media studies
Improving test scores and raising the caliber of learning in all English and Language Arts classrooms is a wonderful goal and one that I hope all teachers are striving for. Many districts think that going "Back to the Basics" will acomplish this goal, but in reality this ignores a wide range of activities that could actually improve the "basic skills" of reading and writing in a more engaging and motivating way for this generation than many traditional methods.
At Nicollet Junior High in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, students focus on grammar and literature (mostly short stories and poems with a few novels). They are supposed to increase their writing abilities as the basic skills test is fast approaching as well as a few other state exams. The school is fairly open to the use of technology in the classrooms and has a rolling computer lab, a computer lab and a few software options. The English office has a ton of movies that go along with the curriculum and the literature textbook has a cd that goes with it so that the students can listen to the stories and poem being read out loud. They do believe that media and technology is a great tool, but don't really know how to incorporate it in.
Rationale: We need to incorporate more technology and media studies into the classroom in order to give our students a better sense of the world that they live in and help them learn to filter the messages that they encounter online, in movies and from television.
---When students are taught to analyze movies and television in the same manner that they would a written text, they will be able to filter the messages that they are hearing and choose what they will believe. It is people's natural tendency to believe what they see and hear, unless they are taught to analyze it properly. They will learn to think critically and see that the music, shot angles, costumes, etc are all used to manipulate the senses so that an emotion is stirred or an idea is raised. They need to understand how this works so that they are not unduly influenced by the world and advertisers. They need to be intelligent, thoughtful consumers of media.
---When students are able to use technology with their schoolwork they are able to do something that most are already quite familiar with, or enjoy a great deal, to learn. This gives them some intrinsic motivation to do the work. When the students enjoy doing their work, they will do it better and spend more time with it so they will learn more. Our goal is to get students to love learning, as most do when they are young, so that they will become lifelong learners, always curious and interested in the world around them. Otherwise they may become complacent adults who simply accept what they are told and do not participate in government and in improving our society as much as they could.
---If students truly understand how the messages in advertising they can choose whether or not they want to recieve the messages. Advertising promotes consumerism, self-centered behavior, and avoidance of the hard issues. They learn how to understand the messages with critical thinking and visual, auditory and textual analysis, skills that are being taught in language arts curriculum as well.
At Nicollet Junior High in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, students focus on grammar and literature (mostly short stories and poems with a few novels). They are supposed to increase their writing abilities as the basic skills test is fast approaching as well as a few other state exams. The school is fairly open to the use of technology in the classrooms and has a rolling computer lab, a computer lab and a few software options. The English office has a ton of movies that go along with the curriculum and the literature textbook has a cd that goes with it so that the students can listen to the stories and poem being read out loud. They do believe that media and technology is a great tool, but don't really know how to incorporate it in.
Rationale: We need to incorporate more technology and media studies into the classroom in order to give our students a better sense of the world that they live in and help them learn to filter the messages that they encounter online, in movies and from television.
---When students are taught to analyze movies and television in the same manner that they would a written text, they will be able to filter the messages that they are hearing and choose what they will believe. It is people's natural tendency to believe what they see and hear, unless they are taught to analyze it properly. They will learn to think critically and see that the music, shot angles, costumes, etc are all used to manipulate the senses so that an emotion is stirred or an idea is raised. They need to understand how this works so that they are not unduly influenced by the world and advertisers. They need to be intelligent, thoughtful consumers of media.
---When students are able to use technology with their schoolwork they are able to do something that most are already quite familiar with, or enjoy a great deal, to learn. This gives them some intrinsic motivation to do the work. When the students enjoy doing their work, they will do it better and spend more time with it so they will learn more. Our goal is to get students to love learning, as most do when they are young, so that they will become lifelong learners, always curious and interested in the world around them. Otherwise they may become complacent adults who simply accept what they are told and do not participate in government and in improving our society as much as they could.
---If students truly understand how the messages in advertising they can choose whether or not they want to recieve the messages. Advertising promotes consumerism, self-centered behavior, and avoidance of the hard issues. They learn how to understand the messages with critical thinking and visual, auditory and textual analysis, skills that are being taught in language arts curriculum as well.
posted by Jennifer | 9:12 PM
2 Comments:
Jennifer, you've posted a well written rationale for your district. It seems as though your district is in need of some direction to go when it comes to the use of technology, and your explanation for using film analysis the same way literary analysis is used to teach critical thinking will be helpful. Also, teaching students about consumerism and its place in society through the use of film is an excellent way to get them thinking about the choices they make when they watch, read, listen, buy, or transmit media. If they understand why they're being targeted by certain groups, they can be instrumental in changing the "self-centered behavior and avoidance of the hard issues" that often comes along with consumerism.
Jennifer, you're right on target about the fact that schools have a lot of media materials/technology, but they don't know how to use it or incorporate it. One reason for this is that their model of "English" revolves around print-text comprehension, without recognizing that students are engaged in understanding and producing texts in much broader ways that are more multimodal, for example, creating their own MySpace sites.
You're also right about the need to focus on critical thinking about media and the world--adolescents are often easy targets for a lot of consumerism messages. What's often needed is a climate of irreverance in which they adopt a critical stance as a group in questioning how, for example, the "quizzes" in female teen magazines position to assume that their appearance or popularity is what's important in life.
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