This week’s installment in the Dead Bunny’s Guide to Algebra series just went live. This time, he’s sharing the two rules that govern multiplying and dividing positive and negative numbers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKG0E-QwhI]
The main problem with this particular skill is that students catch on to the rules for quickly, and then try to apply them to adding and subtracting positive and negative integers. Unfortunately, this gets them in a lot of trouble because the two are governed by their own rules.
On the production side, this one seems plagued by two problems. The audio track has a tinny sound to it that I’m not sure where it came from. When I was recording and editing it in Audacity, it sounded fine. In fact, I spent far more time cleaning up the audio tracks for this presentation just trying to remove the background sounds. The second seems to come from the compression both Windows Movie Maker and YouTube put it through. This time, it seems to be affecting both the video and the audio instead of just the video. I’ll need to figure out what’s causing that and try to avoid it.
I may take a break after the next video is finished because my computer is finally home from the shop, and I’ll be transferring back to it and then learning how to produce my videos on Ubuntu. (Advice is welcome. Leave a comment, or email me at rebecca[at]rebeccathomasdesigns[dot]com.)
Posted by Rebecca as content development at 11:27 AM EDT
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Admittedly, I’ve lived by that axiom most of my adult life. I’m so good at it, in fact, that people actually think I always know what I’m doing and that I’m perfect. It’s fun to watch someone realize I’m just as human as they are.
This doesn’t mean I act like a fraud or deliberately mislead people into believing I’m something I’m not. It means that with a little confidence and a little common sense, I can generally muddle through a situation until I’ve actually picked enough skills to do it on my own.
It may sound weird, but it really works. When you’re “faking it”, you’re really taking an opportunity to learn what you need to know in a hands-on situation, arguably the best way to learn anything. Even better, you’re immediately applying what you’re learning, further cementing your own understanding. You can then apply that to the next time the same question or situation arises, and you’re reinforcing your learning. Once you’ve completely learned that answer or process, there’s no longer a need to fake anything, and you’re honestly standing on your own two feet.
Posted by Rebecca as Personal development, lifelong learning at 11:30 AM EDT
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There’s something to be said for being yourself.
It requires far less energy than trying to be someone else, and these days, everyone is looking to conserve a little energy, right? It’s also far more satisfying to do what you truly love rather than what someone else loves. And third, being yourself might be the only chance to give yourself to be really brave, because let’s face it, it takes a good deal of bravery to be a child-free adult who loves her Saturday morning cartoons. What? No…of course, I don’t do that…except in months with 28 days in them.
Need more convincing? Check out Scott Ginsberg’s post on how people react to those smart enough to be themselves, and see if that doesn’t motivate you.
Posted by Rebecca as Personal development at 7:30 AM EDT
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During my freshman year of college, I took one of the very few economics class available for core credit. If you ask me about the class, I’d tell you it was held in this gorgeous low building at the western end of campus, that I spent many of my afternoons in that class staring across the street at The Hill, and that my two friends in the class were huge MST3K fans who were sad I was never able to go watch with them.
In fact, the only lecture I remember was the day the professor was trying to start a role-playing scenario about the Old West. I can’t tell you what point she was trying to make, because she was derailed fairly early in the scenario. Somehow, we got on the topic of being an individual versus conforming. She asked us to raise her hands if we thought we didn’t conform. I was one of the few who raised her hand.
The teacher asked each of us in turn why we thought we were a nonconformist, and then pointed out that we all follow some basic rules. For example, none of us was running around campus naked, and we were all students with perfect attendance. According to her, that took away our nonconformity. That bothered us. None of us could see why adhering to rules that benefited us would eat into our otherwise nonconformist lifestyles.
I’m still not what anyone would call “normal”, and I teach teenagers. Theoretically, teenagers are supposed to be rebellious as they try to figure out who they’re going to be when they emerge from the teenage cocoon. According to several of my students over the past couple of years, being a teenager automatically makes them nonconformists.
But the teen years are often when we’re most motivated to be accepted, so my rebellious teenagers express their individuality, their nonconformity, by falling in with the subculture that appeals to them, and then conforming with that group. I actually tried to ask one of my students once how that made them a nonconformist, but he couldn’t really answer me because it was like, you know…and…I don’t know. You know?
I think even as adults, we have the same problem. We want to stand out, but still be accepted by the crowd. Being “weird” haunts us. But maybe it’s not the worst label to bear.
Posted by Rebecca as Personal development at 7:18 AM EDT
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The next video in the Dead Bunny’s Guide to Algebra series just went live.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDunXx-yMyA]
This video was challenging at every step. It started when I was trying to find a good framing problem. For some reason, every single one I came up with was actually an addition problem instead. It wasn’t until I was reading through my feed aggregator that I realized I was coming at things all wrong, and finally found the perfect framing problem.
So then I wrote out the storyboard and script (three drafts, thank you very much), and typed everything into Google Docs. Except I’d miswritten two of my example problems. I actually didn’t catch one of them until very late in the process. And then I found the script wasn’t fully edited…while I was recording the script. I was also fighting losing my voice while recording, which just seems to be tradition now.
I finally finished the slides and the audio tracks, and loaded everything into Windows Movie Maker and started putting the video together. This is normally one of my favorite parts of the process because it lets me freely embrace my inner perfectionist. Well, Windows Movie Maker has this weird quirk in Vista where the preview function just stops working. No one knows why. There is no fix, and no consistent workaround. I tried a couple of the suggestions I’d read on the forums, but nothing worked. I finally gave up in despair and let it go for a couple of days while I battled a sinus infection.
When I made it back to Windows Movie Maker, the preview was working just fine, and I finished building the video. Unfortunately, it was far too late to run past my normal panel of critics, so I’m really holding my breath and hoping for the best here.
This particular video has far and away been the most stressful one to make so far. I’m almost finished with the next one, and it’s gone together far more simply. Thank goodness!
Posted by Rebecca as content development at 8:14 PM EDT
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I’m working through a self-study drawing website, and I’ve made it to the shading lessons. Shading is great for creating depth in a two-dimensional world. 
The first shading technique I was taught was called squirkling. It involved making random rounded squiggles of varying size and pressure to shade. I’m still trying to figure out how to do this because my mind really just doesn’t wrap around it.
You can see the changes in values, and it almost looks like it might invite some depth, but I don’t know if it really pulls the viewer in.
A few lessons later (also known as this morning), I hit the next section of shading lessons. These lessons focus on hatching, lines drawn with various spacing and pressure. The different values of the mountains and the sky are clearer here, but I almost feel that the hatching lines keep the viewer from being pulled in.
What do you think? Do you see the depth as the mountains become lighter in value? Do you feel pulled in?
Posted by Rebecca as art class at 3:20 PM EDT
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A couple of months ago, I put out a call for challenges from friends because I had a break in just about all of my schedules. One friend challenged me to write an action book for her very young son, but she wanted it to be something he could grow into.
The only children’s books I read these days are the basals at work, and I hardly ever read them any more. I don’t honestly know the first thing about writing for children. So, I started researching. I talked to people who work with children’s books, and I looked up websites that dealt with writing for children.
One of the websites recommended How to Write a Children’s Book and Get it Published, so I put it on hold at the local library and started reading some recommended picture books. It finally arrived last week, and yesterday I sat down and started reading it.
I realize that books like this are really written to target the person who is considering writing for the first time (which I’m definitely not), and people who are completely new to how publishing works (which I’m also not), but it was also outdated. For example, the author refers to the American Girls series and its three girls. A fourth (the lovable Addy) was just being developed. I think there are now six or seven girls, but I’ve admittedly lost count.
Someone new to writing would probably find this book, its exercises, and the appendices very helpful, but at my stage, there were few truly useful gems. I think I’m going to be better off with the websites I found and my small army of those familiar with children’s books.
All this, just to create a story for my friend.
Posted by Rebecca as book love, writing at 10:05 AM EDT
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After a friend challenged me to write a book for her very young son, I started looking at picture books to see what’s already out there. It’s probably been five years since I’ve read anything beyond the basals we use at work, so asking one of my fellow teachers to show me around the children’s area of the bookstore she works at was an eye-opening experience.
She ran me through the traditional books, the ones so many of us remember from our own childhoods, and then she introduced me to Zen Shorts and Zen Ties, two charming books by Jon J. Muth.
In Zen Shorts, a panda named Stillwater meets three children, each having a problem. He helps each one think through their problem with an old folk tale. The three find their solutions and befriend Stillwater in the process.
In Zen Ties, Stillwater is joined by his nephew Koo, who speaks only in haiku. Together, the pandas and the children from Zen Shorts find out what happens when you’re friendly to someone who hasn’t been friendly to you.
The stories are well-written and are accompanied by Muth’s beautiful artwork. At the end of each book, Muth includes a bit on Zen and the ideas he included in that particular book. They’re definitely a secret treasure among picture books.
Posted by Rebecca as anthropology, book love at 2:46 PM EDT
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Not long ago, there were commercials encouraging children to turn off the television and go outside and do something. They even used a popular cartoon to help them out at one point. The tagline for the commercials was: Verb- It’s what you do. Now when I ask my writing students to define “verb”, some of them respond with that tagline.
The campaign was all well and good. Add more verbs to your day and become more active. But not all verbs are created equal. You can sit and watch television. You’re doing something. You can just be. That’s also doing something. You’re not doing anything active, but you’re still adding verbs to your day.
So, how can you add better verbs into your day, or more importantly into your writing? Cathy Moore has a great interactive slide show in choosing more engaging verbs. They tend to be the ones that describe a movement rather than just an action. It’s rather clever, and a great reminder for those who are writing.
When you write, you’re painting a picture. Verbs that describe an active movement will add more to that picture that ones that just allow things to be. Stronger writing is active. Add more active verbs into your writing and your day, and see just how interesting things become.
Posted by Rebecca as writing at 10:25 AM EDT
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Several years ago, I walked out of the movie theater completely disappointed because Tom Bombadil was missing from Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Fellowship of the Ring. I wasn’t alone. Other friends were upset Tom was missing; a few were glad to not have to put up with him. It was maybe two years later before someone told me he’d been edited out because he wasn’t caught up in the power struggle over the ring, and that made him pointless and extraneous.
I don’t know how true that is, but for those of us expecting Tom, it was a shock to not see him at all.
Sometimes, it’s good to break an audience’s expectations. With so many books, movies, and television shows coming out every year, many of which are just rehashing old classics, it’s actually become critical to shake things up if for no other reason than to genuinely capture people’s attention.
In the case of adaptations, it can be as simple as removing a character like Tom. A character can be changed out, as was the case when Jounouchi’s rescuer in Yu-Gi-Oh shifted from Seto Kaiba, a man who despised him, to his sister Shizuka. (It’s always fun to watch Yu-Gi-Oh fans when they learn Jou’s sister wasn’t his original savior.) A character can be changed completely. The Harry Potter movies have actually danced around this one repeatedly, moving lines and scenes between characters with no regard for whether or not the new character would do the same thing as the original character. Movies based on comic books also suffer from similar problems.
While it can be fun to mess with audiences and their beloved books, it can be almost as much fun to ruin their expectations by being something different in original works. The girl saves the world while the guy is hostage bait. The young son stands up and defends his family because he can’t bear the thought of losing his family. The assassin actually has a well-defined sense of ethics that almost makes him look like a good guy instead. Authors and screenwriters take chances all the time, and the characters aren’t appreciated because the audience was too hung up on their own expectations.
Can you think of a time when your expectations were broken? Share it in the comments!
Posted by Rebecca as writing at 7:57 AM EDT
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