Kate the Great

5150 Final Project

2009-05-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

I wanted to be able to just upload the pdf file of my final project to blogger, but apparently I can't figure it out, or it's not possible to upload pdfs. Instead, I have created a wiki page and have uploaded my final project there. To see the final project, click on the link below, and when you get to the front page, click on the link that says 5150 Final Project. Let me know if you have any issues opening up or getting to my final project!

Final project!

To end the semester with a laugh, please also enjoy the following clips from the Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance of Romeo and Juliet.

Graphic Novels = Awesome.

2009-04-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask me what were my favorite genres of novels a year ago, I can assure you that the graphic novel would have not been located anywhere on that list. I was never into reading comic books as an adolescent, so I never really knew much about the genre, except that I assumed that all graphic novels had some sort of Manga aspect to it. Boy was I wrong. Fast forward to spring semester of my senior year at the University of Minnesota where I was taking an Asian-American Literature class. All of the books I had read previously for that class were mostly interesting, but were only read because I was required to. One day, I begrudgingly picked up the novel that was due the next week, and when I opened it, to my surprise, the book was actually a graphic novel! “American Born Chinese” forever changed my outlook on graphic novels, and now I actually have a long list of novels from this genre that I would like to read eventually.

The following fall semester, I enrolled in an Adolescent Literature class that would go towards my M. Ed in English education, and I was given the opportunity to continue reading graphic novels with the popular “Perspolis,” and now have an ever-growing list of books that were suggested to me by my instructor and by my peers including “The Pride of Baghdad,” “Maus,” and many others. In this class, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we can use these novels in the classroom, and we were pushed to think about how we would teach our students how to read a graphic novel, as there will be students who will have never even opened up a comic book. I thought a lot about this when I brought home “The Watchmen” a couple of months ago and was trying to experience the whole novel without getting overwhelmed.

In the article “How to Teach Graphic Novel Writing,” the author said: “But the rise in interest has created a pool of frustrated talent that needs focus and direction. You step up, ready to meet them and guide them, but you don't know how. Fear not, true believer, for a few simple steps are all that keep you from guiding these poor creatures unto the greatest destiny of all.” As the “expert” in the classroom, I know that I will be expected by my students to be aware of not only how to read graphic novels, but also how to potentially write them. I will have to ask myself, “How do you decide what to draw?” What are the important aspects of the story that should be focused on?” Writing one’s own graphic novel can take more time and effort than the typical novel.

As I move on to my 4th week of student teaching for a 9th grade honors English class, I have been trying to think more about how I want to teach Romeo and Juliet to make it relevant and inspiring for my students. This will be most of the students’ first real experience reading Shakespeare and will have difficulties understanding what is going on in it due to the many allusions made to what was popular during the time Shakespeare wrote the drama. While I am going to be coming up with different ways of helping them understand how the puns were made back then in comparison to the puns they know now. I recently purchased the book “90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry” which takes 90 classic books and turns the whole plot into humorous 4-panel comics. After looking through this, I came up with the following assignment to go along with my Romeo and Juliet unit:

Name:_______________________

Partner’s name (optional):_______________________

Romeo and Juliet Graphic Novel Assignment

Due by:______________________

Now that we have finished the play Romeo and Juliet, your assignment is to create your own graphic novel version of any scene of your choosing. You may work with a partner or as individuals.

1. Pick a scene that you would like to turn into a graphic novel. Once you have done this, come to me and have me sign-off on your scene choice.

Teacher initials__________

2. Chose what type of medium you want to use for your graphic novel. Your options are:

By hand (drawings must be clear for me to understand what is going on)
ComicLife computer program
Comic Book Creator computer program

3. You will each be required to post individually on your own blog about your experience turning this classical text into a more modern format. What did you learn from this? Did it help you better understand the play? What (if anything) was lost between the transformations of Romeo and Juliet as a graphic novel? What are some pros and cons for doing this activity? This response must be at least 300 words long.

4. If you worked on this project with a partner, please write a summary of what each partner contributed to this assignment. This will only be seen by me, and must be turned in on the same day that your graphic novel is due.

There is a rubric that I created to go along with this assignment, but since I couldn't get it to format properly I will be willing to email it to interested people if they comment on my blog asking for it!

2009-03-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

“Because music is a vital component of youth’s popular culture preferred over even movies and television, the teacher’s understanding and application of popular music can be a powerful tool for teaching and learning in social studies education” (p. 111). This quote from White and Walker hits right at the center of the topic of popular culture. While this article seems to focus on the social studies aspect of using popular music in education, as an English teacher, I have been able to find many different ways to use popular music in my own classroom with my future students. Since popular music is always changing, it can be hard to keep up with what is popular at the current time, so it is important to keep up on it to keep it relevant for my students as the years go on. Here are a few ways I have thought of to incorporate popular music into my English classroom:
• Poetry Unit- During a poetry unit, it would be a great idea to have each student come to class with the lyrics to their favorite popular song. The students could pair up and then find all of the conventions that we have learned regarding poetry (i.e., simile, metaphor, personification, rhythm, meter, rhyme, etc.) and analyze the lyrics together. What issues does this song bring up? How does it compare to the poems we have read together as a class over the last few days? It would probably be a good idea to do a sample one with the class and compare it directly to a poem that we have studied.
• Creative Writing Unit- Since students are constantly listening to music and are surrounded by it at almost all times (whether they choose to listen to it, or if they are shopping in a store playing music, or driving in the car with the radio on), so it would be fun to allow students to take time to write their own lyrics for a song. There would have to be guidelines as to what is acceptable, but to allow them to express themselves in a way that is already familiar to them would most likely increase their interest in a creative writing assignment instead of having them write poetry (but little do they know, us sneaky teachers are actually tricking them into writing poetry because music lyrics can definitely be seen as poetry!)
• Popular Culture Lesson- it is important to make sure that students are aware of how popular culture effects literature. When one reads older texts, often times there will be allusions to the popular music that was present during the time the story takes place. This can be confusing for some, but once they understand the importance of how popular music can tell us something about the time period, it should make them more conscious of the popular culture they read in today’s novels. Have students find music that contains references to older pieces of literature (i.e., Taylor Swift's current popular song "Love Story")

I was actually a little surprised to read that it is music that is really the number one aspect of popular culture. I was always under the impression that it would be either television or movies that would be at that number one spot (considering how many hours a day students spend in front of the television or watching movies), but now that I think about it more, I can see how music was ranked at the top of the list. I have just stared my student teaching this week, and over the last five days, I have had the chance to mainly observe and get to know the students in the classes better. I was shocked to see how many students would come into the classroom with their white earbuds connected to their iPods. I was even more surprised when I noticed that most of these students would only take out one of the earbuds, and keep the other one during class. I over heard some other English teachers in the department discussing their opinions on this phenomenon and they have taken to allowing the students to listen to their music during work time as a reward.

Regret:
Katy Perry-

Sexuality:

Race:
Chamillionaire- Ridin' Dirty

vs. Weird Al's White and Nerdy

Fake News

2009-03-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

Before I first started to go to the University of Minnesota, I had had very little interaction with fake news in comparison to real, factual news. In my mind, fake news really only included the tabloids that were present at the check out lines when at the supermarket. The only “news worthy” articles that I saw pop up included: the end of the world quickly approaching, the coming of Jesus, or Bat Boy.

Every once and a while my dad would bring home one of these hardcore tabloids, and I would take time to look through it. To be perfectly honest, as a kid I was pretty naïve and had not ever been explicitly told that these “newspapers” were fictitious. Because of this, I found myself getting scarred at night because I really thought that the very creepy-looking Bat Boy was on the loose and that he would somehow make his way into my house and terrorize my family. My early experiences with fake news centers on the fact that I actually believed these articles and should be a warning for all future and current educators that they need to give their students the skills to figure out biases and what is true and what is not true (especially as they go on to write numerous research papers throughout their academic career).

While I lost much of my innocence concerning fake news and how to identify logical fallacies, though high school I never had to come into contact with it much, until I started my freshman year of college. Stationed at nearly every corner located at the University of Minnesota, there is a newspaper box for The Onion and after spending a lot of time waiting for the bus with nothing to do, I started reading the ridiculous articles written for this fake newspaper. My interest in the fake news increased as the political issues arose and really enjoyed reading the twisted articles for my entertainment. Over the course of the last year, I found myself really wishing that I had cable for the soul reason that I wanted to be able to watch The Daily Show and other parody news shows.

While I have never been a big fan of politics, these fake news stories really helped ease me into keeping up with what was going on in the world, because in order to be able to find the humor in the articles, I had to have a basic knowledge as to what was going on in the real world.

My feelings are that I am not the only one who has had this experience with fake news (especially from when I was an adolescent), and that with today’s influx of published unreliable news articles mixed in with the real thing, the youth may be having a difficult time differentiating be what the real stories are versus the fake ones. As an English teacher, I have been thinking a lot about how I can help my current and future students sift through the correct information that they will need to get through while doing many different types of papers, and how I can use examples from the Onion to get my point across. Some areas that may be causing students trouble with fake news is that it is presented in the same format as the real news. The fake news (when paired with the real articles) can really help students realize that you cannot always take what you read for it’s face value and see that knowing the source of where the news comes from is just as important of a step in the research process as everything else. Students know that they should be wary of Wikipedia articles when digging for information about their particular topic, so they should also start figuring out what print resources are reliable and which one are not. Not only could these fake articles help students with research papers and learning about logical fallacies, it can also enhance a journalism lesson on the conventions of newspaper writing. The Onion is written in such a ways that makes it hard to distinguish what is real and what is fake because it’s conventions match that of high quality newspaper writing. An assignment that could work with journalism students (or in any class where they need to journalistic style writing) to show them the best ways to write a newspaper article is below:

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be learning what it takes to be a great journalist. At the end of the semester we will publish and distribute the school’s biannual newspaper “The Rebel Riot.” Before we can start writing stories, we need to learn the conventions of newspaper writing.

With a partner, take a look at the following news articles:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/obama_peddling_stimulus

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/us/politics/26talkshow.html?fta=y

On the backside of this paper, compare and contrast the two articles and include information regarding the conventions of how the articles were written, and the set up of the website that the article is on:
• What did you notice?
• What were some similarities?
• What were the differences?
• Find anything surprising?
• Comment on the voice of each article

After the class has finished combing through the articles, we will come together as a group and discuss our findings.

I want TOYS!!!

2009-03-08T22:05:00.000-07:00

This weeks readings have really hit close to home for me. I have been working with younger kids ever since I was 12 years old when I started to babysit for my neighbor’s three young boys. In the last ten years, I have also worked as a t-ball coach for four, five, six, and seven year olds, as a camp councilor for kids in elementary school, a park supervisor, and most recently I have been employed as a nanny for three kids (ages five, six, and eight). At one point during my undergraduate experience, I had considered getting my teaching license in either elementary or early childhood education. Now that I have made up my mind to teach adolescents and teens, sometime I wonder how much “kid culture” can really help enhance my lessons.

In chapter 15, White and Walker discuss the importance of play in the classroom. During my foundations of education classes, we spend a lot of time learning about why it is important to let students use play to solve problems. “Toys of value enhance children’s own ideas. They help the child to engage in imaginative, meaningful play by allowing them to solve the problem” (144). As a nanny, I see this happening all of the time when they are playing amongst each other. While these kids are fortunate enough to have several toys, the most loved toy in their house would have to be the play kitchen that they have set up in the basement. Often, the kids will pretend to have their own restaurant and take their jobs very seriously. On longer days, I will take the kids to the Minnesota Children’s Museum, and while we are there, I get the opportunity to observe hundreds of kids using the toys provided by the museum to solve certain, task-related problems. In one room of the museum, the area is set up like an assembly line where blocks are moved from upstairs, to the lower level, and then moved to the “shipping truck”. As soon as the children would enter the room, in no time, they were dressed in the worker uniforms, hard hats, and begin working with one another to complete their task. I am always amazed by how quickly a couple dozen elementary aged students can come together are work with great teamwork. Also, within the museum, there is an area named "Our World". This space is set up to replicate a small town including a Chinese restaurant, a city bus, doctors office, recording studio, grocery story, etc. Here, kids are able to dress up and become little grown-ups. In the restaurant, the kids take the time to happily clean up from their "cooking" (something that they would never actually do at home). This place allows for children to practice adult roles, and by watching them, you can see how they view society and different hierarchies.

“These toys channel children into imitative play, robbing them of their own imagination, problem solving, and creativity” (146).

“Starting at birth, relatives and friends give children toys or objects to express love” (146). I feel like this is a big issue in the United States culture. Toys are loosing their purpose. I remember the days when my mom would give me the empty oatmeal container and washed out milk cartons and I would use them in a ways to help my "customers" finally get breakfast (after months of only having plastic hamburgers to offer them). What makes me almost sick is how much money parents will spend on the popular toys, instead of figuring out which new gift would have a more enduring meaning to their child. Over the holiday season, the popular television show The Office ran an episode that dealt with parents over paying for the holiday's most wanted toy, "Unicorn Princess". Unicorn Princess is what Tickle Me Elmo and Furby were like to us 90's children. These were toys that we just HAD to have, but in the long run, we just ended up donating them to Goodwill after about a year.

One thing that has left me questioning these chapters is how relevant can this be for the middle and high school classrooms? There isn't much time allowed in the older classrooms for play time, and this can most obviously be seen from the lack of playgrounds at middle and high schools. Maybe using games and the cartoons from kid culture is enough? I do realize how important it is to use kid culture to enable our students to have the tools to critique popular culture and take more charge of their social education.

My random gizmoz

2009-02-27T20:20:00.001-08:00

Express Yourself with Gizmoz Video Clips

Wisdom from the eMe

2009-02-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

During my time here at the University of Minnesota, I have been through many classes where there have been some sort of online component or technical aspect that was either required or was provided for additional support for the students. In Aaron Doering and George Veletsianos’ article Conversational Agents and their Longitudinal Affordances on Communication and Interaction, I had a very personal reaction to this piece because I recently completed the EDHD 5007 class through the I.L.P./M.Ed where I was required to create my own eFolio to record my personal accomplishments and what I did to complete all of the various standards and benchmarks in order to receive my Minnesota board approved teaching license. As the paper noted, the class only met once, every other week, for about three hours at a time, and the amount of time in the classroom was dedicated to learning about the new technologies that we could possibly be encountering or instigating as new teachers in our future teaching placements. This left little time for us to actually learn about how to use the eFolio site and how to go about creating the most effective portfolio. Because we learned little more than how to upload a photo or a document, most of use had to figure out on our own time outside of class how to navigate this non-user friendly site. Our instructor made sure to inform my class that there were online-help tutorials, but I don’t ever remember being told about the Conversational Agents to help out with this daunting task.

While I was working on my own eFolio, I was able to figure out what to do for the most part, but it did take hours upon hours of trial and error to actually get a decent looking semi-final product. If I had known about the Conversational Agents before I started to work on it individually, I wonder if the process would have been much easier for me? Would I have taken full advantage of them? Would I have saved time? Would I have a better-finalized eFolio? I don’t know if the Conversational Agents would be the best option for me, as I like to have quick and direct instruction. When I’m not talking to a real person, it becomes very easy for me to zone out or not completely understand what the avatar tells me. I know this because when I was listening to this week’s assignment through the Gizmoz avatar that Thom sent to us last week, and had to repeat it several times before catching everything I needed to know. I prefer to either have the directions right in front of me, or to have a real life person whose body language I can read at the same time. I rely on so much more than just a floating head talking to me. I can definitely see how the Conversational Agents can be more beneficial and supportive than if the user had no help at all.

Speaking of Gizmoz, after trying my hand at creating my own avatar, I spent some time trying to think of how I could use this program as an assignment in my own future classrooms. At first it was really hard for me to think of ways in which this product could be used in the classroom to ENHANCE my lesson, rather than just use Gizmoz for the sake of using them. I had a classmate who informed me that she tried using the Gizmoz in the class she will be teaching, by using it to introduce an assignment. Her students were surprised and slightly confused as to why she was using it (and in my opinion, I was a bit confused as well. I couldn’t figure out how using it to introduce their free-writing assignment really enhanced her lesson). Here is a layout of an assignment that I came up with for how to use the Gizmoz/avatars with my future students:

Digital-You Book Reporting

In today’s day and age, so many things are resorting to using the digital world to get their points across. In this assignment, you will be creating an avatar and reporting on your independent reading book through this innovative technology!

1.) Write your book report. Make sure to include a quick plot summary, 3 important findings from the book, if you would recommend this text, and why or why not? Make sure that you have this completed before we go to the computer lab.

2.) Practice reading this out loud. This is what your classmates will hear during your presentation on the book. This part must be clear, understandable, and loud enough for us to hear what you are saying. When spoken, the book report should be 2-4 minutes long.

3.) Create an avatar- this is the digital-you who will be presenting your book report. Be creative; make it you; be appropriate. If you have to ask me if it is appropriate for school, it’s probably not… (See yellow handout with instructions on how to create your avatar!) We will be in the computer lab on _____________ and ______________ to work on this.

4.) Bring your avatar to life! Using the avatar program, record yourself saying your book report aloud. It may take several tries to get your recording just perfect, so take your time, and have fun with it. Write your book report. Make sure to include a quick plot summary, 3 important findings from the book, if you would recommend this text, and why or why not? Save often. Once you have a finished product MAKE SURE TO COPY DOWN THE URL HERE:

_________________________________________________________________

5.) Presentation: Let your avatar do the talking! On the last day, each student will have the opportunity to play his or her avatar for the class.

**After the presentations, we will have a short discussion on the pros and cons of using avatars instead of paper copies of reports like these.**

DUE DATES:

Written script of book report: ______________________

Presentation date:______________________

Let's get some SHOES!

2009-02-15T21:20:00.001-08:00

From the Washington Post article, this quote stuck out to me the most: “Bush seems to have calculated -- cynically but correctly -- that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as commander in chief from becoming more than a nuisance.” I became very mad upon reading this. When Bush told us to “go to Disneyland,” I was only a sophomore in high school, and was probably comforted by this statement. Now knowing what it has caused our nation with the present recession, I am very upset with what our former president told us. As a teenager, the shopping mall was where I went with my friends to socialize, and with my mom to kill time (and always bought random things that I “just had to have” and we spent money without even thinking). Even through my junior year in college, I spent a lot of time at the Mall of America because there wasn’t much to do on a Sunday afternoon (especially when I didn’t want to be doing homework). My fiancé and I live right next to the Light Rail station, and would just pop on the train and head down to the mall whenever we felt like it. That was when we didn’t have to worry about bills or future student loan payments, ect. Even though we didn’t go there with anything in particular to buy, but sure enough, we’d be riding the train back home with multiple bags in our hands.

After reading about the history of the shopping center and mall, it got me wondering about when was it within that history that marked the time when going to the mall became more than just a trip to get necessities for the home? When did it become a social phenomenon? As a kid growing up, I had always been somewhat aware of the fact that Southdale Mall in Edina was the first fully enclosed shopping center in the states, but to think about what an impact it had on the rest of the nation is incredible! From 1956 to 1968, shopping centers became more than just a place where you could go buy clothing for the family, or pick up some new towels at the department store. It became a place where one could go to admire the architecture and the wonderful décor of the interiors.

This is all I can post at the moment, as my computer/internet is being wonky. I'll get the rest posted before the end of the week!

Gaming, Gender, and Education

2009-02-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

GAMING + GENDER

Reading these articles got me thinking about my own relationship with video games, and being in a household with five women and only one man all living under the same roof (my poor dad- even the pets were all female!), and how we got our first Sega Genesis system when I was about 8 or nine years old. The video games we had in the house that I can distinctly remember playing included: “The Little Mermaid,” “Echo” (about a dolphin), “Sonic” (probably the most violent of the games that were given to us), “Bugsy,” and one other game where you were a newspaper boy and you had to go around delivering papers to clients in a certain amount of time. When my male cousin, Andy (who is only 6 days older than I am) would come over, we had to start hiding the Sega or else he would spend the whole time playing our “lame” games (as he would call them). If he got his hands on the controllers, he wouldn’t put it down until it was a.) Time for him to leave, or b.) He had beaten the game completely (something my sisters and I could never do, and to this day still haven’t). As the years passed, my family eventually became the owners of a PlayStation, Play Station II, PC computer, and various handheld devices after relentless begging on my sisters’ and my part. My parents never limited how much time we could play them based on the fact that we would get bored if we played for more than an hour at a time. Our game collection gained a few more violent games (ranging from a couple of World War II games, to Cabella’s Deer Hunting), but the game I see most often in the disc drive is The Sims. I moved from home for freshman year of college and found myself constantly surrounded by people who were video game fanatics! My boyfriend, Luke (now fiancé) lived in a room with three other guys, and if I walked into their dorm room at any given time, I would more than likely find at least 3 of them playing various video games all at the same time. I spent a lot of my time in that room, and learned more about video games than I ever thought I would. Who knew that watching the plot progress in Halo, Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto could be so interesting? Or how detailed the character development is in BioShock or Gears of War? While I never actually actively partook in the games (except for a few lame attempts at Halo where I ran around in circles and get stuck against a wall), I found myself asking Luke to keep playing just so I could see what happened next. Now that I live with Luke, I am still surrounded by all sorts of gaming consoles including: an Xbox360, Nintendo Game Cube, N64, multiple computers, and a Nintendo DS.

After my two different living situations, I’ve had the chance to see how members of opposite genders approach video games. Not only do the majority of males and females seem to have different views and priorities concerning video games, the actual gender roles that are portrayed within these games. In Game+Girl=Advance, the author wrote early on that “As a woman who plays video games, I've had to think about gender in videogames, because it's so obvious that I'm playing in a boys' world.” When you look at women in video games (i.e., Lara Croft, etc.), they are the ideal women with tiny waists, and huge breasts. They can kick ass while looking gorgeous at the same time. This got me thinking about a good friend that I have who is in school to become an animator, and out of the sketches and final projects that I have seen of hers; her characters mimic the ideals of society. The men are tall with great hair and chiseled jaws, while the women are how I described them before. While her work is beautiful, and she has a great grasp on the art of animating, these standards are not going to go away. After reading the 4 aspects of “Genderspace,” I can definitely see why characters are made the way they are and the thought that has to go into them. The creators have to remember that “some people either take great pains to distance themselves from the avatar, or conversely, create avatars with which they identify very closely,” and need to take this into account to be successful.

GAMNG + EDUCATION

There are many people (parents, educators, ect.) who believe that video games are doing more harm than good when it comes to adolescents’ education. While to some it may seem like a waste of time, to others, it is a precious tool that can be used in the classroom to help reach out to students who don’t fully understand what is going on in class. Since I am on my way to become a high school English teacher, I want to try to use video games to enhance my lessons when necessary. Video games can be used in a variety of ways across a school campus, and in the English class, it can prove to be a valuable tool to get students to understand plot development, and different aspects of literature. Take for instance, if you were teaching a regular Language Arts class and you are trying to explain the concept of plot, climax, and character development to a group of young students who just aren’t grasping these important concepts. Many video games have cut scenes that they go to after the player has made it through a level. These cut scenes add to the story and let the player know what is going to happen next. As the player gets further and further into the game, they become more immersed in the plot of the game and often times become emotionally connected to the characters. This goes along the same lines as reading a novel. You get through a chapter and want to know what is going to happen next. You can sense the building climax through a novel just as you can through Halo or Bio Shock. While I wouldn’t want to have video games take over the classroom, I am very open to using pop culture and media with my students and I realize that video games can be used to enhance one’s classroom, and the power it can have when used correctly.

Parting quote (taken from Confessions of an Aca/Fan):
“Our approach respects all that is inventive and exploratory in play while challenging students to grow intellectually. If we succeed in these goals, we hope to offer a model for what a good learning game should be, one that resolves the contradictory demands schools place on this emerging technology.”

I'm Your Biggest Fan!!!

2009-01-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

As I was sitting here at my computer, I was trying to think about when I first remember becoming a fan of something. Back in the mid 1990s, I was talking with my past babysitter named Crystal. Crystal would bring over CDs every time she would come over to baby sit, and my three younger sisters and I thought that it was the most awesome thing ever (we only owned cassettes). One evening, Crystal brought over the Hanson CD, and she told me that since she had a crush on Taylor Hanson, I should have a crush on Zac Hanson (the youngest of the trio who was only a year older than I am). After a few minutes, I agreed and voila! I had my first celebrity crush and from that point on, I was officially Hanson’s biggest fan. At every gas station, I kept my eyes peeled for the latest issue of Teen Bop or Tiger Beat, which often featured the band on their covers and included inserts of Hanson posters. Although my mother warned me not to tape the posters to my walls, I just had to prove to my friends what a hardcore fan I really was. I can’t even come close to estimating how many hours I spend listening to their original tape and just HAD to have the new Hanson Christmas cassette as well. From then on, every time I would see Crystal in the neighborhood, we would spend a few minutes talking about how much we LOVED Hanson. Many of my friends didn’t understand why I liked this group of young guys so much, and often poked fun at me for it, but I didn’t care. If they didn’t want to share my interest with me, I had other people who I could dump my feeling and emotions about the band on. While I slowly lost interest in Hanson and eventually took down the magazine posters, this was my introduction to perpetual fandom that includes many areas of fandom.

Now, there is no way I can discuss what I am a fan of without including the incredible Harry Potter series. My grandmother introduced me to J.K. Rowling’s novels when I was in junior high school, and I became instantly absorbed in them. My younger sister, Lauren, also found that she was lusting over the series herself, so it was definitely to my advantage to have a fellow Potter fan living under the same roof as myself. Lauren and I would spend hours upon hours reading and rereading the same set of Harry Potter books until the next one would come out. Many of my friends read it too, and I LOVED the heated discussions and arguments over whether or not Sirius or Dumbledore were either actually dead, or if Snape really was one of the bad guys, and ultimately would Harry of Voldemort be the conqueror in the final battle between good and evil? It’s amazing how quickly the world-wide obsession with J.K. Rowling’s books spread, and how even though the series has been finished, people are still losing themselves in the hallways of Hogwarts. According to the Wikipedia article, “a March 2007 study showed that "Harry Potter" is the most searched-for fan fiction subject online.” While I have never participated in any type of fan fiction, it doesn’t come as a surprise to me that there are so many people who are so completely absorbed in the witchcraft and wizardry that they look for other stories written about the familiar characters to keep getting their fill. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series is another viral series of books that is spreading across the world. I have found myself wandering the streets of Forks, WA many times during my daydreams, and love to have discussions with other adults who made their way through all four novels.

In relation to education and popular culture, one can really map out the trends from generation to generation. While there are many timeless examples of fandom (i.e., Star Wars, Star Trek, Anime, Manga, etc.), many of them can be pinpointed to a specific starting point and could be used in many ways to assist educators. I feel that this would be particularly helpful in a social studies classroom when they are discussing what was popular a long time ago and how people felt about those different celebrities, hobbies, genres and fashions. I think that as teachers, we can really use this to our advantage to get students to realize how important popular culture and being a fan of something is and how it directly relates to them. For example: I am going to be a high school or middle school English teacher hopefully within the next 6 months. When I am choosing a classic text such as The Great Gatsby or something similar, if my students question as to why it is important for them to read it and how will this (by their standards) ancient piece of literature relate to them in the twenty-first century, I can bring up the likes of Harry Potter, Twilight, and other popular texts to help them understand that the feelings they have for these books are quite similar to those who read the classic texts when they were more modern.

I will again end this post with my favorite quote from this week’s reading regarding the relationship that didn’t happen between Harry and Hermione:

“My comments weren't directed at the shippers who acknowledged that Harry/Hermione was a long shot but loved the idea of them together. It was directed at the "militant" shippers who insisted that there was overwhelming canon proof and that everyone else was too blind to see it. You were delusional; you saw what you wanted to see and you have no one to blame for that but yourselves.”

A good place to start....

2009-01-23T21:46:00.000-08:00

Going into this class, I thought that I knew more than I actually do about incorporating popular culture into my future classes and lessons. I hadn’t really put much thought into how I would do it to make sure that I am not just adding media and other types of popular culture just to take up time just because it is out there and available. After reading the first three chapters in White and Walkers’ “Tooning In,” I have started to think more critically about how I want to use popular culture to enhance my future students’ education. Since I am a future English teacher, I am starting to realize that there are many areas where popular culture can make a good lesson plan even better, by doing more than just pairing a film to its literature equivalent. Recently, I found out that I will be teaching Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to a ninth grade honors English class, and I have been constantly thinking about how I can take this ancient text and make it more accessible for today’s youth. While I could just pop in the modern film version “Romeo + Juliet” starring Leo DiCaprio and Clara Danes and leave it at that (hoping that the fourteen and fifteen years olds understood the film well enough to get the gist of what Shakespeare wrote hundreds of years ago), there is much more that can be done to get the internal cogs moving inside of my young students’ minds.

I wholeheartedly agree as a future educator that students must be given the tools to investigate “how media and the mass-produced icons of popular culture situate us into relations of power by shaping our emotional, political, social, and material lives” (p.23). Since it is quite possible that students don’t have models at home who push them to take a more critical look at the impact of popular culture, it is important for educators to inform them at school.

While I am definitely all for incorporating popular culture into the classroom, I found it very interesting to read the arguments and complaints from those who strongly disapprove of using popular culture as a tool to enhance modern-day students’ education. In particular, I thought that the discussion in chapter three concerning Disney was fascinating. I am definitely in agreement with Giroux when he says, “Disney’s animated films should be incorporated into schools as serious objects of social knowledge and critical analysis” (p. 25). I do think that some of the messages that Disney conveys to today’s youth can be stereotypical, and can push its young viewers to see the world in a false light, but when taught to view this type of media with a sense of skepticism and to think about it critically, there shouldn’t be that much to worry about. In comparison to Giroux, White and Walker discuss how the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) view Disney, and why they believe it should be boycotted. I attempted to look up the website myself to see the twenty-three reasons for why ERLC is against Disney, but the link no longer works. For those who want to view the CNN article, the URL in the book is incorrect and should read: www.cnn.com/US/9706/18/Baptists.Disney. It still surprises me how many people are out there who are so intolerant of different lifestyles and look down upon those who approve of these existences. The ERLC should be reminded that “Educators must provide students with the tools to critically analyze how the texts from Disney and other media purveyors are constructed and construct viewers” (p. 26). Though this one group may not see the benefit of using this type of popular culture in the classroom, this whole argument is an excellent reason for why future educators must continue to fight the general opinions of the public/parents/school boards to make sure that their students get the chance to have the tools that will enable them to make these important decisions on how to view popular culture themselves!

Popular culture plays such a large part in our students’ lives that it is necessary for us educators to help guide them to the tools they need to use to sort out the information they are getting from the media and such. I will end this post with my favorite quote from the assigned reading:

“As adults they try to restore the popular culture that was familiar to them and as a result the popular culture created by the next generation sometimes becomes a source of fear and concern; the culture gap, in fact is a generation gap” (p.32).

CI 5150

2009-01-22T08:56:00.001-08:00

I found that it would be easier for me to just continue on using the same blog for CI 5150, so everything posted from this date on (22 January 2009) will be for 5150! Feel free to browse my past posts if you like from last fall's CI 5472.

Creating Monsters in the Media

2008-12-13T22:12:00.000-08:00

Kate Kleinberg
CI 5472 Final Paper
Thom Swiss
14 December 2008

Creating Monsters in Media

Whenever someone flips on a television show, or pops a film into the DVD player, she is instantly bombarded with vision of how people should be viewed, and are constantly having their values and opinions changed by how the media portrays people. While it seems like mostly women characters fall victim to being scrutinized and judged, those who are in charge of the editing of reality programming or those who take creative liberties with how they put together films or television shows decide who their audience will see as good, and who they will see as villainous. Through reality television shows, such as America’s Next Top Model and The Apprentice, and a film adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, one can see different ways in which monsters are created by the media.

Reality television is one area of the media where there is a good deal of editing of raw footage to enhance the drama within the scenes, interactions, and tensions between characters. This is done to make sure that the most sensational bits and pieces of the show make it into the homes of millions of viewers each week. In supermodel Tyra’s hit show, American Top Model (ANTM), thousands of girls try out to win a premier modeling agency contract, and a photo spread in a popular teen magazine. In 2005, Guy Trebay wrote an article about this “least-real” reality series in the New York Times stating that, “Each Wednesday a challenge is posed: Is Nik too shy or Kim too butch or Nicole too passive-aggressive or Lisa too quirky (and sloshed) to make it in the cutthroat world of high fashion modeling? . . . The truth is that the winner is never Nik or Kim or Nicole or Lisa.” Not only does Trebay mean in that the those who are more offbeat do not win in the show, but in the modeling world in general. When these contestants can be described by only one or two different defining characteristics, it just goes to show that the editors picked an angle to show these particular women from and concentrate on showing moments that enhance their typecast. In the most current season of ANTM, one of the girls named Elina was an animal rights activist, and was what most people would consider as a representation of a strong woman. She held her ground, let people know when she was upset or angry, and did not let others push her over. Because of her characteristics, she was made out to be a bitch in comparison to the rest of the girls (especially up against the innocent girl who was from a small town in Alaska, and the awkward girl whose family immigrated to the United States from France and was home schooled), because of how here beliefs tended to clash with the other women living in the same house as her. When looking at the media representations of how women are supposed to be portrayed on television and in films, Elina become the other type of women (the villain) that the media likes to represent to their audiences.

While researching the monsters within reality television, I found that there are many sites where authors of blogs and other sites have created their top-ten list of the contestants who they love to hate in television shows such as Survivor, The Amazing Race, and Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. The number one villain to date on almost every one of the lists was Omarosa from The Apprentice. Although I was not a follower of this program, Omarosa’s name was one that I was familiar with due to the publicity she was gaining from participating in the show. One description of her on a top-ten list was as follows: “The biggest love to hate reality television/celebrity is of course Omarosa from The Apprentice who refused to hold back or let anyone stand in her way. She swears she is a nice person, she just has a one rack mind and that is to be the best and she will run you over to accomplish that goal” (http://www.realitytvmagazine.com/omarosa/). Think about it: If Omarosa was a man, would he have gotten the same attention for going for the gold? Would he have made it to the top of this list? The men who are included on this list were ones who were very pushy verbally and physically. Apparently audiences in this modern day still are not completely ready to see a woman in a position of such power, so that she is made out to be the bad guy in the show. Since those who do the editing know (or believe they know) what their audience wants to see, they will make sure that every time Omarosa did something not stereotypical of the sexy, obedient housewife, they focused in on it.
This ten minute clip from the celebrity season of The Apprentice shows how people react to Omarosa’s fierce and pushy way of getting business done. Even though there are other women on the show who are trying to win the same competition could have easily been shown in a more negative light, the producers of the show used what they already knew of Omarosa from previous seasons to get the most sensational storyline possible.

In an article titled “How Reality TV Fakes it: Phony quotes, bogus crushes, enhanced villains,” authors James Poneiwozik and Jeanne McDowell discuss how those who produce reality television programs get their contestants to do and say what they want them to. An interesting find in this article had to do with how they edit storylines and even dub what contestants say in interviews. “There are many ways of using footage to shape a story. . . If a date was dull or lukewarm, the editors would juice the footage by running scenes out of order or out of context. To make it seem like a man was bored, they would cut from his date talking to a shot of him looking around and unresponsive--even though it was taken while she was in the restroom and he was alone.” While many people get sucked into a reality television addiction, it should be known that even though these events all may have happened at one point or another, they might not line up just how it does on the silver screen. The article also stated “viewers want suspense. The problem is that makers of reality TV have the power to imply or outright fabricate things about real people who have to carry their fake reputations into their real lives.” In reality television, those who do the editing hold the key to how the majority of the millions of viewers will view an individual who sign a contract to be a part of the series.

By taking Capote’s In Cold Blood and digging deeply into the text, viewing the films and reading between the lines, one can see the conversion of Perry Smith and Richard “Dick” Hickock from human beings with troubled lives to the monstrous forms, which they create themselves, with the help of the residents of Holcomb, Kansas and the directors of the films “In Cold Blood” and “Capote.” Throughout the novel, the audience also sees the inner struggles of Smith and how he reacts to Hickock’s obsession with going out of his way to kill stray dogs and Hickock’s tendencies leaning towards being a sexual predator. Smith is already under the impression that his partner in crime is a monster. Not only in Capote’s written words do we see these two as contemporary monsters, but by comparing the few films which directors made under the influence of the Clutter family murder, one can see another way in which Hickock and Smith are transformed into less than human. Each individual director of the three films, “Capote,” and “In Cold Blood” has a different take on how they want the murderers portrayed, and will ultimately influence their audiences’ view on the men who murdered an unsuspecting, innocent family. Do those who become monsters really even know of the changes that they are going through and are they able to see what they have become in the eyes of those who see them? Are they aware of their “evilness”? The long debated argument of nature versus nurture comes into play when trying to determine whether one creates a monster or if monstrous qualities and traits are apparent from birth. For audiences to distinguish the change from human to animalistic, one must have the ability to identify and recognize how local community members play an important role in the transformation, be able to see the psychological factors that come into play, and have the capability to make a distinction between the different view points concerning Hickock and Smith which directors Richard Brooks, and Bennett Millerbring up in their films.

Truman Capote’s introduction of the non-fiction novel showed the world how difficult it can be to make a strong distinction between what is good and what is evil. The new genre also brought about the idea of psychological killers; those who were often forgotten in classical literature now find themselves in the spotlight of more recent texts, such as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Billie Louise Jones described Capote’s change in writing styles from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to In Cold Blood, as such: “[He] has moved from an explorer of the underside of the soul to an explorer of the underside of society. . . There, the monsters were of the mind; here, they—Perry Smith and Dick Hickock—are real” (106). What made Perry Smith and Dick Hickock much more horrifying to Capote’s audiences in comparison to other monsters, such as the monster of Frankenstein and Dracula, was that these men could have lived down the street from anyone; they could have been any of the readers’ neighbors at one point. Unlike Frankenstein and Dracula, these characters could actually come though the pages and continue to be monsters in the real world. For as hideous and terrifying these typical monsters look, many find it more difficult to remain not frightened of Smith and Hickock. These men were made of flesh and blood, rather than the creation of a novelist, which in turn made it possible for any family in America to have experienced what the Clutter family went through. It frightened Capote’s readers to witness such a crime because of how real it was, and it was even more difficult for his readers and the actual citizens of Holcomb to have a sense of closure with this murder because of how human Smith and Hickock looked to them.

From the time that Smith was a little boy, he has lived a rough life with little or no emotional support from his caretakers. He grew up in a large family, only to have all but one, his oldest sister Dorothy, abandon him at one point or another. Many of his siblings had committed suicide or died, and his mother was an alcoholic who drank herself to death. Even after all of this, Dorothy did leave him when she found out about what he did to the Clutters, explaining that she believed that he would “just as soon kill you as he would shake your hand” (1:19), and that he just shows his sensitive side to get people to sympathize with him. He had also had the drawback of being disfigured from a motorcycle accident, which left him with a very noticeable limp. He lived in an orphanage at one point and was beaten by the Sisters with a flashlight for wetting the bed. Perry Smith was also at a disadvantage because he was half Indian, which followed him all the way to death row at the Lansing jail. The warden at the jail thought of himself as doing Smith. He told Capote, “You know, I didn't know where to count your boy at first... him being half-Indian. But I did him a favor. I counted him as a white man.” Even in the 1960’s Americans were still slightly prejudice of those who did not share the same skin color as them, so to categorize him as white gave Smith a minor benefit. When he was born, he was not initially evil, and his sister even described him as “her little doll,” but somewhere along his unfortunate childhood and adolescence his disposition went sour.

For one to become a monster, it takes more than just the individual transformation. Many times it takes the force of a whole community to place a monstrous title on those who commit the crime for the convicted to actually lose their humanistic qualities and turn into an animal. The day that the Clutters were discovered by neighbors was a day that changed the whole atmosphere of the small town of Holcomb. Before the murders happened, the peaceful town did not have to think twice about locking their doors at night, but the following morning, everyone went out and changed their locks and became suspicious of those who they thought they knew. Brian Conniff wrote that before the capture of Smith and Hickock, the town’s “unfearful” “life could not be restored until after the killers had been found and punished” and that by changing their locks and being suspicious of everyone in their community, the citizens of Holcomb were “trying to keep out some kind of invader from ‘outside’ the community, some kind of creature as alien as it was frightning”(81). The townspeople were looking for their own monster, resembling that of the beast in Shelley’s Frankenstein. Conniffs states that like Smith’s sister, the neighborhood needed to “believe that Perry’s life [was] completely different from the lives of those other ‘respectable’ people,” and that they must “convince [themselves] that it is only people like Perry, ‘isolated’ and ‘animal,’ who are driven by a lonely search for distant ‘mirages’” (82). Naturally, people want to keep themselves completely separated from those who commit awful crimes, and have no relation with them, even if the murderer is of their own family, which in turn causes the outcasts to be pushed farther away. When the citizens of Holcomb saw Smith and Hickock for the first time, “just about everyone, anxious for the display of the ‘hidden animals,’ anticipated some kind of worthwhile spectacle . . . At the sight of Smith and Hickock, everyone simply fell silent, ‘as though amazed to find them humanly shaped’” (85). The public viewing of the men who killed their well-liked neighbors did not prove to be as comforting as they had hoped. Since they were “not so reassuringly ‘alien’” (86), it became much more difficult for the community to accept that they were caught and that they were safe again. Smith and Hickock looked so normal and civilized that Holcomb did not find closure in the guilty verdicts placed upon the men. Because of their isolation from the dreadful people, the citizens of Holcomb help in the transformation which Smith and Hickock go through. Though many people of this small town contributed to the creation of these monsters, one individual stands out more than the rest. Detective Alvin Dewey, the head of the case in Holcomb, makes the killers as animalistic as possible. While this is not on purpose, it is plausible for one to believe that there could be no one with human characteristic who would have done such an awful deed. When looking through crime scene photographs, he searches for clues that would lead him to the creatures that did this to his friends. When digging for clues, he investigates how the murder could have played out. Conniff writes, “The killer would have had to possess the kind of rationality that . . . distinguishes people like those of his community from animals and madmen” (83).

One major aspect that distorts this difference between the good and the bad was Smith’s immediate regret for what happened on the night of November 14, 1959. Towards the end of the robbery, Smith recalls during the interrogation scene not wanting to go back into the house. He said, “I though, Why don’t I walk off? Walk to the highway, hitch a ride. I sure Jesus didn’t want to go back in that house. And yet . . . It was like I wasn’t a part of it. More as though I was reading a story. And I had to know what was going to happen. Then end. So I went back upstairs” (240). There was something that drew him back in to commit the crime, but it becomes clear that Smith did not even want to finish the task at hand. Hollowell describes it as, “odd moments of quiet, moments of hesitation when the whole scheme might have been ended without anyone dying” (102). Smith just wanted to go home and get away from what they did. Smith shows concern for the Clutter family as he bound them with ropes by putting the mattress box on “the floor for the comfort of Mr. Clutter,” (241) and also placed a pillow under Kenyon’s head. During this scene, Smith also worries for the women of the house and does not trust Hickock to be with them alone. Smith tells Detective Dewey, “I didn’t want to leave him alone with the girl . . . Then he says to me, as we’re heading along the hall toward Nancy’s room, ‘I’m gonna bust that little girl.’ And I said, ‘Uh-huh. But you’ll have to kill me first.’ Now that’s something I despise. Anyone who can’t control themselves sexually” (243). This example shows one of the many characteristics of Hickock which Smith cannot stand. It is obvious that Smith does not trust Hickock one bit, and even Miller shows his audience that during an interview session that takes place in Death Row. Smith tells Capote, “[Hickock]'s naturally mendacious. Not to be trusted. If he had a hundred dollars he'd steal a stick of chewing gum.”

From the beginning of Smith and Hickock’s relationship, Smith was at one point impressed by Hickock’s fictional story, but always looks at him with a bit of disgust. Also in Miller’s “Capote,” the viewers can see right away the regret which Smith has about killing the Clutter family, because when with Capote, he cries over what he had done. Most monsters do not feel or show any regret or sadness over the crime they have committed, or guilt over the pain that they have inflicted on not only the immediately effected family, but on also the community which surrounds them. Many experts now believe that Smith had a psychological issue and that he was not in control over what he was doing. Smith said to Capote, “I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.” Some argue that this was a “brain explosion” and was unable to control his actions. What makes the line of distinction even hazier is when Smith is asked directly about whether or not he feels sorry for what he has done. He responds with, “Am I sorry? If that’s what you mean—I am not. I don’t feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we’re not human. I’m human enough to feel sorry for myself. But that’s all” (291). Smith flatly states that he is not human, and recognizes himself as a monster, just as the rest of Holcomb, Kansas does and everyone else who was aware of the gruesome crime. Did Smith come to this conclusion on his own terms, or were his self-images influenced by those who live in the community? For a man to hear that he is a monster for all of his life and treated poorly, eventually he will grow up to be that monster which everyone says he really is.

The films “Capote,” and “In Cold Blood,” show how the views of the audiences can be molded according to how the directors feel the murders should be portrayed. In Bennett Miller’s “Capote,” the audiences walk away with a sense of injustice. Because of Truman Capote’s close, almost intimate-like relationship with Smith, one almost wishes that in the end he would not have the death sentence carried out. On the other hand, Capote did not have the same relationship with Hickock that he had with Smith, so he was still portrayed as a rough, unlikable man, who the audience still thinks deserves the death penalty. On the other hand, in “In Cold Blood,” the director has his audience walking away from the film with the idea that justice was served and that these two evil monsters got what they deserved. This film closely follows the actual novel by Capote, but the director got the final say in how these two murders would be seen in the eyes of audiences for generations to come.

Whether it be reality television, primetime programming, or timeless literature that makes its way to Hollywood for the big screen, it is ultimately up to those who are in charge of what makes it out to the public to decide what or who should be considered evil. Many times it is because characters or contestants break the stereotypical norms that are supposed to confine these men and women into their places. In the multiple versions of Capote’s In Cold Blood, the audience is reminded of how these two men could have been anyone just walking down the street. What makes them monstrous is the fact that they do not look like murders, but more like one’s next-door neighbor. There are no telltale signs that outwardly show that these men are made of evil and would kill an entire family over a safe that they heard about from a third party while in jail. On the other hand, villains are created by the action of strong women, which ends up with them receiving the label “bitch” or “evil” just because they fight for what they believe in. It is from those men and women who are working behind the scenes that millions of media users find themselves identifying with or “loving to hate” specific characters on the screen.

Analyzing Ads

2008-12-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

I came across this first advertisement while skimming through my fiance’s magazine titled The Economist. This ad is for Singapore Airlines, and depicts an attractive couple being sitting in very oversized luxury airplane seats that look more like a sofa, and has the ability to stretch out more like a recliner. This couple looks to be working on a project that stretches across the two of them, and the woman has out her laptop sitting on the seat with her. A well-dressed Asian lady is serving them, and they all look happy and are smiling. The text above the picture reads, “The First All-Business Class Service Between The USA & Asia.” There is text below the picture that says Daily Non-stop Service. Experience The Most Spacious Business Class Seat The World Has Ever Seen.” This advertisement depicts the people who would fly business class as white, well-dressed people, and the airline attendants as Asian women. Because of the magazine that this ad is in, the intended audience they are trying to reach out to are wealthy business people who travel a lot between Asia and the US. Even though the man and the woman appear to be equal, the advertiser still idealizes their genders by having the woman dressed very feminine-like, and she is slender and showing off a fair amount of skin. The man has lots of hair and is also dressed well. Neither one is overweight or has any noticeable flaws.

The second advertisement that I would like to analyze has been found frequently within the last year amongst the pages of the popular men’s magazine titled Maxim. The ad is for Trojan condoms and can be viewed to the left of this text (or at http://amysrobot.com/files/trojan_ad.JPG). This ad is somewhat striking because of how is compares men who do not use condoms to protect themselves and their partners from sexually transmitted infections to dirty pigs. The line at the bottom of the ad reads, “evolve. Choose the one who uses a condom every time.” While this is ad is mainly seen in men’s magazines, there is a message to the women who may page through Maxim and run across this ad, because it is asking women if they would want to sleep with a dirty pig who does not use protection, or would they rather have sex with the handsome man who does use Trojan brand condoms every time. This ad also tells the men that if they have a condom with them (or at least use one), they would have a chance at getting with any of the three beautiful women who are surrounded by swine-like men. Like the Singapore Airlines ad that I mentioned above, the genders of men and women area idealized because all they show in the Trojan advertisement are attractive people.

Lastly, I just wanted to quickly comment/rant on/about the new (Starbucks)Red campaign. The ad makes you think about others as not being so different from yourself, and why wouldn't you want to help out by buying a cup of coffee? While the ad is very much pushing the idea of helping others, it falls back on telling their audience that when you help others, you help yourself. I guess this is probably one of the better ways to advertise this in this very egocentric country, because many people will not do things if they don't somehow benefit from it as well. The following ad gets it's audience to think that if he or she goes into Starbucks through the holidays, Starbucks will donate 5 cents from everyone's drink to Africa. I am just a little upset/sickened by this campaign because when I went into Starbucks the other day, I found out that the cup of coffee that I had purchased did not count towards the drinks that 5 cents are being donated from. In actuality, there are only 3 drinks on the menu that actually count, and they are the three most expensive drinks on the menu! I'm just going to leave it at that, or else this could turn into a very lengthy post... but feel free to view the (Starbucks)Red ad below!

Popular Music

2008-11-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Labels or Love
Fergie

Shopping for labels, shopping for love
Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of
Shopping for labels, shopping for love
Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of

I already know what my addiction is
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
I shop for purses while I walks out the door
Don’t cry, buy a bag and get over it

And I’m not concerned with all the politics
It’s a lot of men, I know I could find another
All I know is that I’m always happy
When I walk out the store, store

I guess I’m supercalifragisexy
Nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, diss him
Tryna to walk a mile in my kicks

Love’s like a runway but which one do I love more?
No emotional baggage just big bags willed with Dior
Love’s like a runway so what’s all the fussing for?
Let’s stop chasing those boys and shop some more

I know I might come off as negative
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
But relationships are often so hard to tame
And Prada dresses never broken my heart before

And ballin’s something that I’m fed up with
I’ma do the damn thing, watch me do the damn thing
‘Cause I know that my credit card
Will help me put out the flames, flames

I guess I’m supercalifragisexy
Nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, diss him
Tryna to walk a mile in my kicks

Love’s like a runway but which one do I love more?
No emotional baggage just big bags willed with Dior
Love’s like a runway so what’s all the fussing for?
Let’s stop chasing those boys and shop some more

Gucci, Fendi, Prada purses, purchasing them finer things
Men they come a dime a dozen, just give me them diamond rings
I’m into a lotta bling, Cadallic, Chanel, and Coach
Fellas boast but they can’t really handle my female approach

Buying things is hard to say, rocking Christian Audigier
Monolo or Polo, taking photos of my Cartier
So we can’t go all the way, I know you might hate it but
I’ma shop for labels while them ladies lay and wait for love

Love’s like a runway but which one do I love more?
No emotional baggage just big bags willed with Dior
Love’s like a runway so what’s all the fussing for?
Let’s stop chasing those boys and shop some more

Shopping for labels, shopping for love
Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of
Shopping for labels, shopping for love
Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of

This song by Fergie represents how some people view today’s culture. Labels or Love was introduced to the mass public earlier this year with the release of the hit film Sex in the City that some might claim portrays women in a negative way. In Labels or Love, women are seen as materialistic by some, while others might see this as women being seen as independent, and do not need men to control their lives. These women are hard working, and earn enough money to spend on frivolous, expensive accessories from Gucci to Chanel. While these are not labels that I could ever afford, it give hope to women that even though they cannot depend on men, they can always depend on what they purchase for themselves. This song is not telling the general audience that women must make a choice between love and labels, but that men are not dependable, and that they should never depend on any one but themselves.

Even though this type of music is sometimes looked down upon because of how popular it is, listening to the popular songs from the different decades can really show its audience what was going on and the fads that were going on during that time. I had a hard time growing up because I was brought up listening to country music, so I was never up to date when it came to music until recently since no one in my social circle listened to country music. But even comparing the country music of my childhood (think "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus) to the country music today (i.e., "Love Story" by Taylor Swift), many of the same themes are still there, only they are made more accessible to today's audience. Now I'm in a social circle where the Twin Cities radio station The Current is the more popular choice of music, while often my dirty secret of sometimes listening to KDWB, or that I still listen to country on K102 stays hidden.

“If that woman does later declare "Bailamos" great, that statement and its qualifiers allow her to enter into a social discourse that pop creates. But such judgments aren't adequate in capturing the full experience of loving music, which is as much about breaking down distinctions as determining them” (Powers, 237). Just as Powers stated in her article on unpopular music, When someone decides that Labels or Love is a great song and likes it, it allows them to enter a social group that she may not have been in before. It's kind of like watching a television show. For example: This year, I have found myself addicted to the television series "Gossip Girl," though I rarely tell people that I watch it out of embarrassment. One day, I heard some girls in my class talking about the show, and I admitted to watching it and it opened up a new social door for me.

"Anyone, regardless of class or educational background, is capable of understanding this body of material, for it positions itself as being neither superior to nor beyond the comprehension of the average person. The seeming simplicity of its language and musical technique enables the songs to be readily absorbed and transmitted to others" (Sanjek, 162). I found this information from Sanjek to be very interesting when comparing it to Labels or Love. While Sanjek is focusing on folk music here, at that time, it was the popular music of the period. As with past folk music, Fergie's song is meant to be able to be experienced by the average person, and should be easily transmitted to others. This song would not be a part of popular music if most people could not understand her message. Although I rarely understand or relate to the meaning of many of the popular rap songs that are played on the radio today, I can still understand and see the message that they are trying to get across to their audiences. Many times, artists are trying to reach out to a particular audience (unlike the Folk musicians who try to be understood by the average person) or age groups. Very rarely do you see one's grandmother listening to the likes of 50 Cent or TPain. It would be curious to for someone to do a study on how the elderly members of the community relate to the lyrics of songs from today's artists... I would like to argue that the folk music that is supposed to be easily accessible by the average person is not always so. Take the average urban American. How often would he or she actually be able to relate to living the simple life in the country? While, yes, the music is easy to understand, the connections between the majority of Americans and folk music just is not there.

As of right now, I cannot pull up the other readings from WebVista to comment on since it seems to be down for Web construction, I will have to finish the last paragraph of this posting later!

Fox 9 News

2008-11-09T17:11:00.000-08:00

Local News Log:

Fox 9 5 o’clock News

NEWS Stabbing in Rochester- 150sec.
SPORTS Vikings Win against Packers- 120sec.
WEATHER Weather, it’s cold- 65 sec.
ADS COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
NEWS National Transportation Safety Board discusses 35W bridge and the MNDOT Firing 45sec.
NEWS 8 year old confesses to murder- 30 sec
NEWS (INTERNATIONAL) Nuclear Sub testing in Russia- 30 sec
NEWS USS Freedom combat boat- 20 sec
NEWS Lake Superior Fitzgerald shipwreck anniversary- 20 sec
NEWS Obama and the economy- 110 sec
COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
NEWS Unemployment Rate, NY job fair- 15 sec
CONSUMER Economy Cutting back on spending, stretching the dollar, budgets- 50 sec
CONSUMER Snow blowers- 30 sec
WEATHER Snow records across the US 35 sec
WEATHER Weather- 195 sec
NEWS Macy’s Christmas display downtown MPLS- 10 sec
NEWS Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats- 20 sec
COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
SPORTS Viking’s win- 160 sec
SPORTS Chicago/Tennessee- 30 sec
SPORTS Detroit/JAX- 30 sec
ENTERTAINMENT Rubik’s cube tournament- 45 sec

This local news show used “real people” interviews to appeal to the audience. Most people interviewed were younger (didn’t look older than 30), and the news stories were focused on the themes that are concerning the public today (i.e., the economy, President-elect Obama and his plans, the Vikings win against the Packers), and the sensational news (i.e., Murders). The way they edited the section on the woman who was fired from MNDOT for various reasons during the collapse of the 35W bridge was shown sitting alone on a park bench, making her look isolated and cast aside from the department, though she narrowly escaped having to go to jail.

Here is an activity that I came up with to teach critical analysis of the news to my future students:

The purpose of this activity is to enhance the students’ understanding of the news and how different biases and the non-inclusion of certain perspectives can alter the news that the public receives. The first step in this activity is to show the class one the video on news stations and how they distort stories from my first blog post. In this video, a girl’s comment and opinion on the new school uniform policy is edited to match what the big media conglomerations want the comment to sound like. This short clip shows her retaliation against this news station.

Then, I would have the students go online and find two different local news sources and one national news source. Then students are to pick a hot topic or a recent national news event, and read an article, or watch a video from each of those sources on that event. Students will compare and contrast the articles and videos from these different sources and write down the similarities and differences. They will answer the following questions after reading/viewing the articles/videos: What are the differences between sources? What are the similarities? What does each of the sources emphasize? Why do you think there are differences from source to source? How do the local sources differ? How are they the same? How do the local sources differ from the national sources?

Portrayal of Women in Media- youtube style

2008-11-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

The following clips were found on youtube while I was looking for how women were portrayed in the media. While many of the clips were short pieces from television shows, and music videos, there were a few that showed up that were more like short documentaries or commentaries on how the media thinks that women should be portrayed. The video that I think hit me the most was the one titled "Images of Women in the Media" (the 3rd video clip I have posted) and how for the longest time, there have only been two different representations of women in media: The Sex Symbol and The Homemaker. This 9 minute film goes on to compare and contrast these two representations and it's almost scary to see how similar the sex symbol ads are to the homemaker ads.

The fourth film I have posted goes with this quote from Richard Beach, "These representations have resulted in adolescent females engaging in unhealthy eating habits, anorexia, and bulimia, with long-term negative effects on their bodies" (Teaching Media Literacy, p. 48). In this short film, there are photos of super models on the runway, and photo shoots of stick-thin women that are made accessible to young girls in magazines and on television, and these representations of women make the girls believe that this is what they are supposed to look like, and that this is the only way that society will accept them. Film #8 also goes along with this as it shows images of sexy, ideal women, but you cannot see their faces. It shows young women that the only thing that matters, or what people care about is how your body looks.

1.) Desperate Housewives

2.) One Tree Hill

3.) Images of Women in the Media- site member

4.) Media and the Effects on Women- site member

5.) Pussy Cat Dolls “Buttons”

6.) Sexism Sells -- But We're Not Buying It

7.) Women and Media

8.) Women in Media- site memeber

9.) The representation of women in commercials- site member

This video is a compilation of many different commercials, and shows how women are viewed and idealized by members of society. Women are to be housewives, personal servants to their husbands, dress sexy, and be able to complete all necessary tasks with a smile.

10.) Banned Commercials - Beer Makes Women Beautiful

Media Ethnography

2008-10-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

For this week’s blog entry, I decided to focus on a thread that went on during Wednesday night’s final presidential debate between Obama and McCain. The setting of this chat is within a well known website for brides-to-be called theknot.com. There is an area for discussion, and a great variety of boards that people can chat through. Though most of the conversations are about everyone’s future weddings, and questions they have, a lot of the time the chats are not always wedding related. On the local Minneapolis board, which I have been a part of since I got engaged back in April, a vast amount of topics are discussed, ranging from wedding etiquette, to personal problems the women are having (i.e., a girl on the board’s fiancé was recently in a bad motorcycle accident, and it looks like he will have to be in a wheelchair for awhile. The other women on the boards have been helping her cope by letting her vent whenever she needs to, and have even put together a basket of stuff to help her and her family through this tough time), to the most recent political issues. On Wednesday, I decided to just “lurk” on the board, instead of being as active as I usually am, and just watch how those who were participating in the board reacted throughout this final presidential debate. The link to this specific thread can be found here.

During the Vice Presidential debate, many of the same users of this forum discussed how they thought the debate went and what they felt was ridiculous and what wasn’t. During this most recent debate, it is obvious as to which side the majority of the users are on, politically speaking. The women who were actively participating in this thread were: chaoticmum, woohoo2, kissinyou, Payne2b2008, Emma1125, LittleSweetie, LuckyNo7, Ahmed’s Girl, JenniferlovesJordan, jaimes57, ksugar526, anitalynn, and littlemissflip. All most all of these women are all members of theknot.com who post regularly throughout the day, but there are a few who tend to “lurk” more on the boards and only post every once and awhile.

I know from previous political conversations that the woman who goes by woohoo2 is more conservative than the rest of the board, and rarely criticizes Obama because she knows that the majority of the people who actively participate on the board are Obama supporters. So to see her comments against those who are clearly rooting for the DFL to win the election is interesting. Early on in the thread she says, “But he seems to be doing well when he's sitting. He's older, but then again you can't predict life. He might live to be in his 90's and with a sharp mind. Obama could have something unexpected happen and have his life changed. I don't put as much stock into age as others though. Nice way to dodge the question john. geez louise. I hope obama owns up to his commericals.” She never outright criticizes Obama without criticizing McCain at the same time.

The woman who goes by chaoticmum is the one who started the thread, and is very passionate about her political views. Even in her “signature” she has an “Obama Mama” bumper sticker. She is very up to date on what is going on in the political world, and knows where each candidate stands on the issues. During this debate, chaoticmum took to criticizing McCain’s physical features, along with many of the other women who took a moment to point out the excessive blinking that was going on during the debate on McCain’s side.

Near the end of the thread, anitalynn pops up and posts some of the points that she found to be very important, and discussed how and why she believed that Obama should be declared the winner for this debate. She says:

“I watched the debate over at my in-law's house. With 2 of their family friends- both are SD 41 DFL Party Chairpeople, and one is a teacher on top of that. We had a great time... :D Obama looked and sounded Presidential. He had clear, cohesive thoughts. He made statements, laid out a plan, had bullet points to support his plans. McCain had none of the above. I kept screaming at Obama during the whole talk about 'smearing' each other. McCain-Palin has been smearing Obama's CHARACTER. McCain-Palin's negative campaigns have not been about issues. They have been smearing and negative about Obama's Character. Obama's negative ads have been about POLICY. Obama has not smeared McCain's character, he's smeared McCain's POLICY. 2 very different things, and I wish Obama would have come right out and said it. "I, Barack Obama, have been releasing some negative ads about McCain's policy, because I feel his policy is flawed. I have NOT released negative ads about McCain's character, as he has done about me. McCain's runningmate, Sarah Palin, said I palled around with terrorists. Character misrepresentation and defamation. I have not participated in that type of negative advertising or campaigning" I'm trying to keep personal things out of it. Yes, McCain looks like an older Dubya, with his shaky face and shaky hands and constant stuttering and mouth opening but no sound coming out motions. It drives me nuts. His beady eyes and the way he can't open his mouth. BUGS me. That is not what I base my vote on... It certainly doesn't make me want to look at him for 4 years, but whatev. Obama laid out clear plans, clear intentions, and fully explained the basis of what he would like to establish when he is in the White House. I heard mainly avoidance and subject changing from McCain. I liked this moderator best - I like how the ground rules were established to help keep them on topic. Didn't work completely, but I like how Bob interrupted to explain - the question is this, how do you plan on doing this.” Anitalynn posts even more after this, and defends all of her points so that there are no misunderstanding as to how she views McCain and Obama.

After this post, littlemissflip jumps in to say that she believed that McCain did better during this debate than he had during the last 2. Anitalynn politely questions her, and they converse with one another on their opposing viewpoints.

In conclusion to observing this online thread, I like how this group of women can interact with one another and discuss touchy topics such as the presidential election coming up and stay civil about it. I have witnessed the members of theknot.com’s Minneapolis local board protect each other when someone new, or a mean AE (alter ego) pays a visit to the board. By being somewhat anonymous, these women are able to be more out spoken about their opinions and don’t feel like they are asking stupid questions. The more heated and popular discussion that happen on this board typically goes the same way. There are some women who will be very blunt in their responses, while there are others who will respond to people as they would in real life. I know for me, it is easier for me to have discussions with “strangers” over the internet rather than face-to-face because I am normally a very shy girl who would rather look at her feet then look someone I don’t know in the eye- let along divulge private information to a group of strangers. Through my observations, I have caught on to a pattern of how people respond, and who typically “rules the board.”

Who Decided that I wasn't Beautiful?

2008-10-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Since I have been very interested in the portrayal of women in the media since I started this class, I will continue on the same theme for this entry of my blog.

In the media, women are required to be an image of ideal beauty. They are supposed to be role models for young women across the United States, and show everyone else what Americans see as beautiful and what is not. Women are to be flawless and graceful at all times, and to never be seen in a state where their hair is a mess, and they are not wearing any make up. Women must also be thin. If they are naturally thick, then they must control and manipulate their bodies and eating habits to achieve the desired look. In my last post, I had mentioned the difference between how women were portrayed in the 18th century compared to how they are supposed to look now. Back then, women were glorified if they had some fat to their bodies because it meant that they were wealthy and could afford to eat more than what was necessary for survival. If you were skinny, it meant that you couldn’t afford to eat enough. Now days, the women who are looked up to by girls all across the United States are those who do not look healthy at all. Beach stated in his book: “these representations have resulted in adolescent females engaging in unhealthy eating habits, anorexia, and bulimia, with long term negative effects on their bodies” (pg.48).

In the world of sociology, the concept of how women are portrayed in the media is on the forefront of research. In one particular article, written by Jo Ann M. Buysse and Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert, they discuss women athletes, and how no matter how strong, or how well they excel in their sport, they are always women first. On the other hand, in men’s athletics, the sports stars are seen for what they do, not who they are. Buysse and Embser-Herbert wrote: “the reality of women athletes as strong, skilled, competent competitors is masked by media representations that depict them as good enough to compete against other women but never as good as the top men in the same sport” (pg.68). In sociology, researchers are concerned as to how popular media is affecting young women in regards to how they are portrayed. The message that the sociology discipline seems to be conveying from my limited research is that the medial portrayal of women has a general negative effect. While there are some aspects of the media that condones this kind of behavior, most of the media continues to advertise with the “ideal beauty.” They let everyone who participates in this specific media what is acceptable and what is not.

Constructions of Gender in Sport: An Analysis of Intercollegiate Media Guide Cover Photographs by Jo Ann M. Buysse and Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert, Gender and Society, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb., 2004), pp. 66-81

Looking through different lenses

2008-09-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I was a little confused with this week’s post, because I am not sure if I am supposed to be summarizing the key points and giving examples for each of the different approaches, or if I am to be sticking to the two that I became an “expert” on. So, I am going to focus on my two approaches in hopes that I understood the post instructions correctly! The two approaches that I will be discussing are the psychoanalytic and the feminist approaches.

Psychoanalytic Approach: I thought that one of the best points to take away from the text regarding the psychoanalytical approach is that, “much of the focus of psychoanalytic analysis has to do with how audiences’ subconscious forces influence the subjective meaning of images” (Beach, pg. 40). The other key point from Beach that I feel is important to mention when discussing this approach is how students can apply psychoanalytic analysis to movies and films “by discussing the functions of desire and fantasy shaping their responses to film characters” (Beach, pg. 40). While I was thinking about how I would apply this in my own classroom, I started to wonder how truthful students would be, and how self-conscious they may become if they make a connection with a character whom is not universally desired. For example, if I had students get into groups to discuss their favorite characters after explaining that who they choose will often reflect their own desires to “be or become those characters,” the likelihood of getting honest answers out of the students might be difficult. Many may feel like they are exposing too much of their inner self to their peers if they reveal which characters they really liked or connected with the most.

Feminist Approach: The feminist approach seems to really go hand in hand with the psychoanalytic approach in Beach’s text, because there are many links to how people view the characters in ads, films, television shows, etc. While many think that taking a feminist approach to viewing media can be a negative thing, most people do not realize that feminism is not only for women, but to empower men as well. Just as women should not only be looked upon and judged by their looks (good or bad), men should not be made to feel like they must be muscular, and handsome to be viewed as important in society. I feel that the most important key point about taking a feminist approach to viewing media is that “gender performances are continually changing given historical and cultural forces is evident in men’s magazines that exclude the emotional side of males by emphasizing the assertive masculine side of males as reflected in magazines” (Beach, pg. 41). A good way to use this in the classroom would be to show artwork from older periods of time and compare them to clothing ads. Back then, the ideal image of a woman can be seen in Botticelli’s painting of the birth of Venus, where the women are not stick thin. Compare this to a fashion designer’s sketches, where the ideal woman who models the clothing is 6 feet tall and weights 110 pounds. You can see how hard it is to be a female or a male where all sorts of media are trying to show the public what is “in” and what isn’t.

I found both of these approaches to be very interesting and was able to connect each of them to how I would use them in the classroom. As for the psychoanalytic analysis, I thought that it was very interesting that there is “the need to move toward more acceptable, official femininity or masculinity” (Beach, pg. 40) because I remember reading somewhere that in television programs this year, there are more characters who are “out” or are openly gay or lesbian characters in these shows, and that people are still viewing and promoting these shows. Because of this, I feel that the media industry has made a lot of progress in accepting most people, instead of just portraying those who are straight, white, and successful.

Teaching Film Techniques

2008-09-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

After completing the analysis of the commercial shoot by shoot, I found that analyzing the scene in the movie was much easier, and I was able to appreciate what all goes into a single scene in a film. There is so much more to watching a movie than just vegging out, and mindlessly watching for entertainment. While it seems like a lot more work to analyze a scene in a movie, it made the experience much more enjoyable after having viewed this film a couple of times without considering everything that went into this one specific scene. For those of you who are not familiar with this recent film, check out the trailer to get a better idea of what the movie is all about!
Film: Maid of Honor
Scene description: Tom and Hannah are meeting for dinner at a restaurant after not having seen each other for 6 weeks. Tom intends to tell Hannah that he is in love with her, but is dumbstruck when he sees that she has brought another man to the dinner. Hannah announces to Tom that she and Colin are engaged. Tom seems to be confused as to why they got engaged so quickly and is asked by Hannah to be her maid of honor in the wedding (because she expects that she would be the best man in Tom’s wedding some day). At this point he stands up and unintentionally pushes into the server, knocking him over, along with the dishes he is carrying to the other table.
Use of Camera: Circling the 3 characters at the dinner table as Hannah and Colin explain their quick engagement and the short time before the wedding. This use of the camera gives the audience the same dizzy feeling that Tom is experiencing as he’s finding out that the woman he loves is betrothed to another. Continues to circle in this manner until Tom is asked to be Hannah’s maid of honor. Then the camera does a close up of Tom.
This is use of camera technique adds to the romantic comedy’s larger purpose by helping set up the plot for what is yet to come. While we all know that Tom has recently figured out that he was in love with Hannah, we don’t know what is going to happen once he sees Hannah for the first time in six weeks. By giving the audience the same sick and dizzy feeling that Tom is experiencing when he meets Hannah’s fiancé, the camera use adds to the positioning of the audience. We all feel the same as Tom, and this makes us anxious to find out what Tom is going to do: Is he going to let Hannah get married to Colin? Or will he pursue her and try to win her away from Colin?
Lighting: romantic, soft lighting
Sound: Soft sound of the other diners at the restaurant and other restaurant noises
The sound and the lighting help give the scene the authenticity that audience is looking for in a romantic comedy such as Maid of Honor. If the lighting and sounds hadn’t been as they were, the situation would have felt unrealistic and would not have kept the audience’s attention.
Music: plucked strings, intensifies right after Hannah asks Tom to be her maid of honor when there is pause before Tom says anything.
The intensifying of the music during this scene builds some suspense, while the audience is waiting to hear Tom’s answer to Hannah’s question.

Teaching film and editing techniques will be helpful for students in my language arts classroom. The time that I see myself presenting this type of lesson the most is during a Shakespeare unit. There are so many of Shakespeare’s plays that have been adapted to film in many different ways. Take Romeo and Juliet for instance: This play has been made into two very well known films, created in very different ways. The 1968 version takes on a more traditional view of Romeo and Juliet, while the 1996 version has a modern twist to it. Teaching my students the different editing and film techniques would be beneficial because I can show my students two different ways of conveying the emotions and actions that William Shakespeare brought to the stage. Since these movies are so different, I would have my students take a specific scene in the play and compare and contrast how the two directors interpreted the scenes in terms of film techniques. Questions I could ask would include: Where were the scenes different? Where were they similar? What was surprising? Was there anything that you would change to make it easier to understand?

Shot by Shot

2008-09-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4O4f6FKYyc&NR=1

Sprint Commercial: Crime Deterrent

Shot 1: Establishing Shot of Golf Course Locker Room
*Establishes the locker room as the setting of the commercial
Shot 2: 2 Shot of two men talking about the advantages of his phone
*Places the men as the main characters in the commercial
Shot 3: Close up of man in green and cell phone
*Places the cell phone in the center of the commercial, and shows that it is the product Sprint is trying to sell
Shot 4: 2 Shot of men
*Includes a comedic aspect to the commercial.
Shot 5: Computer edited
*Gives the audience the advantages to having a Sprint cell phone
Shot 6: 2 Shot of the men in the locker room, green man is recovering from the “crime deterrent”
*Reminds audience of the “other” cell phone company’s main redeeming quality
Shot 7: Computer edited
*Remind audience to buy Sprint

We are media learners!

2008-09-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

At Hopkins High School, media in the classroom is used very often to enrich and enhance the students’ education in the basic grades 9-12 English classes. There are movies showed after the text to help students understand the difficult pieces of literature, and the teachers use different computer based lessons to improve the lessons.

In today’s world, “going back to the basics” is not an option for schools today. While there are districts, school boards, and parents out there who wish that media was not incorporated as much as it is in modern day classrooms, it is nearly impossible for students to learn as much as they once did in a world that’s technology is growing so quickly. While I am aware of the reasons why people may object to using so much technology and different types of media in the classroom, there needs to be a balance of how much is used and what it is used for. In the language arts, media is an important part of our students’ education, because today there are so many different types of literature. Literature is no longer defined as just novels, plays, and poetry, but it now stretches out to incorporate blogs, wikis, music, and even video games. By including computers in the classrooms, the teacher does run the risk of not keeping his or her students completely on task, but there are ways to make sure they do complete their work. Even something as simple as arranging the room in a U shape so that the instructor has the capability to see every computer screen can detour students from slacking off and looking at Myspace or Facebook.

Students today are media learners. There are so many ways to include the media in the classroom to enhance their learning. Students are exposed to over 6 hours of media a day, and many of those hours include multitasking by using multiple types of media at the same time (i.e., Listening to music while watching TV, or watching TV while on the computer), so as educators, we should take this fact into account that since the majority of our students have this much exposure that these daily occurrences will leak into their school work. To use media to our advantage, an example of something a language arts teach could do is to have their students create their own blog and require that they post on it once a week. Since many people are concerned that with technology writing the students will loose their basic abilities to produce correct grammar, or formulate a decent five-paragraph essay, those could be components that would be graded within their posts.

What we don't know about the media

2008-09-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

For this week, I watched the videos Battlefield Minnesota, and The News is What we Make it.

In Battlefield Minnesota, the creator spent time meeting with each of the major politicians in Minnesota, and getting out the message to vote. Shakademic reached out to the youth in Minnesota by incorporating his hip-hop style with politics. I was impressed by the fact that he was able to get the normally stiff looking politicians to loosen up and make themselves seem more approachable. I also felt that it was important that he did not just show one party, but that he included representatives from both the Republican and Democratic side. I agree with Shakademic’s argument that it is very important for today’s youth to make themselves aware about what is going on around them in the political world so that they can make educated choices when voting for the next potential president of the United States. I agree with this because during the time Shakademic was creating this video, I was a new adult, who had also just turned eighteen just in time to be able to vote in the presidential election. Being at the University of Minnesota for my undergraduate degree was influential on my voting decision because I couldn’t escape hearing about political issues from my friends and professors. Though I do not regret whom I voted for in 2004, I do regret not doing enough of my own research on the issues, and if the young viewers of Battlefield Minnesota understood what Shakademic was trying to get across to our generation, they should get the urge to educate themselves on what they are really voting for.

The News is What we Make it was a very powerful and informative piece done entirely in claymation which tackles the ides of media conglomeration, and how they can skew the news and make it what they want it to be and what they believe the public wants to hear. The main character gets interviewed for one of the local news stations on her school’s new school uniform policy. When the story airs that evening, she is outraged when she finds out that the news station has mangled her message into the complete opposite of what she said in the interview. Upon complaining to the news host, she goes to the other local station to get her real message out, but they turn her away. After a night of research, she learns that most of the media is owned by a small number of large conglomerates. She gets her message out to the locals by ambushing the news host. This film brings up a big issue that most people have never thought about before. The average TV viewer believes the majority of what they see, and don’t think that the media would do such a thing as what they did to the main character in the short video. I know that they always tell you to never believe what you see on TV, but when you think about it, most media sources in the US are biased one way or another and will try to make sure that the news stories are in their favor. I took a U.S. Electronic Media course at the U of MN in the communications department, and while it made me a little more wary of how the media in the U.S. works, I still gave the media the benefit of the doubt in that they would present me with accurate and non-biased information. This film made me open my eyes even wider, and I am more skeptical of what the media presents to me.

Testing!

2008-09-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

Making sure that this blog-o-mine is up and running properly!