Deb's Media Literacy Blog

"Top 10" Revelations, Ideas, and Things I have Learned

2009-07-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

"Top 10" Revelations, Ideas, and Things I have Learned

1. How the brain works while watching advertisements and the different parts of the brain that are affected is very interesting. The limbic part of the brain that is our emotions and feeling is highly targeted in media. As well, as the reptilian part of the brain that targets the fight or flight processes that humans have. When we show ads to our students slow them down and talk about the different frames, music, images and words that pop up on the screen. The brain can only track eight frames per second and TV shows 30 frames per second. Teach students to ask questions about the media. Just do not watch the commercial or see the advertisement by analysis it.

2. Eight trends in our 21 century media culture shows us that the media is always changing. From words to image (Epistemological), from analog to digital, from mass media to personal, from discrete to convergence, from regulated to deregulation, from commercialisms to corporate, from objective to subjective, from privacy to surveillance. Deregulations and corporations are the driving forces of or media today. Free market to children today with more than 40 billion ads. Before 1984 there were only 4.2 billion ads marketed to children. The goal is to hook children into products and have them for life. ( Brand Loyalty) “You are what you have, you are what you buy, you are what you own”, if you do not have it you are know one. That is pretty much our philosophy today with people. It is shallow. It is about me attitude in our culture today. We are super consumers and will consume more than anyone else.

3. Media education is about access, analyze, evaluate, and produce. Questioning Media: Seven Basic Principles of Media Education will be a great teaching tool to help students evaluate ads. We need to be knowledgeable, and skilled to deconstruct and analyze production techniques. We need to be a media activism. That means we need t teach students to question, teach write, support, volunteer, seek out, produce, establish, host and affiliate. The seven basic principles of media education are keys when deconstructing and analyzing media. Teach students see ask, “what stories are not being told and why?”

4. I will be using the handout, developing a Media Education Language: from Persuasive Techniques to Analytical Tools, with my students when deconstructing and analyzing ads. I like the idea of having a poster hanging in the classroom representing each technique. This will be a great media education assignment for my middle school students. These posters will be a stimulus for critical reflection and also a reminder as they hang in the classroom where students will be able to see them on a daily bases.

5. I plan to use some of the media activities from the 18 Easy and Fun Media Activities from ACME as I teach my different units. I will be adding media education into my drug and alcohol unit, nutrition and fitness unit, and body image unit. Some of the activities that will work well with middle school students will be; print ad dissection, live radio spot, media and me journal, and feeling media’s mojo.

6. I learned a new term this week that is differently a 21^st century term; ambient awareness. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and blogging are all social networks that have brought about opening conversations around the world. I have not experienced a lot of use with Facebook, Tweeter and blogging but now feel I will be trying to use these mediums more as I have learned more about them from the course. You do need to have time and interest to get on the computer (or cell phone for some people) to take advantage of these wonderful new of ways of communication. But, I am a lot like Suzie and would rather be doing something active. I do have more confidence in technology after taking this course and I am excited to try new things, such as blogging more, using Twitter to form interest groups and Facebook to keep in touch with friends.

7. The books FEED was interesting. I found FEED hard to read at first, but as I got into to it I found it very interesting. How could the author know that this is how we are living today? It is so true that corporate marketers and government agencies do have a huge influence on how we live our lives. So much of our life focuses around the internet and television. We do live in a corporate and media dominated culture. We are bombarded today with what the corporate world wants us to know. FEED really shows us how media really attacks teens.

8. Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, opened up my eyes to television and the media and showed me how the electronic media is reshaping our culture. TV is turning all public life (religion, politics, education) into entertainment. Image is undermining other forms of communication, particularly the written word. Our media environment is vastly different now than it was in 1985. Multitasking is standard today. We spend many hours using “screen time”, and that involves computers, cell phones and TV sometime all at the same time. Today, teachers are not considered good if they do not entertain their class. Students do not want to read today. We live in a world today much different than in the past. We read shorter stories, have fewer face to face conversations and spend more time in a media saturated world that influences our every step.

9. I learned how to video tape and put together a short video clip. I have never done anything like that before. I liked visiting Channel 17 and experience what it takes to put together a video clip. It was interesting watching the dotcom people get so involved in using the equipment. Creating our video clip in class was fun. David was great in showing me how to add audio, graphics and edit. It was fun using the video cameras and shooting shots around Best Buy and Majestic Theater. I feel that I can know down load some clips, graphics and music to my computer. I only have my students for such a short period of time and so much to do that I do not think I will be able to do any video production with them.

10. The five afternoon video were all very interesting. Consuming Kids was great. It would be a great video to show parents. Mickey Mouse Monopoly video showed The Mirror Project and how images of females and males are stereotyped. High school age students could benefits from watching this video. Wednesday’s videos where interesting and made me see how to watch the news in a whole new way. I will definitely be questioning the news from now on. Toxic Sludge is Good for You, showed how corporations are unregulated. I did not like Real Bad Arab. It was a very difficult show to watch because I have trouble with violence and refuse to watch anything that shows guns. I understand the point behind the video and totally agree that Arabs are stereotyped in one way. Overall, the class was great and I learned many media education techniques to teach my middle school students.

Three “still to do “items I plan to do to move forward with teaching media education with my middle school students are:

1. Create poster using the persuasive techniques to hang around classroom.

2. Have students bring in magazine advertisements and dissect them using the general principles and persuasive techniques as a guide.

3. Have students keep a media and me journal for a day. Discuss how many minutes they spend using different media and how does it affect their life.

Facebook

2009-07-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

Facebook has its good and bad about it. Hodgkinson makes some points that I agree with. Such as when he quotes Thiel,"taking the world away from the old-fashion nature-bound life". I believe humans need human contact.
Theil says, "human beings will tend to move in flocks". It does not take long for people to dive right into anything new on the internet. MySpace, Facebook and Twitter took off in no time. (The bandwagon persuasive technique.)

I teach internet safety to my middle school students. I have to say that these sights can be very dangerous to teens who tend to give out to much personel information. As educators we need to educate our young students on how to use these sights in a safe way. Postman states on page 162 that, "Educators are not unaware of the effects of television (or computers, video games) on their students. It is the acknowledged task of the schools to assist the young in learning how to interpret the symbols of their culture. That this task should now require that they learn how to distance themselves from their forms of information is not so bizarre an enterprise that we cannot hope for inclusion in the curriculum; even hope that it will be placed at the center of education". I am hoping that the few days I have teaching the iSafe Program (a non-profit foundation dedicated to protect the online experience of youth everywhere)is helping my students in making better choices about internet use.

I found this on CNN Health: Five Clues that you are Addicted to Facebook-
1.You lose sleep over Facebook.
2.You spend more time than an hour on Facebook.
3.You become obsessed with old loves.
4. You ignore work in favor of Facebook.
5.The thoughts of getting off Facebook leave you in a cold sweat.

2009-07-08T19:17:00.000-07:00

Todays reading about Facebook and Tweeter relates well to chapter 5 in Postman's book. Postman talks about The Peek-a-Boo World by stating(p.69-70). "Everything becomes everyone's business". "The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by more up-to-date messages." Isn't this so true with Facebook and Twitter. As well, as the way we receive news these days. We receive information and news within minutes of it happening. Postman talks about television as entertainment. Maybe we have lost some interest and are bored with TV so know Facebook and Twitter are are newest form of entertainment. It seems to me that there are people today spending as much time on the web (computer, cell phone ect.) as watching TV. Postman states on page 92, Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. Facebook and Twitter are having effects like this as well. I understand how Facebook and Twitter are great tools and you can talk to people around the world. But, what happens, when your daughter sits home all day and "chats" on-line and never goes out and interacts? What happens when your employee spends your dollar "socializing" on-line instead of working. Again, I will state what I have said a number of times, everything in moderation.

Postman and the Google Articales

2009-07-07T16:47:00.000-07:00

There were many media-related themes that connected between the Postman reading and the two Google articles. I would like to mention two. The first connection was the mechanical clock in the, Is Google Making Me Stupid. Postman (page 11) and the Google article both quote Lewis Mumford description of the clock. The clock made us time keepers. It decides when we are going to eat, to work, to sleep. We stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock. The clock connects to my teaching in a big way. My school is structured into 42 minute periods with no bells as reminders. I am constantly looking at the clock for time management. My lessons have to be planned accordingly. Something that my school has had to deal with the last two years is our newest population of students from Africa have to be taught how to follow time and be on time to classes. They have no concept of time. Very similar to what happened before the fourteenth century. The second theme has to do with the world of fragments. Postman points out that the world of news are events that stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past or future, or to other events. The Google articale states the more we use the web, the more we have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. I have noticed this happening with the Burlington Free Pree. The Free Press news articales are shorter and shorter. Just recently they have started to publish a section of many small news stories. So much differnet then in the years past. Know I know why after reading the Google articales. Thanks!!

2009-07-06T19:26:00.001-07:00

The five most important things I learned about THE PERSUASION INDUSTRY:

1. Advertisers are persuaders. They give us what we want, what we want to hear. They use words like,"new and improved","you are worth it", "you come first", "Be everything you want to be". The media targets our emotions. They focus on our needs and desires.

2. Consumers are driven by unconscious needs and impulses. This is driven by market research finding out what people need and want; target marketing, based on knowledge collected about the consumer.

3. Emotional bonding of high concept ads, such as Nike and Starbucks. These large corporations become communities. They create a whole meaning and identity. They are stars in movies.

4. Solution to clutter is to send ads only to a group that are interested. Censer data and information, use subcategories to advertise to particular groups.

5. Advertising is every place; on our clothing, on store fronts, in schools, newspapers, magazines. Our world is filled up with ads "clutter". We need to educate our students to decode media messages.

2009-07-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

Neil Postman states, "The news of the day does not exists without a medium to create its form." As technology changes so does its medium in which we receive news. We have gone from a culture of word-centered to an image-centered culture. I see this happening in the classroom as well. Television will be a large part of our culture today. We have the choice to choose what we watch on TV. There are many good shows on TV that can be educational, such as the History Channel. I do agree with Postman when he states," the best things on television are its junk." As a stated in class today, I believe everything in moderation is ok. Watching too much "junk" tv is not ok. But watching some tv is ok if you can select the right programming. But, what is right for you may not be right for someone else. Postman does have a point when he says, "A river that has slowly been polluted suddenly becomes toxic." We are losing our ability to think conceptually. The printed page revealed the world, line by line, page by page. Today we see things and learn things many times that has no order, no beginning or end.

Three Themes - FEED

2009-07-06T16:29:00.000-07:00

Three themes I think the author, M.T. Anderson was creating in his book FEED that relates to the 21st century are:
1. Corporations monitor and manipulate citizens. In the book Feed, Violet and Quendy like to buy cool stuff. Quendy buys shoes and then decides after she walks walks out of the store that she does not like them anymore. So many of us today have many pair of expensive designer shoes that we wear ans dislike after the style changes. The feed can help you make buying decisions that can be hard. It knows things before you do. This is like our computers today. So many of us will research on the computer before we buy.
2. I found the family life in feed to be similar to ours today. The book says, dad does not talk much. He is too busy. Mom is busy with younger brother to pay any attention. Mom is working. Father saves for daughters trip to the moon. Some adolesence are self-centered. Making babies with genetics. I think this relates to many families today. Working parents, teens to involved with themselves, parents giving more to thier children then ever before and the talk of genetics in the future.
3. The lesions were very interesting. I related this to the tatoos of today. The book says, everyone is showing of lesions. Everyone is getting them. They are a fashion statement. I had a hard time understanding the point behind getting soars on their body but related it to tatoos of today.