Music through the ages
Sep. 12th, 2007 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampSchool continues to go as usual. The one big change is that the workshop on American Culture that I do Wednesday afternoons is only a semester-long class, so I have a new batch of students this term.
If you recall, the previous class (of two students) were watching Supernatural. This time I got four students, and they had heard what the first pair had done in class, so they were kind of expecting to watch videos right off the bat. Instead, I started the way that I had the first time, by having them brainstorm as many aspects of culture as they could. When they went through the list, they decided that they would prefer to study the history of American music.
I thought that was great--they were actively showing an interest in an educational topic. The main problem is that I only have a superficial knowledge of the subject, so I had to do some websurfing for ideas.
Today I started with two songs: "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Follow the Drinking Gourd." I downloaded mp3s to play in class, along with a few images (like a picture of the Big Dipper). I gave some general background of the social issues of the times, played the songs, explained what they were about, and then asked them some simple questions about their thoughts. At the end of the class they seemed to have enjoyed it, though one commented that some of the issues were depressing to think about.
In Warcraft news, my guild alliance took down Gruul over the weekend, and I got the leg armor to match my shoulder armor. (Seekrit gamer code: The winning strat was to bring in a tree druid to keep HoTs up on the tanks during reverbs.) Our guild is now ranked #15 on our server, and is among the top 5000 nationwide.
Also, I finished my second custom interface: Crane UI. (The area in the bottom right corner is for the minimap, which is invisible in the screenshot.) I'm still fiddling around with where to place things, but I'm liking this one even better than the first.
If you recall, the previous class (of two students) were watching Supernatural. This time I got four students, and they had heard what the first pair had done in class, so they were kind of expecting to watch videos right off the bat. Instead, I started the way that I had the first time, by having them brainstorm as many aspects of culture as they could. When they went through the list, they decided that they would prefer to study the history of American music.
I thought that was great--they were actively showing an interest in an educational topic. The main problem is that I only have a superficial knowledge of the subject, so I had to do some websurfing for ideas.
Today I started with two songs: "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Follow the Drinking Gourd." I downloaded mp3s to play in class, along with a few images (like a picture of the Big Dipper). I gave some general background of the social issues of the times, played the songs, explained what they were about, and then asked them some simple questions about their thoughts. At the end of the class they seemed to have enjoyed it, though one commented that some of the issues were depressing to think about.
In Warcraft news, my guild alliance took down Gruul over the weekend, and I got the leg armor to match my shoulder armor. (Seekrit gamer code: The winning strat was to bring in a tree druid to keep HoTs up on the tanks during reverbs.) Our guild is now ranked #15 on our server, and is among the top 5000 nationwide.
Also, I finished my second custom interface: Crane UI. (The area in the bottom right corner is for the minimap, which is invisible in the screenshot.) I'm still fiddling around with where to place things, but I'm liking this one even better than the first.
