Tim's Genius Hour

This week's attempt at erasure poetry was remarkably more successful than previous attempts. I found an article that worked well, and spent a lot of time planning the process. I tried to think of ways that I could tie in a web tool that I explored today with this process, but nothing came to mind. The article I chose was called "Blending Past and Present at 33 Bowen". It was about the renovation of a restaurant that has seen Hamilton go through its ups and downs. After choosing the article and mapping out the words, I decided to up my creative game (thanks largely to the extra time from the snow-day) and make a collage from the featured photos in the article. The first step was tracing the word boxes so I could form a stencil. I did this by placing a lamp under a glass coffee table, like so: After tracing the stencils, I made the cuts! I borrowed an exacto knife and a craft cutting board from a friend for this portion. Once the stencils were cut, I lined ...

This week's poem went a little more smoothly than last week's. I set out with a clear goal and managed to capture it reasonably well. I chose the article titled "New Influx of GTA Homebuyers Eye City". My goal was to create an alternate title for the article that would paint a slightly starker, less-optimistic view of the trend.  I'm still trying to find a way to make a statement without it coming across as too preachy/judgmental, but you need to find excellent source material for that. So far I've simply bought a newspaper every week and tried to make a poem from one article. This coming week I'm going to work a little harder to find good source material. In the meantime, here's the finished product: "The Influx of New Wave Torontonians Putting a Further Squeeze on Hamilton's Lower Half."

This week marked my first attempt at erasure poetry using Hamilton Spectator articles. It was a heck of a learning curve.  I started with an article from the January 20th paper called "City, LIUNA reach a deal on Lister's 'missing tooth'". I thought it was an interesting title, and one that deals with continued development in Hamilton's downtown core. I knew "Missing Tooth" would be the title as soon as I read it.  After reading the article, I went through and started picking out words that stood out to me, words that I could re-arrange or combine to find new meanings. I realized so much of the language revolved around economic progress, so I tried to follow that train of thought. You can see what that process looks like below.  I thought it was turning out well at this point! I was pulling some meaningful phrases from the article, and while I wasn't sure how I would end it, I loved the intro. Then, in the mundane process of s...

First off, click here for a little PowToon that I created to help you understand how Genius Hour works! Okay, still here? When I was presented with the opportunity to dedicate an hour each week to learning  anything I choose , it took a bit to settle onto a single idea. Do I want to give up using my car for a month to see how difficult it would be to get around Hamilton,  sans voiture ? Do I want to spend the time learning a bit of French so I'm no longer forced to rely on Google Translate , and so my father (a long-time French teacher) is no longer ashamed to call me "son"? Do I want to dedicate the time to chugging protein shakes and bench-pressing max reps every other day to see how many centimeters in chest circumference I can gain in a month? The options are Limitless . In the end, I settled on the concept of Erasure Poetry, a form of poetry that has gained significant  traction since it came to be in 1965. More recently, it's been used to subvert off...

Welcome to my ICT for Learning blog! Here's a simple "passion word cloud" I put together to share some of my interests with you: If that didn't fulfill your longing for knowledge about my personal interests, check out my Pinterest board, " All About Me ". I'll be adding to this board throughout the journey of this ICT course.  You'll notice from the word cloud that one of my main interests is Music. I've been writing and playing songs around Southern Ontario for the past decade or so under the moniker, "Timid, the Brave". You can watch one of my videos below!