Media Literacy

I think the way we talk to our students and our teachers about marketing and the media has changed a bit.  The consumption of media has changed.  It's been put more squarely in the hands of the viewer, more so than ever before.
Commercials
When I teach kids about commercials, some kids look at me like I'm some square that carries a flip phone.  Actually, most of them don't know what a flip phone is, so I'm some kind of square that checks his twitter using the web interface.  What a nerd.  Bottom line: my kids rarely, if ever, watch commercials.  The business teacher at my school did a Super Bowl ad watch and subsequent hashtag to get kids to interact a little more with the media.  The following Monday, he reviewed the ads and the conversation.  Many of the kids had no reference point for the ads and had a hard time talking about approaches of the advertisers.
Why is this?
I try to suspend my understanding of commercials.  How would I understand commercials if I were a a student?  Here's what I'm thinking:
1) I don't consume television live unless it's a sporting event.  Where are the ads?  The ads pop up during breaks in game play with the announcer generally speaking over them.  Most fields or ice have ads that might not have noise, but provides an almost subliminal message.  I honestly don't believe kids consume these ads.  The players are ads.  LeBron, Kobe, and DRose are billboards.  Beats headphones, Nike shoes-Adidas, Gatorade-Powerade.  Are kids buying these things because of the attachment here?  The amount of money dumped into these players to advertise these products makes it seem like it.
2) When I watch content on YouTube or top plays on the ESPN app, many of the videos start with ads that cannot be bypassed.  Of all of the ads that I've seen, I think I am desensitized to it - I couldn't tell you one that I've seen.  I wonder if the kids are the same.
3) Twitter has "Promoted by" tweets that are ads that pop up in feeds.  I generally scroll by these.
4) The apps I use - primarily games that are free like Madden Mobile or Trivia Crack - ads pop up ALL the time.  For me, I've tuned them out as annoying as they are.  Have the kids?
5) Go to the kids - Kids are using Snapchat, so let's go there.  More and more companies are moving there - even Rand Paul has joined.  This is just one thing in a long line social media "stuff" trying to reach these new audiences.  I wonder how companies used Facebook in 2007 vs today.  Most of my students don't use Facebook much anymore.  My mom does.
6) I generally find out about products and services from people I follow on Twitter.  I wonder how kids do it?
I think what I need to do is a survey with the kids to see how they get information about products or services.  Also, I should find ways to get them to tell me about how they are taught about social issues or how they see the world.

Making a video about Portland.

Background

Having known people that have gone to/lived in Portland, hearing people talk about Portlandia, and going there myself, I tried to kind of triangulate that understanding.  Most of the people that I know that go there talk about how cool it is without really saying why exactly.  People who watch Portlandia, a show I've seen a few times and one that doesn't really excite me, tend to say the same thing about the show, it's really cool, but without really saying why exactly.  Just that, "If you go there, you'd get it."

I've been there twice now and the only real difference I see is a climate that is a bit different than that of Chicago.  I don't check the temperature in the middle of winter there, but I know in October and in July it tends to rain a lot in Portland.  It's a different rain, though.  A rain that I really can't tell you exactly how it's different.  You'd just have to go there and see for yourself.

So, the focus of my video was just to point out how just how absurd Portland love is and I came to the realization that I went there for one reason - I love beer.  

Amassing the Media

When I was amassing my photos for the video, I found a lot of shots of beer that I presumably posted to some social network site.  I knew at that moment, I had to make that the focal point.  

The other two things that seem to be synonymous with Portland are the light rail system and the food trucks.  Since I had videos of them, I thought it would be nice to throw those into the video.  The rest of the shots were basically just shots from around town when I would spend the AM hours walking around town, talking to bums, and finding great coffee shops while my wife slept.  If I had the foresight, I would have taken photos of the forgotten Portland as that would've made a better narrative.  The people ravaged by heroin or crystal meth that ride the trains looking for spare change and something to eat.  That's not the Portland people "know and love."  

The music was easy.  Loretta Lynn and Jack White did a song a few years ago called Portland, Oregon.  I love the lyric, "Well I lost my heart it didn't take no time, But that ain't all. I lost my mind in Oregon." I think people honestly lose their minds there for a myriad of reasons.  Another line that I like is, "Next day we knew last night got drunk, But we loved enough for the both of us."  I think the whole "thing" of Portland is that people get drunk on it.  Like, it's a thing that you just need.  I definitely wanted my video to start with the beer pictures at that point in the song. The song also talks about a weird love affair that develops that is presumably kissed with alcohol lacking any kind of true feeling.  I think also works for people's "love" of Portland.

Plotting and Scheming

I started by plotting my pictures methodically.  I really don't like the "Ken Burns effect" on the photos, so I made sure to take all of those off, added a really easy dissolve, and made sure the timing was what it was to hit the different parts of the song.  The opening was perfect as the song slowly plods along until really taking off about a minute and a half in.  This made my video go a little longer than 4, but I wanted to keep that opening scene.  

The other video, the food truck sign, provided a nice separation between the sober and drunk parts of the video.  Albeit, "flipped" in that we ate at that place AFTER going to breweries with the idea of getting closer to sober.  

I outlined a script of what I wanted to say during the pics, but probably re-hashed it roughly 10 times.  Through my speaking parts, I wanted to show that Portland love is very shallow and without much real thought.  It's meant to be cynical and come of as a little flippant - from the beginning of the video in "Super Cool City" to the end where I play "Pretty Vacant" (again, an allusion to just how I feel about vapid nature of Portland Love) by the Sex Pistols.  The line, "And, we don't care" are my sentiments exactly about the place as I was there primarily for the beer - as almost every other person I met at the breweries was.  The only person I met that wasn't was a guy there to brew at Base Camp brewing.  He was from Idaho and brewed a beer I actually had for breakfast the morning I met him.  

If I had to do this again...

If I had to do it over again, I would probably go through the beers that I drank.  Maybe even throwing in some of the posts I made to Instagram or whatever.  I think I would add some bits from the actual homeless people that live near VooDoo donuts.  It's always funny to me as I watch roughly 50 tourists line up for overpriced and overdone donuts while a family is sleeping on the street corner by a dumpster.  These are the same people that claim to love Portland.  I think they like the idea of it.  

The trains are cool, though.  Really cool.

EDIT: Making the Video
To make the video, I used iMovie to put the pictures and clips together.  I recorded the audio clips using an iPhone and GarageBand.  The songs were probably illegally added.

Tagboard and Twitter Chats

I shared this really awesome tool, Tagboard. It was posted by Richard Byrne.  He has a website called freetechforteachers.com.  

Retweetin'

Richard Byrne

Tagboard pulls together #s from all over the net - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, etc (see picture) and presents them in a beautiful interface making it easy to scroll through and browse.  With more and more people (albeit at a glacial pace) moving to Google+ for PD, searching it might benefit users.  

Here's how it works.

Just add a #.

That interface!

I took part in a Twitter chat called #EdTechBridge.  The chat focused on project based learning - specifically how they are graded.  I've always been fascinated  by the idea of using project as a way for students to learn. I find that it is a daunting task to get started, so I am always looking for tips. I am trying to start an initiative at my school where we would start with, say, 50 students, and try to create a PBL-based curriculum for them all 4 years.  

Chattin' and retweetin'

I am somewhat glad that this screen grab has Craig Kemp on it.  Craig is an educator in Singapore.  The first twitter chat that I took part in was a chat that he started, #whatisschool.  That chat tries to reimagine what school can and should be.  It has provided me with amazing ideas that I've learned from educators around the world.

My opinion of these chats is relatively positive in that I can get a ton of ideas from them and I love to chat in the theoretical.  Gets me away from the mundane

Stages of Technology Integration
Entry - Mindset that what has worked in the past (no technology) still works.  Students are still learning, so what's the point.
Adoption - Mindset that one or two tools will work, but that's as far as it goes.  Seemingly, this stage doesn't offer much in terms of teaching or student interaction with technology, but the TEACHER uses it perhaps for presentations and documents.
Adaption - Teachers begin to see value of technology in students' hands.  They adopt technology for students to create simplistic presentations and papers - in essence, transferring their successes to the students.
Appropriation - Teacher begins to find confidence in technology and starts to use everything and anything for every lesson.  Technology is so much focused, but merely used for the sake of use.
Innovation - Teacher begins to be selective with their use of technology and find precise tools for lessons or find precise lessons for pieces of technology.  Classroom becomes more free for students to create and find their own purposes and uses for technology.
I think the main idea of the stages is that what the teacher is comfortable with dictates what the students are able to do in the class.  Even at Appropriation, the teacher has not relinquished total control of what is done - students are merely being asked to replicate what the teacher has done.

My Personal Interactions with Technology
It's hard to put myself in one of these stages because I'm all over the board.  I think that I revert back to Entry mode whenever I find something that works.  I have an iPhone 6+ and have found it very difficult to even attempt to use anything other than that.  I really dislike using PCs and have almost refused to even come into contact with Windows 7 or 8 opting for a MacBook Air instead.
In terms of entertainment, I've recently moved to streaming everything and find little regard for "owning" it.  I've recently moved to Netflix to get my television and movie needs, but I also have a pretty robust Uverse package.  I look forward to the day when cable packages are a thing of the past and we simply just buy and stream our entertainment.
As for production, I don't really do much with it.  I just don't have the time.  I'm really a huge fan of Photoshop and editing the thousands of photos that I take on vacations. I love to put them together into books or streams (Flickr) but rarely have the time to devote to this hobby.

My Professional Interactions with Technology
It's part of my job (as it should be a part of EVERYONE'S jobs) to stay up on technology to help students and teacher find new ways of creating and collaborating.  The most important skill that I have is the ability to fail and it not completely throw me off.  With technology, this is necessary.  I've spent so many years tinkering with various pieces of technology - first setting the time on my VCR, fiddling with a Commodore 64, setting up stereos and television systems, recording my high school band, recording my college band, mixing, sampling, ALL of it has been from tinkering and eventually figuring it out.  I have not been formally trained on anything, but have a pretty good grasp of a lot of technology. When my kids at school ask questions, I tend to tell them to look it up themselves or I show them how to find the answers - sometimes, I don't even know the answers!  With teachers, I take mistakes and failures in stride always using them as ways to learn for the next time.
I am also a huge advocate for allowing students to show understanding in the ways they feel the most comfortable.  With so many ways out there, it only makes sense.  I understand that papers are necessary at certain times during development, but for the most part, teachers I work with tend to try to lock students into using one site or creating a specific kind of thing.

Other Models
Below are a few other models for looking at tech integration and tech use within schools.  The pencil is such a neat way of looking at it.  I'm not sure where I fall, but I think it's probably near the sharp area.  I find that I work with a number of people that are erasers.  They spend the most time in the copier room trying to get those last minute copies like they have been for the last 25 years.  Even teachers my age (which is somewhat young) still rely on paper way too much and openly discredit technology because the world became different when technology was all over the place.



The SAMR model is new to me.  I really like the way we can define where we are and what we need to do to get to the next level.  It is very similar to the model we looked at for this week.  This picture is nice in that it provides us with ideas to move up the model.
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