Explorations with Blabberize and Virginia Woolf

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."- Virginia Woolf




"Excerpt from a "Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf", as read and "Blabberized" by Nicole Muchowicz

Why Virginia Woolf?
As a reader, writer, learner, teacher, woman, and human, Virginia Woolf is among the greatest influences on my mental life.  However, this notion may not be so for everyone.  Some people say they don't "get" Virginia Woolf's writing, and some people say they are bored.  As a literature teacher, I want to share with my students the resource of enlightenment that Woolf can be and is for me.  Students can learn that her voice, use of stream of consciousness, manipulation of time, and perspectives to be very valuable and timeless.  She uses her voice as an intellectual and female powerfully and courageously. Her use of fluid syntax while contextually mirroring the process of thought would be a great opportunity of exploration in thinking about thinking while reading and evidence of thinking about thinking while writing. This could lead students into an adventure into using their own metacognition. Virginia Woolf was a revolutionary. Her words were evidence of human emotion and experience being painfully shared and vulnerable, all the while charging at her intended audience, whether it be "the establishment" or a room full of 9th grade English Students. It would be my pleasure to teach any Woolf work to my future students, especially, "A Room of One's Own" or "To the Lighthouse".  As an experiment for future lesson plans, I decided to use Virginia Woolf as the subject and object for my Blabberize project.

Virginia Woolf and Blabberize in a Lesson Plan
I'm sure Virginia Woolf would be thoroughly amused by the notion of her visage being manipulated and broadcast over the internet with the sound of my 21st century voice reading one of her masterworks. However, I found that Blabberize could specifically be a useful tool in my future English Literature classrooms, as well as, well, any classroom.

This lesson plan would be placed after the lesson on Virginia Woolf's background, history, and residence within the area of literature.  This lesson plan would follow, and it would be the introduction to the text itself.  For my specific lesson plan on the introduction to the book, "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, I would use the Blabberized image as an anticipatory set. Hopefully, the absurdity of a Blabberized face of Virginia Woolf and an unrealistic mouth accompanied by my voice reading the beginning of Chapter One of the text, as well as, the use of technology with an older text would be a hook of intrigue for my students. I would also want it to function as an example of the way tone, pace, intonation, and ideas are relayed within the text, so the students may not be intimidated when they re-read the passage on their own.  They would also be able to compare the way I interpreted the reading and how they differ in their own interpretations, which I would want to encourage.

Following the anticipatory set of Virginia Woolf "Blabberized", I would have the students re-read the beginning of Chapter One of "A Room of One's Own" (the Blabberized excerpt was taken from this chapter) as individual practice.  Following individual practice, I would instruct the students to join the whole class in a dialogue about how they would have read the passage differently.  Which words would you emphasize? Did you agree on the way the passage was read? What do you think this book is about? What did she just say?

For homework, I would assign the students to read the full Chapter One of "A Room of One's Own" and site their new understanding and synthesis of the chapter based upon their own reading and re-reading, the discussion with the class, and my "Blabberize"example. Following the end of the unit of "A Room of One's Own", the students could then make their own "Blabberized" version of any part of the text in which they would like to provoke dialogue or questions. This could be a model for future lessons regarding other difficult texts to approach, as well.

My Experience with Blabberize
The second I entered  the site, Blabberize, I laughed. I was greeted by a Llama with an over-the-top voice telling me to sign up for Blabberize and have "my mind blown".  I thought, this is silly.  However, once I added passion to practice and realized that I could do something literature based with one of my favorite authors, I was ready to create a password and username. However, I was hesitant to use the site because it seemed complicated concerning multimedia interaction, recordings, etc. and I am not completely fluent in all things technology. Needless to say, I was excited and intimidated.

There was no need for the intimidation.  The site was very easy to navigate and it was free. I soon realized that this could potentially be a great classroom tool for myself and students. I had fun picking out images of Virginia Woolf that I found captured the tone of the book I wanted to teach for my lesson. Recording my voice was a piece of cake, even though, there were many re-recordings because I wanted to get the reading "just right".  I realized, I could be on this site for a long time, reading and re-reading to the face of a great author. I am proud of my final product (even though I could probably re-read once again for better emphasis) but I mastered the site and found a successful way to incorporate technology into the literature classroom, and the recording did sound slightly vintage (which was an added effect). I was pleased with my experience and am excited to use it again for the classroom or even as a lift-me-up e-mail.


Resources
Woolf, Virginia. "A Room of One's Own". 1929. Harcourt, Inc