After my post last week of what I can only describe as negativity, I can happily report that most of the concerns raised by last week's reading were nicely answered (or at least addressed) in this weeks reading (which I knew they would be, so why was I so negative towards Buckingham? Because I only want him to give me ideas and not to set up the debate? Fortunately for you, this post isn't the place for me to answer those questions...). Instead of just getting more and more depressed by the reading, I found myself jotting down ideas for future classes, and wishing that my own students were reading chapter 4 this week.
Of particular interest to me was the whole chapter entitled "Locating Media Education", because last week I felt that this was my biggest crises (which makes little sense since I have a job teaching media literacy education...)-- where do I fit? The challenge is that many people are asking this about media education in general, and there isn't necessarily a 'right' answer. There are some answers that may be more right than others for certain situations, but studying 'media' has so many facets that it's virtually impossible to say that it only belongs in, say, the English classroom. It certainly needs to be applied across the curriculum (as I said in my last post), but as Timbre points out, this does necessitate changes in core curriculum and teacher expectations, and will take time and effort to implement. However, media education located in other places (like in Hands on a Camera) also has a place. It is our responsibility as educators in our own spheres (teachers, parents, members of the church, etc.) to find ways to incorporate media education. For example, how might I convince my Relief Society book group that it is okay to examine texts that are not religious? Should I do this?
Another point that I really appreciated is the way that Buckingham both emphasizes and de-emphasizes production. He treats production as an integrated part of the learning process, but he doesn't place it on the 'end all be all' pedestal that sometimes it gets assigned. We talk about the need to access, analyze, evaluate, and create, and in placing creation at the end we (maybe just I?) treat it as the culmination of all of these skills. Buckingham explicitly states that "production is not an end in itself" (p. 84), but rather that production is something that can encourage "critical participation in media". I feel that this is one area in which the curriculum in Hands on a Camera needs a little bit of tweaking. We do the majority of our analytical work at the beginning of the semester, and then we do a project at the end, and there isn't much time to place the students' projects back into the cycle and have them reflect on their own creations as media artifacts .
So, I find this portion of Buckingham's book to be extremely helpful and hopeful. It is true that monumental change of the sort that fully integrates media education into all subject areas, thus creating a more media literate public, will take time, but that doesn't mean that the small things we do don't matter. Choose your "big things come from little things" analogy or scriptural reference, and the small changes we make will eventually add up to some change.
3 comments:
I want to hear more about this LDS book club. What type of LDS texts? Like The Work and The Glory, Twilight, or A Marvelous Work and a Wonder?
I appreciated your restatement and commentary on Buckingham's feelings on production. It is important not to allow students to give up after (or during) production. As far as production goes, your future products will be greatly benefited by following through now and being self aware of difficulties and shortcomings. But more important is the necessity to an analysis of your own text as you would analyze any text. It gives perspective and a little charity.
Okay, so you are totally bordering on inspirational - bravo! Reading your post really got me thinking about Jenkins, actually. And that bounced my thoughts over to the idea of practical application of skills learned in your "Hands on a Camera" projects. One of the thoughts that I had is not only the application of analytical skills to production of documentary filmmaking, but the understanding that intertextuality is a state of being. Why don't you work to help students learn to not only do the documentary but work on posting about it on a blog (perhaps you already do this) and/or a website and a Facebook project/cause, etc.? All of these activities do a multiplicity of things, not the least of which is to help the students think about their work in terms that are necessary for understanding their own creation of media but also the skills necessary to function effectively in our media culture. I think it is a small "tweaking" that could help. Just my thoughts on the matter.
I also really like the way Buckingham views production, that is it not an ends but something that encourages critical participation in media. One of the things we are really focusing on at my school this year is the idea of assessments and what does a good assessment look like and I keep thinking of Hands on a Camera and how viewing the students final projects I could tell which students had grasped the lessons they'd been taught. I was also thinking that I wish we had taken the time to more thoroughly discuss everyone's finished projects. I know that you spoke to the kids about their experience with making the film but I really wish Scott and I had placed a greater emphasis on that post-finish analysis. For instance, I know that Carlos was angry about editing his movie down to 5 minutes and yet I felt his finished film could have trimmed time in several places, it would have been interesting to have a conversation with him about why he felt the things he kept were important and necessary information. This year I would really like to make really finishing out the the process more of a priority.
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