Thinkfinity

Thinkfinity - Process and Reflection
Thinkfinity.org is an online database of lesson plans and educational resources. According to their website it contains more than 55,000 resources for students, teachers, and parents. For this project we were tasked to select two lesson plans or learning tools that would support a unit we teach and review them for potential inclusion in a course.

I am fairly new to the world of teaching, I have only taught a handful of classes as an adjunct. The class which is most significant to me is "The Early History of Film" which I developed and have taught twice at this point. I specifically wanted to seek support materials on Thinkfinity for that class, as there are always areas upon which I'd like to improve or further develop in the course.

One of the most complex concepts I teach is "Mise en scène" in film. The definition I use in class is "everything in a scene that advances the story, minus the dialoge." Mise en scène can include costumes, set design, actor blocking, lighting, shot selection, cinematography, sound design, and much more. Part of the complexity comes from the loose definition, and few experts have the same opinion of the exact meaning. It is an extremely important part of understanding film history, and I was thrilled to find that Thinkfinity had some useful materials. The Thinkfinity lesson uses a clip from //Good Morning Vietnam// as well as several handouts and in-class exercises to help students develop a better understanding of the visual elements of a film. You can find a more in-depth review and description of the lesson by opening the document below:

Another important unit I cover in The Early History of Film is the transition to sound in cinema. In 1927 Warner Brothers was facing bankruptcy and gambled on releasing //The Jazz Singer//, generally considered to be the first sync-sound film. Though it was actually a mostly-silent film, Al Jolsen's few scenes with sound enthralled audiences and changed movies forever. Thinkfinity had an activity related to //The Jazz Singer// and sound in movies, which asks students to watch clips of popular films without the sound and reflect on the content. More specifics on the unit can be found in the following document:

Now that I've been exposed to Thinkfinity I will continue to search for other relevant materials for this class, and for other classes I teach related to film, TV, and video production. I expect to find some excellent resources related to broadcast journalism that I hope to be able to modify and apply to higher education. As someone without any undergraduate training as an educator, being exposed to resources like Thinkfinity is invaluable to me. Though I consider myself to be an expert in the subject areas I teach, learning how to effectively pass that knowledge on to my students is an ongoing process. After only a few weeks in this program I've already been exposed to dozens of useful websites and online tools. I have already applied some of what I've learned to my current classes, and I will be applying both of these Thinkfinity resources to The Early History of Film next time I teach it. By that time I'll hopefully found other useful lessons and support materials from Thinkfinity and elsewhere to help add more depth and interest to the course.


 * REFERENCES**

Verizon Thinkfinity.org. (2010) //Thousands of Free Lesson Plans and Educational Resources for Teachers//. Retrieved from @http://www.thinkfinity.org/

//The Jazz Singer//. (2010) Retrieved from IMDB: @http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/

//Mise en scène//. (2010). Retrieved from Wikipedia: @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_scene