media education

documentary film on decline of television

Mark Tollefson — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:47:00 -0700

I am producing a documentary film about the current state and future evolution of television. It is a critical examination of how the broadcasting industry has been steadily corrupted by the influence of media consolidation, greed and mismanagement.

FUFA Takes on Media Ownership

FUFA — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:56:00 -0700

FUFA (Females United for Action) is “a coalition of young women leaders that is dedicated to educate not only ourselves, but others as well, on issues that affect women and girls. We organize to bring attention to the issues and take action to address them. FUFA is formed by girls and young women from all over the city of Chicago, from all backgrounds & nationalities, ranging from 12 years of age & up.”

Predatory Programming on BET and MTV

Paul Porter — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:58:00 -0700

This study shines a light on the predatory daytime programming of BET
and MTV. We commend the Parents Television Council and the Enough Is
Enough Campaign for such a comprehensive and much needed study. Viacom
and it's shows sponsors continue to be speechless while impacting
millions of youth daily with negative images.

The ABC Debate and the Danger to Democracy

Megan Tady — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:09:00 -0700

Despairing, disgusting and disheartening – those words are flying around today to describe ABC’s irresponsible Democratic presidential debate Wednesday night.

Here’s another one – dangerous.

ABC’s failure to ask tough questions, act as a watchdog and hold our leaders accountable is not an anomaly. It is a testament to our broken media system.

Wireless Mesh May Be The Right Choice

tompoe — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:41:00 -0700

Wireless Mesh May Be The Right Choice

The pentagon has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for Afghanistan and Iraq. San Francisco, California, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for local broadband infrastructure. Ypsilanti, Michigan, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for a nontechnical approach to local broadband infrastructure, monitored and operated by two fellows with laptops. Perth Amboy, New Jersey, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for their "Canopy" approach to local broadband infrastructure for their city.

Advocacy or Research - In the Eye of the Beholder?

tellsomebody — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:00:00 -0700

”…the role of advocate is, no matter what kind of information comes out, to sort of disparage it, and, you know, they’re fighting for a result, not the truth. And they already think they know the truth..”

A True 21st Century Education Looks Like This

tompoe — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:40:00 -0700

"He sees interactive tablet PCs replacing textbooks and notebooks in schools. Students will call up everything they need on their tablet PCs and write everything directly on the screen to be stored there. His daughter’s school, he said, is already using this technology."
<a href="http://www.freepress.net/news/31335">Free Press News</a>

You Know They're Lying When They Say . . .

tompoe — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:09:00 -0700

You Know They're Lying When They Say . . .

The next time your mayor (like Jim Erbs), or your governor (like Chester Culver), or anyone in your community (like Charles City, Iowa), says they're not technically savvy, and have to rely on their computer experts to brief them on whether they will be doing the right thing about bringing community broadband infrastructure to their citizens, try to be a little respectful (like I am) and not guffaw in their faces. These officials are under the impression that they're clued in, and the Public (that's you and me) are just plain stupid. Now, I guess it's all right if you go ahead and guffaw in their faces.

Disruptive Technology

tompoe — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:22:00 -0800

Disruptive technology

Democracy Now! Saves $1,000 a month with bittorrent

deanjansen — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:04:00 -0800

In preparing for Monday's public FCC hearing, I decided to do a bit of research into how much money an organization can save by using bittorrent. It turns out that the savings are pretty amazing!

As you will see, Democracy Now! has a fixed cost of roughly $200 per month (the service is donated) for distributing their news program at full resolution. Compare that to a bill for serving direct HTTP downloads using Amazon's S3 service, which would currently sit at roughly $1200 per month and would increase with viewership.

P21: Corporate lobby for media literacy curricula

kamilla525 — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:42:00 -0800

I recently learned about the Progressive States Network.
I hear their general belief is that state policymakers often have
little experience with issue areas they are working on, so corporate
lobbyists can often come in and serve as a veritable “brain,” pushing
legislators to implement policies that favor big business. PSN was
created to counteract the corporate voice and create policy solutions
that better serve the public interest.

I mentioned the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) in my last posting.
Today, I want to go into greater detail about the group’s work — and
point to a place where we desperately need some serious PSN help. Like,
right now.

Message to Teachers

kosmicdebris — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:54:00 -0800

"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners." John Holt, in 'Growing Without Schooling'

I am going to stay on point and talk a little more about my thoughts on education. The topics I chose today are expectations and encouragement. Ideas I got from my study of education and the people that influenced me the most 30 years ago are still valid today. Some of the greats include Leo Buscaglia and Carl Rodgers. Their ideas on student based learning and the future of education was considered outside the mainstream and therefore mostly ignored. Tapping into the unlimited source of human potential sometimes requires unconventional methods based on the individual. And this makes me have to wonder why common sense is so uncommon in the learned these days. That’s what makes movies like “Stand and Deliver” story of Jaime Escalante so inspiring. I am targeting teachers in this discussion but these principles apply in everyday life to everyone human.

Ellis B. Page was widely published in the field of educational psychology and edited books on the subject. Dr. Page did a wonderful study in affect where he took his class and he divided it up into three groups, A, B, and C. on every Group A paper, he put only a grade. Remember writing those wonderful papers that were a bit of you and then finding that you got it back with only a letter grade?

An A, a B, a C, a D, an F? Meaningless. If you were like me, you would look for a spot of spaghetti or maybe a place where some coffee has been spilled on it so you would know he or she actually read the thing. Group B, he gave them a grade and a word, like: good, fine, excellent, nice work!

With group C he stopped and wrote each of them a letter and he said, “Dear Johnny: your syntax is atrocious. Your grammar is not to be believed. Your spelling is nonexistent. And your punctuation is like James Joyce. But you know, as I was sitting in bed last night talking to my wife, I said, “Sally, he has the most beautiful ideas in this paper. And I’m really going to try and help him develop it. sincerely yours Teacher” and if somebody did something really beautiful he wrote down, “thank you. You continually blow my mind. Such a good paper with so many good I ideas. I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to say next.” Then he did a statistical study, Group A remained the same, group B were stationary and Group C grew and became without exception.

Another study I found fascinating back then was “Pygmalion in the Classroom.” the paperback is still around I just saw a copy a few months back in a local used bookstore. Every educator or anyone working with children, parents e.g. should read it. Talk about expectation! These people from Harvard came in and said to all the teachers, “now we are going to go in your classroom and we are going give (this isn’t verbatim but the essence) a test to be called the Harvard Test of Intellectual Spurts. And what this test is going to measure is which kids in your classrooms are going to grow intellectually during that year that they’re in your class. And we will be able to pick them out. It never fails. We’ll be able to tell you, and think of what a help this will be.”

So the testers went in and gave some old obsolete I.Q. tests. After they finished giving it, they threw it in the trash can. Then they just took five names at random from roll books and sat down for an interview. They said to a teacher, “now these kids that are going to spurt this semester: Tommy Taylor.” “Tommy Taylor couldn’t spurt if you put him in a cannon,” said the teacher. “nevertheless, the Harvard Tests of intellectual spurts never fail,” said the bigwigs. And do you know what happened? Every name they put on the list spurted all over the walls. Which shows you, you get what you expect.

You walk into a class and say, “you dumb kids. They will never learn anything.” you walk in saying, “these kids will and can learn; it’s my challenge to bring them to that table show them how fantastic it is.” We all have a need for achievement and recognition. We’ve got to be able to do something and the greatest thing is joy in the work.

You teachers that are only working for a paycheck do the world a favor, find something you love to do then go do it, to the ones waiting on retirement, retire and go teach illiterate adults you may be responsible for. To the rest, redeem and renew skills with an upgrade in attitudes and expectations. It’s too bad when you go to work and you don’t love it, especially in the teaching profession.

If you don’t get excited every morning about getting into that room with all those little kids with bright eyes waiting for you to help them to get to that table, then get the hell out of education! Do not feel obligated to stay because you came from a long line of educators, that is part of the problem. Do something where you’re not going to be contact with little kids and killing them at a early age. There are other things you can do…..but let children alone. We all need to be recognized for what we’re doing, for our work.

Ever say, “your beautiful, kid. That was well done. That’s nice.” and don’t forget, if you need it, so do your kids. How about giving up this nonsense about twenty-seven wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Getting back papers with all of the things marked wrong. What about marking those things that are right. “you got two right, Tommy. Good for you. Wow! How about letting them know they can do something well and building from that instead of always counting what is wrong? Accentuating what is right and is good is just as simple. In fact, you have less wrist movements.

We all have a need for freedom, too. One thing that Thoreau says is that: “birds never sing in caves.” and nether do we. In order to learn we have got to be free. You’ve got to be free to experiment, to try, free to make mistakes. That’s the way you learn. I can understand your mistakes and I profit greatly from mine. The secret is not to make the some one twice. But I need to be free to experiment and to try. Give me that chance. Allow me the freedom to be and to be myself and to find the joy in need. Don’t give me your hang-ups! Let me find and overcome my own.

The dangers of vaguery

kamilla525 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:26:00 -0800

Did you know that Comcast, AT&T, and
Verizon all support media literacy education? It’s true! The public
interest community has been portraying them as big bad wolves, but
really they are just a bunch of nice, friendly guys and gals who want
the best for you, your family, and society as a whole.

National standards: communication/language arts

kamilla525 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:07:00 -0800

The National Communication Association (NCA), a Washington, DC non-profit organization, created the most prominent national standards on media literacy from the communications field.

NCA’s first set of national learning standards on language arts and media literacy were developed in 1998 with the help of educators, academics, and media literacy advocates. Standards on media literacy within this document are numbered 16-19, and among them, standards 18 and 19 discuss the political economy of communications. Standard 18 states, “[m]edia literate communicators demonstrate knowledge and understanding that media content is produced within social and cultural contexts.” So “media communicators

Covering the election story—“indy-style”: Election Day the documentary

Maggie Bowman — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:09:00 -0800

As the 2004 presidential election approached, Katy Chevigny knew that the country would be paying more attention to the process of voting than they had in the past, due to the debacle at the polls in 2000. She wanted to step back from the horserace that the media so often focuses on to figure out what those voters were thinking. What would their experience of and perspective on voting be like in the wake of 2000? As an independent documentary filmmaker, Chevigny knew that she was in a position to go after this story. After all, while we in the independent documentary community don’t have the financial resources of CNN or MSNBC, we do have the editorial freedom to go after the story we think is important.

It’s All in the Game: Media Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Primary Campaigns

Jim Carlson — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:11:00 -0800

The news media in a democracy should facilitate and nurture a “marketplace of ideas” where the best policies and the best political candidates emerge from competition between ideas that arise from free and transparent public discourse.

National learning standards - civics/government

kamilla525 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:15:00 -0800

The Center for Civic Education (CCE) is a nonprofit organization funded in part by the federal government. The group published its National Standards for Civics and Government in 1994.

Media Manipulation of the 2008 Presidential Race

Newt — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:40:00 -0800

Why is the 2008 Presidential race suddenly about gender and ethnicity? It’s no surprise that people base their impressions of others on familiarity and subconscious comfort levels. But when does the media focus change start affecting the news instead of reporting it?

PSAs - Pretty Sorry Attemps at Public Service

Joe Public — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:03:00 -0800

Everyone ought to check out this new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation which offers a damning analysis of the ways that television stations are serving the public. We own the airwaves and TV stations get free licenses by promising that they will serve their communities. I tend to think that real service to a community would mean local news about critical local issues or emergency notifications or coverage of local elections, etc... However most television stations point to their weather and local sports coverage as public service - that and all the PSAs they give.

Media education, media structures, and national learning standards

kamilla525 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:16:00 -0800

To find out how much students in public schools are expected to know about media issues, it's important to look at curricular standards in education. For the next several posts, I will weed through
a number of national learning standards to find out whether topics like
media structures, media ownership, media policy, etc. are defined as subjects to