Dcrockettbeauchamp's Blog

Media ecology

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:49:32 +0000

Media ecology is a field of study concerned with the impact of technology on environment such as family, government, business, and education. This is the situation from ‘’Rethinking Technology in schools’’. Media ecology is about the impact of technology surrounding us. Remember a couple of years ago, where families used to gather up during supper time, eat together, asking how their days went, what happened and so on. Now, families used to listen to TV. We have a better understanding, or at least, some views about what happened in the world. In some ways it is good because we can open up our mind on the external world, but there is less and less formal communication within the family. Now, we listen to commercial, we know them by heart, we know every single characters of a tv show, what they like, dislike, emotions, qualities and so on. Is it the same with the family, I disagree.

TV brought news. If elections or government do something, we will know as soon as it says. TV channels try to give different point of views, and sometimes, to brain wash at some points watchers. Countries are filtering information to provide only one side of the story. We think that media provide every single piece of information, but most of the time, if not all the time, don’t give the whole story. How many times did we heard that United States that, the army for example, shows only one side of the story. They never see coffin, dead people, people getting shot…

http://www.nppa.org/competitions/best_of_still_photojournalism/2004/winners/still/INS/HM3_2545_iraq_war_001.jpg

all they see is that it is glorious to be in the army. It is the same thing with the scandal we faced couple of month ago. Where is the truth?

There are advertisements everywhere. On tv, cars, radio… everywhere and everything can be an advertisement. We see ideal lives, things to get for being happy and much more. There are several information going on everywhere. Even in education. There are several advertise throughout our school. Every building we go, we see different poster providing information, which ask us to attempt different event, and so on. It it’s not posters, it is simply TV screens, computers and so on . Media is surrounding us to provide information that has a specific message in it. Music groups provide information as well. They can be either in their songs, or simply as their image. We can see that some artists are sponsored or choose a specific style that people want to imitate to give themselves an identity. I saw the famous drummer Travis Barker sponsored by DC* shoes USA.

http://www.bittenandbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/travis-barker-files-lawsuit.jpg

People tend to buy image thru technology. They will give everything to be identical to what they saw on TV. Same with TV shows. Let’s go back to our favourite show; they are providing information, habits etc. Same with tools like facebook, myspace, youtube and so on. Media provide information that we buy, that we like to watch, and like to live with. Sometimes, it will be better to be ourselves within our family than spending time looking at image. Image sells, which is true, but it has an empty connotation at some points.

http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9dia

http://www.howimetyourmother.fr/

discussion forums

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:45:24 +0000

A discussion forum is a tool on internet which allowed several people to exchange ideas, information, and much more with each other. Also, it can be used as a ‘’question tool’’ if you can not find the answer to your questions, or simply advice according to their issues. There are several discussion forum like myspace

http://www.lennykravitzonline.fr/img/actu/myspace.jpg

and many other forum. From these tools, we can also download information, video, picture, music, according to which site we are using. It can be great for school. School can use discussion forum for several reasons: save local, expand lecture or discussion they had in class, adding information, doing test, homework and much more. This can be a great tool to familiarize children with technology. Technology is surrounding us; we can show them how to use it properly, to make them develop critical thoughts throughout fun activity. Most of the kids that I know play Xbox 360, Playsation 3, Wii etc… or PC games. They know and understand that it is a great part of their lives. They are good at it. So let’s use this to teachers’ advantage, and use discussion forums or blogs. Children need to express themselves. We often eared children that they can’t express themselves… that you ignore them and so on. This is the perfect tool to make them express themselves… they can’t be afraid of being judge because it is less personnel of the net, which can help shy people to make their points valid, or simply express them, and their thoughts. Many shy people use video games to help their shyness because they don’t know the other person which they are talking to. They, if they have the proper system, communicate with complete strangers, and use strategies to win. We can use the same principle with discussion forum; providing the same aspect of people not being scared to share information or thoughts with other. It is true that it might be a dangerous tool because some people might use it as hurting people, trying to steal personnal information, but it’s really rare on discussion forum. Good advertising, good preparation of the teacher, and give specific task to do to children with make discussion forum a great tool for sharing information. There are some sites that for example, http://www.gamespot.com/ , which is a gamer site where people can talk about games. It sounds interesting. It is possible to make it as interesting for both sex, and to apply the concept for school. We know that, most of the time, girls like to chat within their group, and boys like to talk about sports and etc… why couldn’t we use those to attributes and make them talk, write, create video and share on discussion forum for school, or pedagogic class, to help them as individual. ? There are some ways where we can use discussion forum and media to our advantages. Teacher needs to step up and learn new technologies, to remain up to date, and to keep focus on children to make them interested, and if possible, use this as an anti-dropping school.

http://forum.khurram.ca/

Women and TV

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:57:12 +0000

IN chapter 36, of ‘’Media Literacy, a reader’’ Television’s Mature Women is the given topic. I would like to talk about the role of women in general, since the introduction of women as important character in television. I used to watch ‘’Scrubs’’, a tv show about interns who become actual doctor. I then realise that women are no longer used as inferior tools. They have to fight for their place, but they have gained their place. This whole perception of strong women comes from our grand-mothers, who gave their lives for their kids, but step up into the TV world. They went beyond the limits established by society. They were called as other, people, not young and so on. They were perceived as a bunch of people who are useless, who had menopause so they can’t give life; they are mostly perceived as not useful anymore. I used to listen to just for laugh shows, and I eared so many jokes about old people who passed the ‘’best before’’ date. Within our society, we don’t really care about old people, mostly old women. They have a great role; on tv on radio, in magazines and so on. They are more like problems in our eyes. Let’s just think about our health system care, which is in bad shape because of old people. Old women are important for us because they went thru several events, passed experiences and so on. I think they have to provide strength to new women’s generation. They are no such things are ‘,others’’ or different group. They are part of our society at all time, no matter how old they are, and what sex they have.

Old Women are always seem to be angry, confused, retarded and so on., They don’t always like that. Some are, but most are simply lonely, and they are stereotyped and this message is spread out throughout TV radio, internet etc. We have the sense that they are invisible. If a woman is the co-star, and is not crazy or insane, or simply a mother, they will be ignored, and left aside. I looked at TV for a couple of minutes. I changed channels until i went thru the whole process twice. I then realise that women are always represented as mothers. If they aren’t represented as mother, we ignore them. I’m going back to my ‘’scrubs’’ tv show. In this show, we realise that women can be more than mother; they can be wifes, spouses, doctors, nurses, and much more. Women are important in our lives. No matter how old they are, we always need women, old people, a wife, sister, etc…

We need to stop those stereotypes. They are not the sources of our problems, nor an handicap. We need these people at all cost. We need more females figure as representative aspect of our society. I think that we are equals, and that we all have our roles. We don’t need to discriminate women to make ourselves better. We need to make sure we respect every single person and give the same importance on TV.

http://www.wbdd.org/fileadmin/Billede_Arkiv/Portrait_photos/Old_woman/Old-woman.jpghttp://www.scrawlingclaw.com/blogs/SushiBlog/Entries/2007/5/10_Worms_in_Your_Sushi_files/shapeimage_2.jpg

http://repositories.cdlib.org/csw/07_Hant/

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi9401.html

http://www.questia.com/library/communication/women-and-television.jsp

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/blog/2008/02/tv-rebels-that-girl-network-notes.html

Social Networking

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:29:19 +0000

definition: are online communities of people who share interests and activities. They provide various ways for users to interact, such as messaging, email, video, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. This is the actual definition in the ‘’Rethinking Technology in Schools’’ book by Vanessa Elaine Domine (p.62). This is something that every school should processes into a well organized manner. It is a great tool to communicate with, to make sure information is transmitted no matter where we are on the planet. Also it brings a point where you can show your point of view, demonstrate your thoughts, and much more. Video, pictures, images are very popular because they can be interpret into several ways, can be linked to many thoughts, or can simply be an immortalization of a certain event. It is a great tool to provide information as teacher, as well as sharing ideas, creating organization like Amnesty International online, Club 2/3 and so on. Then comes the idea of myspace.com. This site is great because we can share etc… as well as creating, giving opinions to everybody who is interested to look at it. I went on myspace.com, and I read several good ideas, information. I went to my friend’s site and listen to her song, which is great. This is a great tool because it forces users to go beyond their knowledge, creativity, and skills. It can be used into different ways; as ‘’facebook tool’’ as dating site, and educative and beyond the limits. It is a place where information are, and where we can use it as an educative propose. It can also be a media provider: commercials are everywhere on myspace. They provide publicity. This is a great tool for sharing ideas and discussion group. There is a whole section about discussion, where you can find any topic you are interesting in. Also, youth love this tool because it is fashioned. There are so many music presentations, fashion topics or even, pictures, and so much more. This is a place where the freedom of speech takes his sense. They can share same ideals topic, or way to express themselves, or thoughts. They can do whatever they want with their myspace web page. They can change the background, adding pictures, adding photos, videos, music samples etc. They can play mini games like Karaoke, and the most important for most teenagers, is that they can have access to their page thru their cell phones. They can create their own study environment as well as fun place to procrastinate. I remember that, back in elementary school, we used to send letters to people into another country. We were so happy once we got the letters back. Now we can experience the very same exercise with youth. They can have friends throughout the world, without any obstacle holding them back. This is a great tool to make them realize that the world is not as big as it looks like. THey can share with people of their own school into a community group where they can, instead of homework and tests, can provide feedback from a lecture,and/or arguig about that. This is a useful tool

Links: http://www.myspace.com/herotiks

http://browseusers.myspace.com/Browse/Browse.aspx

: http://thalicox.free.fr/affiches/AfficheMyspace28-09.jpg

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:55:32 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34907614@N04/sets/72157614803158855/

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:08:18 +0000

[gallery]

The U.S. empire has worked carefully to use various media forms to create an ideological climate both domestically and abroad that supports the efforts of a ‘’ benevolent’’ America to establish new forms of military, political, and economic dominance. Such power has worked to transfer billions of dollars from the poorest countries in the world to the wealthiest corporate tycoons of the richest countries on the planet. Such actions have improvised hundreds of millions of people. (p. 80 3^rd paragraph)

I would like to comment on this quote. I think that this quote is more important than any concept in chapter 6 or 7. This quote shows how America looks like, and what they do. Throughout those 2 chapters, we realize that media show America as either a Patriotic country, and as the worse country on earth. It shows that because they have power they think they can do everything they want, conquered any weaker country as long as they have interest in it. They could have stopped many conflict… like in Africa… which million and millions of people died, but they only thing we remember is the Gulf War, The Vietnam etc… Media shows the atrocities across the world, but it is different in America, the ‘’land of the free’’. They are making allies with richest countries to actually taken every single piece of wealth in poor countries. In the text, there is a quote that says: “ aggressors cannot be rewarded’’ … but what about U.S. and message sent in Media? It basically tells that it is nonsense, that they have the ultimate power and so on. I think the authors are trying to point out that even though millions of people across the world were against war in Iraq, in Afghanistan etc…

The use of fear in Media as motive to American’s leader to get what they want is unacceptable. Media in this sense provide emotion where they force people to agree with their point of views. They selected the important part only, instead of transmitting the full information. This use of fear and Media is the perfect combination to achieve their goals. Once everybody is brainwashed, the can talk about ‘’ benevolent’’ America to establish new forms of military, political, and economic dominance. There is nothing benevolent in this, simply greed and power. Like stipulate in chapter 7 in the New York Times, they say that winning over a weaker country is easy, and that they don’t simply have to defeat them, but actually beat them entirely and rapidly. They simply seek power. They allied with WTO, and many other big world institutions, to prove themselves as serious, and as acting in the best interest of the world, but mostly for themselves. U.S. are actually fighting against ghost. They wanted to fight against nuclear missiles in Iraq… which they did not found any. They could have stop African conflict, but because they had no interest in there… they decided to go where they would take some benefits… Media shows U.S. as patriots because they fought the terrorists. IN fact… they weren’t at all. If a girl find out that her boyfriend cheated on her, she’ll find that girls within 24 hrs… and if U.S. had billion of dollars, an army… and still, cannot find Ben Laden?… there’s something wrong? What about Media? LOL! Nonsense!

Hello world!

dcrockettbeauchamp — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:54:59 +0000

Football is the most wonderful thing in the world… it’s more than a sport, it’s a way to live