Spring 2018 Course

A COPLAC Digital Distance Learning Course

Tag: Dr. Richards

Week 14: Defense of Contract

April 30, 2018 / / 0 Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird#/media/File:To_Kill_a_Mockingbird.JPG
Wikimedia Commons

We are presenting our project on Wednesday and I am so ready. Karina and I found a really interesting case that we investigated and we have worked really hard to create this site this past semester. As in terms of our contract, I believe that we followed through on almost all of the goals we lined up in our contract back in March.

We have all the main pages that we wanted on our site with a few tweaks here and there. The main thing that we did not do was talk about the case from the late 1960s in Hanover County, Virginia. We decided that it would be easier and more conducive to talk about more recent cases because the reasons why it is banned/challenged have changed so much. From that idea we created the page, “Other Recent Challenges” with the StoryMap labeling the other challenges in recent years.

The Timeline and StoryMap is set up just like we wanted them to be. I think that the Timeline looks great on the first page and it ties the whole site together. We found some great images from Wikimedia Commons and tried to have at least one on each page. Our theme worked out really well and with a lot of tweaking, we created a clean looking, but colorful site. For a ton of little things, like how to adjust the font color on the top menu bar, I went to our Digital Knowledge Center for help. With their expertise, I was about to create the beautiful site we have now.

We used a ton of digital tools. I myself used both JS Timeline, iMovie, GarageBand, Canva, and Youtube to display our media. I also found images on Wikimedia Commons. I wish that we had been able to take images from the Accomack County site or some more materials that were primary resources, but I think it ended up working out well with the images that were created using Canva and the ones I found on Wikimedia Commons.

As for our timeline in which we wanted to get certain work done by, we met all of our time goals. Sometimes we even got them done sooner. We also added some information after we created the contract, like the interview with Dr. Gary Richards, so I had to fit that in. There were a couple pieces of materials that we were not able to get. We thought we were going to get a response from Charles Knitter when we sent him out interview questions, but never did. That was going to be a part of the protest page, but because we did not hear back from him we combined the two pages we initially created “Petition” and “Protest,” into one page. Because we did hear back from Sadye Saunders and she was a part of the protest anyways, we thought that it was fitting that the pages be meshed together. That was the very last thing that we revised on our site. The other thing that I tried for a couple weeks to get was the complaint form, but was unfortunately shut down by someone at the School Board office they could never give it to us because it displays personal information and told that they don’t even know where the document went.

Overall, we did really well meeting our goals that we laid out in this contract. The interview with Charles Knitter and the not being able to get the complaint form was out of our control. I am really proud of this site and excited to get the chance to present it on Wednesday for everyone.

Thank you for such an awesome course Dr. Dierking and Dr. Hajo! It was a wonderful experience.

Week 11: Another Post Interview and Update

April 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This past week was a busy one with finishing up collecting information for our project and the first draft of the site. Almost all the information up is at this point and we are working on copy editing the site.

I had the chance to talk with Dr. Gary Richards this past week to talk about the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. He was recommend to me by Pete Kelly and is the head of the English, Linguistics and Communication Department here at Mary Washington. He also teaches Southern Literature and Modern American Literature courses. He graciously sat down with me to record  an interview and answered a lot of my questions about the book and how language functions in the novel.

The whole interview was really fascinating and Dr. Richards pointed out a lot of things that I hadn’t considered before. He didn’t  know too much about the challenges to the book, but he did talk about the reasons why it is probably so frequently challenged. I asked about his experience and he had read it when he was in middle school and then again in high school. He studied Southern literature at Vanderbilt and said that at the graduate level there was some debate about whether or not the book should be even considered because it is looked at as young adult literature. He eventually included analysis of the book in his thesis and agrees that because the book has been so widely read that it is productive to talk about it. Now he teaches it in his many of his classes and talks about how it is structured and how some of the themes are so heavy handed.

We talked about the n-word and if it was necessary for this book, and if it should continue to be taught in middle and high schools or if it was too problematic. He spoke of how the language was probably used by Harper Lee to draw attention to the racism of the time and that she probably did think it was necessary. In his classes he has students try to decide if the word is allowable and some think that because it packs such a punch that it is important to talk about. It shows just how much derogatory language can hurt. Dr. Richards also talked about how he likes to teach problematic texts because he thinks it is important to talk about why they are problematic or why they make people uncomfortable. He does think that teachers need to carefully handle the novel, but if it gets students to read and talk about the book then it is worthwhile to teach.

I set up a page and wrote a write up about the interview with him, kind of summarizing what we talked about. The interview ended up being almost eighteen minutes long and the transcription five pages long. I made a video with the recording of the interview and included it on the page and below, so if anyone wants to listen to the whole thing they can. I am also going to include a PDF link to the transcription for anyone who is interested.

I think this interview added a lot of in depth information about the book and how it impacts society. There is a lot to unpack in it and I am really glad we were able to connect with Dr. Richards and create this interview.

 

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