The Video Journalism course at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush has 28 students who are in their junior or senior year.

I am nearing the end stretch with my field experience at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and I finally feel like everything is finally coming together. For the past two weeks I have been setting up our culminating activity, which will involve me bringing the students from the Video Journalism course to our class on Tuesday, Nov. 29. I will also be taking them on a tour of Temple’s main campus. Although everything is planned for the upcoming field trip, we still have some students who are finishing up their videos/slideshows. I was a little worried at the beginning of the week, but I finally saw a handful of completed projects which have all been very good considering it is their first attempt at a journalism piece. Still I am concerned about the students who are falling through the cracks, but not so much for November 29, but for their final grade in the course.

This week was the end of the first marking period, so a lot the kids were upset with their grades. However, the students who were coming to us complaining were the students who I know have not been putting a lot of effort in the class. I made this comment several times, but a lot the students started projects, hit a wall and gave up. The education system has young children programed to think if they can’t find it, then it must not be true or that I can’t do it. This is completely different from journalism, which is a different world for most high school students. I still have some students treating their projects as if it was a research paper and not a news feature. I’ve explained it to them several times, but it just not seem to click because their minds have been programmed to to think a certain way. May be I am over generalizing, but I do see it in their projects.

Fortunately I did see this week that they do understand bias in news pieces, which is a small step away from the persuasive essays they are used to writing. This occurred when one group presented their piece on vandalism in Mayfair. It was a pretty good slideshow, but the students noticed that the music choice was over dramatic and most importantly there was only one side of the argument presented. It was great to see that they actually caught on to that little mistake, which made me realize that although the students may not be at the stage Louis and I had hoped, they are still progressing. Still I am worried about the students who just sit in class and do nothing. This a common occurrence that many teachers face, but I have made suggestions to Louis to use the Library day to have students do research about journalism. This can include current events, class discussions and critiques of published news stories. So in a way this can serve as not only “busy work,” but really more of a learning experience about journalism and the rest of the class days can be devoted to their stories.

Shellon interviews Sang, another student from the class, about his favorite musician.

Overall I am happy with where we are right now, but there still is only four more school days until I bring the students to Temple. I look back at the calendar and wonder where all of the days have gone. I really wish I could have started day 1 with the kids because I think I could have used strategic planning to help prevent students from falling between the cracks. I have also said to Louis that I would have liked to request students to only do audio slidehshows for their first project because video is a bit more challenging. I actually kept thinking about this and other approaches we could have taken first while I was reading Jumping for joy, wracking our brains, searching our souls: Youth media and its digital contradictionsby Elisabeth Soep. I enjoyed reading about Soep’s experience with developing and help run Youth Radio “an after-school, nonprofit organization where young people produce stories for local and national broadcasts on radio, television, and online outlets.” This program does seem to be successful with teaching journalism to youth, but as she mentions it also has its ups and downs. She discussed the story about the American soldier who wanted to share his experience in Iraq with the students, but was not published because higher authorities in the army disapproved of releasing it to the public. I found her comments about this issue to be very similar to the sensitive topics that students wanted to cover when I first started my field experience. I had spent most of my first two weeks helping students redirect their story idea to be more appropriate for a school setting, but without completely going off topic. I actually found this to be a huge issue for me because it did hinder the early stages of progress for the entire class. Louis and I were spending to much time individually with students, that the class as a whole was being jeopardized.

Trevor is a Junior Media Arts major who enjoys being the camera operator and the editor. Students from the class tend to seek help from Trevor when they have difficulties with the equipment and software used for their projects.

Soep’s suggestions for three  “signature pedagogies,” (collegial pedagogy, multiple outlets, and applied agency) could have served as a great for Louis and I to start the course. We had both wanted the students to have their own voice in their video journalism pieces, but we had never considered applied agency, or rather ”working on a systemic level to help open concrete opportunities and expose erasures and injustices where they exist.” Also we would like to expand our outlets, but we won’t be looking like Youth Radio anytime soon who works with NPR and other large news organizations. However, I am trying to make strides for a partnership with one of my Philadelphia Neighborhoods acquaintances at NEastPhilly.com. In fact a handful of the students are interested in producing stories for their site. For me this is exciting because I giving the students an opportunity to have exposure to a local media outlet that they can use in their portfolios for college.

All I can say is that I can take Soep’s suggestions and my own experience at Rush and use for when I one day teach my own journalism course to high school students. I am learning what works and doesn’t work in an elective course, which I have hopes of one day doing as a teacher.

I thought that Landis’s introduction to this lesson could easily be implemented into the Video Journalism course at Rush. This week I introduced this idea of having students look up local, national and/or global news to not only keep them up to date with current events but also to see examples of work. Mazza had never thought of doing this because he has been so worried about seeing the students complete their multimedia community based stories. He has also been worried about the students utilizing their time in the classroom, but felt overwhelmed with the lack of production which causes some students to sit in class with nothing to do except brainstorm. I had been questioning how to approach this idle time issue and this approach had been at the back of my head for a while now. However, reading this article helped solidify the idea for me and even has provided me with an online TV news search engine that should be accessible in the school, unlike YouTube and Vimeo. The article also brought an issue that I actually see in the classroom, which is that in order for children “to grow up [as] citizens in a democracy, then it is important that they understand how news is constructed.” I asked the students if they read the newspaper and in a class of 28 I think I saw 4 or 5 hands go up. I believe that this really needs to be addressed in our classroom and this approach seems to be the best way to start to help students understand journalism in terms of its construction, impact, hidden messages and as examples of production.

Youth, Technology, and DIY: Developing Participatory Competencies in Creative Media Production, by Yasmin B. Kafai and Kylie A. Peppler also presented some information that felt was very relevant to the experience I am having Rush thus far. It actually also ties closely to a question that I brought up with Diana Laufenberg, one of the Social Studies teachers at the Science Leadership Academy, which is whether media production should be taught in media literacy classrooms. Since the article focuses closely on this idea of creative media production as “Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Broadcasting,” I began to think about what we did this week with the Video Journalism class. Since I had suggested to Mazza that the students could cover school stories if they were having issues with their community ones, he decided that we should create a blog to house the students’ work. Kafai and Peppler actually refer to studies about how blogs are “potent forms of ‘Do-It-Yourself Broadcasting,’ creating links to academic writing while making connections to potentially broad audiences, informing affinity groups among youth.” I showed the students how to create a post, but we are not telling the students what to post. We are giving them suggestions for story ideas and they are able to use their own creativity to produce a media based story on their own. It is very DIY, but we are there to help the students through the process of production and post-production. However, we will not make sure that the story will be the student’s vision and not our own. I believe this is very important when teaching youth media literacy and the creation of DIY productions. I do not want to remove their voice from the piece. I am there to teach them, not to act as manipulate their work so that it meets my standards.

I also found Kafai and Peppler’s suggestions towards converging participatory competencies based on the advantages of DIY production used for creative media production. I had to agree the whole time I was reading the article because I really believe that this approach does allow students to have a deeper understanding of media and gives them the ability to voice their own opinions about the subject. This type of production allows students to have “critical reflection on media culture through visual instead of oral or written discourse.” In the Video Journalism course Mazza and I want to give the students the chance to have their voices heard. I particularly want the students to become more aware of the media as well as their own local and school community. Kafai and Pepper conclude that “creative media production pushes youth to question their current observations and understandings, make explicit their assumptions about new media, and discover the conventions of writing the language of new media by learning the visual, semiotic, aural, and technological literacies necessary to inscribe one’s self into the larger participatory culture.” This is exactly what Mazza and I would like the students to get out of this class and I believe DIY Broadcasting is by far the best way for them to understand these concepts. I do think the weekly current events assignment will also be beneficial, but there is no substitute that can be as active as this type of creative media production for learning about video journalism.

My presentation takes a look at this approach to learning and also pointing out some of its flaws that are appearing at Rush. Referring to Levine’s comments about public and private voice, I present some of the examples for both types of speech I have experienced and shared with the students. Since the issue of an audience is brought up in both articles, I wanted to speak about the Video Journalism’s audience and how students on the class are reacting to their “real audience.” I actually see the strategies for promoting student trust in a real audience as not quite effective in our classroom, but I am hoping it will change once they are exposed to a face-to-face encounter at Temple University this November. I end the presentation with the Buckingham and Harvey discussion about the production context and how we should ultimately evaluate these types of production. The student Bea that they use as an example of a student who may or may not have “learned” from producing her own film reminds me of a student in our class who worked in the PBS Newshour Student Reporting Labs last year. This student has even admitted that she is repeating a lot of the same learning experiences as she did the prior year. Also the collaborating teacher has created an atmosphere for creative freedom, which has been both positive and negative towards the results of the course. Thus I have revealed our biggest issue with the course and now we are setting firm, but realistic deadlines that all of the students can make.

I really enjoyed reflecting on these readings in this manner and I hope you enjoy reading it. Thanks.

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One of these bumps actually relates to one of the seven great debates in the media literacy movement. It occurred after both of Louis Mazza’s classes and our prep time discussions on Tuesday. During Mazza’s lunch he allows students to use the Mac lab to work on other class work or anything else they need to do on the computer. He had to step out at one point and I was left to watch the students for a few minutes. I recognized one of the students from the Narrative Filmmaking class and decided to talk to him about his work in the class. Unfortunately, this young man saw my idea of a friendly and helpful conversation as a way to complain about the class. He claimed that he was frustrated with the class because the description had been solely based on producing films and not learning film history. Mazza had decided to introduce the history aspect of the course to show the students different ways that Hollywood has made films and as a collaboration with another teacher’s history class. I tried to explain this to the young man, but he ranted about how disappointed he was with the structure of the course which included a film history test that was given last week. A few minutes later Mazza came back in and the young man decided to switch his attention to him. I decided it was probably my time to leave.

This young man’s frustration is similar to one of the debates about media literacy in Renee Hobb’s article, The Seven Great Debates in the Media Literacy Movement. The debate that I am referring to is whether media production should be an essential feature of media literacy education. In this instance the young man claims that he only signed up for a production based course, but Mazza wants to have students watch older films and read material about its history to help analyze them more deeply. I had not even considered that my discussion with this student had been related to this debate until I came to class on Thursday. I was glad that I tried to explain the importance of the history side of the course to the student because I think it is just as important as the production aspect. His frustration proves to me that most students chose a course for the production possibilities rather than the chance to talk about media literacy content. However, I do think there can be a happy medium between the two and I am trying to help Mazza with that right now. I also believe that a course could work just as well with one over the other. Yet I still believe the ability to give students an opportunity to produce their own multimedia projects is very essential in helping them understand not only how to create it, but the potential messages behind them.

After reading David Cooper Moore’s article, Asking Questions First: Navigating Popular Cultures and Transgression in an Inquiry-Based Media, I am hoping that Mazza will be using popular culture influenced films in the course. Since he is using very old films from the 1940s to show the students, I would really love it if we could find clips from a recent film that plays with either the same film techniques or hidden messages for the students. Since he wants to show the entire version of the older films, I think smaller clips of new films that the students are familiar with will work nicely into the course. I guess I also got this idea from reading about Larissa Pahomov’s experience as an English teacher using popular culture to help students understand older, romance texts (Romantic Love is a Myth, or How to Unpack a Genre). I may even suggest this idea to make websites–instead of the young man’s dreaded test–to Mazza. Since this is an elective course and not every student is completely into the idea of making films, this would be an alternative assessment for the history aspect of the course.

As for my experience at SLA this week, I actually walked in on the beginning of two benchmark projects for the two American History courses. One is about students creating a multimedia ad campaign to promote voting in America and the second is getting students to research and learn about the history in their surrounding neighborhood.  I am really excited to see how these projects turn out and the latter I am going to be providing assistance to students for their research and potentially production stages. It’s great to actually be able to see and be a part of a unit that I would like to one day teach my own students.

Overall it was a week packed full of new experiences for me, ones that I will use to help me through the next several weeks. I am still afraid of the timeline for completing the projects at Rush. However, I am staying optimistic and hoping for the best.

Works Cited

1. http://mediaeducationlab.com/pub/asking-questions-first-navigating-popular-culture-and-transgression-inquiry-based-media-literacy
2. http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/seven-great-debates-media-literacy-movement-circa-2001
3. http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/2763

Since Rush runs on a 5 day colored system, my schedule will always be changing and my visits to SLA will be based on what color day it is at Rush. This week I was able to go to Rush 3 days, Monday, Tuesday and Friday, and I went to SLA on Thursday. Probably the most interesting observations that I made this week was that teenage girls love to use their macbook’s Photo Booth application as a mirror. I saw two girls, one at Rush and one at SLA, using Photo Booth to help them do their hair. However, I did also see some great uses of media used in the classrooms. I was actually very surprised at the amount of computers that were in each class and that students were allowed to use  them, even in the Social Studies class. In fact, Laufenberg allowed her students to listen to music with their headphones on while writing an essay with primary source documents about immigration to America. Rush also had a lot of computers, but it did lack a full functioning library and Internet database access for the students.

When I started the week at Rush I was unsure how the week would progress because students in the Video Journalism course were trying to pursue stories that involved documenting other teenagers using drugs or alcohol. I was asked to discuss the issues behind publishing these types of stories to the students. After explaining the laws a journalist must abide by and the rights of student journalists, I was able to help the student create a different approach to her telling her story about teens and illegal activities. By the end of class the student had fully constructed a new visual and written story idea that still focused on the same drug related topic but without the legal ramifications of including a teen’s name or  face in the story.

Monday and Tuesday I started working one on one with each student/group to check on their pitches for the stories. After speaking with several students I came to realize that they were all relying way too much on google and were approaching their research as if it was for a book report and not a news article. I decided to contact one of my former Journalism professors, Christopher Harper, to see if he had any good sources or ideas for how I can help students with journalism research. Fortunately he teaches this course and sent me over 20 documents with helpful sources and worksheets for the students. I spent most of Friday explaining the different between a news article and research paper as well as how to approach it in terms of research. I also helped Mazza set up the assignment that will be due next week. We decided that each student needs proof of an interview or consent for an interview by the end of next week. I told Mazza that this is a good way to ensure that the students are making progress with their stories and to see whether they need help getting to the production step of the story.

As for my time spent at SLA on Thursday, I was able to see two different American History courses in action. In Laufenberg’s class I watched students work on a timed essay with primary source documents. In Herman’s class I was able to watch students prepare a city budget in small groups with a program offered for free on the Internet. In both of the classes I was able to see how students work with the distractions offered from their macbooks and the Internet. Laufenberg actually allowed her students to listen to music while writing an essay, which was handwritten, not typed. In Herman’s class students were using their cell phones as calculators. This was really surprising to me because I would have gotten in so much trouble in my high school if I had been listening to music or using my cell phone in class. I also learned a lot about curriculum ideas for a Social Studies course as well as some background information about the students’ upcoming benchmark projects.

Overall this week was definitely a success. I was able to get through to a lot of the students at Rush and learned some great strategies for teaching American History at the high school level. However, I am worried about whether some of the Video Journalism students will follow through with their interviews and will be prepared for producing their stories. I am going to the school Tuesday and Wednesday morning, so I am going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Global Girl Media created its own GGM Academies which features a project called, Kick It Up! This project sent 20 South African girls to the 2010 World Cup to use their training to be broadcast journalists at the game. The GGM Academies are designed to teach teenage girls the technical, critical thinking and leadership skills to become citizen or professional journalists in their local community. GGM has worked with young women who are from under-served communities in L.A., South Africa and Morocco. These ten-day workshops focus on using video and other media tools as a form of self expression. The instructional approach to the workshops is not only hands on field experience, but also a mix of guest speakers, case studies, role-playing, small group work, group discussions, writing and reflection. The girls are able to work with professional journalist to help prepare them for the second half of the program. After the GGM Academy’s 10 days of training, the young women are then sent to the GlobalGirl Media News Bureaus where they will put all of their training to good use. The teenage girls are placed into groups/teams and are taught how to use a camera, microphones, interview, edit and produce their work together. Their work is featured on not only GGM’s website, but also on its Vimeo account, YouTube account, Tumblr page, the youth reporters’ own blogs and to GGM’s global partners.

GGM emphasizes this idea of self expression for the young woman participating in the program. Broadcast journalism is the primary focus at GGM, but the teenage girls are also asked to draw on their own lives, both the positive and negative aspects, to assist them with their reporting. They are also able to not only learn how to interview, use a camera, edit and produce their work, but are also able to share with girls like themselves.

The organization is funded through a number of sponsors and donors that have continued their support since the program’s founding in 2009. The website actually has a donation page that lists how different donations can contribute to the program. GGm seems to have  a lot of support, but I think its biggest challenge is keeping up this support. Since it is expanding globally, the funds also need to expand. GGM seems to be gaining more and more momentum globally, but a non-profit that is working on this scale can run into a lot of finical issues along the way.

Each workshop’s number of participants varies, but on average there are between 10 to 20 young women working as GGM Reporters. I actually learned a lot from the broadcast pieces created by the girls. Probably the most interesting story I found was about “corrective” rape and that it was created because one of the reporter’s sister  had been a victim of this form of rape. I also learned that the 2011 workshop in South Africa featured a number of young girls who have HIV/AIDS. I read short bios about each girl which allowed me to see them at a more personal level.

I believe that the staff at GGM are truly devoted to the mission of their organization. They are professional broadcasters and journalists who have made it their mission to help these young women find their own voice. They may have their ups and downs with the programs, but I am sure they are all in it 100 percent. GGM seems to be a very successful youth media program and one that I believe needs to expand further as well as continue to operate for many more years to come.

It’s a fear for some teenagers, but for others its a challenge that can leave you wishing social networking sites had never been created. Sometimes I think I got my first gray hairs when my parents started asking me how to use the computer and to “dial up” the Internet.

In Toyota’s 2011 Veneza commercial, a young teenage girl complains about her parents inability to socialize on facebook. She explains that she helped create Facebook accounts for for her parents but unfortunately they hardly ever use it. As she sits in front of her nice sleek Mac laptop, surfing around on Facebook, b-roll of her parents driving happily in a brand new Veneza is provided for the viewers. The teen continues to talk about her parents lack of social networking skills and how depressing it must be for them. She finally says the main driving point of the commercial: “I have 687 friends. This is life.”

This statement is the compared to parents’ low number of 19 Facebook friends, a number she believes creates their lack of social mobility in the world. We then see her parents are actually driving to a secluded area in the woods to go mountain biking with several of their close friends. Perhaps even some of those 19 Facebook friends. Toyota is using this scenario to demonstrate the disconnect between adults and teens in terms of social networking. Indeed it is meant to be a funny commercial, but it draws on the interests of parents who are confused as to what their children are even using Facebook for each day. However this message can also be interpreted by young adults as saying, “If my parents buy a Venezza, then they will have a social life.” This is a more obvious message, but I believe the message is still directed at parents and their frustration with Facebook.

When my mother asked me to create her a Facebook account last year, I was a bit apprehensive at first because I knew I would have to teach her everything about using it. I had experience with teaching both my mother and father how to use a computer, the Internet and email which is still a work in progress. My mother has probably 30 friends, but she hardly ever uses Facebook. ‘Adding’ friends and ‘poking’ people seems to be like a foreign language to her. This is not uncommon for most adults which does leave some truth with Toyota’s interpretation of this disconnect in its commercial. However, the sales pitch is what is a little unbelievable for some people and even adds to the humor of the commercial. Sure adults may have less friends on Facebook, but I doubt everyone of them goes out mountain biking with a brand new car. This representation of reality is twisted by Toyota’s humorous pitch for people to buy a new Veneza.

Note to self: Buy a new Veneza and you will be or will have cool parents. Facebook will be a thing of the past. Right?

Temple University High School Press reporters and instructional staff.

One issue that I found within in our readings, discussions and my own reflections of media literacy this week was the argument that media in the classroom distracts students their work. Clearly this course sets out to prove this argument as false by providing examples and techniques that a teacher can use for implementing media literacy into their curriculum. Although this statement contradicts our course, it is does hold some truth because students may be distracted by media literacy due to the excessive amount provided to them in today’s society and perhaps even their teacher is improperly using it in the classroom.

In Marshall McLuhan and the Book: A Reconsideration, Wayne J. Urban addresses this argument by outlining McLuhan’s potential position on the Internet’s effect on student academic achievement. Claiming that McLuhan would probably “be one of the loudest advocates of the electronic revolution,” Urban presents the position of those who would oppose his advocacy. These individuals oppose the use of the Internet because they belief it will be the end of the of printed books due to the replacement of google and ebooks as well as other online databases and databases. Urban draws on a key point for this argument which is the belief that when students are given full control of the Internet for their school work it “diminishes the seriousness and the comprehensiveness of the process of academic research, limiting the work involved to what can be seen on a screen and what can be accessed through keyword searches,” (153). Now this is not Urban’s thesis for this paper, but I believe his assumption of McLuhan’s take on the electronic revolution and those who oppose it is a very relevant analysis of this argument. It actually draws on some of my own experiences teaching high school student.

TUHS Press Reporter Alexa Hicklin (Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush) changes the settings on her camera before taking a shot. Photo by Sarah Fry (Assistant Director of TUHS Press).

This summer I was able to experience first hand how high school students can easily be distracted when they have full control of the Internet. For four weeks I worked as the Assistant Director for Temple University’s High School Summer Journalism Workshop. It was the second time I had worked with high school students to produce multimedia stories, but this was more in depth than my previous work with high school Journalism Clubs. Our workshop was held Monday through Friday from July 11 to August 5 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Temple’s Center City campus. At this location we were able to utilize the Department of Journalism’s equipment office and MAC computer lab. We had more computers and equipment than students, which was great relief for the other instructors and myself.

TUHS Press Reporter Dado Nianghane (Mastbaum High School) interviews Elton, a homeless Philadelphian, at Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's Birthday for the Homeless. Photo by Sarah Fry (Assistant Director of TUHS Press).

The summer workshop included 15 Philadelphia public high school students from the ages of 14 to 18. All of which had a deep interest in using the computer. Now I do not know all of the students’ family backgrounds, but I believe that for a majority of the students their time at the workshop was also their only time to use a computer. In other words, their families do not have a computer at home so when they got to our workshop the students tended to enjoy computer time a little too much. Although they still got their work done, I was constantly telling them to stay focused on the task at hand. The lab is shaped in a big U, so the instructor can see everything from nearly every section of the classroom. I cannot remember how many times I saw students on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. At first I was unsure what to do, but after a while I decided the best thing to do was to embrace the students’ obsession with social networking.

To address this issue of excessive social media usage in the lab we discussed at length to the students the importance of how they present themselves on these particular sites. We suggested how they could use tools such as these to find public forums about a particular issue they are interested about writing. There was even an instance where the students found a news article about a homicide related to a Facebook party. The students were completely engaged and saw how some individuals take the issue of their Facebook reputation a little too far.

Photo by Sindora Stallworth, Communications Technology High School.

In Howard Gardner and Henry Jenkins’ article, How We Got Here, examines how youth use social networking sites “to construct their identities, to make sense of their social networks, and to gain respect from adults who share their goals and backgrounds” (2). The article goes on to explain that although today’s youth are in fact “digital natives” they are still not aware of the proper way to utilize their digital environment. Their suggestion for solving this issue is for adults to realize this particular similarity and help youth address it. Their suggestion was similar to our own reasoning for attempting to restrict social media usage to find story related information. Of course it did not always work, but I was glad that we were able to discuss at length how they should use it as well as present themselves in the public sphere.

Photo by Shaquil Taylor, Ben Franklin High School.

At this workshop I was also given the opportunity to give the students a photo scavenger hunt lesson as well as a caption writing and photo-editing lesson. The caption was not quite as successful as the other two, which were in fact a rewarding teaching experience for me. The students came back with amazing photographs. We had sent them out with only point and shoot cameras and they came back with some very print worthy images that were not even edited yet. A few days later I was able to sit down with students individually and show them how to edit their top 3 – 5 photographs. It was the first time I was able to teach students Adobe Photoshop and it worked out great. At first the students were reluctant about editing because they thought their photos were fine the way they were straight off the camera. I made sure to explain that the photographs were great, but that Photoshop gives them the opportunity to enhance the contrast in their images and how to edit them for the web and print. By the end of my lesson each student was able to use Photoshop to either lighten or darken, sharpen, crop, change the colors or resize their photographs. I saw several students experience the “light bulb” moment, which was truly a satisfying reward for me because I plan on one day becoming a Secondary Education teacher. I am currently pursuing my Master’s of Education in Secondary Education Social Studies, but I would love to be a photo teacher as well. Or perhaps even teach the two together.

After reading the second chapter of our primary textbook, Digital and Media Literacy, I was inspired by Sam Fisher’s approach to teaching his 10^th grade English class The Crucible by drawing on his student’s knowledge of today’s reality TV shows. At first I thought it was going to be strictly 16 and Pregnant, but thankfully it branched out to include all drama related TV shows. Plus his lesson plan not only had students identify dramatized TV shows to compare to The Crucible’s overly dramatic plot, but also having students question the truth behind these “reality” TV shows. I thought that it was indeed a relevant lesson plan that uses student’s media literacy skills to connect students to a text that they would have never seen as relevant to today’s society.

Over the next 15 weeks I hope to find similar lesson plans and approaches in our readings and my own experiences helping teachers at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush. Since my undergraduate degree is in photojournalism, I would love to blend my love for the media into my Social Studies classroom. As we saw in Sir Kenneth Robinson’s lecture on changing education paradigms, the current educational system is dated and needs to be revitalized. I believe that the future of education is in fact media literacy and I am so grateful that there are people out there like myself who have a deep desire for change.

To view the work from this year’s Temple University High School Summer Workshop, please visit our blog.

Last Spring my Audio Visual Group had done an audio story on the 2009 Flower Show. I did not actually go, but I edited the interviews. I felt like most of the interviews I got this year were similar to the ones last year. This helped me decide to not do a slideshow, but rather a blog about the event. I did interview five people, but I wanted my story for this year to be about the visual aspect of the show.

The main reason why I chose to post on my blog is because I have been neglecting to post and I have been doing an excessive amount of slideshows lately. I need to start focusing on print and how I want my book to look, so I guess this is a nice step in that direction.

I am going to include photos of the people I interviewed and quoted, but three of the five people were shot in RAW which currently can not be read on my old Mac. However I am getting a new iMac Saturday and I am excited to finally have a Mac from this decade. Well I hope you enjoy my photos because this was a challenge for me. Anything with low lighting is a challenge for me and I guess that’s another reason why I chose to do another indoor event. Practice makes perfect!

Now I am taking the theme for that blog and putting it with my original blog. For my more recent posts go to www.lwilkphotoj.wordpress.com In the future I plan on moving those photos to this blog, but for right now I am going to get back into the groove of blogging.