Jessica+Rodgers

=Field Experience Journal:=

Week April 16th-20th
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Video 2: Kate teaches students about target audience

What do you notice about the way that the teacher interacts with students in your video? When Kate is giving the instructions to the kids she makes sure they are giving her their complete attention and no one is speaking. The video is specific to the kids and their reactions to the activity so you do not see Kate much, but every time she interacts with the kids it is to start the conversation going and make sure no one gets out of hand, besides that she allows the kids to do most to all the talking. What do you notice about the responses and talk from students? After the student went up and placed the audience they thought the ad was targeted to the kids would yell out if they agreed with them or not. Then Kate would have the student in front of the class explain why they choose that audience, some kids would then talk about the choice they would have made and why as well. With this way of involvement a lot of people wanted to share their ideas and explain why a lot so it helped the discussion keep going. What questions do you have about the lesson? The lesson was pretty self explainable to what the kids had to do and how it helped them talk about their feelings and ideas on the ad even though they probably didn’t see it the same way as the teacher did. The only question I have is what they did with the activity when it was done, did the class have a more in depth conversation on why they felt the way they did with each ad or how they came up with the idea that it was targeting a specific audience. How do you think the lesson engages, or fails to engage, with concepts from our readings so far this semester? This lesson did a good job of engaging the children in many different ways. It starts out by bringing the kids into a group activity that is very interactive and has different parts to keep everyone focused and alert to when they may be asked to do something. The activity also allows the kids to bring their real world experiences with media into the classroom and discuses their views on the different ads they are being seen when in other situations they might not have the ability to do this. May it be from the lack of knowledge on their part or their parents? In order to have a conversation on a new level one party should understand how to approach the topic and not many parents know how to do this with the media their kids are being shown because they themselves see ads and commercials in certain ways. This activity connects to the different readings we have done in //Digital and Media Literacy// by Renee Hobbs so far. The first things that stuck out to me was a remark Hobbs has in the first few pages of the book, “when teachers and students are asked to reflect on their perspectives to prioritize the dimensions of their relationship with print, visual, sounds, and digital media, they clarify their values” (p 11). This is pretty much exactly what Kate is doing with the students, allowing them to choose an audience based on what they see in the ad without any discussion and then asking them why they feel this way, making them find their own words about the piece, not always agreeing with what society wants us to see. “That’s why the practice of close reading or close analysis can be a powerful tool to understand how media are constructed and how media texts construct reality” (p 56). This quote is taken from a paragraph where Hobbs is talking about the questions we have to always be asking ourselves and others to be good learners. By analyzing something more than just skimming the surface we are helping ourselves connect more with the subject and can bring it into different media connections, just like the kids did through their activity. Hobbs later states, “To support the development of critical autonomy, teaching and learning must be student-centered and inquiry-oriented” (p 119). This is also something you see right away when watching the activity and how excited the kids are to participate and have a discussion about their different ideas. This is a goal every teacher has for their students, to have them want to interact together and share their ideas. Each part of this activity allowed the viewer a glimpse of the five-part process we should learn and discuss in when being taught new information. The first step was giving the activity, allowing access of a form of media to the kids. The second step was analyzing the ad first as an individual then as a group. After the child picked their audience they were asked to tell the class why they picked them this is using step three, create, to have them come up with their thoughts on why it was a good pick. The forth step is to reflect, after the student told the class why they picked this audience a few other people talked about who they would pick as the audience and why, giving their own opinion and talking together. The last step is to act; overall that is just what the activity did. It brought the class together as a group to talk about their different views and made it easier for them to explain what they felt or why they felt that way. I feel the main point of these steps and activities like Kate’s are to open a space for students to feel free to talk about things in a more critical way, to try and see learning as a collaboration of different techniques.