I thought I would create a final blog post for my final thoughts about this class and what it offered. So I majored in Popular Culture at Brock University for my undergraduate degree. At Brock, Popular Culture is part of the department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film and so the three programs overlap a fair amount. While I took courses in Canadian Culture, TV culture, Music culture, etc., I tended to focus a lot of attention on film. I often say I took the most amount of film courses without actually being a film major. I took this course because I thought it would allow me to study in the area that I was so passionate about in my undergrad. I think it offered me another perspective that I hadn't considered before and for that I am grateful to have taken the course.
What has driven me to study popular culture has been my passion for understanding the everyday. While studying literature, plays, classical music, science, math, these are all really important, what studying the everyday allows us, is the opportunity to be critical of the things that we walk past, that we sit and watch, that make up our daily lives. For this reason, I think it is essential to study in the classroom. I am a big advocate for equality. If we don't analyse representations of groups, whether that is women, minorities or anyone for that matter, than how can we possibly understand how to apply change? If we want students to become leaders who are open-minded, embrace change, and believe in equality, we can't expect them to do this, if we don't look at the messages that are presented to us daily with a critical eye and give them the set of skills to allow them to do the same. I believe that studying popular culture allows us to become critical thinkers, who don't just consume our everyday culture, but engage in it and question it. Often when we think about applying popular culture to the classroom, we think "okay, how can we use rap music to teach math?" Maybe it would work, but maybe it won't, but if we study rap music in relation to its historical context, its representation of people, the culture around it, then students can understand the purpose of rap music and become better informed people in this world. I am glad I had the opportunity to further explore these topics in detail in EDUC 5199.
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In class on Tuesday, someone brought up a good point, do we employ games in the classroom for the sake of the game? Gamification and the idea of employing games to help the learning process is a really interesting concept, one that we have been covering in detail in class, but I do have wonder and agree with this individual, do we use games for the sake of games?
I would agree with the literature that we have been exposed to thus far that argues games help people learn. I would also argue that utilising games for education, is just one style of learning that some students will be more drawn to than others. Often we talk about education, as a one size fits all, but like everything some people are more drawn to certain ways of learning and I don't think gaming is an exception. In my undergrad I took a course in Drama in Education and the idea that concepts from dramatic arts can be applied to any subject. History is an obvious subject that works well with this, because history lessons are easier to re-enact, but in the course we also covered science and math. How can drama be applied to these subjects? Part of it was looking at how can we create worlds in our classroom where multiple subjects can be explored at the same time. If you want to teach science, then perhaps you have to create an alternative universe where students are astronauts and have to figure out distance, space, and calculate this, while dealing with social issues of their planet and conflicts and building a government. Multi-disciplinary approach. While I think games, for game sake is something important to look at, I also think that like this Drama in Education, gaming can offer us an opportunity to teach across different disciplines at the same time, because ultimately this is what students will face when they enter the real world. I have never met an accountant who doesn't have to work with people or a writer who doesn't have to consider budgets.... This weeks reading is all about Video Games and critical education in the digital age. I enjoyed this reading from Square (2008) and what he talked about in regards to video games and education.
When I started reading this, it reminded me of a Women in Tech conference I went to, where I heard from a young entrepreneur out of the west coast, who appeared on Dragon's Den for her educational game app for young kids starting to read. While her business was growing, I wondered how well her product actually worked with kids. The problem with all learning games, is that kids know they are learning about reading or about grammar or about math, it changes the relationship to the game. What was interesting about Square's article, when he talks about how video games present a given set of ideologies that a player must work within. Like studying novels or film, we are presented with a world which offers up opportunity for real critical learning and critical reflection on the ideologies that have been set out for us. Unlike movies and novels, we get to move through them and explore them at our own pace. This creates an interesting opportunity for learning. Work Cited: Kurt Squire. “Critical Education in an Interactive Age,” Mirror Images. Pp. 105-123. During last night's lecture we talked a lot about cyber bullying and online aggression and I had some further thoughts about this topics.
Recently, I read an article by Rafferty & Vander Ven (2014), where they looked at the reasons behind cyber bullying and aggression online in college aged students. Interestingly, they believed there were three key reasons for online bullying 1) Entertainment 2) Regaining Power (for example if you had been recently dumped by a girlfriend, shaming her online would be asserting your power) 3) To modify behaviour (you don't agree with someone's choices and you believe it is your right to shame them to change this behaviour). To me these reasons make complete sense and understanding the motivation, I think is the first step to be able to teach proper online etiquette. Many people brought that there needs to be some sort of moderator online. I have to wonder, however, where does a moderator end and a gatekeeper begin? While online creates opportunities for incredibly mean, hateful and life ruining communication, it also creates an opportunity to self-express that has never existed before. To find like minded and people that have different thoughts than yourself and to create communities and to uplift people. It also allows you to be exposed to ideas that you might never have been exposed to before. My fear would be if we moderate it to much, then don't these beliefs just reflect those of the moderator? How do we determine who is the best moderator? As educators, it isn't our goal to make students believe what we believe, but give them the opportunities and skills that allow them to generate their own ideas and if me moderate this, aren't we moderating their ability to form thoughts. While obviously online bullying is bad (there is no denying this), I think it leads to lessons about the impact that words have, the impact online communication can have and how we present ourselves online is a connection to our real world selves. Work Cited: Rafferty, R. & Vander Ven, T. (2014). “I Hate Everything About You”: A qualitative examination of cyberbullying and on-line aggression in a college sample. Deviant Behavior, 35, 364-377 I have taken a couple courses in gaming culture and it is really interesting how gaming and virtual reality worlds are perceived by academics and writers alike. To me it seems, that everyone has an opinion about the benefits or downfalls of game play in a virtual world. In de Castell's article she talks about that a lot of people perceive the virtual world as a spot where people can be themselves, but in reality these selves are created from already existing pre-made identities and I do agree that this is true. I don't think is unique to the virtual world, which helps to support another one of her arguments about the virtual world spilling over to who and what one is in the "real world". This argument reminded me very much of a Ted Talk that I saw about the benefits of game play and the virtual world. She talks about the positive feedback that we get in the virtual worlds that we don't really get in reality. I thought this applies so well not only to the classroom, but the work place. One of the biggest issues, is that we often get feedback on what to improve than what we do well. We are so addicted to the virtual world because we do get that positive reinforcement. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the virtual world. Every year around New Years Eve, my brother and I watch all three Back to the Futures, back to back. One of my favourite lines from the first movie is when Doc Brown asks Marty who is President in 1985 (of course they are now in the year 1955) and Marty replies Ronald Reagan and Doc Brown questions him, the actor? This is followed by "Then who is Vice President Jerry Lewis?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_AzVvgEF8 What I like best for this, is that it is so accurate about our reaction to who would end up President or Presidential candidates even. Can we imagine going back 8 years to when The Apprentice started and said that guy is going to run for President? What is interesting about this article and ties into my point about all this, is that while Kanye's claims that he wants to run for President seem absurd, but in reality it is not impossible. I think what Marantz is saying in his article is that pop stars, celebrities, these people can draw an audience and can make people listen to them in the most profound way. As history is being made right in front of us, it really shows that the possibilities are endless for who can run (as unfortunate as that seems in our current situation). It also makes me think just a little bit further, that 50 years ago, even 60 we respected people who had traditionally and easily respectable jobs, lawyers, teachers, doctors. There is no doubt these people are doing work that helps people, but pop stars, especially ones like Kanye don't tend to have the same attitude. These are the people that will soon want to run our country. Is putting them up there to do that our fault or theirs? Work Cited: Andrew Marantz, “Kanye West For President”, The New Yorker. (31 Aug 15): http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/kanye-west-for-president?mbid=social_facebook Advertising and Consumerism and Education This week we looked at advertising and consumerism, with the assistance of Funes (2008) article titled Advertising and Consumerism: A space for pedagogical practice. To study advertising is an interesting concept, as Funes pointed out several times throughout her article. To study advertising, isn't to understand a product, but to understand the mode in which is sold to us, which of course can only exist in a consumer culture. When I think of advertising I often think about Mad Men and I think about what goes into the work that creates these ads and the buying of our short attention span. One of the trademarks of Mad Men, is when they have their brainstorming sessions or a sales pitch and Don Draper is able to come up with something brilliant that not only sells the product, but the feeling around it, at a time that was evidently the start of lifestyle based consumer culture. The goal on the Mad Men is what Funes says "the social representation of advertising produces an informational dynamic that allows one to see certain aspects of reality while at the same time blocking other aspects from view" (p. 163). As you see here. When we see what goes into creating advertising, we can see why it would be a important tool to study the everyday. I agreed with what Funes discusses about the teachers role, "to stimulate the analysis and reflection process" (p. 170). To study advertising is to study the process, the analysis and emotion that is created. I think this is an opportunity to give students the ability to think critically about what they are exposed daily. By studying the advertisement and not the product we can link back to McLuhan says about the medium being message and that understanding advertising is understanding the message. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps I will end this post with a final thought about the article. This article was written in 2008 and talked a lot about TV commercials, but I wonder, as was mentioned in class, TV in the traditional broadcasting form is longer the main way young people and students get information or entertainment. Youtube, online marketing and social media advertising, is way more powerful tool for that demographic, with that said, does that change the analysis and learning process of these advertisements for the classroom? If we follow what Funes suggests then, does that have adapt for the changing way this information is disseminated? |
AuthorHigher Education professional, with a passion for student affairs and educational events. Currently working towards my M.Ed. Archives
November 2016
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