Werewolves + Volterra =New Moon

Written by: Danielle Abernethy
Monday, November 16th, 2009

How many of you are thinking about skipping school on Friday so you can go see the movie New Moon? Are you trying to figure out a way to make it a classroom field trip? A potential way to study what’s bound to be an upcoming classic? With so many movies out there based on books, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how you could use these in the classroom with netTrekker resources, and we’ll begin with New Moon.

I have a knack for remembering silly little facts, but not important enough facts to be considered a contestant for Jeopardy. Awhile ago I was in the bookstore and saw an apple made out of alabaster that was made in Italy. Since Italy is one of the places I want to visit someday, I decided to look up Italy in netTrekker and also Volterra (although I doubt that I’ll ever want to visit a region that is now at least literally known for their vampires). I found it interesting that the setting of the most powerful (or so they claim) Vampires in Meyer’s world is that of Volterra, especially when I learned that Volterra is special in being a rare location of chalky alabaster. (You can find alabaster all over Europe, but only the chalky form in Volterra). This form of alabaster looks like marble (but is softer) and is either translucent or white in color. Hmmm, sounds like certain vampires I’ve read about.

If the vampires, art, and European geography are not your thing, you can always look up werewolves and Indian legends of North Pacific tribes. (A search on the Quileute tribe itself does not bring up any results yet.) By doing this search I found an interesting site that shared information about a variety of Indian tribes that included information on Jacob Black’s tribe and LaPush. Stories of their trickster can be compared to other folklore from various regions, or you can compare the livelihood of these tribes to their region.

Find more videos like this on netTrekker Village

This summer I used Twilight for a weeklong Integration Class for Language Arts Teachers. We created Google Earth Lit Trips, linking to My Portfolio’s in netTrekker and created Digital Stories. Twilight was a great series to base lessons on. Above is my version of the Digital Story (complete with misspelled word) as a potential student sample.

To learn more about integrating netTrekker into your project based, literature classroom, contact your Account Manager. We’d love to come conduct an integration training with you in the near future!

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Monday, November 16th, 2009 Training