The Links of Interest!

There is so much useful, and probably more useless, information on the internet, the task of limiting interesting links to just a few and sorting out the bad is daunting.  I want to share a few things with a reminder that my mind makes bizarre connections frequently.

THE STORY OF MOVIES
 http://www.storyofmovies.org/common/11041/educationalStandards.cfm?clientID=11041
Although I am primarily an Art Educator, I have a long standing passion for film.  I took enough film history and production classes in college to qualify for a minor in it.  In my 3rd year of teaching high school, and casual conversations with my art students about film history, I was shocked at how little they knew and became determined to teach some sort of Film History class.  When I would ask, yearly, the administration looked at me as if I had asked to fly the moon.  They told me it didn't exist.
I finally had a film buff administrator who thought it was a decent idea.  The hard task of refining the curriculum fell upon me.  After I had already taught the class a couple of years, I stumbled upon this website.  While mainly geared towards middle school and a limited curriculum, it did help me in justifying what I was already doing and helped me with ideas to improve.  The main page has this inspiring video that explains what the site is about;
http://www.storyofmovies.org/common/11041/som.cfm?clientID=11041

How can this help teachers who do not teach Film Studies?  A few important points about integrating the art of film into any classroom:

1. Watch the full movie.  Some administrators have been conditioned to have their head explode when they find a teacher doing this.  Mostly it is justified (teachers having a free day showing films that have little to do with the curriculum) .  But, as the filmmakers and teachers who developed this program discovered, students can only achieve full understanding if they watch the entire film.  For many years, film was considered simple entertainment with little educational value.  However, students now live in a visual age and are more likely to receive information via a video on the internet than reading (you can argue if this is a positive or negative development in humanity all you want, but it is a fact of contemporary society).  Students must be taught how to "read" a film; why did the director choose that shot?  Why is there an edit here?  Students should also come to appreciate the history of film and the stories that are a direct reflection of the time they were made.  If legitimately integrated into the content of the class, film becomes a powerful tool.  

2.  It's about the film, not the book.  This might confuse or upset some English teachers, but if you are only using a film adapted from a book to supplement the book (for instance, students read "To Kill A Mockingbird" then watch the movie "To Kill A Mockingbird"), it is pointless and removes any value in actually watching the film.  Rather than experiencing the film with the filmmakers' artistic intent, the overall approach to the film for the student becomes "what did they get wrong."  A more integrated example would be to have students read a science fiction story then watch "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and discuss how each artist approached the overall genre of science fiction.

IMAGINEERING
  http://www.imagineeringdisney.com/forums/
People who know me would not be surprised about this.  Imagineering is a term coined by Walt Disney to explain the artists and engineers who help design and build Disney park attractions.  This was a crazy Arts Integration experiment in the 1950's that could have taken down an entire film studio.  Walt Disney managed to encourage artists, architects and engineers to work together (instead of arguing), understand each other and each others' strengths, and create a new form of entertainment.

I have had my art students in the past do a project where they must work together to design an attraction.  Using Imagineering resources, I help students understand that the rides designed by engineers are not just roller coasters; these rides immerse people in a complete environment (from the architecture to the plants) to tell a STORY.  Even if it is not obvious to the person riding it, every Disney ride begins with a written story, then designs, then the engineering (science) of building it.
While I cover the first and second aspects of this project, I have not been able to integrate the final science aspect of the project.
Hopefully I will find a willing science teacher one day.