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Media Literacy Week 12 Blog Post

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Media Literacy Week 11 Blog Post

I can’t wait to help my students learn to live in their own shoes and be confident young people and adults. I find the fact that a disparity in confidence can lead to different salaries and levels of exploitation really sick, but it’s a reality. “Being a good negotiator helps to improve relationships because both parties can strike a mutual deal without hurting each other’s sentiments.” I find that quote important because I often see negotiation portrayed in the media as a “strong man” bullying his way to the top of some food chain that results in him remaining a bully. Think Trump. He’s portrayed (less so now) as a skillful businessman, but that’s all a front. He’s just a bully who shoves his way into the collective conversation whenever he wants to. I think being able to point out his behavior and the behavior of others like him as negative to students while teaching them smart, confidence producing negotiation skills will heighten my students’ abilities to advocate for themselves without becoming a bully or an oppressive force. There’s an empathy necessary for negotiation, where one has to consider the needs of the other party before striking a deal. I think negotiation is one of the most important media literacy skills because it uses so many skills in order to identify an issue, advocate for oneself in the conversation, balance confidence and compassion, and create a situation that benefits all parties to the greatest extent. If more people understood negotiation on a deep level, I believe there would be less inequity in our world. There will always be bullies, but maybe a generation with greater negotiation skills can be the group that collectively refuses to put up with those bullies.

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Media Literacy Week 10 Blog Post

Collective Intelligence and Online Learning Communities lays out exactly what was to come with Covid-19 schooling, but what most people are learning is that kids, especially those in low income areas, are suffering from the current online learning model. I really appreciate what the authors are saying when they refer to mobile learning, and I truly think online learning will never go away. I think it can be a really useful tool for supplemental instruction or meeting “face-to-face” without having to spend money on a commute or waste time waiting on people who are held up in traffic situations. I think online learning needs to be augmented in order to serve everyone, not just folks with enough money to make it work. My brother in law is being a saint these days, staying home to work (he has the option to return to the office) in order to supplementally homeschool my nieces while they take part in online learning. As we’ve been learning, not every kid has that level of support available. The issue can simply be that someone’s parents don’t have a flexible work environment, or that a kid’s home life is unstable. There are so many variables that in-school education takes care of, like creating a space that’s equal for all students (ideally). Someone who has siblings all trying to do online learning in a one bedroom apartment is not in an environment that’s equal to my nieces who have space in an Ohio suburban home to spread out and focus on their learning alone. I think technologies like universal Wifi or some sort of VR learning environment could be amazing for the future of mobile learning environments, but we’re not there yet. I believe that setting up mobile learning apart from a pandemic emergency scenario would be key to making the world of distance education more effective.

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Media Literacy Week 9 Blog Post

I absolutely loved the story, Nigerian Teenagers Are Making Slick Sci Fi Films With Their Smartphones this week. My artistic skills and training lie in photography and filmmaking, and I always enjoy seeing people younger than me being better at those things than I am. I have often been afraid of writing fiction scripts and I tend to gravitate to documentary because I enjoy the improvisation it allows me, but maybe I’m just nervous to express myself and have that expression judged. These kids aren’t afraid of that at all. I find their skill in writing and filming amazing because I couldn’t have done this stuff as a teenager. I often found that I wanted to have the best equipment and if I couldn’t make something look perfect, I wouldn’t do it. That’s a terrible attitude! I will definitely be using these kids’, The Critics’, work as a teaching tool in the future if I’m able to teach an integrated media or video class to high schoolers. The films they’re making are not bound by anything. They’re making complex science fiction movies with complicated plots and detailed special effects. It’s something I wouldn’t have even dreamed of trying when I was getting my MFA in film. The future is really exciting for me and I hope I can light some fuses to get kids in my future classes to make amazing films that are seen across the entire world.

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Media Literacy Week 8 Blog Post

This week’s TED Talk on the future of news as a virtual reality space was very controversial. I found it to be extremely exciting, because I think the ability to put someone who can never and will never experience something in the shoes of a virtual (that is to say fictional, fake) character that is experiencing something traumatic is fascinating. I was checked in class because my opinion was considered to come from a place of white privilege, and I completely agree. I don’t think there is space for artists, journalists, or anyone else to commodify the spectacle of black death or trauma. After that conversation, I was still ruminating on the issue, and I think there must be some way to accomplish this without rehashing trauma for specific people. I know the audience is very important, and I would advocate for audiences to be picked specifically, not randomly. The fact that people were down on the floor at Sundance, crying and trying to help the man in the virtual (fake) space having the seizure was really eye opening for me. I don’t think this needs to be something that is commodified or turned into a horror moment, but perhaps there is a way to use *something* like this as a specific educational tool.

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Media Literacy Week 7 Blog Post

There’s one specific part of the Media Literacy Key Facts sheet from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation that caught my attention: The reduction of violence and violent associations/behavior after the incorporation of media literacy courses into standard curricula. I understand that there is a lot of violence in TV, movies, and video games, not only because I can read about these things from a distance, but because I have actively participated in watching or playing TV and video games that include violence. I will never be someone that says video games are the root of violence in America because I believe that would be very hypocritical of me. I honestly think that people in my age group (which I would say is 0-45 for this specific point) grew up with more access to video games, television, and movies than the previous age groups. I think for a group of people who grew up with type writers, then the new Grand Theft Auto must seem like the most disgusting piece of media ever made, but as someone who grew up playing games like that, I hardly bat an eye at that stuff. I think it’s because I’m able to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake - I cry at the news and I can play violent video games all day. I believe media literacy classes could help not only younger people, but also older people who need to distinguish between reality and fantasy. I went off on a tangent in this post, but the fact that young people can create better lines between fantasy violence and reality with the injection of media literacy education is huge.

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Media Literacy Week 6 Blog Post

Michael Foucault’s What is an Author? is entirely, and maybe more so, applicable in today’s internet meme and content driven society. Kids, teenagers, and even adults across multiple generations are producing memes at all times and on all modes of social media, both popular and unpopular. I could log on to TikTok right now and see the same dance done to the same music by a seemingly infinite number of users on that platform, and it would be nearly impossible for me to determine who exactly created this dance, why they created it, whether they expected to go “viral” or not, or why this particular instance of social media participation has taken hold of the internet, if only momentarily.

When Foucault asserts, “Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates,” I am immediately reminded of the effect that meme culture has on the youth of today, and how memes have, in a sense, flipped this assertion on it’s head.

It’s not until later in the essay that Foucault comes around to where I believe memes fit in to society today, when he writes, referring to authors like Homer and Aristotle, “The distinctive contribution of these authors is that they produced not only their own work, but the possibility and the rules of formation of other texts.” This point illustrates the power and danger of authorship when teaching media and media literacy to young people today.

In a way, the anonymity of the internet, particularly in meme, sampling, and remixing subcultures, is a double-edged blade. Students in today’s connected world are more likely than ever to author new types of media, whether that be a new style of music, an essay that explores previously unthought-of content, or a film that takes advantage of rising inexpensive technology and the powerful editing software that comes standard on most computers these days. The possibilities for creative expression and inspiration are endless. There is a negative to that connectivity though, which is the possibility of being completely lost in the sweeping scope of the Web. In my previous example of a TikTok video that goes viral and inspires millions to recreate and remix that original content, the originator of such a video will forever remain anonymous.

The authorship doesn’t matter for the creation of a particular moment in internet history - it’s the movement itself that remains and evolves. Celebrities will latch on to the phenomenon and it will be played out until it reaches its inevitable saturation point and is run into the ground. What will happen to the person, most likely a young person, who created this worldwide phenomenon? If they can continue their prolific production and retain their followers, they may end up in the strange new world of “internet fame,” but if they can’t continue to produce content that is widely consumed, they may fade into oblivion or be eaten by the same media engulfing amoeba that may have gathered the writings of Aristotle or Shakespeare under common authorship.

So what is there to do in order to teach young people about these phenomena that spread like hungry wildfires? It seems readily apparent to me that my job as a media literacy instructor and mentor will be to make sure children and teenagers don’t fall into the trap of feeling as though they need to break out, blow up, or become famous overnight. It may be hard to sell, because just the idea of getting thousands of likes on an Instagram photo, being retweeted by a comedian on Twitter, or racking up followers on TikTok must seem entirely alluring to a person who has spent a great deal of their childhood and adolescent years consuming brightly colored content accompanied by the catchiest of tunes.

I do not feel comfortable calling what is happening, the desire of many youths to become some sort of internet star, a sickness. It is the natural outcome of a society that values fame and celebrity, then gives all of its members a chance to be connected to every other member. I also run the risk of sounding like someone who rejects social media entirely, which is not true at all. I love using Instagram. I find it to be an effective method of journaling, in this case a visual journal. I can try out combinations of photos in series, or just catch up with what my friends and family are doing. The risk comes with dopamine-spiking likes, businesses being built of the sexuality of young people, and exploitative data-mining that leads to invasive advertising techniques.

The negatives of social media have been there since the beginning, but I believe since COVID-19 has hit and made all of us turn to our screens even more, it is more vital now to reach young people and show them that they need to manage their online personas carefully. I worry about a future where nobody can get credit for the work they produce. A future where a student of mine creates something beautifully engaging on the internet, and it is ripped off and sold to a major corporation that will bastardize and reproduce the work for their own gain, but not the gain of the creator. A connected world is great for inspiration and collaboration, but the reality is that the idyllic values proposed by a truly democratic and interconnected Web will always be appropriated and skewed by those looking to make big money. I worry about exploitation in all forms, and I worry that someone out there will always be looking for a way to make someone’s hard work into an advertisement, whether it is subtle or grossly overt.

The only way to make sure that the impact is mitigated is to teach young people how to recognize the sinister arm of The Corporation and how, even though what they are making may be a new template for new ways of expression, as Foucault refers to the work of Homer and Aristotle, someone may want to take their work and use it for their own, usually monetary, gain.

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Media Literacy Week 5 Blog Post

I’ve been feeling like it will be difficult to constantly make sure I’m adequately integrating media literacy into my future curricula, but after learning more about effective ways to do just that, I’m feeling more confident. I guess I should thank my teachers in high school, because I feel like I did many of the small exercises/activities that are mentioned in the 12 Basic Ways to Integrate Media Literacy and Critical Thinking into Any Curriculum. I definitely recall being asked to analyze news from different perspectives. I was a more conservative leaning youth because of the influence of my parents and the news media they solely consumed (I’m sure you can guess which network to which I’m referring) and I credit a few of my high school English teachers for making me see things from many different perspectives. Basically once I went off to college and escaped the orbit of conservative news media, things I had felt for a long time started to make more sense to me.

One of the points in that same article that I starred was “asking questions routinely and consistently of ALL media (including media conveying a perspective you support).” I find this to be completely crucial in the process of media literacy. I get so mad when I see people repost content that is just absolutely false, even if I would agree with its political message. I really dislike the lack of vetting that any political story gets, even from people I know are informed and well read. It’s frustrating! I hope to be able to integrate this mindset into as many lessons as I can, because I think it’s one of the more important habits for living in today’s media-saturated world.

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Media Literacy Week 4 Blog Post

I think the article on making thinking visible is fascinating. At first, I must admit, I was looking for something as dazzling as seeing dancers or having soccer players materialize, but the solution to making thinking visible is actually quite simple. One simply has to ask open ended questions and encourage discussion and debate about any topic for one’s students to see thinking happening in the classroom. I am excited to do this in an art class setting because I feel like there are many opportunities for students to speak about famous works, less famous works, and their own work in ways that are well beyond, “that’s good” or “that’s ugly.” Questions like “is this art?” are perfect for this type of discussion. Maybe showing some readymade art vs. ancient sculpture and discussing which has a place in an art museum or gallery, and WHY. The why is so important and I can already think of pieces that will drive discussions on what is and isn’t art. I think I’m most fascinated about the question of what is and isn’t art because I’m not truly sure I care which way anyone leans about a specific piece. As long as someone can have an honest discussion that includes introspection and empathy, I think the goal is accomplished.

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Media Literacy Week 3 Blog Post

I feel slightly disheartened when I read any statistics about rising teen high school dropout rates, and it feels especially negative when a specific reason has something to do with an area in which I am fairly well trained: digital media. I studied all forms of photography, including digital photography, and I studied filmmaking, again both digital and analog. I am so excited to have a chance to reach young people in a way that perhaps they are not used to being reached out to. I have done minor work with digital music production, and I have done basically no work in coding or digital animation, but I feel as though I have the skills to learn those mediums so that I can be a better teacher for as many kids as possible.

Peppler lays out three broad concepts that drive engagement in media art, and I feel most strongly about the second concept - Youth’s personal connection to their work, which inspires a general love of learning and builds upon their prior experiences. I want to be an art teacher that encourages his students to create work that not only checks a box on a boring art curriculum, but instead inspires deep connection between the work and themselves and the other members of their classroom, family, and the community beyond.

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Media Literacy Week 2 Blog Post

I definitely found Goldsmiths’ text difficult to get through on a first read. What I gleaned from it, among other hints, was that students and teachers are always coming at each other in a moment of the unknown. The moment of learning takes place at an uncountable number of events that bubble up from the careful planning and the improvisational nature of education. The teacher sets up what the lesson will be in response to a curriculum and with their students’ experiences and the student comes to the lesson with their own thoughts, excitements, and insecurities, and the combination of those forces produces the lightning through which learning is possible. When teachers teach to a set curriculum in the attempt at complete standardization, the lightning that can come from a true learning event is blunted. Only through the constant engagement of both the educators and the students is real learning possible. Education cannot become routine, and learners will approach each learning situation on their own terms. Those terms are to be figured out by the educator. 

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Media Literacy Week 1 Blog Post

I found the topics covered in the readings for this week to be of utmost relevance to our current times. I found myself surrounded on all sides by information that almost never seems legitimate. In an age where even news websites can edit their content on the fly, and articles are “live” and “updating,” it seems impossible to suss out the truth. I also find it frustrating that news sources often find it more important to be the first to run a story, even if the facts have yet to emerge. 

The Jenkins reading covered many of these topics when going over the transparency problem and the ethics challenge. There seems to be a lot of work that needs to be done whenever one opens an article or pulls up a tweet. Who is writing this source, why are they writing it, when did they write it in relation to when the event actually happened? These questions are often never asked, and it seems as though the divide between news and reality is ever-widening. People like to latch on to whatever source confirms their bias, whether they live on the right or left, politically speaking. 

It’s almost an insurmountable task to be able to understand news biases. Something may seem neutral, but everything is edited for an audience in order to make money. Jenkins’ essay posits that we should be teaching this media literacy to our youth, but I don’t understand the correct way to do that other than to never trust the media. I would love to instruct children to only watch C-SPAN, in order to see the news as it happens live, but I don’t find that to be particularly realistic. I hope to uncover some really solid strategies for relaying this media-wariness to a member of a younger generation without only sounding jaded and suspicious. 

I found the video on Media Literacy from the BBC to be particularly fascinating. The connection between the religiosity and cash value of classic works of art is something that has bothered me since entering my first art history class in college. Not to mention the means necessary for some of these classic artists to even be able to paint in the first place. I love talking about the changing of media through photography and film. It’s a history that has been analyzed since the first motion picture producers were able to stitch together an edit. I find it fascinating how easily the human mind is manipulated and how difficult it is to snap out of the brainwashing that happens on an unconscious level almost every day.