My Top 10

Top 10 Things I Learned In Media Literacy Class
(not ranked by importance)

1. Advertising has gone from informative to emotional. Advertising is not informative at all. It hits us at the limbic and reptilian brain. Love the brain stuff.

2. The follow the money activity. I love to know all the parent companies of different products. I am so interested in how companies are consolidating. I never thought of doing that as an activity with kids and their media usage.

3. Disney. Having a daughter who loves Disney, it was really interesting seeing the movies from a different perspective. The portrayal of women in these movies seems archaic.

4. The constant influx advertising. I knew that advertising was all around us, but this class really opened my eyes to it. We can’t tell students to not listen to advertising. It is impossible. We need to teach them to be critical thinking in terms of their media consumption and the way they view advertising.

5. VNR’s Say what? VNR! I had never heard of that! I couldn’t imagine! I am outraged! I thought my morning news was news, not a FEED coming in from a PR firm!

6. Understanding more persuasive techniques. I knew many, but I couldn’t come up with 29 on my own. I feel this will be a really useful tool with students.

7. Media at War. I knew that our media took a pro-US viewpoint, but the movie was very revealing. There certainly are cons to having embedded media with the troops (especially with just the troops).

8. Facebook and Advertising. I just started using Facebook a few months ago. I never really noticed the ads too much, at least consciously. I didn’t realize the extent the company uses profile information to target advertising at its users.

9. Acxiom, Acxiom, Acxiom… Scary, scary, scary…. Need I say more? I guess I have to. I can’t believe this company collects so much information about people. They use their credit cards, buy plane tickets, get magazines and there is an assumption of privacy. They can target advertising to just about anyone.

10. How we have gone from having informative programming to infotainment. We are losing meaningful conversations about important issues in the world because we are inundated with such media fluff.

Questions for the Future:

1. How can we pull ourselves out of this? Will media education be enough to solve this problem? Advertisers are always trying to find the next new concept to cut through the clutter. How will we keep up with them?

2. Where will the Internet go? Will it remain, “free.” How will advertising and the Internet work together?

3. I am exciting to incorporate these concepts into my curriculum. I think the kids will really enjoy it. The question would be, with 4th and 5th graders, how far do I go?