“You presented your pitch as a ‘means to an end’ instead of media education.”
I started thinking about how I present my program to those who are not familiar with Media Education, and although I am very pro-media literacy, I seem to have a tendency to project an education about everything around media and not the media itself.
These chapters were fantastically practical and clear cut. I have been taught using many of the principles before, but it is nice have a name from it now. For example, turning a children’s story into a movie or website will now be know as the Classroom Strategy of Translation, which perhaps I should have known, but I didn’t, so now I do.
The examples were helpful as well. Do they watch “The Simpsons” in the UK?
The end of our reading dealt with finding Media Education outside the classroom.
The community aspect of Media Education is something that I connected with in the very beginning and as of now, community will be a big part of my thesis. Dean Duncan spoke at the Orem Library on the subject of “Representations of Teens in Film.” Not that it was necessarily directed towards teenagers, but I did think it was odd that my wife was the youngest person (she’s not a teen). Even more discouraging was that less than ten people show up to hear a professor speak at a free venue, when lots pay lots to take notes on his every word in a school setting. There are opportunities in the community for Media Education. What can we do to help our community take advantage of those opportunities?
3 comments:
I think that this idea of tapping into the community as a venue for media education is absolutely vital. Until you create an acceptance and an understanding of it within the larger realm of community members and parents, Media Education will continue to be undervalued as “the video game class,” or something like it. By extension, the teacher who teaches it, even as it is incorporated within established classes, will be dubbed “the one who doesn’t teach” or “the one who just lets the kids play,” and that’s definitely not a sought-after title. It think that this ties directly back into what Amy said about advocacy…without advocates, we may not be screwed, but establishing media education as a legitimate subject and/or pedagogy will be very difficult.
I can't help but think of Kung Fu Panda when the sensei says, "You are free to eat." Po goes for the dumplings and he fights Po everytime he goes after it. With media education, we have to be advocates and "we are free to eat" but we are not going to be without opposition. That's part of the fun. After all, in the show, the story gets fun as soon as Po decides he has to get the end goal. This is where creativity comes into play and that's fun.
For me, your question leads to other questions: Who needs to be influenced to change their minds - meaning, who are the opinion leaders in the community? Those are the guys who have to be enlisted to help out. How do you get their ear? If you can, how do you build that network to influence the entire community? Does it meet their needs, wants, agenda, etc.? Until you can identify these things, you will merely be frustrated by your attempts to get the dumplings. That's my experience, anyway, and it works, but its not easy and will take a team to get it done. Maybe that's something we need to think about as a cohort. Good question Jeff!
Dean Duncan spoke at the Orem Library on the subject of “Representations of Teens in Film.” Not that it was necessarily directed towards teenagers, but I did think it was odd that my wife was the youngest person (she’s not a teen). Even more discouraging was that less than ten people show up to hear a professor speak at a free venue, when lots pay lots to take notes on his every word in a school setting.
I thought this was a really interesting choice for an example of media education available in the community. One of the issues that I keep coming back to is the question of who should be the educators? One of the things I like about new media is the lack of elitism and at least the idea that anyone with a camera/computer can participate and create media. That you don't need to take expensive classes or go to college to have something to contribute to the conversation or to create a dialogue for yourself. I worry that as a teacher I will come across to my students in a gatekeeping capacity when I want to be more like a facilitator helping students to find and answer their own questions. I know that you're not trying to make an argument for elitism in media but I just found this example interesting in light of this week's reading.
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