Viewing entries tagged
pop culture

Comment

The FableVision New Years Toolkit: Everything You Need To Make 2017 Your Best Year Yet

The air is ringing with 2017 New Years resolutions. Every January, a new year presents the opportunity to make small (or big!) changes in our lives to be better versions of ourselves. FableVision wanted to give you a little help. We went around to ask our staff what helped make their 2016 a productive year.

Read on to find gadgets and gizmos, apps and podcasts, ideas and a dash of imagination. We hope this will inspire you to make the most of 2017 – get out there and be awesome!

Bob Flynn, Director of Art and Animation

Brian Grossman, Technical Director

  • Flickr: In 2016, I was able to organize all my photos online on my Flickr account. Gathering up photos from various computers, tablets, phones, etc. was a chore, but I now have everything organized and posted online. I love being able to call up memories on a whim. Next up, scanning all my family photos and making some photo books!
  • New babysitters: 2016 marked a turning point in our household. With the kids getting older, we’re able to let them babysit for one another for short periods of time. This has been a big breakthrough in terms of freedom. Now, if only I can find something to do…

Christina Kelly, Production Artist

  • Reply All podcast by Gimlet Media: hosted by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman: A fun, interesting, and eye-opening show about internet culture and history. The podcast explores how unexplored parts of the vast subcultures and tidbits of the internet has shaped us and also showcases internet figures through interviews and amazing short stories.
  • Golden Thread Tarot app by Tina Gong: A gorgeous, sleek, and simple app that acts as a tarot card deck and a tarot card reader companion to your own tarot card deck. The design of the app's deck is lovely and the UX design is very pleasant and works well for a medium that typically feels unfamiliar in digital form. A fun and meditative addition to my everyday routine.

Andrea Calvin, Vice President of FableVision Learning

  • Edith and Mazer Calvin: The Calvin house became a tad more cat-filled in 2016 when we welcomed Edith the Cat Calvin and Mazer the Cat Calvin to the family. We adopted the double-pawed siblings from Paws of Plainville (#adoptdontshop) the Saturday after Thanksgiving and have been cuddling and playing ever since. A tad on the hefty side, Edith likes to snuggle and sit. Mazer is more adventurous and is known to climb to the top shelf.

Jordan Bach, Senior Developer

  • Meet the Composer podcast from Q2 Music, hosted by Nadia Sirota: Great explorations into the minds and work of composers. I've gotten to know some new music and come away from each episode having learned to listen a little better, and inspired to live more creatively.
  • Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin: I raced through the first volume of these wonderful, cozy, funny essays about cooking and am now slowly savoring the second volume. Originally written for Gourmet Magazine in the ‘80s, the recipes can be a little dated but the spirit is infectious. For Colwin, cooking is all about connection. More dinner parties in 2017!
  • Gather Here: It's a sewing/knitting/craft shop in Inman Square, Cambridge, and although they sell lots of great stuff, it's really about learning, making, and community. I go there to take classes, to rent equipment, and for meetings of the Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild.

Loren Lee-Flynn, UX/UI Designer

  • Song Exploder Podcast from Radiotopia, hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway: This podcast has changed the way I think about music. Each episode is a deep examination of a single song and the creative process behind it. By isolating individual tracks from a recording, Hrishikesh prompts musicians to describe their decision-making—the how and why—in detail, eventually revealing how all of the parts come together to form the whole song. Even music I would never listen to for enjoyment becomes fascinating when viewed at this level.
  • Zumba in Norman B. Leventhal Park: Every summer, I look forward to the weekly Zumba classes offered through the P.O Fitness program at Norman B. Leventhal Park. The classes are fun, challenging, and completely free! The instructor, Emily McLaughlin keeps things interesting by offering a mix of Latin, Hip-hop, and kickboxing moves. The best part is, outdoor classes means no mirrors, so you can pretend you look like a fly-girl, even if your dancing more closely resembles Elaine's from Seinfeld.

Margarita Dekoli, Senior Developer

  • Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett: In Becoming Wise, Tippett distills the insights she has gleaned from luminous conversations with the leading thinkers over time and from mind to mind into a coherent narrative journey examining the great questions of meaning. The book is a master class in living, curated by Tippett and accompanied by a delightfully ecumenical dream team of teaching faculty.

Matt Brelsford, Developer

  • Moving to Western Massachusetts: This was the best decision of the decade for me and my wife, Jamie. It's something we dreamed of doing and living here absolutely changed our lives for the better. I live in a beautiful loft in a converted mill building above an indoor park, with an outdoor park in my backyard that hosts live music in the summer. We have a big kitchen and the awesome local food has inspired me to become a better cook.
  • Working from home: As much as I miss seeing everyone in person at the office, I still feel connected since we have a 'working from home' Google hangout that allows us to see what's happening at the studio. People still pop over to say hello and ask about my weekend, or talk about what games we've been playing. The commute is also pretty excellent.
  • Coworkers: See below.

Mikaela Johnson, Production Assistant

  • Bedtime Reading Ritual: I've been reading for the last 30-45 minutes before bed instead of watching TV on my computer and I feel much more relaxed when I'm falling asleep.

Mitul Daiyan, Marketing Coordinator

  • Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky: A gorgeously illustrated book that now lives on my shelf and the shelf of a few lucky friends that I’ve gifted this to. The book follows inspirational women in science who have made great strides in their field. Loving the girl power in this inspiring book!
  • Headspace: There's no doubt that everyone can stand to benefit from a little meditation and mindfulness. This wonderful, guided meditation app has something for everyone. The free version provides 10 free 10-minute meditation sessions that you can use over and over again. It has greatly improved my commute and helped me catch a breath of fresh air.

Headspace meditation app

Women in Science written and illustrated by Rachel Inotofsky

Sam Zollman, Production Assistant

  • Sewing and clothes-making: A newfound passion that I picked up after a year living abroad. The process of selecting fabrics, thinking spatially about the construction, and cultivating the physical skills has been a much-needed artistic outlet, plus you get to wear the end result!
  • Stretch Music by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah: Scott blends Afro-Native American and west African rhythms, New Orleans jazz, and Trap music to create a personal reflection and excavation of his family history. It seems dense, but I think it is some of the most beautiful, creative, and inspiring music out there.    

Sarah Ditkoff , Marketing and Client Services Manager

  • In The Company of Women by Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge: A coffee table book that's actually worth sitting down and reading cover-to-cover. This inspiring compilation of women entrepreneurs and innovators in the greater creative community is full of great stories of successes, failure, and insights. The perfect gift for professionals in any creative field.
  • Revisionist History podcast by Panoply Media, hosted by Malcolm Gladwell: Once the news cycle has moved on, Revisionist History goes back and reexamines something overlooked or misunderstood from the past, like an event, a person, or an idea. Hosted by Malcolm Gladwell, the three-episode educational miniseries within Season 1 is especially fascinating.

Comment

Comment

Who put the pop in your “Good Thinking!” culture?

A Master’s Degree in Popular Culture is not only a great ice-breaker at parties (and a surefire way to strike fear in the hearts of your parents), but it turns out to be very useful when developing an animated series for teachers about science misconceptions. Who knew? 

Before we dive in to how pop culture shaped the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Good Thinking!: The Science of Teaching Science series, how about a quick lesson? I’m sure Ms. Reyes would approve.

Popular culture is often described as the “cultural glue” that bonds people from all walks of life together through a shared experience. For example, whether you live in Topeka or Tribeca, are 23 or 67, are a retired homemaker or a club promoter, if you both watched the series finale of Mad Men (sob), you have a common point of reference to draw upon should you meet at an airport luggage carousel. If you happen to inhabit another planet in a different galaxy, a Kardashian reference would most likely be your entry into the conversation. 

That’s in part why popular culture references – pointing to another body of work, fictional character, or well-know event – are so abundant in movies and on television. It adds another layer of enjoyment, a wink to the audience that makes them feel knowledgeable or “in on the joke.” 

Bugs Bunny was a frequent borrower of cultural references (weirdly highbrow ones, like the Barber of Seville and Richard Wagner), but it was The Simpsons that really set the bar for animated television laden with pop culture references. I love the rapid-fire references in Family Guy, but one could argue that there’s very little original text holding all that self-congratulatory smugness together. But I also enjoyed Ted 2, so I clearly can’t be trusted. 

And this brings us full circle to Good Thinking!: The Science of Teaching Science (How? A talking teddy bear and a talking piece of chewed gum, obviously), and how and why we used popular culture references in the series.  

Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) launched the Good Thinking! series to explore pedagogical ideas across a range of subject-matter topics like energy, natural selection, and gravity, as well as cognitive research findings on topics such as student motivation, or the myth of left- and right-brained people, earlier this summer. It’s an engaging and entertaining web series designed to enhance K-8 science education, and deepen understanding of STEM topics for teachers and students alike.

The Smithsonian’s bold, brave, and awesome decision to make Good Thinking! an animated series (versus live action) not only gave the team at FableVision license to borrow from some of the best classic series, it also set audience (more on them in a bit) expectations. Viewers knew they were in for a something a little wacky and fun – a big departure from run of the mill professional development videos.  

Animation is a good approach to reduce the stress and apprehension around learning complex information. If animation allows the audience to let their guard down a bit, they will hopefully realize that science can be a ton of fun, and pass that same mindset on to their students. 

From the beginning, we drew on popular culture to shape Good Thinking!’s world and characters while keeping the audience in mind. 

Speaking of audience, the huge network of teachers tuning into the series is incredibly diverse — gender, age, geography, race, student population, economic status, subject matter expertise. While we can’t make a “one size fits all” experience, popular culture references are a good point of entry for people to rally around. (Remember a few paragraphs up about how pop culture is “cultural glue?”) The important thing is not to overuse them, or to make them so obscure that the creators are the only ones “in on the joke.”  In that sense, cultural phenomenon that have made their way into the pop culture lexicon (like Twilight featured in the Natural Selection episode) make good broad references. 

In creating the series, our major inspirations were the 1950s Tex Avery House of Tomorrow and Farm of Tomorrow cartoons featuring the omniscient “golden voiced” narrator and clever visual and verbal puns and gags, and the talking inanimate objects (Globey, Chairry, Clocky) from Pee-wees’s Playhouse. All of the inanimate objects that spring to life in Ms. Reyes’ classroom were based on well known actors and fictional characters (you can read more about them here) as a way to make THEM feel familiar and relatable, even when the complex scientific info they’re dispensing might not be.  

We tried to lean on references/jokes teachers would be familiar with, not just because of their own personal experiences, but because these things have become so entrenched in media representations of teaching and classrooms — so meta, I know. 

From seasonal classroom decorating to the horror show of the fridge in the teacher’s lounge, from the “secret” side of teachers that comes out when the kids go home (Ms. Reyes’ goth phase in Make it Rain!, or nod to Mad Max in Fired Up About Energy) to the “teacher’s pet” whose hand is in a perpetual state of up-ness, there are hopefully some moments in every episode that ring true.. 

darwin_ssecgoodthinking

A few more pop culture rules for the road: it’s critical the episodes and the writing stand on their own, and even if you don’t “get the reference,” the scene is enjoyable and the information presented is clear. For example, in the Natural Selection episode, Charles Darwin serves Ms. Isabella Reyes and Blossom, umbrella drinks poolside in Isabella’s daydream. It’s a funny gag if you make the connection, but nothing is lost if you miss it. 

And as tempting as it is to use hot “of the moment” references to seem hip and relevant, the series needs to live for a long time and not feel dated. That’s why I can mention doing the “Whip/Nae Nae” in this blog post, but Gummerson and Bunsen may NOT discuss their mutual heartbreak over the Affleck/Garner uncoupling. 

The Good Thinking! series is one of many projects where we have “gone to the pop culture well” for inspiration. Bite Club, a financial literacy game that teaches about retirement savings, is set in a Vampire nightclub similar to Fangtasia in the TV show True Blood. Reality TV shows like Jersey Shore and The Real World influenced the story for the Infinity Island animation for LIME Cable Broadcasting, and celebrity internet cats, the writer’s gift that keeps on giving, were the basis for Señor Ticklewhiskers character in Learning.com’s Digital Citizenship app.  There are lots of other examples as well, but in every case, the choices we made were about setting the right tone and finding the hook to draw a specific audience into the experience. And maybe a little about what we learned on Buzzfeed that day. But only a little. 

Comment