Thursday, December 16, 2010

Spontaneity

Or at lest semi-spontaneous.

The other day, one of my more obnoxious classes was being really good, so when they suggested I play some music while they worked, I complied.  Especially since some of their suggestions were songs I actually knew.  One of them was the one you’ll hear when you click on the link.

I started playing the song, and virtually the entire class started singing it.  Probably because I was on YouTube and the lyrics were right there on the screen.  So I quickly stopped the video, set up my little Flip camera, started the song over again and got this video.  I blurred it up a bit and left it on my own site rather than upload it to YouTube (which is why it’s not embedded here) for the sake of the students that don’t want their faces plastered too accessibly on the internet.

Click HERE and hope you have Adobe Flash ready to go.

Now, the really cool thing about this was that we got into a discussion about the meaning of the song.  Talked about what a music video was before MTV and how it completely redefined the art, and they actually were interested and left really understanding the song.

4 comments:

Jeff said...

Very interesting that the kids even know that song - did they know that MTV started out with music videos?

My favorite part of the video is the kid in the back row flailing the doll around - i assume that is one of those dolls that acts like a real baby and has a computer that tells the teacher how well you treated it. I'm going to guess that he will fail...

A Paperback Writer said...

Feels just like home. :)

My thoughts:
1) This is why I generally don't allow music in the classroom; nothing gets done (although they look like a fun class....)
2) What the heck was up with the Cabbage Patch doll in the background???!!! I occasionally get 7th graders bringing toys to class, but not the 9 th graders. Or was it one of those teen parenthood classes where they drag the baby around for a week? If so, that "parent" should've lost points for making their baby head bang to the music.

Very funny. Obviously, I liked the two boys in the front the best. Lots of personality there.

Max Sartin said...

Jeff - I was kind of surprised too. They also wanted to hear "Hotel California".
You are both right - it was one of those Teen Living dolls, and the computer ought to tell his teacher that he gave it shaken baby syndrome.
Writer - the amazing thing is that over 90% of the kids actually finished the assignment during this time, up from normal. Probably because I told them the music was going to stop the second I noticed they weren't working. (Of course not much got done while they were singing that song, but the rest of the time they were actually working).

A Paperback Writer said...

Well, hey, whatever works....