1. The fishbowl today really focused on how story is incorporated in our lives. We really showed how they affect our everyday lives and really focused on how they can apply to school. We talked about how classes like history naturally have a story to tell. I love history because my teacher can weave a story with any piece of history, particularly the Second World War. It has its own unique story to tell and it just kind of unwinds as you learn about it. We also touched on how story affects media. Twilight really changed the face of the mass media vampire. After the movie came out everything had to be vampire. This really showed the power that story had over our lives. We really emotionally connected with the characters and that is what pulled us in to the books. I still feel like we are not referencing the book enough. We need it to stay more grounded and connected with the text. All in all it was a great fishbowl and I look forward to presenting and discussing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Today in Fishbowl, we acted almost like we did last time. The first half of the class was focused more on the book, and the second half was more devoted to divulging the science behind the story. We tried to find how we relate to stories and how effective they are to us. The reason we did this was probably because we were trying to figure out how well stories work in our world. The connection of characters and emotion was one way we diverted from the topic, but was a good discussion nonetheless. Also, we connected to if a story had more connection and emotion in its DESIGN, making it more appealing. This topic was sustained through the rest of the class, with a little help from Savannah and Natalie trying to push it back to a better point. Nonetheless, the topic was mainly on how story affects us, and how we deal with it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Today, the fishbowl was overall okay. In the inner-circle, the getting the conversation started was awkward. I was a presenter and I felt we could have done a better job preparing questions. However, once the conversation was started we got very good discussions going. We were best at the end of the fishbowl when we were relating story to our lives. We talked about stories behind movies and books, how we can incorporate stories into learning, and how story connects to Drive. The conversation stayed on topic and overall was very good. I feel like the fishbowl was fun to talk about because we could connect so much. We looked at everyday things like labels and movies and compared them. Twilight was also brought up. It connected to the formula Pink wrote about for a story in A Whole New Mind. Stories like that work because they bring a new idea. Vampires had never been written into a romance novel before Twilight, and that is why it was successful. The inner-circle’s conversation was fun and connected to everything we have been talking about. The outer-circle had a great conversation too which also related to the inner-circle’s. However, they related more to the book and the idea of right and left brained rather than real life. Overall, both conversations were great, and it was a good fishbowl.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Today’s fishbowl went well. I thought it was better than last time but we could still improve. The only problem with the fishbowl today was at the beginning, the talking was very forced. Not many people were talking, but then we got onto how we can relate story to our lives, and there was never a science. I have now realized that story is everywhere and it really impacts learning and decisions. We talked a lot about how story relates to movies and books. Twilight and Harry Potter were the main subjects. That is because after the books were written it makes it seem like everyone loved those stories, and then all media and books became based on vampires and wizards. It was a really interesting application of story, but it really opened my mind to new ideas. We also talked about why we remember stories better. I thought that was really interesting and we really went into depth on that in the blog. I think it is because it makes it possible to connect on an emotional level, and that makes it easier to remember. We talked a lot about how story applies to school. Maybe if we learn more in story than in facts, we may do better. It would be really hard to learn all in story, so a good balance of story and facts would work well. It was interesting to have Mike Porter in on the conversation. He also helped to apply story to our lives and helped us see how important it was. I thought today’s fishbowl went much better, and we just keep getting better!

    ReplyDelete
  5. The fishbowl today went fairly well, and there was good discussion around. At first, it took awhile for people to bring up questions and stir up conversation, but once the questions and responses started flowing, there were some great opinions and great questions asked. The topic of how important stories are in education came up, and the consensus view was that stories are in every subject and have value in all aspects of life. Stories have more applicable use in subjects such as English and History but can also be used in more analytical subjects such as Math and Science. It was also said that both left and right brained people can learn and understand stories well, and that both can write stories based of a simple formula. What deviates normal stories from memorable and great stories is the creativity put into the story. Near the end of the fishbowl, however, I feel we went off topic and started to talk just about certain movies and books such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and Shrek. I feel that the discussion of these were initially about how they connected to the concept of Story, but after a while people just started to talk about their favorite and least favorite parts in the movies.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Today’s fishbowl went alright, I believe. Towards the end the inner circle started discussing the Twilight series of books, although it was a good discussion about what makes a good story, it could have been connected to more. We need to start focusing on what each of these chapters mean to the future and focus discussion on that. During the blog people were asking great questions, but sometimes they were not answered because there was so many circulating. I believe having Mr. Porter in the fishbowl really helped and gave us a real world example of both design and story with his new project. Overall, the entire fishbowl went okay, but it needs to become more structured and relevant so that everyone can benefit from the discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Through the eyes of Mrs. Smith, which was my experience today as I recorded presenter and discusser action, today's fishbowl was great in the beginning; but, as most of our fishbowls do, the end was a mass chaos of random movie reviews. Story was our topic and with a reluctant start, the discussion began smoothly. Most of the conversation in the inner circle was about how we learn from story and many participants had good connections between their education and how stories effected their learning. Once the topics dwindled, and nobody had a new question to present, the discussion took a turn for the worse. All that was said were comparisons of different movies' success-fullness compared to one another with a few intelligent thoughts mixed in as to why those did better. Discerning which statements were worthy enough to be marked down on Smith's chart gave me a new look on the fishbowl and helped be to sort the important discussion from the silly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. In the fishbowl today, I think we improved from the last one. In the first half of the conversation, the inner circle made a lot of connections to the book; but once we covered the information from the text, we started talking about how stories are used in the real world.

    There were many positive ideas that caused the fishbowl to improve. We stayed on topic, in the sense that we talked about stories the whole time. A lot of our comments and questions included information we read and we did a good job analyzing the topics deeper than we had before. We started to use questions from the topic in our TED talk blogs “what matters” and we answered the questions about how stories relate to education and the world. During the discussion, an important point someone made is that stories apply to both right-brained and left-brained thinkers. The fishbowl today really helped me think about stories and how many of them occur in our lives; from movies and books, to conversations between people, and even to the advertising on drink cups…they’re everywhere!

    There were a few negative parts of the conversation we can improve for next time. The discussion started off really slow and didn’t reach a platform that boosted it to the level of the sky. Only a couple people came into the inner circle, but only the usual faces. We need to have more people shifting in and out of the inner circle; the more participation that comes from the inner circle, the more thinking and viewpoints we’ll have. Near the end of the fishbowl, the conversation was easy to relate to because we were talking about movies and how they use stories. Right before the bell, people described details from movies, rather than relating it back to stories. Although there are still a few aspects of the discussion that we need to work on, overall we have improved and our next fishbowl should be even better.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I did not feel that this fishbowl was very good. Honestly, I was embarrassed to have the people from outside our class in there, and even Ms. Moritz and Mr. Fisch. At the beginning, there were a lot of awkward silences. Eventually, those got eliminated, and it got into a pretty good discussion. There were several people who sat in the whole time but were not signed up for the fishbowl, which was fine, but I felt like they were the ones who dominated the discussion. After a while of using the book to ground the conversation, it drifted into a random topic about Twilight, Harry Potter, Shrek, and other movies. Eventually people essentially started talking about which movie was better, and then they were talking about whether books or movies were better. I could kind of see a connection to story in that, but not really. I felt like the conversation went way too off topic, and by that time, no one was even thinking about using the book anymore. I really felt like we needed to steer back to the book and talking about story, but a couple times I tried to make a comment, and someone would cut me off. Honestly, it was very frustrating. I felt like there were some people who dominated the conversation, and if they might have tamed back a bit, then some more people might have gotten a better chance to talk, and maybe it could have been a bit more balanced. This was just my perspective on the fishbowl, because I was in the inner circle, and I did not see what the blog talked about. Despite all this, there were some good connections made to advertising and design. I think next time we definitely need to use the text much more, and maybe make more connections outside the book, but still keep each other on track.

    ReplyDelete