Lesson+plans+for+unit+4

__Lesson Plans:__ These Lesson plans are for the final Unit in the course. However, students will be engaging with //Pottermore// throughout the entire semester and the final class is a reflection on that process. I have placed this Unit at the end of the course so that students will have had a chance to read more "traditional" representations of literature, but ones in which the content is anything but "traditional." This course will be building towards Digital Literature the whole semester in the hopes that by engaging with Pottermore students will already be familiar with the concept if not all the different mediums in which they are produced.
 * 11/15: (10:00-11:15) **

__Text for the day: __ -//Game, game, game, and again game// by Jason Nelson. This is a Flash player piece of digital literature. This is how Jason Nelson describes the piece: “ //Game, game, game and again game // is a digital poem, retro-game, an anti-design statement and a personal exploration of the artist's changing worldview lens. Much of the western world's cultural surroundings, belief systems, and design-scapes, create the built illusion of clean lines and definitive choice, cold narrow pathways of five colors, three body sizes and encapsulated philosophy. Within net/new media art the techno-filter extends these straight lines into exacting geometries and smooth bit rates, the personal as WYSIWYG buttons. This game/artwork, while forever attached to these belief/design systems, attempts to re-introduce the hand-drawn, the messy and illogical, the human and personal creation into the digital, via a retro-game style interface, Hovering above and attached to the poorly drawn aesthetic is a personal examination of how we/I continually switch and un-switch our dominate belief systems.”

__Recap of what has happened previously: __ -We have finished the unit on drama and now the Unit on digital literature will begin. -Students will have “read” the Jason Nelson piece over the weekend and will have completed a wiki post as well.

__Course goal/s to be implemented today: __ - To Examine the social constructs of identity, and different activities that fall into deviant or normative categories.

__Objectives: __ -Introduction to digital literature as a Unit. -To recognize how Nelson’s choice of animation is a deliberate one, and how that might shape how we interact with the piece. -To explore the differences in the digital piece they have been engaging with all semester and this piece. They are both “game” pieces, but how (apart) from animation do they have different goals? -To critically examine how this falls into our defined category of magic realism (Nelson’s description of how we re/imagine the self and identity is both queer theory and magic realism)

__Activity for the Day: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-We will be meeting in the computer lab for this Unit so that students have a chance to explore the piece together. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Start with an Introduction to Digital Literature and give an overview of key terms and the differences within the genre. (5-10 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Bring up the Nelson piece and begin with a discussion about the ways in which students were perplexed with what they saw/his choices for animation/and the piece in general. (15 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Navigate through the piece together, paying attention this time to the text of the piece. Is the story line linear? What do we think Nelson is commenting on? Is he accomplishing what he describes the piece to be? How do we see this piece as a part of Magic Realism? Can we read this piece through a Queer Theory lens? In what ways was this piece alienating the reader, or in what ways did it invite the reader to engage more than a traditional written text? (30 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Ask if any student was able to complete the game. If so, have them come up and navigate through the piece as far as we can go so that if there were any students who did not have a chance to view the whole piece they can see it here (15 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Reflection/final thoughts on the piece and our intro to digital literature so far. Connections to the next digital lit piece from Shelley Jackson (her own shaping of the “self” through an exploration of the body). (5 min)


 * <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">11/17: (10:00-11:15) **

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Text for the day: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-//My Body a Wunderkammer// by Shelley Jackson. What the author says about this piece: “ //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">my body — a Wunderkammer //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> is a semi-autobiographical hypertext combining text and image in an exploration of the body.” How the eliterature site sees the piece: “The author and artist Shelley Jackson has produced a corpus of work in print and electronic media that takes as its central focus the relationship between human identity and the body's constituent organs, fluids, connective tissues, and other parts. While her well-known Storyspace hypertext //Patchwork Girl// revisited the Frankenstein story from the viewpoint of a female monster, //my body// uses the HTML hypertext form to revitalize the memoir genre. As the reader selects elegantly drawn woodcut images of parts of the author's body, meditations and anecdotes associated with each body part are revealed”

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Recap of what has happened previously: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-We started the unit on digital literature with the piece from Jason Nelson. Students were given an overview of the history of digital literature and key terms so that they would have a vocabulary to speak about the pieces in an informed manner. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Students were asked to read the piece from Shelley Jackson, there is no wiki post on this piece since it is for a Thursday class.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Course goal/s to be implemented today: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">- To Examine the social constructs of identity, and different activities that fall into deviant or normative categories. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To Learn to disrupt and subvert the normal tendencies of order, and categories of orientation. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To Interact with texts of various genres, time periods, written by authors of various races, genders, and nationalities; and also to be able to //distinguish// between these genres. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.66px;">-To Think creatively about problems by using the texts we have explored as a broadening of one’s own experience and practical knowledge.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Objectives: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To see the ways in which digital literature allows for “readers” to engage with the same subject matter and have it represented in completely different ways. (Nelson vs. Jackson and the idea of the “self”) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To expand our idea of literature and the genre of digital literature through the inclusion of our first hypertext piece. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To discuss the experience of navigating through a hypertext piece and if it allows for more control over the piece than either the Rowling or Nelson piece did.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Activity for the Day: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Bring up the Jackson piece and allow for the same type of beginning discussion as with the Nelson piece. Discuss first impressions, problems, hesitancy, excitement, too much text/hyperlinks, feeling like you don’t when you are done with the piece etc. (10 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Have the student’s name a body part and then navigate through the piece together, reading the text out loud so that we are all able to make the choice together as to how we read the piece and where we go next. (30 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Discuss the connections/differences in the ways in which we see how Nelson and Jackson are speaking about the same subject but they are visually presented it in different ways. What was the experience of reading a hypertext piece? Did it start to feel overwhelming? Did you like the control of going where you wanted to? How can we see this piece as Magic Realism? In what ways is this piece like others we have read for the semester when dealing with ideas about the self and how self perception can be skewed and influenced by society and personal opinions? How does Queer Theory offer us a way to critically think about this piece? (25 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Wrap up of Jackson piece, final reflections. Introduce the Clark piece for the week after break, reminder to do Wiki post by Sunday, and how to think about a non-linear narrative that they will encounter when reading this piece. **Collect Close Reading paper # 2!** Happy Thanksgiving Break!!


 * <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">11/29: (10:00-11:15) **

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Text for the day: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-//88 Constellations for Wittgenstein// by David Clark. Clark describes this text as “ <span style="color: #000000; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">an interactive, non-linear net.art piece that explores the life and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein through a series of animated vignettes created in Flash. Each of the 88 sections corresponds to one of the 88 constellations in the night sky. Each constellation becomes a navigation device for the viewer to negotiate the associative relationships between these vignettes. As well, viewers can interact with each collaged animation using their left hand to trigger events from the computer keyboard (in homage to Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother Paul (a concert pianist who lost his right arm in WWI but continued his career performing piano works composed for the Left Hand). This work considers questions that Ludwig Wittgenstein pondered in his career as a philosopher: logic, language, the nature of thinking, and the limits of knowledge -- all in relation to our contemporary digital world.”

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Recap of what has happened previously: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-We have had one full week of digital literature so far. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-So far the pieces they looked at were more narrative in structure. This piece they looked at over the weekend is a non-linear piece and it is structured completely differently than the ones they have read already. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Students had the whole weekend to explore this piece and write a wiki post about it since this piece has 88 constellations involved and is trickier to navigate than the first two works.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Course goal/s to be implemented today: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To Learn to disrupt and subvert the normal tendencies of order, and categories of orientation. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To Interact with texts of various genres, time periods, written by authors of various races, genders, and nationalities; and also to be able to //distinguish// between these genres. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.66px;">-To Think creatively about problems by using the texts we have explored as a broadening of one’s own experience and practical knowledge. __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Objectives: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">- For students to discuss the experience of reading a non-linear piece of digital literature. Did the piece seem disjointed in any way? What were the experiences of having complete freedom to choose the next piece of text as opposed to clicking a certain hyperlink to navigating through a “game” with prompts. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-How has this piece expanded our definition of what can be considered as “literature” in the digital world? <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To have students make the connections using what they have seen of digital literature so far to begin to talk about how this medium may be more effective in teaching magic realism than using only printed texts and showing plays/films. What does it say about the way in which the readers have agency and control over the pieces we are reading? Is it useful to read this text with the background on who Wittgenstein was?

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Activity for the Day: __ <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To create our own set of “constellations” based on what we have read in the course so far. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Go through the Clark piece quickly for first impressions, confusion, dealing with non-linear narratives, how we see this piece as magical realism, etc. (10 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Have the students break up into groups and give them categories of what our constellations will be for our “# constellations of ENGL 121” Have them choose which texts they feel fit into which categories and how they would divide up the knowledge they have gained so far this semester. They are to use Paint as a simple medium in which to create text boxes and use color to create the different constellations and the starts that will make up those constellations. (45 minutes) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Have each group show on the computer to the rest of the class how they would organize our course and the texts we have read, authors, quotes, terms, etc. into constellations. This will hopefully be an exercise that will show how each group will have a different idea of how to shape the course, and how certain themes overlap and change based on the group. This will be gearing the students towards their reflections on how reading digital literature is itself a magic realist experience since they are creating their own version of reality that might differ from the rest of their classmates. (15 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Wrap up and final reflections of this piece, introduction of //Public Secrets// for next class. (5 min)


 * <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">12/1: (10:00-11:15) **

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Text for the day __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">: <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">- //Public Secrets// by Sharon Daniels. How the author sees this piece: The expansion of the prison system is possible because it is a public secret - a secret kept in an unacknowledged but public agreement not to know what imprisonment really means to individuals and their communities. As the number of prisons increases, so does the level of secrecy about what goes on inside them. The secret of the abuses perpetrated by the Criminal Justice System and Prison Industrial Complex can be heard in many stories told by many narrators, but only when they are allowed to speak. For the past three years, I have visited the Central California Women's Facility [CCWF] as a legal advocate. I work with a non-profit, human rights organization, Justice Now (http://jnow.org/). Together we have been documenting conversations with women prisoners at CCWF, the largest female correctional facility in the United States in an effort to unmask the well known, yet still secret injustices that result from our society's reliance on prisons to solve social problems. Given the ban on conversations with the media, I would not have had access to the women who have contributed to //<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Public Secrets // without the support of Justice Now. As a “legal advocate” I am allowed to record my conversations with the women and solicit their stories, ideas, and opinions.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Re-cap of what has happened previously __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">: <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-We have been exploring the genre of digital literature for 3 classes already so students will have a good idea of what they can “expect” from a digital lit. piece, and how these pieces fall into the categories of magical realism while employing some of the theory of Queer Theory with the theoretical pieces they have read so far. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Students will have read/listened to //Public Secrets// over the weekend from Sharon Daniels and Erik Loyer. Many of them will also have done a Wiki post so there will be a starting point for discussion of the piece.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Course goal/s to be implemented today __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">: <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">- To Examine the social constructs of identity, and different activities that fall into deviant or normative categories. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">- To Think creatively about problems by using the texts we have explored as a broadening of one’s own experience and practical knowledge.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Objectives __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">: <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To have the students examine the social stigma of incarceration and especially for women. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-To have the students engage with the piece and make the connections of how this piece of digital literature is both a magic realism piece and how some of these women are “othered” and treated as homosexuals/sexual property within the system. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Each student will be randomly assigned either the position of CO (corrections officer), or inmate. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Mock prison set up in the classroom with the students seeing how easily it is to mis/treat others when put in a position of power/ignominy. <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">-Students will be told about the failed social/psychological experiment “The Stanford Prison Experiment” after the exercise in class as an example of the extremes that have happened when “trained” psychologists tried and horribly failed to create a “fake” prison and what became of it.

__<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Activity for the Day __<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">: <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -Already have the desks set up in a way so that there is a square of desks around one desk in all the corners of the room to keep the “inmates” as sequestered from having contact with anyone not in their “cell.” <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -The students will be asked upon entering the classroom to remain standing and silent. Then they are to pick a slip of paper from a bag that will give them their designated role for the day. On the inmate’s slip of paper, they will be told not to say a word unless they are spoken to for 5 minutes, then to see if they can get creative in ways to communicate with the other inmates and be able to smuggle or conceal any of the items that I will have stashed in the “cells” like pieces of papers and tiny pencils. Some of the students will be given the name of an inmate that they have read about from the Daniels piece and the back-story that we know about this person. It will not matter if there are males who are inmates, they will be asked to portray the women they are to imitate. The CO’s will be given instructions to call different names of inmates one at a time and to lead those people to their designated “cells.” They (the inmates) will then have all of their possessions stripped from them (backpacks, cell phones, notebooks) anything that might be considered a “comfort.” (5-10 min) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -On the CO’s slip of paper, they are not given many instructions, other than to make sure that the inmates are not conversing with each other and that they do not have anything that are not supposed to. The exercise is designed to isolate the inmates so that they get the sense of being deprived of contact with others and also to get the sense that the CO’s are in charge, not me. The purpose of the activity is to see what the CO’s resort to in order to keep the inmates in order. I want to leave it mostly up to the students to see how this exercise will play itself out. Some of the “inmates” know that their characters are outspoken against the atrocities inflicted on them and would give the guards attitude. (15 minutes) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -The students will then be asked to gather back into our regular classroom formation. The students will then be asked to free write about their experience of the exercise, discussing about the ways in which they were uncomfortable with the power/or lack thereof while in their certain roles. This free-write will not be collected (15 minutes) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -I will then show the students some footage from the Stanford Prison Experiment and give a simple background of the experiment and how it failed. Discussion of the social construction of “prison” and how we can work with that term to explore the different “prisons” some people (based on what we have read so far this semester) might be living in their own prison-like existence. Is the reality of these women one that we can see as a magic realist one? Why or why not? What are the social stigmas that we see being placed on incarcerated people/women? (25 minutes) <span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> -wrap-up of the class and preparation of the semester projects due next Tuesday and what we will be doing as reflections of playing/reading/engaging with //Pottermore//. Students will be asked to think about the exercise we just did in class today and how/if they see any connections between that and the experience of being placed into the Houses at Hogwarts. Were there any moments of alienation/isolation from peers, etc. (10 min)

__Text for the day__: -//Pottermore///semester journals (//Pottermore// is an interactive piece that is part game/part text. It incorporates video, text, and other visual elements that are supposed to give the "reader" the experience of being a charatcer in the books) See a video of J.K. Rowling's explanation behind why she chose to do this project:[]
 * 12/6: (10:00-11:15)**

__Re-cap of what has happened in the previous class__: -Students will have completed their journals over the weekend and will have them ready to share with the class and to turn into me as their semester projects. -At the end of the last class they were asked to try and make the connection to the digital literature piece //Public Secrets// and this semester project/experience. This is an important goal of the day to see if by the end of the semester the students have gained the skills to see how part of the experience of engaging with //Pottermore// has placed them in their own type of imagined reality that may or may not be the same reality other students were experiencing. __Course goals for the day to be implemented:__ -To Examine the social constructs of identity, and different activities that fall into deviant or normative categories. -To Create a ‘community of scholars’ (Thompson) in which we actively support and engage each other’s critical conversations and magical realist ideas explored in the texts. -To Learn to disrupt and subvert the normal tendencies of order, and categories of orientation. -To Interact with texts of various genres, time periods, written by authors of various races, genders, and nationalities; and also to be able to //distinguish// between these genres. __Objectives:__ -To showcase the skills gained throughout the semester to see this as a magic realist text and one that can also be discussed using the terminology of Queer Theory that they will have learned and explored extensively. -See sentences above in the re-cap section about the experiences that students had engaging with this piece. How was this different from any of the other digital literature pieces aside from the fact that we read it all semester long? -To figure out if this is a useful piece for them as a learning tool, since this is the first time it is being implemented in my classroom. I want an open discussion of whether or not it was useful as a piece of text to think critically about. Students will have a chance to say if they felt overwhelmed by trying to write about it, or if they felt like they did not have time to engage with it fully. Perhaps there were students who finished it early and felt like we could have discussed it earlier, perhaps at the beginning of the digital literature unit. -This is a class that not only will hopefully show what the student have learned so far, and a chance for them to make their own connections about this piece, but also to show them how much I value their opinions as critical thinkers-they could be shaping future courses that I teach. If this turns out not to be a useful tool, or if there is a better way of presenting it, or a different time in the semester, I want to know about it.

__Activity for the day:__ -This class will not be structured around time limits and sections. I have goal that I want to accomplish with this text for this day, but if we get caught up talking about the ways in which they think it might be improved as a teaching tool, so be it. Some discussion points will be shared below: -Students will bring their journals to class today to hand in. If they have a digital journal such as a wiki or blog, then we will allow them to bring it up on the computer (Perhaps we will use the computer lab for the day). They should email me a copy before class. The rest of the journals will be collected at the end of the class period so that the students have a chance to refer back to entries while we discuss the piece. -Before class, I will divide the room into sections of chairs based on the Houses the students were sorted into. The students will sit with their “house”-mates so that they each have a chance to see who else was in their House and who was sorted elsewhere if they do not already know. This is important because it will allow for discussion of how we see the Houses as a part of Queer Theory. -I feel that with the definition of magic realism given to the students on the first day of class, the jump to including this text as a piece of magic realism will not be difficult for them. The real “test” will be to see if they notice the way in which they might view their classmates as “others” based on what House they are in. -Anyone who has read the books knows that you are supposed to want to be in Gryffindor. At the very least, no one would want to be in Slytherin because of the way that House is portrayed. If students are placed in that House, I want them to share their experience of the sorting and if they felt ashamed of where they were placed. Did it change as they navigated through the text? Can they see how the Houses get “othered” in this text? (QUEER THEORY connection!)Why is that important to the theory we have been studying? -I am hoping that by engaging with other students while they “play” the game that they can share frustrations and challenges they had to overcome while engaging with the text. Not all of the students will have had the same experience with this piece so in that way they may have all experienced a different reality (MAGIG REALISM alert!) -Discussion on the digital literature Unit as a whole. What have they learned about the ways in which texts can be presented? Do they still have any problems in seeing these pieces as "literature"? Were any of the digital literature pieces More useful then the short stories, novels, or plays we read for the semester? Why or why not? Is it because they were visually engaging, or that digital literature allows for a reader to interact with the piece and control some of the agency? Should this unit come at the start of the course? -I then want to have an open discussion about whether or not this piece was useful and if it even belongs in this class. Even though I have a strong opinion that it does, the practical application of it as a pedagogical tool might have not reached the potential that I hoped for with the students. If they think that is should stay, then we should talk about the placement of the text within the syllabus and if they might shape the semester project in a different way. Were the journals useful in looking back as a reflection of the experience? Did you learn things as you went about other texts we were studying? Or was it all a giant pain in the ass? This is the kind of discussion I am hoping to share with the students as they prepare for their final in the class. **Collect Semester Projects!**