Minor study of Myth Creation

 Creating a myth is a fun process. The concept and story that surrounds them can be whatever you want and follow any logic you want so long as they stay consistent. learning about myths and figuring out how to write about them from that you've learned can be a delicate process. for example the book Journey to the west contains a mythological character Sun Wukong. something that differs between writing a myth from this would be that the aspect of figuring what exactly you want to use as a base for the myth to exist. myths are stories and each one takes place in lands that could be mythical in origin. something that puzzled me though about writing a myth is how exactly to write a good one. Sure you can write just about anything slap a decent lesson onto and be done but in writing and studying myths I tended to gain the question of what completely constitutes the myth to be good? is it when a myth holds another myth or is it when the myth has enough reality grounded in it for people to believe in them. sacred lands described in them are sometimes based on real life places after all. in writing my own myth I wanted to see if having some kind of geological basis would help construct it and give it life. another aspect i found from my research is that myths also follow the story telling rules of the places they come from. if it's from japan then they use haikus and poetry in between and in Journey to west they use poetry to tell how events happen between characters. in all I'd say that from this experience I can better deconstruct myths and be able to create a good base line between make separates them from the rest 

What Comes First the Thought or the Product?

 Writing poetry and writing about poetry is something akin to cooking from memory and eating food. both actions belong to the same category but are still distinctly different in execution and purpose. In writing about poetry many thoughts like intent, and overall experience are all subject to question. Writing about poetry allows you to ask about the very universality of the piece. It's a necessary prelude to what's to come next which is writing the poetry itself. Old philosopher's like Plato would scoff and mock the very notion of poetics due to their ability to manipulate the masses into feeling emotions that distract them from reality and influence their minds and thoughts deterring them from reason. However Aristotle and those of similar mind would argue that poetry having that kind of effect on people is what gives it meaning and should be embraced by all. now while both are mimetically speaking about the significance of poets and their poetry mimetically speaking when it comes down to writing poetry the question about writing about poetry is synonymous with the act of not just writing, but also reading it as well. All this to say that in my experience of writing about poetry I couldn't help but draw the comparison of how Aristotle and even another romanticism poet like Sir Philip Sydney would uphold things like universality and how conceptually we see and determine what is and isn't beautiful. And in actually writing poetry I write with the intent of getting my experiences and feelings out so that other people can feel and or think about something. so the difference between them isn't really a difference but a similarity in that in order to write poetry you need to at some level have an understanding on what it means to write about poetry. Going back to the beginning and using it as an example you can't really cook without having preconceptual knowledge of what it means to cook something. ultimately you cook for a reason be it for fun or to eat it doesn't matter. In order to cook you need to have a reason no matter how small to do so. Which to me is the same for poetry. You can write for fun or maybe even in some cases to even eat as well. No matter the reason may be in order to write poetry on must always have some inherit reason that motivates and brings them to do it. 

The roles media has in teaching

This is my first of many posts many of which will be about media technology and the like for teaching and many other topics highly worthy of discussion. I think that the reality of the situation requires a syncretic blend of media use in teaching. The avenues of which we can go with technology and teaching are ones that can be beneficial if used with careful consideration and great limitations. We have schools and institutes that either allow it and ones that don't. there are always two sides to any coin and as such I feel like people like to play heads or tails when they forget that regardless of what side you land on the object you hold at the very end is still a coin. it's still something that holds value regardless of the hand it's in. it's just that the conceptual coin is named technology in school and the sides are for and against. I remember back in the day we would have computer lab classes where they'd teach us how to use programs like Microsoft word and any of the other Microsoft based programs with the purpose of teaching it's students how to use a program that was believed to be important for our school careers in the future. needless to say that they were right and while some students did get distracted here and there the teacher did their job and got the class right back on track. in closing or as I like to say the punchline here is that I think teaching with media CAN be done however it's up to the people who enforce it to make sure that it's implemented properly.