Another year, another chance to get busy with the blog.
WordPress has just become available to me again, so I am delighted to start up again by highlighting a couple of pieces of homework from this year’s ‘What is beauty?’ class. The first one is a photo essay/poem from Emma:
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Not only did Emma write the poem, she also sourced or took all the photographs herself. Multi-modal learning and skills, anyone?
The second one I wanted to share with you is this one from Sam. Keep watching…
Sorry about the green line! I managed to add it when uploading the video, but I’ve no idea how!
I can’t wait to see what the rest of you have to share! 😉
The title is a pun! I’m marking your “What is Beauty?” work at the moment, and throughly enjoying doing so, so thank you all for your efforts! After a fair bit of faffing around, I have managed to shrink and upload the first version of the Beauty Video Presentation that EW submitted. I thought you might like to see the whole thing. It’s rather good, and gives you all a target to go for for the next piece of big work! 😉 Of course, I have no idea how I’m going to grade it…
The Task: You are going to investigate the question “What is beauty?”
What you need to know: You are free to define beauty in any way you wish. It can be physical beauty, or (please pardon the phrase) “inner beauty”. You can talk about people, or you can talk about objects or places or maths calculations or nature. In short, you have a completely free and open choice for the subject matter you choose.
What you need to do: No matter what you choose to investigate, you must use and acknowledge appropriate source material. No sources, no marks… Simples!
You can present your findings in any way you choose. This might be an essay, a PowerPoint presentation, a video, a song, an annotated painting, a website… in other words, in any way you think will best help you demonstrate an answer or point-of-view on the question, What is beauty?
What you need to think about: There are several obvious sources where you will find information about what “beauty” is. I’d start with Wikipedia and any other easily accessible sources such as dictionaries or encyclopaedias. Start by finding out what others have called beautiful. You may agree with their definitions, or you may disagree… But be prepared to support or argue your own point-of-view either way.
What you can do to develop your ideas: You are encouraged to think beyond the obvious. If you decide to look at people who are considered “beautiful”, have you considered how much our perceptions can be and are manipulated by someone using Photoshop? If you choose to talk about art that is “beautiful” have you considered the cultural background and baggage that we bring to how we look at something beautiful?
Consider how much of what we consider beautiful is because of peer pressure, or accepted points-of-view… be strong, and consider that if we all had exactly the same opinions, then we would all be trying to go out with the same person.
Consider the lists you created in class. When you wrote down the names of 5 people and 5 places that you considered “beautiful” and the same again for people and places you considered “ugly”, you were basing your decisions on a set of criteria that you had chosen. How well can you explain or defend these decisions?
Finally: Is there any value in considering the impact the “beauty” has on the person experiencing or enjoying it. Is it a truly personal response according to a set of rules that cannot be shared… or are there some truly beautiful people or objects or places that we can all agree on? And the obvious extension of this is can we ever separate the physical from the essence of that we call beautiful — how do we reconcile a physically beautiful person with an ugly personality?
Starting Points
To get you started, here are the slides I used in class, and also some links to the YouTube video(s) I referred to. Please use the comments to ask questions and to get some discussion going. This is an interesting topic, and you do all have something to contribute… So get busy!
My Slides
Dove Evolution
Related Video(s)
DUE DATE: You are expected to hand in your project on Friday 28th October. You are welcome and encouraged to submit early drafts or ideas during the October break using http://Dropitto.me/nwinton (I’ll remind you of the password if you ask me!). And as a last point to consider: you are welcome to include photographs and/or drawings or media in your submitted work… In fact, given the nature of the task, I think you have no choice but to do so… in this case, DO NOT FORGET TO GIVE THE SOURCE OF ANY IMAGES OR MEDIA YOU USE!
THE PRACTICAL STUFF: It is up to you to decide on the format you choose, so it will be up to you to decide on what you include in the final ‘product’. As a general guide, you will need to have some sort of discussion or explanation of what others consider beauty to mean, and then you will need to give YOUR point of view on what you think beauty is.
I am more than happy to give you advice or tips and suggestions, so don’t leave it till the last minute! Think through what you will need to make your project happen, and devise a good plan… Otherwise you may never finish it!
Finally, set your own goals! How will you decide that you have been successful?
Second Year English 