The power of TV

I have been sitting here the ENTIRE day with my roommates watching every single Harry Potter movie! Lame, yes I know, you can judge me. We have sat here for the past 12 hours just watching these movies. The fantasy and all of the creativity put into them has been fascinating to me. I know that TV doesn't really seem like a topic of blogging that I should be writing about when I am supposed to be blogging about our future as educators. However, I think that movies like these are great for students. The fact that as a 21 year old adult I can still enjoy the fictional aspects of these movies is awesome. It allows my mind to think creatively and wonder off to places that textbooks or even most novels can't even take me. I know that Harry Potter is also such a widely recognized series of books that millions of Americans are hooked on. Some students don't have the attention span to read a book that is over 400 pages long. Yet, I guarantee a student could sit down and watch one of these movies for 2 and a half hours and would be able to articulate all kinds of aspects that were put into the movie on a paper that they could write. It would be an easy assignment and it would still be considered educational because they would obviously have to dive deep into the movie to analyze it. Just because students aren't strong readers, it doesn't mean that they are terrible writers. Sometimes it's extremely difficult to write on materials you find difficult to read. I think creativity is half the battle when it comes to writing, and these movies certainly spark that part of ones brain. I easily think things like this could be incorporated into the classroom.