Nathan is your typical college freshman. Through confessional-style interviews, we learn of his traumas and achievements writing his first university assignment. From the moment his teacher gives him his assignment, we watch Nathan as he churns out--and rejects--a number of ideas. We share his satisfaction when he narrows his choices down. We share his pain at his not-great critique. We share his joy at his final rewrite. Okay, so maybe we're getting a little carried away--but using Nathan, humorous skits (including a genie who grants wishes), and clever graphics, the Standard Deviants cover characteristics of academic prose, getting started, collecting information, outlining, rough drafts, feedback, and lots of revision in a jocular way. Included with the tape is an insert that shows not only Nathan's assignment, but the three versions of his paper, which incorporate the changes he's made. --Jenny Brown

Not one of the SD's best efforts.

One is that the humor is way overdone. The purpose of this video is to educate young minds on writing properly as opposed to jamming as many cutesy sight gags into the video as possible. Although a few of these gags are a bit clever, the over use of humor is quite distracting from the task at hand especially when the narrators switch in rapid fire motion in synch with these special effects.

The other issue is that this video is way too long at two hours and six minutes. Many of the ideas illustrated are indeed important. However, the video tries to do a bit too much and its sometimes hard to determine which is most important. This video definitely must be viewed in small doses and in multiple viewings to determine the key points and then retain them. This is a slightly annoying task but certainly worthy of the effort. In spite of all the details, much of the information has some relevance.

Again, this video most certainly passes the test. However, there are some flaws which can hamper its overall effectiveness.

Just a few minutes into my first viewing, I began to worry. As the bubbly narrator chirps about English Composition, cartoon characters dash across the screen to the "BOING" and "CRASH" of Saturday morning sound effects. Squeaky-voiced puppets occassionaly appear to yelp some unintelligble point about writing, or something. The actual information is great, but I found myself cringing as we cut away to yet another hopelessly lame bit of comic relief. The humor in Sesame Street is much more sophisticated than this. After two-plus hours of slide whistles and bad jokes, I had to have an aspirin. Still, I decided to try it on my students.

Oh, how they wished they'd brought some rotten vegetables to class that day. Not one of the muscles in the human face required for smiling even twitched in my entire class for an hour. There was, however, a great deal of moaning, head shaking and eye rolling. I think one student began to drool a bit, and another did not blink for over twenty minutes. Imagine Hee-Haw without the laugh track, then think of something less funny. It was agonizing, and I doubt I will show them the remainder of the video.

If the dumb comic bits were edited out, this program would run about 90 minutes, and would be a great refresher for my students. As it is, the helpful information is dumbed-down by the overdone fluff. I have seen other Standard Deviants videos on Shakespeare's plays, and they were not so inane. Perhaps a class of traditional college Freshmen would react more positivly to this video. My older students were insulted.

In conclusion, the video might be useful at high school levels or for adults welcoming a change of pace in their approach to learning. Or perhaps advanced college students who are "truly" sophisticated would be able to extract the wheat while getting a chuckle at the chaff.