10 Ah has! & 3 Questions

Ah Ha!

1. Advertisers target Facebook users, just like the Feed!

2. In order to better understand the production and persuasive techniques being used "against" them, teens need to know how to analyze the media they see and hear.

3. Another way to better understand the media they see on an everyday basis, is for teens to learn how to create and produce their own media.

4. As educators, we need to harness the positive aspects of new technologies in order to make sure students know how to use them as resources rather than just as entertainment.

5. At least half of the stories we see in the news and read in the paper are advertisements from public relations firms.

6. There's no such thing as multi-tasking, it's just high speed toggling. Our brains may move quickly from one thing to the next, but we can ultimately only focus on one thing at a time.

7. Our students have grown up in a very different culture than we did. Whether it's the televisions, cell phones, or internet, our students need more stimulus and do not seem to learn as well from traditional teaching techniques.

8. One of Feed's themes was the fact that technology does not always work without fault. We need to be cautious not to become too reliant on technologies that could fail us.

9. People in cults have similar characteristics to those who are part of "product cults". We are being advertised to the point where we think owning certain products can fulfill emotional needs.

10. Advertisers are constantly trying to "break though the clutter" to get to their potential clients more effectively as they become numb to more and more advertising. "Cool hunting" is actually a profession!

Questions

1. I am still concerned with the amount of time it takes to properly incorporate media education into my already packed curriculum.

2. Statistics seems to be the one area of math that lends itself well to media education, I'm interested in finding other connections.

3. What can we do to prevent the big corporations from controlling everything from the news we read, to the advertisements we see, to the movies we watch?

Facebook Article

This article forced me to look at Facebook from a different angle than I have in the past. I have used Facebook for a few years as a tool to keep in touch with family and friends. I enjoy being able to keep up on friend's lives, reconnect with friends from the past, and share some of my own experiences though pictures (over the past year I shared buying my new house, getting my puppy Rambo, and traveling to Switzerland with my Facebook community). However, I have not ever critically questioned Facebook as a medium: Who owns this medium? What value messages does Facebook send? What trade-offs are there for using this medium? Hodgkinson's article forced me to do so. In a world already riddled with media, Facebook does provide yet one more outlet for the big corporations to collect information about its users and target them with specific advertisements.

Speaking of specific advertisements, I just checked and my Facebook page had advertisements about a new Wilco album, wedding stationary and diets, Ithaca college clothing, and saving on summer essentials at City Market. Scary (and how Feed!). Out of 59 million users, Facebook knows enough about me (a Facebook user who does not frequently update information about myself, or include anything very personal) to send advertisements that do directly connect to things going on in my life. Now, maybe it's all the clutter, or the fact that I am a somewhat aware of media in today's society, but I have always ignored the ads on my Facebook account (until just now). However, our students are also using Facebook, probably providing more personal information, and might not be aware that the advertisements (which they may not ignore) are being directed at them specifically! When do I get to go back to the classroom to teach this stuff??

Postman Ch. 8-11 & Twitter

The more I read on this topic, the more I feel responsible to help transform these new technologies into meaningful and insightful tools. Something that struck me in Postman's argument about television was when he said, "like its forefather, the telegraph, television needs to move fragments of information, not to collect and organize them (p.136)." This is exactly how tools such as blogging, Facebook, and Twitter are the opposite of television. The internet allows us all to be creators, collectors, organizers of information. This is a very powerful tool that needs to be harnessed and taught to students. If left on their own, these technologies could become tools to simply "move fragments of information" like Postman claims the television does. Although this feels somewhat redundant of my post yesterday, today's reading reinforced this idea threefold for me. I need to help my students see the importance of using these tools in meaningful and thought provoking ways.

Postman Ch. 5-7 & Google Articles

"In any case, there's no going back (Cascio, p.1)." All of the readings today made me think more and more about the systems though which we communicate and how, regardless of what things were like in the past, our communication and information systems will continue to change and grow; there's no going back. Postman argues that with the advent of television, came the advent of trivial news meant to entertain rather than to truly inform. "Whereas television taught the magazines that news is nothing but entertainment, the magazines have taught television that nothing but entertainment is news (p.112)." I agree with him on this point. If I really want to know what is going on in the world (or at least what the 6 or 7 big media corporations want me to know about what is going on in the world), television news is not where I go. I turn to various newspapers (typically online versions), websites, and public radio.

In my agreement with Postman on this point, I am forced to look forward to the communication systems currently in use and those of the future. As an educator I feel a partial responsibility to ensure that future technologies do not act purely as forms of entertainment and recreation, but that they are used to advance our society in thought provoking and meaninful ways. We can not stop the future, nor should we try to; however, we should try to use our new communication tools with our students in an effort to sustain critical thinking and reflective thought.

Media Educaiton Project

After our first class, I got a few more ideas about a media education project I would like to do that would both serve as a final project for this class and could be used in my 9th grade Algebra class. I would like to have my students create a short video that involves very large or very small numbers, facts about technology and/or media, and a comparison that helps viewers understand the magnitude of the numbers. This could be used in conjunction with our exponents and scientific notation unit. Students often have a hard time understanding the magnitude of the very large and very small numbers we discuss in this unit. I think using media and technology to hook them, along with the creative piece of creating a movie might help motivate them to understand the numbers as well as see the impact of media and technology on their lives.

Postman Ch. 1-4 & Wesch

Technology is full of wonderful opportunities as well as challenging repercussions, both of which we need to be aware of and respond to. Wesch demonstrates how educators need to think about the Web 2.0 tools available to our students use and incorporate them into our own practice so as to better meet their needs and tap into the creativity the tools allow. At the same time, we need to be aware of the negative effects new technologies can have on our students if we do not teach them how to use the tools appropriately. Postman tells us "the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations (p. 9)". The communication tools available to today's society are changing rapidly. It is importnat as educators we make sure that as our modes for communication change and grow, we ensure the critical thinking skills and intellectual ability of our students continue to remain a promient focus of education while incorporating new technologies.

"The Making of a Media Literate Mind" comments

5 observations I found useful:

1.90 percent of media content is owned but just a handful of corporations.

2.Since music and images are processed in the part of our brains that control emotion, media intentionally targets consumers’ emotions and try to evoke certain feelings.

3.Teaching students what is behind the ads they see is an important step in helping them better understand media. For example, the picture of an actual fast-food hamburger is quite different than the one we see on television that advertisers spend hours creating.

4.Americans are concerned with the fact that media is a large monopoly and has shared this concern with Congress.

5.In addition to teaching media literacy, it is also important to teach students how to create their own media. Telling their own stories though media will make them that much more aware as they are bombarded with media in their everyday lives.

Question: As educators we are already under very tight time constraints to teach the skills and content in our subject areas, how are we also supposed to find the time to make sure our students are media literate as well?

THE PERSUADERS comments

What I learned from THE PERSUADERS:

1.The persuasion industry researched cults and found correlations between people who joined cults and people who joined “product cults”. Consumers buy certain brands to feel like they belong and to make meaning for themselves.

2.Advertising has gone beyond telling the consumer the purpose of the product to creating a meaning or experience that is elicited by using the product. For example, when we put in our iPod earbuds we are able to see ourselves as the silhouettes in the advertisements.

3.In order to “break though the clutter” and combat technology such as TiVo, advertisers seek out ways in which TV shows and movies can not only incorporate their products, but actually build story lines around them.

4. Luntz researches the language that strikes consumers and voters emotions. He said that consumers think about what they hear about 20%, while their emotions take up 80% of their reaction to what they hear.

5.Rather than being one unified nation of Americans with one goal for the common good, the persuaders have created about 70 different demographics of people, plus subcategories, all of whom are focused on their individual wants and needs.

Question: How do we as consumers determine if we truly want or need the things we buy or if we only think we want these things because we have been targeted by the persuaders?

FEED comments

1. The importance of understanding the media we see and use.

Titus and his friends were so engulfed by media and technology that it essentially controlled their lives without their understanding that they could choose to live without it. The more we are bombarded with advertising the more important it is for us to know what we’re being exposed to and who is behind it. The more knowledgeable we are, and the more we help to inform our students, the less likely we are to become like the society in Feed.

2. We don’t always know how the technology we use today will affect us tomorrow.

When a new technology comes out, our society tends to quickly jump on the bandwagon without necessarily knowing how we will be affected in the future. This is especially true if the technology makes our lives easier or more efficient. In Feed, Violet felt she needed a feed because that was how everyone else lived, however the lower quality and time in life she had her feed installed ended up having serious consequences for her.

3. Technology cannot think for us.

Although there are many ways that technology can make our lives easier, as well as ways technology can make some learning experiences more meaningful to students, technology cannot think for us. Technology has made it easier for us to get information, to research products we want to buy, and keep up to date on current events. However, once we access this information, it is still up to us to think critically about the information and make our own unique, informed choices.

Media lit project in the works..

I am not sure what I would like to do for my media literature project yet. I know there are plenty of ways I can use statistics to tie math and media lit together, but I have already created so many statistics lessons because it is an easy way to tie many real world topics into math. I am hoping our first day of class will inspire me to think outside of this box to develop a media lit project that I can also use in my classroom.

New Blogger

This is my first time blogging, so I'm excited to see how it works as part of this class. See everyone on Monday!