Confessions from the Media Classroom

Confessions from the Media Classroom

By Lisa Wilk

A Public Voice for Youth: The Audience Problem in Digital Mediaand Civic Education By Peter Levine

Imagining the Audience: language,creativity and communication inyouth media productionBy David Buckingham & Issy Harvey

Structure vs. Chaos

A Closer Look at My Field Experience and the Key Points Found in the following texts:

My Field Sites: Two Public Schools

Teaching Video Journalism

Civic Education Meets Citizen Journalism • “It seems likely that active citizens check corruption and mismanagement.” – Levine

Journalists are the “watchdogs” of society.

• “Service learning means a combination of community service and academic work or classroom discussion; it is now present in half of American high schools.” –Levine

Students exposed to service learning gained more knowledge of civics and government and felt more confident about their own civic skills.

• HOWEVER, “[a]ctive learning can be counterproductive unless projects are well conceived and executed.” – Levine

This is a reoccurring problem in the Video Journalism course. Students are unsure what they really want to write about and even after sitting down with us, they resort back to their uncertainty.

•Community vs. School Stories “School newspaper benefits those who produce it but has

no effects on the student body as a whole, because students are not sufficiently connected to the school community to care about its news.” - Levine

Public and Private Voice• “All of these purposes of civic engagement are best served when people deliberate before they act, expressing opinions to some body of peers in an appropriate voice.” – Levine

• “Public voice as any style or tone that has a chance of persuading any other people (outside of one’s intimate circle) about shared matters, issues, or problems.” – Levine

We have introduced the Op. Ed. writing style to the students to promote their own passionate opinions in over generalized topics.

We have also gone over the issue of non-biased journalism, which confused them when we introduced Op. Ed.’s.

Journalist vs. the Citizen Journalist (a.k.a. the Blogger) Newsgathering and being able to understand the difference

between a reliable and unreliable source is also a feature of effective citizens.

• PRIVATE Voice in Video Journalism = NO FACEBOOK Thanks to the School District of Philadelphia there is no

distraction of Facebook in the classroom. However, we do not have access to YouTube or Vimeo which is

really frustrating for me. Teaching how to write an email for an interview request (PBS

Newshour Student Reporting Labs).

Who is the Audience?• “Student production in media classrooms often takes the form of simulation, in which students are required to produce small-scale artifacts for a specified (albeit generally imaginary) audience.” – Buckingham & Harvey

• Audience for Video Journalism @ Rush School Community Student’s Local Community Parents Temple Students and Faculty NEastPhilly.com (Personal Outreach) However, there will most likely be a lack of a large audience.

(TUHSPress, SEO and PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com)

• “Students often perceive as a necessary duty imposed by the teacher, or even as a kind of pay-off for the more pleasurable experience of production.” – Buckingham & Harvey

Working for the grade

• “People must also want to create—and specifically to make products with public purposes—rather than use the Internet to get access to mass-produced culture.” – Levine

The Production Context • How do we evaluate these productions?

Did they learn anything from the media lesson or project?

• WAC Performing Arts and Media College in North London: Opposites Attract vs. Equilibrium

“They had developed an ability to use the conventions of continuity editing in order to tell a simple story, which had been one of the aims of the exercise; and while Bea had not set out to do this, it is certainly debatable whether she learned anything that she did not already know.” – Buckingham & Harvey

• Measuring student work @Rush Louis Mazza has not given me a grading criteria or “rubric” that he

follows. Freedom over structure. Here lies our problem. Oh and did I mention it’s an elective course?

• Rebecca: the Experienced Student This senior worked with the PBS Newshours Student Reporting Labs

and so she is a veteran with this work. Here previous assignment was about dance at the school and now

she is reporting on diversity at the school. Is she another Bea?