Talking to Robots

In reading the articles about Conversational Agents and their effectiveness as teaching tools in the classroom, I was not surprised to see the authors point out that middle school students often devolved into vulgar or inappropriate conversation with the avatars. First, middle school students often use the internet to explore sides of their identity and personality that it would be socially unaccaptable or inappropriate to explore in the "real world". In the past, adolescents have done this; it's just that they have had to do a good job of hiding it from adults who might judge them. The idea that adolescents need to develop these facets of their identity and how they might go about doing that in a digital age is an exciting and interesting area of study. 

Further, I thought that the reprinted conversations were a little funny. I, sadly, could not blame the students for testing the limits of what was possible/acceptable to the CPA. If I were that student,  I would never be able to take the CPA seriously enough to be able to use it as a resource. I would resent the fact that someone (probably the teacher or the software publisher) thinks I am so stupid, and has so little respect for the miracle of uniqueness in humanity, that they think that I can learn all I need to learn by having a "conversation" with a robot. I don't care if this is the most advanced robot that has ever been created; it still does not compare with the interaction that students get with other humans. Further, the authors go on to argue that if a teacher is going to use a CPA, he or she should program the CPA to respond to inappropriate or vulgar language by telling the student to stop using such language. The authors write from the point of view that says that the CPA represents a human, and that therefore it should be treated with the same respect. Students know the difference between reality and everything else (or at least let's hope they do), and so it makes complete sense that they see the robot for what it is. 

Lastly, as a teacher, I need to ask myself what the goal of my assignments are. For me, it is always to help students elevate their thinking to that which is critical and analytical. When my assignment asks students to simply have a conversation with a robot in order to gain information, I feel that I am insulting their intelligence and their ability to research. So, instead of using a CPA, I would have the students do a guided webquest and then podcast a dialogue about it (with a partner). That way, students would be using their social skills to learn, and it wouldn't feel like I am putting them with a robot "babysitter" because I didn't have the time or energy to personally address each of their questions and encourage critical thinking. 

Here is what I would look like if I were a South Park Character

Media Literacy Lessons

This first lesson is a complete rip-off from Read Write Think, but it's so great! I want to try it. 

1. Kids share their grammar pet peeves

2. Discussion: Does grammar say anything about your education? Do people judge you on your grammar? If so, how can good or bad grammar affect their judgment of you?

3. Lecture: Grammar, class, and race--> language matters

4. Read Culture of Power by Lisa Delpit

5. Students must collect questions from columns about grammar such as the word column in the back of the Atlantic, "grammar rants" from Dear Abby, etc. 

6. Students must analyze what the language that the writers use says about them, and whether or not they (the students) identify with the writer. Then, the students must analyze why or why not. This step would be in writing and it would be nice if it could take place on a blog with links to the articles themselves. 

7. Students must reflect on what they think their own dexterity with "proper english" says about them. Do they choose to speak or write in a certain way? If so, why? If not, what do they think the way they speak or write says about them as individuals? 

Here is the link to the lesson that gave me the idea. As you can see, I've expanded it a bit. In retrospect, it might just be good to go with the lesson on ReadWriteThink, but then again, it's great to get the kids deeply engaged in this. 

Readwritethink grammar lesson

Lesson #2

1. Students view various music videos of artists like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lil Wayne to analyze

a) who the video is trying to appeal to

b) what ideals the video is promoting

c) how the video contributes to or changes the artist's image

2. Students decide write an argumentative essay that takes a position about whether or not they think the image that the video presents is helpful or harmful for society and support their opinion. 

3. The students then turn their essay into the script of a P.S.A. in which they attempt to use film to inform the audience of their opinion. The students must also utilize information about persuasive speech to make their video both argumentative (it takes a position) and persuasive (it attempts to persuade others of this position). 

The Daily Show

As do most from my generation, I honestly appreciate The Daily Show and what it tries to do. While it does inform us of what has happened in the world, and more importantly, how supposedly trustworthy news outlets respond to it, it also reminds us that not every event in life needs to be taken as seriously as cable news would have us do. I would love to use The Daily Show in my classroom. Here are a few ideas about how I could make that happen. 

Irony and Satire- 

1. Read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

2. Discuss the definition of Irony and its connection to Satire

3. Students must watch the Daily Show and analyze a segment in terms of its use of irony in a short reflection paper. 

- Answer: What makes this segment ironic? What makes it the opposite of what one would expect? 

- Answer: How does this irony reveal a truth? Could this truth have been revealed more accurately without the use of irony? Explain your answer

4. Class Discussion- How is irony and satire effective in illuminating truths about social problems? 

I believe that this lesson would be an excellent way for kids to connect their own reality and experience to that of those living hundreds of years ago. It would also help them to understand that when they read something, they need to be on the lookout for cues that it might be funny, or might have been meant to be at least, so that they can become more critical and discerning readers of all types of texts. In the end, this is what The Daily Show helps us do: it helps us to take a more critical approach to the media messages that we are bombarded with each day. Thankfully, though most semblances of truth in journalism have dissipated, we still have a forum where someone is interested in providing contrasting (mostly humorous) viewpoints. 

Daily Show Simulation

1. Choose a news story that is prominent in the headlines this week. Follow the coverage of that story on at least 2 tv news broadcasts (1 network, 1 cable), 1 print publication (online or print edition), and The Daily Show. 

2. Analyze how The Daily Show is able to parody this coverage on its broadcast in terms of devices such as hyperbole and satirical language. 

3. Create your own video parody of this same topic. Try to get at the truth of the issue while still being humorous. 

4. Post this video to our class's wiki page. 

5. Review at least one of your classmate's videos. Analyze it in terms of its use of hyperbole and other satirical devices we have studied in class. Post this analysis as a blog post. 

This lesson would help the kids to see media and replicate it, therefore helping them tap into their own agency as filterers of information. Often, apathy is bred out of a sense that the establishment is big and untrustworthy that "resistance is futile". When the students see that not only are they able to take in news from different sources and analyze it, but then they are also able to understand it so well that they can make fun of it, they will feel as if they are actually participating in the process of media dissemination instead of constantly defending themselves from it. 

tv news analysis

TV News 10:00 pm

 

1. Weather- Thunderstorm coverage, warnings etc.  (2 min)

              - lots of radar images, serious talking tone

2. Cut to live coverage of Milaca where there was a storm(1 min)

- cut to prerecorded story about the storm, footage of tornado damage from last night

3. Back to studio- Walter Cronkite is sick (10 seconds)

4. Pot Bust- (30 seconds)

5. Brainerd mom illegal downloader (30 seconds)

6. Denny Hecker (30 seconds)

7. Recession, job cuts (20 seconds)

8. KC Chiefs move from River Falls to Missouri (20 seconds)

9. Graphic and teaser (30 seconds)

 

Commercial Break 10:06 pm- 10:10pm

 

10.  Kare 11 Extra- Analysis of response (media and WHO) to swine flu (5 min)

              - voice over, images of cable news hysterical coverage

              - media self-critique about coverage of swine flu?

- minnpost “authority” quote “if you’re watching cable news, you’re doing something wrong”- AH HA!

- traveler’s testimony of mexico is safe

- talking about the “hype” that was created

11. Kare 11 food drive plug  (30 seconds)

12. Weather forecast (3 min)

              - more storm infoà there’s hail!

13. Banter, Teaser for sports, sponser info for the “cabin cast”, which is apparently the weekend forecast in the summer

 

Commerical Break 10:19- 10:23

 

14. Sports Scores, Sports coverage (4 min)

              - includes human interest story about group horse ownership

 

Commercial break 10:28-10:31

 

15. Cheeseburger in a can story (30 seconds)

              - lots of laughing

16. Forecast (30 seconds)

 

             

 

 

Assignment 5

For this assignment, I watched the ten o'clock news broadcast on Kare 11 in the Twin Cities on June 18, 2009. Please refer to the log below for more information about the segments I will refer to. 

This news cast was pretty much completely ridiculous from the start. The first segment had to do with the severe weather that we have been experiencing in the region in the past 24 hours. It involved two live segments, one from the studio with lots of radar graphics and one from a field in Milaca, where it appears there has been a thunder storm. This reminds me of the segment that Beach refers to in Chapter 9 of Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Colombine. This weather story felt sensational and unnecessary, since there is clearly nothing that anyone can do about the weather. I think that a tasteful description of various warnings and ways to protect oneself would have done the trick, but these guys decided to indulge their audience's craving to know exactly how exciting and terrible thunderstorms and tornados can be. At one point in the field weather segment, the reporter said "Amazingly, no one was hurt" just after reporting that only one structure was really damaged. 

The newscast then continued to talk about the stories of the day, leading with Walter Cronkite's apparent sickness. This is probably because Walter Cronkite is member of the news community, so his sickness is very important to the news channel. Then, they go on to tell us about other current developments, have a commercial break, and then come to a story about news coverage of swine flu. Now, at the outset this story appears to be a useful critique of news media in general, which would lend an air of credibility to KARE 11. That is, until you hear that they are mostly criticizing every other news outlet and public health official for raising the alarm about the swine flu, and only wryly pointing out their own bottle of hand sanitizer they placed in the office. I guarantee that the swine  flu led their news cast for about two weeks a month and a half ago, but they failed to mention that. 

In the end, the local news cast was low on information and high on sensational reporting. 

Possible News Critique Lesson

For my seventh grade students, news critiquing would require that they actually understand the news. I think that the first project we did would have to focus on methods to gain information and make it relevant to their lives. First, I would teach the kids the conventions of a newscast, such as the definition of a lead story, human interest story, media convergence story, the difference between a local, national, and international story. Then, I would have the kids watch the news for a week and choose a story to follow. I would have them keep track of the story both on the news cast and in one other type of news publication (web, print, or radio). Then, I would have the students write about any differences they noticed in the way that each outlet reported the story, when the story happened in the broadcast (and what that says about its importance), and whether they would have reported the story differently and why. 

Assignment 4

In this post, I will be discussing various media representations of sex in the U.S. It seems to me that sex is often portrayed in U.S. media as separate from love; that is, it is more often discussed as "lust" or as less than actual love. For instance, in the popular books/movie series Twilight, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen's love is deepened and given more respect because they resist their sexual impulses until after they are married. We as the readers/viewers are supposed to know that because Edward will not allow Bella to indulge her sexual desires and thereby sully herself, he actually loves her more than other men who might take advantage of a woman who "doesn't know what she's doing". 

Further, we see the obvious example of sex portrayed as separate from love in reality television. Often, on shows such as The Real World, we see young adults "hooking up" and then we see testimonials of how although this hook-up was nice, neither is looking for a "serious relationship". This is something that has even spawned new phrases such as "friends with benefits" or even more crass examples which I will not list here. 

All of these representations seem to fly in the face of what religion teaches us, which is generally that sex is a sacred part of love, that indeed, sex and love are inseparable parts of the same intimate relationship that human beings have both in this life and the next. In Catholicism, sex is something that is limited only to marriage, and that only serves to deepen love and serve God. For buddhists, sex with the correct partner is a step towards Nirvana. Though these religions do value monogamy, just as Twilight does, they all see sex as something that is spiritually intertwined with love, and that love is something that helps one fulfill one's obligation to worship a god. With these contrasting representations of love, the louder or more available message is bound to win cultural importance. Still, never do either of these representations allow for the fact that sometimes sex is more relevant to love than other times; that, in fact, there is actually a gray area which it would not serve either popular media nor religion to tell the public about. 

Assignment 3- Part Two

For this assignment, I will be looking at the scene where Kevin Spacey's character is murdered in the movie American Beauty. In this scene, Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari have just finished a rather strange sexual encounter, where Lester (Spacey) decides not to take Angela's (Suvari) virginity and also realizes that there is much that is good in the world. The score is somewhat hopeful and resolved sounding, with lots of pleasant, calming strings. Angela goes to the bathroom, leaving Spacey alone in the kitchen to ponder the realizations he has come to. We see a medium shot of Spacey standing against his kitchen counter, smiling, and then he notices something across the room. We get a perspective shot of a photograph of Lester, his wife Caroline (Annette Bening) and their daughter, Jane, when Jane was a young girl and they were all smiling wildly on an amusement park ride. We get a medium tracking shot of Lester taking the picture off of the counter and sitting down with at a table, as we get a voice-over telling us about the joy that is possible in life. Then, as he sits at the table, we get a close-up of his profile. The voice-over script continues and then stops just as we see the tip of a gun move up just behind the profile of Lester's head. The camera then tracks to the wall across the table from Lester, we hear a shot, and see a splatter of blood hit the wall. Though the music remains the same throughout, what originally seemed resolved and pleasant in the end seems slightly sinister and mysterious. 

I believe that the shot where the gun enters the screen just behind Lester's head is symbolic of the message of the movie, which is that one never knows when one will die and so the best thing to do is to make sure that we focus on the things that matter at all times. Lester is killed when he is focusing on his family, who he loves, and thus has learned the lesson well. The scene is followed by a series of replay-reaction tracking shots, while we have a voice-over from Lester. This scene helps us, because it is mysterious, to simultaneously feel the fear that death and murder provokes as well as the peaceful resignation that we must eventually come to about death. 

I plan to teach film in my classroom next year. I would like to design a unit around two or three films and I would like the students to watch them, analyze them based upon their elements (as we have here), and then create their own films. I have had students make their own films in my class this year, but we have not studied the film elements as well as we could have. Right now, I would continue to have the students storyboard and script before they film (just as I have in the past) and I would also see if it would be possible to use other cameras than the ones we have (which are flip cameras). Our flip cameras only film in 30 second clips, so it makes editing very difficult. My students have said that their favorite thing we have done this year is making videos, so clearly there exists a large opportunity for the students to be both engaged and to learn. 

Assignment 3- Part One

Here is a shot-by-shot analysis of a popular commercial for condoms. In this commercial, we see a parent who brings his son to the grocery store. His son has a tantrum when he is not allowed to have candy. This leads to the advertisement's point, which is that we should use condoms to prevent even having the children who would cause this embarrassment for the father. 

Shot Number	Shot Type	Purpose of shot
	long  shot/establishing shot	establishes the setting, which is familiar to a wide audience
2	P.O.V shot	shows the little boy looking at his father. Also shows how the little boy knows he is doing something wrong by putting the candy into the cart without asking, but that he is doing it anyways. This tells us that the boy thinks he can manipulate his father. It then shows the father taking the candy out of the cart, and the boy's reaction, which is negative (he crosses his arms defiantly).
3	P.O.V shot	child watches as dad puts something else into the cart (not the candy) and then begins to scream
4	reaction shot	dad reacts to child's screaming by breathing exasperatedly out of his mouth
5	P.O.V shot	boy begins to scream "I want the sweets"
6	P.O.V shot	boy begins to shake cart and scream more intensely
7	reaction shot	. This shows us how embarassing this is for the father.
8	P.O.V shot	dad watches as boy runs around throwing things off of the shelves.
9	medium shot	boy continues to rip things off of shelves as another shopper walks up an then backs away. This, again, shows how publicly humiliating this is for the father.
10	reaction shot	dad attempts to pick things up. At this point, we know how helpless he is.
11	P.O.V shot	boy begins to scream while laying on his back in the store and kicking. We realize that this child has crossed over to the "dark side", where only a bold, exhausting parenting manuver will bring him back to normal.
12	reaction shot	Dad inhales and wonders what to do as the words "use condoms" come across the screen.

An Argument for Teaching Media Literacy

It is my understanding that our district, in an effort to save itself from government restructuring that would result in a loss of control over decisions made about the education we provide, has considered a return to more “traditional”, or my view, “old-fashioned” methods of teaching English/Language Arts. It is my recommendation that the board considers the following argument for teaching Media Literacy, that is, employing the various media to which students are regularly exposed in order to teach students how to analyze, how to synthesize, and how to discern meaning from various source of information.

First, the board argues that teaching Media Literacy detracts from the classic skills necessary to success: the ability to read and write. Unfortunately, we no longer live in a world where reading and writing are simple, straightforward tasks. Because of the development of new ways to read and new types of writing and publishing, students must not only learn how to decode letters and form them into sentences, but they must also learn how to derive meaning from a variety of multi-modal texts and conversely form these multi-modal texts in order to construct that meaning and be understood. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the emergence of media such as websites, interative movies and video games, and the widespread media convergence that exists forces students to now discern meaning and make decisions about meaning that is coming at them very forcefully from many angles. According to the Kaiser Foundation, the average American child spends over eight hours per day engaged in some sort of media consumption. This presents an especially ripe opportunity for those with an agenda, whether it be advertising or political, to saturate the minds of our students. If we decide that teaching our students only “basic” literacy will prepare them for the world they live in, we are gravely mistaken, and we will be sending our students into a manipulative world where they will be powerless to make their own educated decisions.

Thankfully, it appears that even if we decide to ignore the necessity of teaching Media Literacy in our schools our students have, through copious exposure and practice, decided on their own to learn to decode the messages that they are bombarded with. Students today are able to tell the difference between a reliable website and an unreliable one. I have shown this in my own classroom through the use of several wiki-based projects, where students are to create their own websites conveying information about other texts. When I have brought the use of various media into my classroom, the students have commented that it is something they are motivated to be involved in for several reasons. First, they recognize that their work will be judged by their peers, which for seventh graders, is far more motivating than any grade I could impose. Further, they get to make school part of their normal, habitual lives, which is something that does not occur when we force students to simply “sit down and read a book”. These days, research shows that students may sit down and read a book, but they are also taking breaks from the book to visit the book’s website, or to go to wikipedia to look up the origin of a literary allusion. If we are to reach our students in order to improve their ability to read and write for the world in which they live, we must teach them to read and write the texts they use everyday and we must recognize the value and importance of the social interaction they engage in over these texts. As an English teacher, I know that when a student connects the text to his or herself, he or she begins to truly own the information in it, and can therefore begin to construct meaning based upon it. 

This is my dog, Jemma. She is 10 weeks and is a very time-consuming puppy. I love her. 

Back in the Saddle with 5472

For this week, I have read Rick Beach's first chapter of his Teaching Media Literacy. This is a chapter that is spent largely on justifications and rationalizations and research that supports the teaching of Media Literacy in schools. This brought up a lot of thoughts for me given my current state. I am a 7th grade teacher at South St. Paul Secondary School which is both a school and community that is undergoing difficult transitions. The school itself is an IB school and has just received authorization, so it is undergoing all of these test-like things. Further, it has failed to make AYP for the last three years, which means that if it doesn't make it this year and next, it will be re-structured by the state. From a social perspective, SSP is a traditionally white, working-class community that in recent years (about the last 10 years) has been more and more populated by students of color (mostly latino, but also some black kids).
All of these things converge to make my school a somewhat tense building. Never have I experienced that tension more than when I first arrived. I took Rick Beach's Digital Writing course this past fall, and this was also my first semester of teaching in the U.S. public school system. I did two wiki projects which included the use of video, bubblus, and podcasting with gcast. Part of the second wiki project involved some talk of media literacy. We reviewed websites to find out what made a good one and what didn't. I found that it was amazing how well kids could almost intuitively know when a website was "bad", even if they couldn't articulate why. Of course, they had trouble identifying shoddy information when it was presented in a professional looking manner. Overall, I thought the experience was positive and my students said that they would rather do a wiki project, even though it was more difficult, because they enjoyed writing for an audience besides myself. I also found that I got better quality of work and better engagement in the project from my students on the wiki projects than on the essays that I forced them to write.
So, if you are still reading, you're thinking, "Ok, sounds good, so what's the problem?" The problem was that while all of these wonderful things were happening in my classroom, I was also developing a reputation at my school. Before people even really knew my name I was the "wiki teacher" who booked up all of the computer labs. While most teachers were admiring in their comments, I almost got the sense that there was a bit of jealousy or "Who does she think she is? She should be teaching in the classroom instead of futzing with the computers". To me, as a first year teacher in my first semester of teaching, this was not an attitude that made me proud. This was an attitude that offended me and disappointed me. It was yet another instance when I felt the disconnect between what I had been taught to do and what got me the approval of my peers, which, like it or not, is actually important when you teach in a school. This chapter in Beach talks about the justifications for teaching media literacy, and in doing so, it assumes that the major reason that more teachers do not use pop songs, movies, and websites in their classroom is because they themselves don't know how useful it is or how to justify its usefulness to administrators. What Beach fails to mention is that when one decides to be an agent of change in his or her building, one is going to encounter not just professional pressure, but also social pressure. Perhaps it is just my small district (which I will be leaving at the end of the year), but I know that even in my student teaching at Como Park in St. Paul, when I did a podcasting project with my Creative Writing class, i was told by both of my cooperating teachers to be careful, to not try to do too much, and to stick what I know I can succeed with (and that is not to say that my cooperating teachers were at all bad- in fact, they were fantastic teachers).

I know that I will be met with choruses of "But that social struggle is worth it for the good of the kids", and I would agree with you, but I am one of very few. I have pushed my media literacy agenda perhaps to the detriment of my own personal/professional life because it is simply more fun to be a classroom full of kids who are really engaged than it is to fight them. I like the way my kids learn, and it's especially useful because I have received the education I need to teach them where they are at. However, many teachers have not received such an education, and in an effort to hang on to the legitimacy of their own teaching methods, they have to balk at the methods of the fresh-faced first year teacher, just in from grad school. We need to remember that if we are going to be agents of change, if we are going to teach media literacy and defend it using scholastic, theoretical arguments, we will be doing so in an actual school, with actual teachers whose last education credit was received years ago, and who aren't as interested in what works for the students as they are in what works for them as teachers. We have to be ready to face that social opposition and figure out how to respond in such a way that we don't compromise ourselves as teachers and professionals or as social beings who need a relatively pleasant place to work.

Again, all of this comes from the perspective of someone who is just about to finish her first year of teaching. I've found that there was much that teacher school couldn't prepare me for, and I am excited to be back in my academic community where ideas and research are smiled upon, both in discussion and follow-through. I know that I would have written differently about this one year ago; I wonder if I will write differently about this after I have another school experience.