Active Media Learning

I have come across a surprising reservation amongst students towards one aspect of blog learning – the fact that it is public!  Generally I am finding the whole experience of blog learning refreshing, engaging, even exciting.  Students are having to take more personal responsibility for their learning and independence is emerging.  The students are also less dependent on the teacher spoon-feeding them curriculum content.  It is requiring more work from me but it is taking the emphasis off teacher and students and putting it more onto us all as learners.

However a problem I was not expecting was the resistance among some students to publish online.  Young people are so fluent in online publishing (I have yet to meet a teenager who doesn’t have a MySpace page, a facebook account or a Photobucket or Bebo profile – most have them all) and they leave comments for each other daily and publish photos of themselves and their friends.  Some of these accounts may be private but often the ‘friends’ are well over 100 people so this form of creative communication is very public.  So why the fear about writing a blog post?  What is clear is that young people see a difference between there social learning and opinion sharing and their study notes and course work.  Some students have told me that they don’t want to be copied!  Others have said that they are embarassed that people might read their work and think that they are wrong or even wors – stupid! 

Both these points concern me for a number of reasons.  Firstly has mainstream education conditioned these youngsters to actually believe in right and wrong opinions?  Have we privatised learning so that we are scared to be original?  Do we thing good ideas are something to be hidden and defended like gollum with his ring of power… Knowledge, wisdom and ideas kept to yourself are pointless and possibly poisenous.  Have we made everything so transactional that good ideas are to be protected and only cashed in to get you the best grade rather than benefit anyone else’s thoughts?  Where do we think the good ideas come from in the first place – if a young person puts a great point into their essay, do they really own it?  Normally they understood what their teacher told them and I heard it from someone else or got it from a book and that book got it from somewhere else… Our cleverness is the mixing up of other people contributions - surely sharing ideas IS learning.  Being wrong is really important and needs to become fun so that people take the risk and don’t hide their ideas and in so doing limit their learning potential.

Please do publish comments in response to this so we can all learn and decide our response to the fear, embarrassment or resistance to learn openly and publish online.

Here is a video clip from David Gauntlett – it may start of sounding a bit ‘clever’ or even ‘boring’ but listen to him and give it time – try to understand it, he says some really interesting stuff about moving from a ’sit back and be told’ way of learning to a ‘making and doing’ way of learning.  This is what we are going for.

Comments welcome…

I found an interesting article on Salon.com

Stanley Crouch thinks that we should all “stop whining” about the representation of black people in the media.  He thinks it is fairer than ever!  But what do you think – especially of his damning opinions of hiphop and rap!

Comments please.

Full article also available at:
http://archive.salon.com/news/col/crouch/2000/04/19/images/index1.html

Channel 4 showed an interesting documentary last week as part of their series on ’sex in the naughties’.  This particular episode was called Nuts Vs Zoo.  The documentary was looking at the rise in sales of Nuts and Zoo magazines in the last 5 years.  The show was very interesting in terms of a very specific young male target audience and also interms of the representation of women inside the magazine.

Here is a link to Channel 4’s website where you can still see the documentary:

http://www.channel4.com/video/sex-in-the-noughties-nuts-vs-zoo/series-1/

And here is an article taken from the Telegraph in response to the programme.  Any comments welcom as ever.

Hello.

Here we go – a new year of Media Studies.  A new A level course specification and some new lovely Media teachers too.

First of all, welcome back… hope you all had lovely summer breaks and are raring to go.  Congratulations to all new Media students in Year 10 and Year 12 and welcome back again to the rest of you.  I’t an exciting time for Media Studies here at HSfG.  We have new equipment and new  units of work!

Our exam results last year were brilliant with 69% of GCSE students achieving an A-C in Media Studies.  Congrats!  More Year 10 students have taken Media Studies than ever before and that means we’re a larger department than we’ve ever been – cool!

Please click on your course to get more details.

A big hello to all Media Studies Students. This blog is intended to provide you with interesting articles, links and ideas about your course.

In the column to the right of the page, you’ll notice some different pages in the ‘blogroll’ – there is one for ‘A level students’ and one for ‘GCSE Students’. Click on the page relevant to you and see what’s what. Feel free to hit me with a comment and I can reply to any specific questions.

Ta.

Mr M.

Year 11 GCSE exam on Sitcom. 

There are some new notes and ideas about your seen exam topic in the GCSE Media blog.  Click on the link or go to: www.mediagcse.edublogs.org