I loved the line in this week's reading by Rema Shore that in the current digital age we are the Jetsons. She was quoting Shalom Fisch and she expanded by stated that "children are growing up in a world where their toys obey them and their parents converse with the family car." (page 13). This image and the real connections to our world just made me chuckle at the things that are possible in 2010. Especially when reading the other reading this week from 1975. The changes and developments are so unpredictable, yet fascinating to look back on. I think that sometimes it is easy to forget how much technology has changed and affected so many aspects of everyday life until a line like "we are the Jetsons," especially considering that we "meet" online for class each week. these readings really brought me back to the long view and caused some further reflection on the people in my life and their media use.
My parents are my first example. Both of them have high speed internet at their place of employment, but in their home they still had a dial-up connection until last week. It is not that they have little computer knowledge. My mom knows more about connecting hardware and Excel formulas than I can ever hope to understand, but the use of the internet at home held no appeal for either of them. Now when they talk about having high speed at home they mainly refer to the use of it by their children. Particularly this child who also takes classes online! (Homework while visiting them was quite inconvenient.)
My next example is my grandparents. I am very lucky to have four grandparents and none of them have ever used the internet. They obviously grew up in a different time and place and still get the physical newspaper every day and read paper copies of books, magazines, and letters. Not a single one has an email address. I did get them to play Wii over Thanksgiving, but that is the extent of their electronic gaming experience. My grandma still plays cards each week with her friends.
This has really got me thinking about media literacy in a different context. I know that this class is about youth and preparing them for a life that is already filled with communication, entertainment, and work centered around different elements of media, but I also think that knowing how things worked before all these media outlets and ways of expression cannot be left out of the equation. As we work with students, I think it is important to keep in mind the varying degrees in their experience, interest, and support system of media activities and to respect their interest or disinterest in media. These support systems of the youth have varying degrees of interest in media activities as well and varying degrees of interaction with their youth and the media. While for many people in the workplace digital communication is highly valued, there are places where this is not true.
When looking at the issue of the digital divide, I think it is also important to recognize the vast disparities that exist in the use of media resources across different demographics. From the Kaiser Family Foundation report on children and the digital divide it is clear that income of the parents play a huge role in the experience and accessibility of different media. And while some of us are the Jetsons, this is not true for many young people. While the government during the early 2000s has taken action toward making the internet accessible in public schools and libraries, there is still the question of quality and quantity. Is this access enough to bridge the technology gap for lower income young people, or is there more that can be done to advance their media literacy skills?
As Amanda's example of her library and their computer situation has shown from our discussion in class, there are still places where the equipment and access does not meet the demand of the young adults who use media for homework as well as entertainment. And with the current economic situation, further monetary assistance from the government seems unlikely. I am anxious to learn of different grants, etc for funding that will allow more young people more access. As a person who wants to enter the library field, I want to be part of an organization that actively works to bridge the digital divide and give students access to resources that will help them succeed.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Synchronicity
I also have noticed how my increased awareness of media literacy issues discussed in this class has coincided with things I notice in other parts of my life. And like Robin (April 28, Ambience) I made one of those connections on the topic of comics. When we talked about comics, graphic novels and visual literacy in class, I began to re-think my ideas about the value of comics.
In the past, I had tended to dismiss comics as nothing more than easy, pretty much mindless entertainment. Reading the Sunday comics was a little treat to give myself at the end of the week (but only after I had done the “real” work of reading the actual news in the newspaper). When my homeschooled children would spend hours at the kitchen table reading Calvin and Hobbes or Foxtrot or Dilbert, I would grow impatient with them, and nag at them to do some “real” work, like math or a science project or something; or at least to read something that I could characterize as educational—maybe a National Geographic magazine, or Johnny Tremain, or something by Jack London.
My first attempt to broaden my outlook was reading the children's book Into the Volcano by Don Wood and my second was reading Neil Gaiman’s 2000 novella The Dream Hunters (Sandman, Book 11), illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Without even getting to the most popular anime and manga novels that seem to be everywhere these days, these two very different, amazing and very wonderful books had already convinced me that there was a lot more to graphic novels and comic-style art than I had realized. Then my son came home for a weekend from his senior year at college and told me about his senior seminar for his English writing major. His final paper was entitled: “Image, Text, Space: Frames and Tempo(rality) in Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes." I nearly fell off of my chair. All of those hours that I thought were being “wasted” in comic books were bearing fruit in a college level senior thesis paper.
I’m pleased to report that not only did he receive an “A” for that paper, but his professor asked for permission to use it as his example for next year’s class.
Who’d have thunk it? Comics in college! One more lesson for me in keeping my mind open.
In the past, I had tended to dismiss comics as nothing more than easy, pretty much mindless entertainment. Reading the Sunday comics was a little treat to give myself at the end of the week (but only after I had done the “real” work of reading the actual news in the newspaper). When my homeschooled children would spend hours at the kitchen table reading Calvin and Hobbes or Foxtrot or Dilbert, I would grow impatient with them, and nag at them to do some “real” work, like math or a science project or something; or at least to read something that I could characterize as educational—maybe a National Geographic magazine, or Johnny Tremain, or something by Jack London.
My first attempt to broaden my outlook was reading the children's book Into the Volcano by Don Wood and my second was reading Neil Gaiman’s 2000 novella The Dream Hunters (Sandman, Book 11), illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Without even getting to the most popular anime and manga novels that seem to be everywhere these days, these two very different, amazing and very wonderful books had already convinced me that there was a lot more to graphic novels and comic-style art than I had realized. Then my son came home for a weekend from his senior year at college and told me about his senior seminar for his English writing major. His final paper was entitled: “Image, Text, Space: Frames and Tempo(rality) in Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes." I nearly fell off of my chair. All of those hours that I thought were being “wasted” in comic books were bearing fruit in a college level senior thesis paper.
I’m pleased to report that not only did he receive an “A” for that paper, but his professor asked for permission to use it as his example for next year’s class.
Who’d have thunk it? Comics in college! One more lesson for me in keeping my mind open.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
On politics in the classroom
After attending a college where it was standard practice for professors to move beyond sharing their political opinions to punishing students who disagreed, I am admittedly oversensitive to this issue. But the readings we did a while back, on teaching kids how to use digital media to express their political opinions, and even some of the readings on media literacy, made me a little wary. There is a balance we need to strike between empowering kids to understand media messages and voice their own opinions, and convincing kids to believe the same things we do.
It can be tricky. On some level, teaching media literacy is in itself a subversive action. We’re teaching kids to think critically about information provided by the government, the media, corporations: sources that plenty of their parents trust without question. Learning to ask those questions is a vital skill, and one that kids are not likely to pick up on their own. Even so, it’s not without controversy. There are plenty of adults who would prefer that children believe what they’re told. There is, after all, a great deal of money at stake.
So it’s important, I think, to make certain that we teach kids how to make these evaluations and judgments on their own, without asserting that our own views on the subject are right. Rheingold’s goal seems like a good one: “What if teachers could help students discover what they really care about, then show them how to use digital media to learn more and to persuade others?” Helping kids refine and articulate their views, and teaching them how to share those views in interesting, attention-getting ways – that’s all well and good. This stuff, though, concerns me more:
Finally, American youth are particularly susceptible to being influenced by corporate-funded mass culture, which is aimed directly at them even though it reaches a global audience. For that very reason, they have special leverage over media corporations, especially if they act cooperatively. It is not an exaggeration to say that youth civic engagement in the United States could benefit democracy around the world if youth-led associations challenged mass culture.
I agree, right? But this is a political opinion. Where do we draw the line between teaching media literacy skills and performing our own indoctrination? Is it really the place of schools or teachers to encourage kids to “challenge” mass culture, above and beyond just analyzing it? I don’t know. It seems like a difficult line to walk, anyway.
On the other side: for my annotated bibliography, I looked at copyright issues and youth, and while researching that topic, I ended up looking through a bunch of pro-corporate propaganda aimed at kids. The good news is, a lot of schools are teaching kids about copyright law in a responsible way: they're giving kids information about how they can and can't use other people's intellectual property, with plenty of emphasis placed on the fair use doctrine and on finding Creative Commons-licensed or public domain materials.
The bad news - there is always bad news - is that plenty of schools aren't. The MPAA and the RIAA, among other corporate interest groups, have created lesson plans that boil down to, “If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it.” That’s obviously not true. These lessons ignore the intricacies and vagaries of copyright law in the real world. Rather than introduce a complicated subject, like fair use, these interest groups ignore it entirely, even though it has a huge impact on the way we think about and interact with copyrighted materials.
Worryingly, plenty of schools are using these lesson plans. California now requires most schools to teach kids about copyright law. (Whether or not this is more worthwhile than teaching them, say, math or English or music theory is up for debate.) Teachers, most of whom are pressed for time as it is, sometimes see these professionally produced, thorough lesson plans as an easy option. And so corporate interests continue to insinuate their way into our schools. And of course, the reason I find this so upsetting is that I do not think that the political positions of some corporate entity have any place in the classroom, where they are presented by teachers and other adults in positions of authority, and are less likely to be questioned by the young people who hear them.
So while teaching kids the realities of copyright law – how it impacts them, what exceptions they may be able to take advantage of, how to find materials that are freely available – is absolutely important, we have to be careful. Advocating for a change in copyright law, reasonable as it may be, probably isn’t something we should be doing in the classroom. (On our own time, or as an institution…that’s a different story. Advocating for copyright law reform seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for libraries and librarians to do.)
Anyway. Teaching media literacy skills can be a really empowering thing. Teaching kids about the ways copyright law can work for them, or the ways they can work around it, is also good. We just have to make sure that kids are empowered to take their media literacy toolbox and go out in the world to figure things out for themselves.
It can be tricky. On some level, teaching media literacy is in itself a subversive action. We’re teaching kids to think critically about information provided by the government, the media, corporations: sources that plenty of their parents trust without question. Learning to ask those questions is a vital skill, and one that kids are not likely to pick up on their own. Even so, it’s not without controversy. There are plenty of adults who would prefer that children believe what they’re told. There is, after all, a great deal of money at stake.
So it’s important, I think, to make certain that we teach kids how to make these evaluations and judgments on their own, without asserting that our own views on the subject are right. Rheingold’s goal seems like a good one: “What if teachers could help students discover what they really care about, then show them how to use digital media to learn more and to persuade others?” Helping kids refine and articulate their views, and teaching them how to share those views in interesting, attention-getting ways – that’s all well and good. This stuff, though, concerns me more:
Finally, American youth are particularly susceptible to being influenced by corporate-funded mass culture, which is aimed directly at them even though it reaches a global audience. For that very reason, they have special leverage over media corporations, especially if they act cooperatively. It is not an exaggeration to say that youth civic engagement in the United States could benefit democracy around the world if youth-led associations challenged mass culture.
I agree, right? But this is a political opinion. Where do we draw the line between teaching media literacy skills and performing our own indoctrination? Is it really the place of schools or teachers to encourage kids to “challenge” mass culture, above and beyond just analyzing it? I don’t know. It seems like a difficult line to walk, anyway.
On the other side: for my annotated bibliography, I looked at copyright issues and youth, and while researching that topic, I ended up looking through a bunch of pro-corporate propaganda aimed at kids. The good news is, a lot of schools are teaching kids about copyright law in a responsible way: they're giving kids information about how they can and can't use other people's intellectual property, with plenty of emphasis placed on the fair use doctrine and on finding Creative Commons-licensed or public domain materials.
The bad news - there is always bad news - is that plenty of schools aren't. The MPAA and the RIAA, among other corporate interest groups, have created lesson plans that boil down to, “If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it.” That’s obviously not true. These lessons ignore the intricacies and vagaries of copyright law in the real world. Rather than introduce a complicated subject, like fair use, these interest groups ignore it entirely, even though it has a huge impact on the way we think about and interact with copyrighted materials.
Worryingly, plenty of schools are using these lesson plans. California now requires most schools to teach kids about copyright law. (Whether or not this is more worthwhile than teaching them, say, math or English or music theory is up for debate.) Teachers, most of whom are pressed for time as it is, sometimes see these professionally produced, thorough lesson plans as an easy option. And so corporate interests continue to insinuate their way into our schools. And of course, the reason I find this so upsetting is that I do not think that the political positions of some corporate entity have any place in the classroom, where they are presented by teachers and other adults in positions of authority, and are less likely to be questioned by the young people who hear them.
So while teaching kids the realities of copyright law – how it impacts them, what exceptions they may be able to take advantage of, how to find materials that are freely available – is absolutely important, we have to be careful. Advocating for a change in copyright law, reasonable as it may be, probably isn’t something we should be doing in the classroom. (On our own time, or as an institution…that’s a different story. Advocating for copyright law reform seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for libraries and librarians to do.)
Anyway. Teaching media literacy skills can be a really empowering thing. Teaching kids about the ways copyright law can work for them, or the ways they can work around it, is also good. We just have to make sure that kids are empowered to take their media literacy toolbox and go out in the world to figure things out for themselves.
Critiquing "Old" Media
Most of the posts this semester have focused on so called "new" media - Internet technologies or console or computer gaming, which is a big concern when talking about media literacy and youth in schools. However, I ran across a post in the New York Times this week, "Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs", that made me remember that it’s just as important for students to know how to appropriate, use, dissect, and critique "new" media as it is with "old" media like the television (I know we've sort of talked about how not as many young people are actually watching TV anymore, but I think they are still watching TV shows; they're just watching them online).
"Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs" is about the show The Big Bang Theory on CBS that chronicles the lives of two physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, and their neighbor Penny who is of course beautiful, blonde, and from a completely different social circle - okay, a completely different social universe! The show is quite popular (there's even a website where one can find links to purchase shirts like the one's the characters wear in the show), and I know quite a few of my graduate student friends who don’t miss an episode, but when the show was proposed, and even now, some were worried about the types of stereotypes that the show was perpetuating, which is what Dennis Overbye addresses in this article. The show attempts to be scientifically accurate and realistic while remaining funny. Nevertheless, the stereotypes that the show seems to perpetuate of the socially awkward scientists who are interested in science fiction and gaming and who are overwhelmingly male is a stereotype that many are trying to get away from. There are a few women on the show, and one happens to be a pretty good scientist who competes with one of the main characters occasionally, but the show doesn’t do nearly enough to truly challenge the overarching stereotypes concerning some scientists. As Bruce Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is quoted as saying in the article, "The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy". And to an extent, I agree. How are we supposed to convince those who do not fit this stereotype that they will be welcome in the scientific community if they keep seeing these images? I sometimes watch and enjoy the show though, so…
Not all people feel this way though, and several famous scientists have actually appeared on the show including Nobel laureate George Smoot and Lisa Randall who is a Harvard particle theorist who has appeared on the show as an extra. The scientists who support the show emphasize that the show is funny, defends science more than it mocks it, and has broken the mold a bit by having one of the characters, Leonard, actually dating Penny. So, opinions of the show seem to differ a bit in the scientific community and almost certainly amongst non-scientists as well.
I mention this article because it sort of shows that the ability to be critical of images, information, sources, and presentation is just as important with "old" media as it is with "new" media and that it's perhaps not as easy as one would think. I think that some of the skills that we have discussed teaching our students about dissecting information encountered on the Internet would be just as useful when coming across information in other places. This show presents interesting opportunities for that with the show topics where students could investigate the scientific information that is shared if they would like to know more about the topic, or they could even do more research into the veracity of the staging of the show. For example, is that really what it’s like at a university? Do people working at a university actually make the amount of money necessary to sustain the lifestyles of the show’s characters? What percentage of academia, and specifically the sciences, is made up of women? What is the viewer supposed to take away from seeing the living situations of the characters in the show? What impressions are made on the viewer by seeing how people of color are represented in the show? I think there are several paths of inquiry that we could engage in based upon this one, simple half-hour long sitcom and of course, other shows was well.
In thinking about how we could teach others how to think more critically about this type of media, I found it interesting that Overbye notes in the article that neither of the show's lead characters understand the scientific dialogue that they deliver so convincingly. They also don’t quite know some of the references to popular culture that are in the show including references to "Star Trek" and comic books. The actor that plays the character named Sheldon says that what he is trying to say with the references is more important than actually understanding the reference. I guess… This sort of illustrates though that not only is investigating the stereotypes that some say are perpetuated by the show, e.g., the dumb blonde stereotype, important, but the actual content of the show is prime for investigation as well. And I think it might actually be useful for students to see that the skills that are useful in online contexts are just as important offline and vice versa.
"Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs" is about the show The Big Bang Theory on CBS that chronicles the lives of two physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, and their neighbor Penny who is of course beautiful, blonde, and from a completely different social circle - okay, a completely different social universe! The show is quite popular (there's even a website where one can find links to purchase shirts like the one's the characters wear in the show), and I know quite a few of my graduate student friends who don’t miss an episode, but when the show was proposed, and even now, some were worried about the types of stereotypes that the show was perpetuating, which is what Dennis Overbye addresses in this article. The show attempts to be scientifically accurate and realistic while remaining funny. Nevertheless, the stereotypes that the show seems to perpetuate of the socially awkward scientists who are interested in science fiction and gaming and who are overwhelmingly male is a stereotype that many are trying to get away from. There are a few women on the show, and one happens to be a pretty good scientist who competes with one of the main characters occasionally, but the show doesn’t do nearly enough to truly challenge the overarching stereotypes concerning some scientists. As Bruce Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is quoted as saying in the article, "The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy". And to an extent, I agree. How are we supposed to convince those who do not fit this stereotype that they will be welcome in the scientific community if they keep seeing these images? I sometimes watch and enjoy the show though, so…
Not all people feel this way though, and several famous scientists have actually appeared on the show including Nobel laureate George Smoot and Lisa Randall who is a Harvard particle theorist who has appeared on the show as an extra. The scientists who support the show emphasize that the show is funny, defends science more than it mocks it, and has broken the mold a bit by having one of the characters, Leonard, actually dating Penny. So, opinions of the show seem to differ a bit in the scientific community and almost certainly amongst non-scientists as well.
I mention this article because it sort of shows that the ability to be critical of images, information, sources, and presentation is just as important with "old" media as it is with "new" media and that it's perhaps not as easy as one would think. I think that some of the skills that we have discussed teaching our students about dissecting information encountered on the Internet would be just as useful when coming across information in other places. This show presents interesting opportunities for that with the show topics where students could investigate the scientific information that is shared if they would like to know more about the topic, or they could even do more research into the veracity of the staging of the show. For example, is that really what it’s like at a university? Do people working at a university actually make the amount of money necessary to sustain the lifestyles of the show’s characters? What percentage of academia, and specifically the sciences, is made up of women? What is the viewer supposed to take away from seeing the living situations of the characters in the show? What impressions are made on the viewer by seeing how people of color are represented in the show? I think there are several paths of inquiry that we could engage in based upon this one, simple half-hour long sitcom and of course, other shows was well.
In thinking about how we could teach others how to think more critically about this type of media, I found it interesting that Overbye notes in the article that neither of the show's lead characters understand the scientific dialogue that they deliver so convincingly. They also don’t quite know some of the references to popular culture that are in the show including references to "Star Trek" and comic books. The actor that plays the character named Sheldon says that what he is trying to say with the references is more important than actually understanding the reference. I guess… This sort of illustrates though that not only is investigating the stereotypes that some say are perpetuated by the show, e.g., the dumb blonde stereotype, important, but the actual content of the show is prime for investigation as well. And I think it might actually be useful for students to see that the skills that are useful in online contexts are just as important offline and vice versa.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Online Comics?
I meant to include this recent article from the Christian Science Monitor in my earlier post -- POW! Online comic books start to pull fans to the Web. "The iPad is a natural fit for comics . . ."
Have any of you had a chance to explore an iPad yet? When the semester is over, maybe I'll visit the Apple store . . . .
Have any of you had a chance to explore an iPad yet? When the semester is over, maybe I'll visit the Apple store . . . .
Media Studies lesson plans from the NY Times
You guys may have already seen this, but it's kind of neat:
Media Studies Lesson Plans
Some of these are cooler than others - I really like the ones about photojournalism and understanding the census - but they are all kind of interesting. Teaching kids how to understand the news is a hugely important part of media literacy education, I think, and these lesson plans do a better job of it than, say, those made-for-kids news videos we watched earlier in the semester. They're more interactive, too - a lot of them involve a hands-on component that gives kids a chance to be content creators as well as, hopefully, content "understanders."
Media Studies Lesson Plans
Some of these are cooler than others - I really like the ones about photojournalism and understanding the census - but they are all kind of interesting. Teaching kids how to understand the news is a hugely important part of media literacy education, I think, and these lesson plans do a better job of it than, say, those made-for-kids news videos we watched earlier in the semester. They're more interactive, too - a lot of them involve a hands-on component that gives kids a chance to be content creators as well as, hopefully, content "understanders."
Ambience
Early in the semester, Lee Rainie talked about the “always on” or “ambient” quality of technology today, especially in the lives of young people. Lately I’ve been thinking about this idea and how it applies to other library and educational issues. For example, in a library, reading should be ambient. Right now, learning seems to be ambient for me. By this I mean different aspects of my life keep crossing over, informing other aspects of my life. The boundaries of personal and professional are blurring. I used to think it was unprofessional to talk about family, children, and also about a career, but for me, these two broad arenas keep overlapping – even when I try to keep them separate.
Here is an e
xample. In reading Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Ito, Mizuko, et.al. published by the MacArthur Foundation,2010) for my resource review, one of the studies included focused on Neopets. This was of no particular interest (interesting, but not compelling) until I discovered that my eleven-year old was spending a great deal of time on Neopets. These two things – my reading and his interest, took place in the span of the same two week period. Coincidence? The study talked about three very different reasons that most children use Neopets: 1) social (interacting with their friends) 2) creative (inventing pets, dressing them, decorating their houses, taking care of them) or 3) economic – by playing different games and making investments, children “earn” more points. Those who are focused on the earning usually don’t spend all of their points. Capitalist, yes. Certainly not violent. I pictured my son – why would he play? My guess was #3. So I asked him if he liked playing the market and he responded very enthusiastically. But is this a good way for him to be spending his time? So, I also checked on Common Sense Media (a site we have looked at in this class and I have used before) to see what they have to say . . . and yes, it’s not too bad. They also note the commercial nature of the site and recommend avoiding the chat rooms and discussion boards, which my son was very dismissive about when I asked him – that part is just not interesting to him. Still, he gets so involved that it does seem addictive at times . . . so I can understand the concerns that parents have about too much media use and gaming. Where these lines are, how much is too much, what is appropriate? . . . I’m not sure, but I’m still learning.
In another part of my life I’m involved with a parent educational group. At the April meeting a school administrator talking about an exciting new program she is implementing to help teachers learn how to differentiate in the classroom. What planning method did she refer to? Backwards design. A concept that makes great sense, but I was not very familiar with before just a few weeks ago. This week’s article by Wiggins and McTighe, “Put Understanding First”, about using backwards design in designing school curriculum was excellent for me as a parent and well as a librarian. Learning is ambient.
Another example: Comics. We’ve recently analyzed the conventions needed to interpret comics, issues surrounding comics and reading, visual literacy. And the same week we discussed it in class, a comic book exhibit at The Works, a local science museum, opened: St
ories in Four Colors: Cartoon Art in Ohio. This coming Saturday, May 1, our local library is hosting a comic book day with a workshop for youth in the afternoon. Ahh . . . because it's National Comic Book Day. Thanks to Carol for tweeting this NPR resource as I'm blogging! Cool! Other recent comics news include a graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time. One of my favorite books, so I’m both excited and a bit worried – so is the artist, who is at least aware that L’Engle didn’t want illustrations for her book. But if it will introduce the story to new readers, then that’s a good thing . . . And what about the movies? I haven’t heard much positive about the Kick-Ass movie, but this article asks whether graphic novel heroines are different when written by women, instead of men (think Wonder Woman)? I think she’s on to something here . . . will graphic novels written by women appeal more to girls than traditional comics do?
Does this kind of coincidence happen for the rest of you? Where one aspect of your life informs another . . . in sometimes unpredictable ways? It’s exciting . . . and there is always more to learn.
Here is an e
xample. In reading Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (Ito, Mizuko, et.al. published by the MacArthur Foundation,2010) for my resource review, one of the studies included focused on Neopets. This was of no particular interest (interesting, but not compelling) until I discovered that my eleven-year old was spending a great deal of time on Neopets. These two things – my reading and his interest, took place in the span of the same two week period. Coincidence? The study talked about three very different reasons that most children use Neopets: 1) social (interacting with their friends) 2) creative (inventing pets, dressing them, decorating their houses, taking care of them) or 3) economic – by playing different games and making investments, children “earn” more points. Those who are focused on the earning usually don’t spend all of their points. Capitalist, yes. Certainly not violent. I pictured my son – why would he play? My guess was #3. So I asked him if he liked playing the market and he responded very enthusiastically. But is this a good way for him to be spending his time? So, I also checked on Common Sense Media (a site we have looked at in this class and I have used before) to see what they have to say . . . and yes, it’s not too bad. They also note the commercial nature of the site and recommend avoiding the chat rooms and discussion boards, which my son was very dismissive about when I asked him – that part is just not interesting to him. Still, he gets so involved that it does seem addictive at times . . . so I can understand the concerns that parents have about too much media use and gaming. Where these lines are, how much is too much, what is appropriate? . . . I’m not sure, but I’m still learning.In another part of my life I’m involved with a parent educational group. At the April meeting a school administrator talking about an exciting new program she is implementing to help teachers learn how to differentiate in the classroom. What planning method did she refer to? Backwards design. A concept that makes great sense, but I was not very familiar with before just a few weeks ago. This week’s article by Wiggins and McTighe, “Put Understanding First”, about using backwards design in designing school curriculum was excellent for me as a parent and well as a librarian. Learning is ambient.
Another example: Comics. We’ve recently analyzed the conventions needed to interpret comics, issues surrounding comics and reading, visual literacy. And the same week we discussed it in class, a comic book exhibit at The Works, a local science museum, opened: St
ories in Four Colors: Cartoon Art in Ohio. This coming Saturday, May 1, our local library is hosting a comic book day with a workshop for youth in the afternoon. Ahh . . . because it's National Comic Book Day. Thanks to Carol for tweeting this NPR resource as I'm blogging! Cool! Other recent comics news include a graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time. One of my favorite books, so I’m both excited and a bit worried – so is the artist, who is at least aware that L’Engle didn’t want illustrations for her book. But if it will introduce the story to new readers, then that’s a good thing . . . And what about the movies? I haven’t heard much positive about the Kick-Ass movie, but this article asks whether graphic novel heroines are different when written by women, instead of men (think Wonder Woman)? I think she’s on to something here . . . will graphic novels written by women appeal more to girls than traditional comics do?Does this kind of coincidence happen for the rest of you? Where one aspect of your life informs another . . . in sometimes unpredictable ways? It’s exciting . . . and there is always more to learn.
Get Social
I'm not sure if any of you have heard about or followed the Google vs. China censorship stuff that has been in the news since late March. For those of you who haven't, Google shut down its search engine services to China (google.cn) due to the country's strict laws on and enforcement of censorship. Quoted from the New York Times 'Google vs. China' linked article above:
Google’s move represents a powerful rejection of Beijing’s censorship but also a risky ploy in which Google, a global technology powerhouse, will essentially turn its back on the world’s largest Internet market, with nearly 400 million Web users.
“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on google.cn has been hard,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in the blog post. “The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a nonnegotiable legal requirement."
In last Sunday's New York Times, there was this article, which talked about how Chinese youth spend most of their free and social time on the internet. Quoted from the 'this article' linked above:
Frustrated with media censorship, bland programming on state-run television and limits on the number of foreign films allowed to be shown in China each year, young people are logging onto the Web and downloading alternatives. Homegrown Web sites like Baidu, Tencent and Sina.com have captured millions of Chinese youths obsessed with online games, pirated movies and music, the raising of virtual vegetables, microblogging and instant messaging.
Mr. Li, the Shanghai Maritime University student, says he surfs the Web to find or build his own community. A shy person with no siblings, he now has 300 online buddies, and says he turns to the Web to find what he cannot find anywhere else, particularly on state-run TV, which banned some Korean shows years ago.
After reading both of these articles, I couldn't stop thinking about the unique and positive role that the internet--and the access it provides to various forms of media--is playing in the lives of Chinese youth in the face of their struggles with and against their government's imposed censorship: especially since the past weeks have been spent discussing safety concerns in general and how they apply to popular social media sites like Facebook. But then I also began to think about the above-mentioned student and his sense of community online: I could just picture him sitting in his room at his computer for hours communicating with friends and surfing the internet. In the article, it says that he is an only child and is somewhat shy, though he does has 300 friends online and communicates with them regularly. Looking at this situation realistically though, he is still somewhat disconnected from these friends because even though all this regular socializing and communication is going on, he's still at his desk behind his computer being an isolated and shy only child. Are his online friends the same as his friends at school? Does he have any friends at school since he's busy spending so much of his free time socializing on the internet instead of meeting up with friends at a coffeehouse or club? Clearly I don't know any more details about his life beyond what's mentioned in the article, but it makes me wonder.
Socializing online behind one's computer is quite different from socializing face to face with another person or a group of people. And it's this difference between these two forms of socializing that always raises questions and concerns for me when it comes to singing the praises for social networking. Social networking provides you with instant information and access to your friends, allowing you to message them, comment on the material they have posted to their personal pages, and even allowing you to text chat with them live if they are online at the same time that you are. But even with all this access to different forms of communication thanks to social networking, it can and never will be the same kind of socializing that one experiences in real life. I'm not saying that the purpose of social networking is to replace actual real life socialization, but I think that many times people--including young adults--can become so reliant and consumed with the ease and availability of social networking that they don't make an effort to physically get together and connect or communicate in different ways, such as picking up the phone and actually talking to that person instead of posting a quick "Hey, how ya doing' on their wall. And that's something I always wonder, and I guess worry about, when looking at how much time young adults and adults spend communicating with and relaying on social networking. Like many of the other issues we've discussed concerning media and youth in this class, I think it's important present a balance and complete view of the situation: to not only encourage the use of social networking but to also encourage young adults to get off the computer, grab some friends, go outside, and just all around live!
Google’s move represents a powerful rejection of Beijing’s censorship but also a risky ploy in which Google, a global technology powerhouse, will essentially turn its back on the world’s largest Internet market, with nearly 400 million Web users.
“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on google.cn has been hard,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in the blog post. “The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a nonnegotiable legal requirement."
In last Sunday's New York Times, there was this article, which talked about how Chinese youth spend most of their free and social time on the internet. Quoted from the 'this article' linked above:
Frustrated with media censorship, bland programming on state-run television and limits on the number of foreign films allowed to be shown in China each year, young people are logging onto the Web and downloading alternatives. Homegrown Web sites like Baidu, Tencent and Sina.com have captured millions of Chinese youths obsessed with online games, pirated movies and music, the raising of virtual vegetables, microblogging and instant messaging.
Mr. Li, the Shanghai Maritime University student, says he surfs the Web to find or build his own community. A shy person with no siblings, he now has 300 online buddies, and says he turns to the Web to find what he cannot find anywhere else, particularly on state-run TV, which banned some Korean shows years ago.
After reading both of these articles, I couldn't stop thinking about the unique and positive role that the internet--and the access it provides to various forms of media--is playing in the lives of Chinese youth in the face of their struggles with and against their government's imposed censorship: especially since the past weeks have been spent discussing safety concerns in general and how they apply to popular social media sites like Facebook. But then I also began to think about the above-mentioned student and his sense of community online: I could just picture him sitting in his room at his computer for hours communicating with friends and surfing the internet. In the article, it says that he is an only child and is somewhat shy, though he does has 300 friends online and communicates with them regularly. Looking at this situation realistically though, he is still somewhat disconnected from these friends because even though all this regular socializing and communication is going on, he's still at his desk behind his computer being an isolated and shy only child. Are his online friends the same as his friends at school? Does he have any friends at school since he's busy spending so much of his free time socializing on the internet instead of meeting up with friends at a coffeehouse or club? Clearly I don't know any more details about his life beyond what's mentioned in the article, but it makes me wonder.
Socializing online behind one's computer is quite different from socializing face to face with another person or a group of people. And it's this difference between these two forms of socializing that always raises questions and concerns for me when it comes to singing the praises for social networking. Social networking provides you with instant information and access to your friends, allowing you to message them, comment on the material they have posted to their personal pages, and even allowing you to text chat with them live if they are online at the same time that you are. But even with all this access to different forms of communication thanks to social networking, it can and never will be the same kind of socializing that one experiences in real life. I'm not saying that the purpose of social networking is to replace actual real life socialization, but I think that many times people--including young adults--can become so reliant and consumed with the ease and availability of social networking that they don't make an effort to physically get together and connect or communicate in different ways, such as picking up the phone and actually talking to that person instead of posting a quick "Hey, how ya doing' on their wall. And that's something I always wonder, and I guess worry about, when looking at how much time young adults and adults spend communicating with and relaying on social networking. Like many of the other issues we've discussed concerning media and youth in this class, I think it's important present a balance and complete view of the situation: to not only encourage the use of social networking but to also encourage young adults to get off the computer, grab some friends, go outside, and just all around live!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Educating Parents to Relieve Fears
We have talked quite a bit about how we as librarians can and should help young people to be media literate and media safe. What should our role be? Censor? Guide? Facilitator? Educator? Which are the most important things to teach? What exactly do children and young adults most need to be protected against? There are no clear and easy answers to these questions, but for a general approach, I agree with Chanell (April 14, Always use protection?!) and Katie (April 14, Fear and the Internet) that it is important to consider the potential benefits of media engagement as well as the potential risks, and to not let our fears so overwhelm us that we throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, and deny our young people the myriad opportunities for creation, communication and connection available through digital technologies and the Internet.
One way to work towards achieving this balance between safety and encouragement, I think, may be to widen the focus of our efforts a little to include parents as well as young people. As Ruth pointed out, “teens and their parents may be growing farther apart, giving new meaning to the term ‘digital divide’. Parents often do not understand or monitor the online behavior of their children, or underestimate what their children are doing.” (April 14, Should we be concerned?) I think that parents not understanding the technologies their children are using is what creates a great deal of the fear surrounding young peoples’ use of digital and internet technologies.. Ignorance is the most fertile breeding ground for fear that there is. Perhaps in addition to trying to make judgments about how to guide, educate and protect young people ourselves, we should also be striving to empower parents to make those decisions by educating them and giving them the tools they need to understand the practices their children are engaging in.
I noticed that when we broke in to small groups to design programs, at least two, if not all three, groups chose to design programs aimed at adults. In the “real world”, as well, many libraries offer programs intended for parents about topics such as social networking, blogging and texting. This approach is not much different from the advice concerning TV and movies that it seems like I have been hearing for years: you don’t need to forbid your child to watch TV or movies—you need to watch with them and talk with them about what they see. Similarly, being on Facebook and navigating its privacy settings or reading some blogs and noticing how the discourse is furthered or hindered by the nature of the comments will make it easier for parents to teach their children about these topics.
The bottom line is that in most cases, parents have far more influence over their children’s attitudes and activities than teachers or librarians. If they can understand what their children are doing and converse knowledgeably with them about the various digital and online practices they are involved with, they will have a much better chance of helping to keep their children safe, more opportunities to help their children take full advantage of the many benefits of being media literate, and more opportunities to talk with their children about how their beliefs and values apply to these activities.
I am not saying, of course, that we should offer education and guidance to parents instead of offering the same to children and young people. Children can never have too many opportunities to learn. But I do think that educating parents may be just as important as educating children. Educating parents serves two purposes: it creates another resource for children to turn to for guidance and it lessens the fears that parents may have, which in turn will make it easier for them to encourage and support their children’s positive engagement with various digital and internet technologies.
One way to work towards achieving this balance between safety and encouragement, I think, may be to widen the focus of our efforts a little to include parents as well as young people. As Ruth pointed out, “teens and their parents may be growing farther apart, giving new meaning to the term ‘digital divide’. Parents often do not understand or monitor the online behavior of their children, or underestimate what their children are doing.” (April 14, Should we be concerned?) I think that parents not understanding the technologies their children are using is what creates a great deal of the fear surrounding young peoples’ use of digital and internet technologies.. Ignorance is the most fertile breeding ground for fear that there is. Perhaps in addition to trying to make judgments about how to guide, educate and protect young people ourselves, we should also be striving to empower parents to make those decisions by educating them and giving them the tools they need to understand the practices their children are engaging in.
I noticed that when we broke in to small groups to design programs, at least two, if not all three, groups chose to design programs aimed at adults. In the “real world”, as well, many libraries offer programs intended for parents about topics such as social networking, blogging and texting. This approach is not much different from the advice concerning TV and movies that it seems like I have been hearing for years: you don’t need to forbid your child to watch TV or movies—you need to watch with them and talk with them about what they see. Similarly, being on Facebook and navigating its privacy settings or reading some blogs and noticing how the discourse is furthered or hindered by the nature of the comments will make it easier for parents to teach their children about these topics.
The bottom line is that in most cases, parents have far more influence over their children’s attitudes and activities than teachers or librarians. If they can understand what their children are doing and converse knowledgeably with them about the various digital and online practices they are involved with, they will have a much better chance of helping to keep their children safe, more opportunities to help their children take full advantage of the many benefits of being media literate, and more opportunities to talk with their children about how their beliefs and values apply to these activities.
I am not saying, of course, that we should offer education and guidance to parents instead of offering the same to children and young people. Children can never have too many opportunities to learn. But I do think that educating parents may be just as important as educating children. Educating parents serves two purposes: it creates another resource for children to turn to for guidance and it lessens the fears that parents may have, which in turn will make it easier for them to encourage and support their children’s positive engagement with various digital and internet technologies.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
"Haul Videos" -- Shopping porn or just plain boring?
Another article in today's New York Times -- "Tube Tops and Teddy Bears" by Cathy Horyn -- also struck me as relevant to our class. In this short article, Horyn discusses the trend of "haul videos," where young women, mostly in their teens and twenties, show off purchases from recent shopping trips. Because the videos feature young women usually in their bedrooms, some are using the sinister label of "shopping pornography" to suggest something creepily voyeuristic about them. The author of the article, however, argues that those who give them this label haven't really watched them: her experiences after viewing was that they are really quite tedious. Despite how boring they seem to be, these videos get hundreds of thousands of views.
With all our fears of protecting our kids from what is dangerous, violent, sexually provocative, exploitative, etc., sometimes I think we could spend a bit more time helping steer them towards stuff that's not so shallow and boring. In some ways I fear the much more prevalent mind-numbing and relentless consumerism of much of what's in the media as much as the fringe wackos and perverts on the internet. As some of our readings in the last few weeks have suggested, most young people can spot those kind of creeps and avoid them. Can we say the same for how well we've trained them to recognize and be savvy about those who only want to sell them more junk and make them more insecure about their appearance?
With all our fears of protecting our kids from what is dangerous, violent, sexually provocative, exploitative, etc., sometimes I think we could spend a bit more time helping steer them towards stuff that's not so shallow and boring. In some ways I fear the much more prevalent mind-numbing and relentless consumerism of much of what's in the media as much as the fringe wackos and perverts on the internet. As some of our readings in the last few weeks have suggested, most young people can spot those kind of creeps and avoid them. Can we say the same for how well we've trained them to recognize and be savvy about those who only want to sell them more junk and make them more insecure about their appearance?
Speaking of those tech-aware young folks
In light of recent posts about how young people are perhaps more savvy about the potential pitfalls/privacy issues of online social networking, I thought this article in today's New York Times was relevant: "An Online Alias Keeps Colleges Off Their Trail." The gist of the article, as the title suggests, is that there is a trend among high school students to create aliases for their Facebook profiles, usually starting junior year until they are accepted into college. This move stems from a fear that college admissions officials will check their Facebook pages and that what they find could negatively influences the students' chances for admission. The article also suggests that this fear may or may not be justified, something I have wondered myself. At the high school where I teach, I have heard counselors and outside speakers tell students nightmare tales of admissions officers and potential employers rejecting applicants based on unsavory images and text found on applicants' social networking pages. Not that I don't think it's a good idea to warn students about this, but I have wondered how prevalent this practice was and whether or not these warnings were solely about helping students not undermine their chances for future success. I suspect that part of it is an attempt not only to get students not to publish such unsavory images but to indirectly address the behavior itself, an approach, I think, with questionable efficacy. Now certainly, I agree with the goal of discouraging students from underage drinking and engaging in potentially damaging sexual behavior, but it always struck me as false to focus on the dangers of photographing and publishing this behavior and sidestepping the concerns about the behavior itself. Aren't we more worried that they are doing these things than that a college admissions official will find out that they are? Don't some discussions of "think before you post" tacitly accept that the behavior takes place and emphasize the idea that it's all o.k. as long as it's not made public? How can we have discussions with students about these issues that look at all of this as a whole?
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