Game for Change

I fixed it! This link should work: http://philome.la/haveatopday/provo-dating-life

I didn't want to pick a big issue because it scared me. The sex trafficking example made me uncomfortable so I didn't want to go too deep into an issue. Going deep into world issues with your students can be a really good thing, I just didn't know what to pick. The only social issue specific to BYU that I could think  of was something that not everyone has issues with, but something that bothered me. I decided not to go on a mission, but with the age change it seemed like that was the cool thing to do. I don't blame male RMs for looking for women with a similar experience, but I have often felt left out because these guys are only looking for girls who served missions. This could have been more detailed, but I think it accomplished the assignment. I love the idea of creating video games in class! This was easy for me to figure out, but its not very interesting without photos. I wonder what my students could come up with! I'm sure they'd have more experience or tools to do this assignment. It would be great in a storytelling unit to come up with alternate endings or many different story routes. What a cool way to bring up problems. Maybe you could even work on solving class issues with this if your students created games anonymously. This as definitely a fun assignment and I wonder what we could do with it!

Sources:
RMs Wait for Sister Missionaries
Would you Date a Non-RM
The LDS Church is Getting Away from the "Thou Shalt Marry a Returned Missionary" Mantra

Process Piece: Ukulele

*TURN OFF AUDIO BEFORE PLAYING VIDEO*

I kind of... left the sound on and it sounds HORRIBLE together. :)

I don't know if learning to play an instrument counts as human labor, but as I have spent my weekend fooling around with a ukulele, this is what came into my head. I found it difficult and time consuming to find clips that somewhat went together to make a story that made sense. I tried to find videos of similar looking (redheaded) girls showing many different emotions. I thought by showing kind of a montage of footage of practicing that the audience would understand that time passed before she was good at it. I also hoped that some of the images (getting angry and smashing the ukulele) would convey the frustration of learning without having to audibly say it. I didn't realize until the end that without the sound of poor and skilled ukulele players at the beginning and end, I didn't know how to show that she wasn't very good yet. My idea for the process/story is that this girl dreams of playing a ukulele, goes and buys one, tries to play and gets frustrated, then keeps trying and succeeds. I don't know if this works very well together, but I definitely spent hours on it. This could be a fun way of summarizing stories or plays with your students. It could help them to pull out the most important plot points. If we did the audio version, it could be a great experience in making sounds in addition to words, and would even be cool if you could have your students tell a story without words, only sounds. I wonder how that would turn out. This was definitely time consuming so I would need to plan accordingly with my students.

Round Robin

Suzy had worked on this wedding cake for days and was finally ready to deliver it.

Lauren was loading the cake and 1500 cookies into her car for delivery. 

Then suddenly she lost her grip on the cookies and they splattered all over the ground.

It was a sugar free-for-all for all the mice hiding in the shadows!!!

However, this "free-for-all" did not last very long (with the help of a few mouse traps) and so ended their mouse infestation problem.

I definitely think this is an interesting idea, but I don't quite know how to use it. It could be used in some sort of storytelling unit I guess, or as a way to get the creative juices flowing. This could be a type of free writing activity where students create monologues or scenes from someone else's ideas... I also foresee some problems with accessibility and timing. I don't really use technology on Sundays because I have so many other commitments, and because of that, someone's story was left in the dust. Maybe if two or three students worked together and just wrote back and forth it would be easier, but it would lose the random outcome. I was also surprised at how quickly my story changed. I was expecting something about a wedding or a cake to continue throughout the story, or at least through the next few sentences. My main character also went from being named Suzy to Lauren in one sentence. I was disappointed my ideas weren't carried through into any part of the story. I think you could run into some problems with students being disappointed with the end result. It was also interesting that (from what I saw) everyone was using pictures because that was easiest. If you want students to use other mediums, you should probably specify not to use photos. It was a fun, interesting assignment, but I don't think I'd feel inclined to use it unless someone else in the class comes up with a great way to use it.

Textual Poaching: Submarines

If the video is not working, here is a link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNaGqK8acnE

I am a little worried this isn't what you were looking for. I dove right in and struggled with all of the technical aspects (downloading the audio from a YouTube video, downloading the video of a different YouTube video, cutting each of those, and editing them together) created something I liked, then worried that this wasn't exactly what you're looking for. It's a pretty broad assignment so I thought I'd just turn in what I had created. I read the assignment description and started thinking about what makes me who I am. I started searching for vintage ads or commercials for Disneyland because that is a huge part of my life. I found an old documentary clip about the opening of The Submarine Voyage. I jumped on it because I worked at Disneyland driving submarines in the newer version, The Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. I actually drove those exact submarines that are in the video, but they have been updated since it originally opened in 1959. This might not be poetry or a song, but Disney culture is something that exists for me and something that I identify with.

The version of Disneyland shown here is extremely different from what I experienced. Safety rules are different. Technology is different. The value of customer satisfaction in relation to profit is different. BUT, my understanding is that the magic is the same: this is a mystical world where people can escape reality.

After I worked at Disneyland, I found a YouTube video an Australian woman had made of her ride on a submarine. Amazingly enough, I was her driver and now have a video of myself driving a sub. I wanted to see what I could do to combine my modern understanding of Disneyland and the historic opening years because there is so much emphasis on tradition and heritage in the Walt Disney Company. The audio in this video is actually me in 2013 and the video is Disneyland in 1959 and the early 60's.

I could use this to give my students opportunities to find correlations between the modern world and the plays we're working on. It could also be used to generate excitement about shows or be some sort of advertisement about our program. Media has growing importance in the theatre world. Even one of the Mask Club performances this semester will be projecting social media throughout the show to give more meaning. My only problem is that I question the legality of what I created and would worry about that with my students. I want to be very aware of the options my students would have if I gave an assignment like this. I would need to give them the tools so hopefully they wouldn't "accidentally" pirate YouTube videos or sound clips.