Today's youth and the media

Now, when most people think of the word "media" they usually assume television. That's what happened when my friends and I sat down and actually started talking about the media and what our assumptions and our viewpoints on the matter was. Having started the semester with a media literacy lesson, I was waiting to see what everyone else thought media literacy meant. We had the television going on in the background and for every 15-20 minutes worth of a show you had about 5-7 minutes worth of commercials . . . and depending on which channel you were watching and what time it was, the commercials differed.
"That's just good marketing," said an advertising major.
"But it isn't advertising anything that is needed," said a family science major. "It's just showing kids what the marketers want them to pressure their parents into buying."
"Children are the best marketing tools we have," said the advertising major.
"But children and teens are still impressionable," I said. "Media has a huge effect on how we think and how we act/teach."
I got a few raised eyebrows at that, but most agreed with me.

Media literacy allows people to interact with different media in constructive and thoughtful ways. Daniel Rossi, a director of Satellite Academy says "the reality is that our kids are in constant contact with the media. Their opinions–about violence, about commercialism, about issues of race and gender–are often developed as a result of the media images around them, but many aren't even aware of it until they slow down and analyze the process." My friend in the family science major said that children, on average, spend 5 hours every day watching television yet there isn't a lot of discussion between those children and their parents on what they are watching and how it relates to things going on in today's society or even within their home.

Media affects our values and behaviors. Media is about to affect us on a subconscious level. Cable in the Classroom has been a huge supporter of media literacy and has recently stated that: "Our attitudes towards work, school, government, and family can all be influenced by media. Each story, whether fact or fiction, reflects underlying values about who or what is important. if women or minorities are consistently portrayed as lacking power and authority, impressionable young viewers may absorb that message. If scenes with smoking, drinking, violence, or casual sex are repeatedly shown, young people may believe these behaviors are normal and appropriate. on the other hand, highlighting our shared values can bring us together in times of trouble." They have also suggested five things that everyone should know about media:

1. all media messages are constructions
2. each person interprets messages differently
3. media have commercial interests
4. media have values
5. each medium has its own language and style

By discussing images–whether moving or just a still image–with students we can try and allow students an environment that they can express how a certain commercial, image, or clip makes them feel and what that media is actually trying to say to them.

Learn More and Study Less

A friend sent me this in an e-mail a while ago and I recently was able to dig it up. I wish I would have been taught this early on in high school or at least have received it while I was in the early stages of college . . . perhaps I would have been able to do better on tests and in my classes. I believe that as teachers, we have the ability and partially the responsibility to show our students the best way that we see possible for them to achieve with what abilities and talents they have. Now, I'm a horrible test taker. I always have been. I can study for a test and know about 95% of the information well and be able to answer questions that arise in class, but when it comes to being handed a test and actually sitting down and having to answer those questions my mind decides to shut the doors to that information and I'm stuck staring at the paper. When I first received the e-mail, I tried out some of the tips for my biology final. I missed one question on that final. That is the best that I've ever done on a test . . . ever!

We need to distinguish–or at least help our students try and distinguish the difference between studying and learning.

Here is what was in the e-mail sent to me. It was originally written by Scott Young. Some of his insights are amazing and something that I hope I'll be able to implement into a classroom setting if I continue with teaching:

Time spent studying does not equal learning.
More studying time won’t help if the way you are studying is flawed to begin with.

Holistic Learning
Smart people don’t just learn better. They learn differently. While many students get caught up in memorizing facts, intelligent learners know to seek the bigger picture and connect the facts together. This form of learning I call holistic learning.

Holistic learning is basically the opposite of rote memorization. Instead of reciting lists of facts, rules or formulas, you seek to connect ideas together. Instead of having separate boxes in your head for geometry, algebra or ancient India, you deliberately link facts together, so they form a bigger picture.

Excessive studying shows you aren’t learning holistically. It shows that you didn’t learn the material the first time. If you properly link ideas together to see the bigger picture, studying should only be a brief refresher.

How to Boost Your Study Habits
Holistic learning isn’t like a brainstorming technique or mind-mapping. It is fundamentally changing how you look at the process of learning and how you absorb information. As such, there isn’t an easy ten step program to master it.

But there are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic:

1. Visceralize - You’ve probably heard of visualizing, right? Visceralizing means taking all of your senses and connecting it to information. Studies have shown that people remember more vividly information that comes to us in an emotionally aroused state. Linking feelings, senses and imagery to bland ideas makes them more real. You probably counted on your fingers when learning numbers, why can’t you do the same when you are learning now?

2. Metaphor - The heart of holistic learning is relating things together. Metaphors are literary devices that link two things that normally don’t go together. Come up with metaphors to describe more complicated ideas in simpler terms.

3. Ten Year Old Rule - Explain ideas to yourself as you would to a ten year old. Sure, this isn’t always possible in your last years of a medical degree or learning how to apply neural networks to computer AI. But the idea is that you should be able to “dumb down” an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself.

4. Trace Back - Put away your books and start with a random fact or concept. Then relate that idea to another concept in your subject. Keep doing this tracing pattern until you’ve linked many ideas together. The Gupta Dynasty reminds you of ancient Greece which reminds you of Socrates, reminding you of Confucius…

5. Refresher Scan - Scan through information in your text book. Notice whenever you encounter information that you either don’t remember or weren’t 100% sure about. Quickly link that information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor. If your refresher scan is turning up more than a few points per chapter, you haven’t learned it thoroughly enough.

6. Compress Information - Not all information works well for holistic learning. A common point cited to me is learning anatomy for first year medical students. Anatomy involves learning arbitrary Latin names for hundreds of different elements of your body. There often aren’t clear patterns and constructs, just a dry list of facts. When encountering information such as this, your goal should be to compress it. Find ways to group information into smaller chunks of memory through pictures or mnemonics.

7. Write - Take a piece of paper and write out the connections in the information. Reorganize the information into different patterns. The key here is the writing, not the final product. So don’t waste your time making a pretty picture. Scribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.

Using multimedia in a classroom setting

With the push for technology to be used in today's classrooms, it is easy to unconsciously exclude certain students. Now, now one would consciously teach to exclude students but sometimes, as teachers, we do that. You know what you are trying to accomplish by using a certain movie clip or image or sound file, but students are trying to figure that out. They will make assumptions and draw their own conclusions. Normally that is what you want them to do . . . you don't want to give them all the answers, you'd rather have them think on their own. While talking with a few other professors and teachers about this, we came up with these questions that you should try and answer yourself before you show the media in your classroom:

• Who is included? Who isn't included?
• How are those who are included represented? Positively or negatively?
• Does the media reinforce stereotypes in any way?
• What are a few assumptions that students might make?

If you put yourself in the student's position and look at the media through those eyes, you might find that what you thought was innocent might be something that one student could find offensive.

Now, while you can't please everyone, using certain guidelines can help you so your classroom will function as a safe environment for everyone.

Ordinary into something else . . .

Take a look at this . . .


Now, to most people, you'd look at this and just say "yeah, so what?" To me, seeing a room full of these was amazing. This is an ordinary Darth Vader helmet. About 20 artists were given a helmet and asked to create something else out of it. Each of them created something completely different. They used their imagination and their talents to transform ordinary Vader helmets into works of art.

I believe that is what we need to do with students and projects they create. Sitting in my brother's multimedia class last year, I was kind of dismayed at the fact that they were doing the same projects I had done 3 years earlier . . . nothing had changed. They hadn't even updated the software. The computers were changed out, but everything else looked the same as it have before. They students were all doing "cookie-cutter" projects . . . each had to look exactly the same. Where is the creativity? Where is the expression of oneself? It had gone out the window when the students had signed up for a class they thought was going to let them express themselves in a different way.

Multimedia and film should be about expression. Just as each of the artists were given the exact same object to play with, each of those objects looked different. We can give our students the baseline, the guides, to start with, but we need to let them expand and create as they see fit. Of course, being in a public setting, they have to follow certain rules and regulations, but other than that, let them explore. The students are probably over-ruled and over-stifled in their everyday lives when it comes to their education: "please copy down the sentences on the board and find the noun and adverb in each" . . . "your essay must be 200 words and between 3-5 pages and must include the following . . ." .

Creativity is my main goal when it comes to teaching. What better way to get to know your students than to let them be creative and express themselves in a safe environment.

Photo Essay

I will admit it right now . . . I'm a geek. And not just any type of geek, I'm a Star Wars geek. Yep, I dress up as a character(s) from the movies and go out into public. However, I have a purpose behind my madness . . . I make children (and adults) smile. I'm part of an organization called The 501st Legion. The local chapter is called the Alpine Garrison. We use movie quality costumes to bring smiles and happiness to children--both big and small--through charity work.

For many of these kids we are a dream come true! When you were younger, didn't you think it would be cool if the characters from the movies would jump out of the screen and come to life in front of you? Well, that is what we are doing while enjoying the smiles we get from people.

Saturday we were able to participate in the Uptown Downs Buddy Walk in Murray. They organize this walk to promote awareness of Down Syndrome and for those in the Downs community to come together and enjoy themselves. They normally have various characters walking among everyone but we were specifically asked to come back this year because of the impact we made last year.

We're a crazy bunch, but anywhere we go, we seem to be able to draw quite a crowd. This was one of the entrances to the park where the walk was being held. The troopers decided to stick their heads in the little openings for a little girl who was laughing and smiling when they did that. The little girl was about 4 and had a mild case of Down Syndrome.

This boy is a teen who has a mild to moderate case of Down Syndrome and didn't leave us until one of his siblings or a parent would come and "escort" him to the other activities and characters there.
Three of the four kids in this picture have Down Syndrome ranging from mild/moderate to severe. The little girl was just so amazed by the character that she wouldn't take her eyes off him even with coaxing from her mother and others.

Again, the wonderment and amazement that we get from these kids is fun to see. They are a bit hesitant at first, but when they realize that we aren't there to hurt them, they get up close and don't want to go away.
This is Wampa. Normally we get two different reactions when he is around . . . people are either afraid of him and won't come near him or they are completely drawn to him. The Wampa from the movie is pretty fierce looking, so our actor-when he had this costume made-decided to put a friendlier face on the costume. I love this picture, but I wish I would have snapped it just a few moments sooner. This little girl has moderate Down Syndrome and was just standing there amazed by Wampa, staring up at him. Since you can't see much in that mask, one of the spotters tapped him on the arm and told him to look down. He leaned down and the little girl just had her mouth wide open and reached up to touch his face. The mother was smiling because normally she doesn't get near strange objects, the girl is a bit weary but wasn't afraid of Wampa.

This is the whole point of the photos. Normally the troopers don't participate in the walks because they don't have very much mobility in the costumes. This walk is short compared to the rest of them so some of the troopers decided to walk with the kids. This particular trooper wasn't going to walk the route but this little girl came up behind him, took his hand and wanted him to walk with her the entire way around. She wouldn't let him leave to go suit down at the end of the route until a member of her group came and picked her up. I later learned that Star Wars is one of the few movies that she will sit still and watch all the way through.



These kids are interesting to spend an afternoon with. They find wonderment in the little things that normally we just look at and dismiss or give little acknowledgment to. They always find us a wonder and amazing. The smiles that we see on the parents' faces are sometimes worth all the 'trouble' of putting on the costume and having limited vision and being hot a sweaty. For them, seeing their child smile and be happy running from character to character, wanting to touch them just to make sure that they are real . . . that is what makes it worth all the trouble: smiles.

We'll carry on into the future.

Social Networking Warfare

Normally I don't read all the articles in Newsweek . . . I just look at the cartoons and a bit of the movie stuff but an article in the August 6th Newsweek caught my eye. There has been a lot of debate lately over "social networks" such as Facebook and MySpace over safety and usage. It brought up some interesting points:

• "The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college."
• "MySpace is till home for kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. It is the preferred digital hangout for outsiders–bunrouts, punks, emos, goths and gangastas, as well as minorities outside the mainstream."
• "Facebookers are strivers"
• "Myspacers are there in part becasue they're rejecting the values of preppies, jocks and tools"
  

Hmmmm, makes me think that those social values and labels are now moving over towards the digital age. Those lines/rifts are seen in every high school and society around. Near the end of the article it says "the division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values".

But could style have something to do with it as well? You look at Facebook and it is very clean cut–no weird backgrounds, white and blue contrast–where as MySpace ranges from person to person with the fonts, backgrounds, and add-ons.

Interesting to think that lines are still as sharp as ever when it comes to society and values. Many say that lines are beginning to blur when it comes to society and how it interacts with each culture, but I believe that the lines are still there and that they aren't going to change any time soon because of the way a culture has control of its society.