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.

Final Presentation

I forgot one! Here's my rubric for my wiki project

Whoops! Here is one of the rubrics that I used for my most recent wiki project and there are a few things I would change. First of all, I would not include the rough draft in my grading of the entire project. I would make that a separate grade. As it was, I was not able to thoroughly help each and every student on their rough draft, and therefore I had to make my judgement about that part of the rubric based upon their final draft (which is fairly easy to do with 7th graders, but still not the most transparent). Anyhow, feel free to steal anything you like.

Wiki Project
7th Grade Language Arts
Walk Two Moons

Assignment: To create a wiki page that informs the public about the book Walk Two Moons

STEPS TO COMPLETE

1. CREATE A BOOK REVIEW: A book review is a piece of writing that describes what happens in the book, parts that you liked, and parts that you didn’t like. This book review should be about 2-3 paragraphs long.
2. INSPIRATION CHARACTER WEB: You must create a character web that shows the names and descriptions of all the characters using the computer program Inspiration. This web should include 20-30 bubbles.
3. POST ALL OF THE ABOVE ON THE WIKI PAGE

THINGS TO REMEMBER:
1. You must have all parts approved by Ms. Ward before you put them on the wiki
2. All grammar and spelling must be perfect BEFORE it is posted on the wiki
3. Follow the checklist below in order to make sure you complete each of the steps













CHECKLIST:

1.______ Book Review (30 points)

____ Rough Draft
____ describes what happens in the book
____ describes parts you liked, says why
____ describes parts you did not like, says why
____ all grammar and spelling is correct
_____ 2-3 paragraphs long
____ Final/Wiki Draft
____ all grammar and spelling is correct
____ all necessary information is included
2. ______ Inspiration Character Web (30 points)
_____ Rough Draft
____ All major characters are included
____ All major characters are described
____ Web is easy to understand
_____ Final/ Wiki Draft
____ All major characters are included
____ All major characters are described
____ Web is easy to understand
____ Web is colorful and organized
____ All spelling and grammar is correct

3. ______ Wiki Page (15 points)
____ Wiki page is neat and organized, uses heading and subheadings
____ Wiki page includes all of the necessary components
____ Wiki page has correct grammar and spelling
____ Wiki page has a link in the sidebar on the Front Page

E-Portfolios

Between illness and the demands of being a 1st year teacher, I'm afraid my attendance to this class has been less than stellar. As such, I missed our discussion on E-portfolios, so I will have to simply share my experience with them. In the post bac program at the U, everyone is required to create an E-portfolio. I realize that there must be circles where this would be a valuable way to communicate information about oneself as a teacher, but in education (at least in Minnesota), districts are still a little behind the times. Each district application has a number of documents that must be attached, and therefore all things that one might put on an efolio are made redundant.
Further, I found that even though I did give out the address for my efolio and encouraged people to go and look at it, the paper copy that I had in my hand was much more useful. I carried a binder with pictures of former students, examples of unit and daily lesson plans, my teaching philosophy, letters of rec, and other projects that I had done during student teaching and in my time teaching in Ecuador. Unfortunately, this is one area where the gap between what academia thinks is going on in schools and what is actually going on in schools (in my experience) is quite wide. Many principals (and teachers for that matter) have just learned how to use email. They are unable to fathom the idea of an online C.V. Still, I know that eventually this will be the way of the future, so I am glad that I know how to do it.
As far as using this technology with students, I think it is excellent. Right now, even though my kids don't know it, they are creating a portfolio of work that will exist for them for a very long time (hopefully forever). They will not only be able to look back over their work from the beginning of the year, but also for their work during 7th grade. It is very empowering for the kids to be able to see what a difference their hard work and effort makes to their learning. I can tell now that kids are excited about the improvement they've made just from one wiki project to the next. We've even used the revision tool on the wiki to show the progress they've made from when they first began the wiki page to when they "turned it in" for credit. Meta-awareness of the learning process is a valuable tool in building motivation and engagement, and it serves as the truest example of natural positive reinforcement.
In all, I believe that like most other things, efolios have their place and their value. This depends largely on audience. One has to ensure that the audience is able to access and appreciate the effort and the progression of the efolio in order for it to be truly valuable.