Random Thoughts and Musings

Soon I'll get around to posting some of the really cool stuff I've compiled for my Media Literacy class, but until Christmas break, this blog project probably won't take off as much as I'd like it to.

However, I did want to post some of my observations, both for my own records and on the slight chance that anyone actually has found this blog on the WWW so far, for your sake as well.

Below are a list of things my colleague and I did that I feel were mistakes in our first ever semester design of our curriculum and how they can be done better for the future.

Mistake #1: Many of the unit assessments early on were production type assessments.

What I mean by this is that the actual final assessment for both the advertising unit and the television unit was an actual commercial or short clip of a television show. While the commercials and TV shows were usually amusing and the students seemed to have a lot of fun doing them (at least those groups that finally got everyone to the same place at the same time and didn't have infighting about various situations), it seemed like many of the things that we tried to actually accomplish in our readings about and viewings of different genres and aspects of these two forms of media was thrown to the wayside when it came to actually producing each medium.

Some of this was probably the fact that I didn't really have any type of model for the students to base their work off of, and some of this might have been an early attitude of thinking that Media Literacy was going to be "the blow-off class."

In replacement of this production idea, my belief is that a research basis should exist for the assessments. One of the research studies that one group did concerned itself with what percentage of different types of magazines was advertising. It may or may not astound people to know that over 50% of most women's magazines (I believe the example in particular was Elle) are ad pages. Doing some type of research study, either about advertising, as I've previously mentioned, or about kids' or even adults' media usage, such as how many kids have a MySpace page, or how many people think of wikipedia as a reliable information source, could be far more valuable educationally than having kids make a commercial where they chug down an entire gallon of Sunny D (Although such an ad would surely be amusing).


Mistake #2: Making a "Literacy" class into a "Literature" class during the film section.

I agree with my colleague in designing this class that the film section was one place where he and I could get back into more of a comfort zone, since we did more literary analysis than study of the genre and how to understand how the directors and producers try to manipulate both the medium and the viewers. However, that's the role of a film class. At time of this post, there is no film class at DeKalb High School, so it's certainly not the worst thing in the world that it was temporarily a film class, however, our week long study of The Matrix didn't really fit with the overall concept of the class and it actually extended our film unit two weeks longer (three in the case of my colleague) to the point that we've had to make the choice to sacrifice part of the video game unit, which was one of the big draws of the class.

The film unit of this class should have explored mostly documentaries and films that are obviously politically charged. The change in the documentary genre over the last two decades is a fascinating thing and would be vastly interesting to study, and seeing as most of the changes are inspired by the fact that documentaries weren't entertaining enough to grab mass appeal before, it definitely fits in with the idea of a Media Literacy class (it could be brought in under the overarching concept of what media has done to our attention spans).

Other films that would be perfect for this type of class are politically charged films, such as Wag the Dog, about a Hollywood-studio created war that deflected attention away from a President's moral misgivings, or The American President, about a Democratic President in the 90's who has to engage in a moral war with the Republicans after issues about his morality come up due to a sexual relationship with a lobbyist. V for Vendetta is another film, that while I personally have not seen it, supposedly has political statements concerning issues that have arose over the last 6 years.

Other things that could be studied include how films about wars are handled. Now, after the public opinion has turned on the War in Iraq and on a smaller scale against the War on Terror, we see a new influx of movies coming out that, from their previews, seem to show these wars in a much more unflattering light.

These are Media Literacy issues. As much as I enjoyed teaching Greek mythology and Christian symbolism and allegory within The Matrix, it didn't belong in the class.

Mistake #3: Classroom setting.

To start out, both my colleague and I were scheduled in a business lab at DeKalb High School, fully equipped with (I believe) 24 operating computers and a teacher workstation that could lock student computers, monitor what they're doing, and broadcast what I'm showing on their screens.

This software, as great as it sounds, worked very poorly. In addition, while many students handled the possible distraction of having a computer in front of them very well and either ignored the computer when it wasn't helpful, or utilized it to type notes and look up elaboration on issues I brought up in class, others used the computers to look up silly "Caturday" pictures, ESPN stats, or their favorite guitar that they hope to buy someday.

Outside writing up disciplinary referrals for every student, there was no obvious way to break the attention sucking powers of the computers. Even in a Media Literacy class, anything I talk about is no where near as entertaining or cool to them as their favorite online game or reading reviews about the new Ibanez they're saving up to buy.

Having said that, the computers have been invaluable at times. Having easy access to a computer lab is very beneficial to a Media Literacy class, in my opinion. In fact, the very issue of why the kids, in what SHOULD have been the most interesting class they've ever had (they couldn't even pay attention when we were specifically dealing with how shows like Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy are examples of satire that deal with cultural and political issues with varying degrees of sophistication), couldn't pay attention IS a Media Literacy issue. However, as long as the computers were in front of the students, I had to deal with either being the ignored teacher or the totalitarian teacher who wrote students up for looking at ESPN.com.

The best thing that happened was when a neighboring class complained during our film unit that we were too loud, moving us temporarily to another classroom. Being in a standard classroom changed the dynamic completely, and where previously students would become transfixed by what was on their computer monitors, they would actually actively engage and participate in class discussion.

These three mistakes are things I've definitely learned from and when I get a chance to teach this class again, likely next fall, I'll certainly be correcting them.