Metacognition: Jane Eyre Mash-Up Project

The first day Mr. Allen introduced the idea of having a "mash-up" based assignment to test our understanding of Jane Eyre, I was confused. What's a mash-up? How can that show our understanding of a book? Questions flooded into my head as to how this would actually end up working out, especially since I was quite unfamiliar with the concept of a "mash-up". As Mr. Allen explained it further though, the idea began to grow on me. It seemed kinda cool...and different. The idea of creatively putting together a bunch of seemingly random sources and creating this unique, binding result sounded different from anything I had ever done. And not having to actually write anything of your own seemed like a relief- but also a challenge.

As Nour and I got started on our project [our topic being "Love"], the whole "mash up" concept really became appealing to me. The whole concept of linking together the ideas and insights we gained from Jane Eyre with a plethora of other sources was effective for my understanding of Jane Eyre, and was fun too. Instead of just having to stick inside the text and be trapped in the confines of ONLY Jane Eyre, I was able to broaden my thinking and take it to a whole new level. The linking process forced my brain to constantly search for connections. This enabled me to remember many useful concepts I had learned from previous years in different classes and in everyday life- stuff that was really worth remembering, but was hidden in my brain, waiting to be re-looked at. I was able to connect Jane Eyre to things that I couldn't believe I even remembered...it was just really cool to see how much a theme from a classical book could resonate and mesh with sources from all over.

Additionally, this mash-up project opened the doors for great collaboration. It was really interesting and entertaining working with Nour, thinking out loud together to try to work out possible sources for the mash-up as well as the "line-up" for the project. Putting our background knowledge together, we were really able to come up with great results for the mash-up project!

Though I thought that I would face a fair amount of obstacles with this project- both mentally and time-wise- there were very few. There were, certainly, moments where Nour and I had trouble putting the puzzle pieces together and really figuring out what we wanted the mash-up to signify and how we wanted it to be put together, but the rest came easily. Finding sources was relatively painless- with all of our background knowledge, it wasn't too hard coming up with connections to "love". And overall, I'm very happy with our result and with the whole "mash-up" technique. I found it to be a very unique and effective way to challenge my brain and make meaningful and lasting conclusions about Jane Eyre.