A former media instructor of mine, who has since become my online friend in all things media, sent me an article from the U.K. called, "The Death of Texting", asking what my students would think about it (thanks Neil!). The Online Mail article claims that the slowing growth of the number of texts signals an end to texting. I'm not an analytics specialist by any means, but I'm pretty sure it's common for trends to stagnate at some point without it meaning the death knell is about to ring.
While it's true that more and more people may opt for the texting services that are on their data plans rather than messaging by SMS, I don't forsee an "end" to the craft of texting. I also don't see video chat "replacing" texting, as the author claims. While the technology or platform may change, the communication itself doesn't necessarily change. Instead, we end up with an expanded repertoire of tools.
Texting is popular because of its anytime, anyplace nature. As long as teenagers continue to stay in touch with friends in their every waking moment, whatever technology that helps them with this is surely going to survive. In an interview with Microsoft researcher, danah boyd, she explained to me that teens use technology to help them find their place and identity as their social circles continuously shift through their development.
The teenaged students I interviewed about Facebook and texting gave me some pretty good insight into the popularity of texting as a medium of choice, saying it's great because its intimate while requiring short spurts of commitment, and participants don't have to worry about how they look. Students talked about carrying on multiple conversations and the enjoyment of no one else knowing who or how many other people they were conversing with at the same time. Not only do they benefit from feeling connected, but they also reinforce or move higher in social status.
Although I didn't talk to students about video chat, there's a whole different dynamic going on in a visual conversation. You can't talk to multiple people at the same time without the other person knowing about it, and body language and voice expression come back into play. The time commitment and attention required for such a task continues to keep this form of communication limited.
The question of "user friction" also comes to mind. Friction is generated by the number of steps it takes to follow through in using the technology, as well as the commitment required on the part of the user. In online commerce it's been found that customers feel most comfortable with about 3 steps in making online purchases. This friction is generated through the desire of ease of use against the peace of mind required when it comes to making secure transactions. Not enough steps will cause a customer to question the security of the transaction, while too many steps make the customer feel like online shopping is an arduous task. In communication with close friends, we want to be one-step away. Texting is a one-step process. Straight from your contacts, you can compose and send a message. It's an easy way of maintaining close friendships.
In Facebook, the "Like" button is what I would call a half-step process. It only requires hitting the button of something you're already on anyway. The time commitment and attention required is minimal, maybe even too minimal. It's a perfectly easy way of signalling that you're aware and somewhat interested in your friend's or acquaintance's life. These tiny bouts of commitment are part of relationship maintenance.
Video chat is a multi-step process. You need to make sure you look okay, you need to make sure you are in a suitable location, and then, you have to make sure the other person is available at the same time, under the same conditions. These steps come before the ones you have to take in operating the communications device. Going through all the steps of a video chat signals a serious investment in the relationship and will likely be reserved for such.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Ontario College of Teachers’ release this week of a Social Media advisory takes education into the 21st century by acknowledging that teachers and students are using the medium. Unfortunately, headlines like “Teachers banned from friending students on Facebook” and online rants about teachers with pedophilia-like tendencies show several members of the media and public have misinterpreted the advisory. Advisory is “advice”, not a rule handed down through a policy. Why is this distinction important? Because it helps us define purpose. The advice outlined in the document is meant to protect teachers from potential legal ramifications that can take place through misinterpretations of text communications. It also serves as a reminder for teachers to continue to follow, as we have always followed, The Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession and Ethical Standards for the Teaching Profession. Although, this reminder should really go without saying. Teachers have always understood that their lives are predominantly public and they must act accordingly. Online social media is much like being in public coffee shops and malls and should be an easy transition for teachers.
The advisory is directed towards teachers as its audience. Unfortunately, some members of the public and media looking in, took it upon themselves to “read between the lines”, believing the advice to teachers was laced with a hidden message warning the public to protect themselves from the misguided and predatory intentions of teachers who troll the online world. However, to be fair, the OCT writers didn't do much to steer public opinion away from the negativity, especially by including phrases like “cellphones are the gateway to child pornography”. Such a bad call on the part of the writers. Inciting fear is a great way to get people to sit up and take notice but it does little to foster public trust in teachers. It also does little to encourage teachers who currently sit on the fence with technology to use social media in the classroom.
Parents already trust teachers with their children every day in the classroom. So, why is it that when the classroom goes online, some members of the public think teachers’ ethics change and the relationships are negatively affected? Do they really think that the technology dictates our behaviour? The public needs to give teachers more credit.
There are 60-thousand teachers in Ontario and only a few, very rare cases of teachers communicating inappropriately with students on-line. In fact, social media actually works completely against this. It encourages people to behave the same way online as they do in person by predominantly taking place in a public space. In these spaces, everyone knows that your words can and will be passed on through the community circle. That’s actually its purpose and so it serves as one of the most transparent communication platforms between teachers and students. Even private messaging doesn’t necessarily present a problem. It is just like the private conferences we’ve always had with students needing guidance on school-work and not wanting to be subjected to the scrutiny of their peers. There are many times when students are too embarrassed to ask for clarification or admit they need extra help in front of their peers.
Outlining your expectations in advance with students and discussing digital citizenship and privacy in class brings everyone in line with the appropriate use for social media in the classroom. Following this practice and modeling appropriate behaviour can only help students. And if anything inappropriate should surface, there is a textual record or paper trail.
The advisory is directed towards teachers as its audience. Unfortunately, some members of the public and media looking in, took it upon themselves to “read between the lines”, believing the advice to teachers was laced with a hidden message warning the public to protect themselves from the misguided and predatory intentions of teachers who troll the online world. However, to be fair, the OCT writers didn't do much to steer public opinion away from the negativity, especially by including phrases like “cellphones are the gateway to child pornography”. Such a bad call on the part of the writers. Inciting fear is a great way to get people to sit up and take notice but it does little to foster public trust in teachers. It also does little to encourage teachers who currently sit on the fence with technology to use social media in the classroom.
Parents already trust teachers with their children every day in the classroom. So, why is it that when the classroom goes online, some members of the public think teachers’ ethics change and the relationships are negatively affected? Do they really think that the technology dictates our behaviour? The public needs to give teachers more credit.
There are 60-thousand teachers in Ontario and only a few, very rare cases of teachers communicating inappropriately with students on-line. In fact, social media actually works completely against this. It encourages people to behave the same way online as they do in person by predominantly taking place in a public space. In these spaces, everyone knows that your words can and will be passed on through the community circle. That’s actually its purpose and so it serves as one of the most transparent communication platforms between teachers and students. Even private messaging doesn’t necessarily present a problem. It is just like the private conferences we’ve always had with students needing guidance on school-work and not wanting to be subjected to the scrutiny of their peers. There are many times when students are too embarrassed to ask for clarification or admit they need extra help in front of their peers.
Outlining your expectations in advance with students and discussing digital citizenship and privacy in class brings everyone in line with the appropriate use for social media in the classroom. Following this practice and modeling appropriate behaviour can only help students. And if anything inappropriate should surface, there is a textual record or paper trail.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Misinterpreted OCT Advisory on Social Media
Reading the media and public response to the Ontario College of Teachers' advisory on social media is an exercise in frustration. It's so easy for facts to get twisted and misinterpretations to be made.
One teacher in Idaho pleads guilty to engaging in sexual conduct online with a 14-year old girl after impersonating a teenage boy and now Macleans wants us to blame it all on social media? Obviously, the Idaho teacher is a sick man who needs help. It’s bizarre to insinuate that teachers would start behaving this way just because of the technology. A person’s social ethics and morality are what dictate the use of technology.
Social networks set up in a professional manner between students and teachers actually help both parties to behave in the same way they would in any public place such as a coffee shop or a mall. Teach proper use through education.
The author needs to be corrected in stating “the College is making sure the rule is hereby carved in stone”. This is an incorrect assumption. An advisory is advice; a policy is a hard and fast rule. The main purpose of this advisory is meant to protect teachers from potential misinterpretations, leading to costly and embarrassing lawsuits. It wasn’t meant to cause alarm to the public by warning parents to lock up their children and cause general mistrust of teachers. Too bad Macleans interpreted it that way. Thanks for doing your part to set the teaching profession back a little further, as well as the integration of technology in education.
One teacher in Idaho pleads guilty to engaging in sexual conduct online with a 14-year old girl after impersonating a teenage boy and now Macleans wants us to blame it all on social media? Obviously, the Idaho teacher is a sick man who needs help. It’s bizarre to insinuate that teachers would start behaving this way just because of the technology. A person’s social ethics and morality are what dictate the use of technology.
Social networks set up in a professional manner between students and teachers actually help both parties to behave in the same way they would in any public place such as a coffee shop or a mall. Teach proper use through education.
The author needs to be corrected in stating “the College is making sure the rule is hereby carved in stone”. This is an incorrect assumption. An advisory is advice; a policy is a hard and fast rule. The main purpose of this advisory is meant to protect teachers from potential misinterpretations, leading to costly and embarrassing lawsuits. It wasn’t meant to cause alarm to the public by warning parents to lock up their children and cause general mistrust of teachers. Too bad Macleans interpreted it that way. Thanks for doing your part to set the teaching profession back a little further, as well as the integration of technology in education.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Music Albums: Down in a "Blaze of Glory"
Jon Bon Jovi told the London Sunday Times magazine that iPods and other digital mediums have destroyed the business, saying, "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like…God, it was a magical, magical time. A generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' “ He added, “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."
Jobs actually saved what was left of the music industry by helping artists find a way to monetize what was left after illegal downloading nearly finished it off. Though digital technology finished killing off the music album of our beloved past, it certainly didn’t start here. Remember making mixed tapes for your friends and lovers? “Theme” tapes were popularized in the 80’s when recordable audiocassettes became widely available. Couples would pull their albums off the shelf and select songs that helped them express how they really felt for that special someone. Others would make party tapes of the greatest hits, recording off the radio, off other tapes, and of course off vinyl albums. My brother would argue that the gleaning of thematic or top-rated songs from albums happened even earlier in time, as his friend’s father was a D.J. in the 70’s and used his reel to reel machine to create mixes, but notice I’ve used the word “popularized” to describe the recording of mixes in the 80’s, as production of this blank recording media took off.
In Canada, recording artists demanded that the government add a special surcharge to each blank tape sold, called a Private Copying Levy that is set by the Copyright Board of Canada and currently collected by the Canadian Private Copying Collective. Still, music lovers everywhere abused, and continue to abuse the privilege to make a personal private copy of their albums. CD ripping and digital file sharing has just amplified the “pick and choose” landscape that had already begun with the proliferation of making mixed collections on blank cassette tapes.
Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the old music album of our youth. Can you genuinely name a recent album that has come close to the ones we worshipped way back when? I’m not knocking today’s music. I just think we’ve entered a new era of “singles”, “doubles”, and maybe if the music is hot enough, “triples”. So, what did those long albums have back then, that others today don’t? Two of my favourites, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love both tell stories throughout their albums. This single narrative weaving its way through the entire album had a cohesiveness that would have been sacrilege to separate. But, do today’s youth listen to albums the same way we did? Research shows more than ever, that youth are prone to flipping through music, often not even finishing a song before going on to the next. The music trough is so full and the market so saturated with choice, that when you combine the wide availability with the way hyper-mediated youth switch their attentions so much quicker than we did, the dying of the music album seems like an obvious end.
So, what’s left then? The simple answer is the consumptive experience. Bon Jovi is just going to have to get used to hitting the road for more tours, ‘cause that’s where the money’s at.
Jobs actually saved what was left of the music industry by helping artists find a way to monetize what was left after illegal downloading nearly finished it off. Though digital technology finished killing off the music album of our beloved past, it certainly didn’t start here. Remember making mixed tapes for your friends and lovers? “Theme” tapes were popularized in the 80’s when recordable audiocassettes became widely available. Couples would pull their albums off the shelf and select songs that helped them express how they really felt for that special someone. Others would make party tapes of the greatest hits, recording off the radio, off other tapes, and of course off vinyl albums. My brother would argue that the gleaning of thematic or top-rated songs from albums happened even earlier in time, as his friend’s father was a D.J. in the 70’s and used his reel to reel machine to create mixes, but notice I’ve used the word “popularized” to describe the recording of mixes in the 80’s, as production of this blank recording media took off.
In Canada, recording artists demanded that the government add a special surcharge to each blank tape sold, called a Private Copying Levy that is set by the Copyright Board of Canada and currently collected by the Canadian Private Copying Collective. Still, music lovers everywhere abused, and continue to abuse the privilege to make a personal private copy of their albums. CD ripping and digital file sharing has just amplified the “pick and choose” landscape that had already begun with the proliferation of making mixed collections on blank cassette tapes.
Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the old music album of our youth. Can you genuinely name a recent album that has come close to the ones we worshipped way back when? I’m not knocking today’s music. I just think we’ve entered a new era of “singles”, “doubles”, and maybe if the music is hot enough, “triples”. So, what did those long albums have back then, that others today don’t? Two of my favourites, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love both tell stories throughout their albums. This single narrative weaving its way through the entire album had a cohesiveness that would have been sacrilege to separate. But, do today’s youth listen to albums the same way we did? Research shows more than ever, that youth are prone to flipping through music, often not even finishing a song before going on to the next. The music trough is so full and the market so saturated with choice, that when you combine the wide availability with the way hyper-mediated youth switch their attentions so much quicker than we did, the dying of the music album seems like an obvious end.
So, what’s left then? The simple answer is the consumptive experience. Bon Jovi is just going to have to get used to hitting the road for more tours, ‘cause that’s where the money’s at.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Teachers as "in-service Researchers"
I presented my research on teens and cell phones at an Education and Technology conference back in the Fall, outlining issues around compulsion, stress, multi-tasking versus task-switching, education, and social relationships. In the trade show exhibition room, following my presentation, I bumped into a fellow teacher colleague and asked about his experiences so far at the conference. He gave me a run down of his morning and his friend joined in and offered his opinions on the seminars he had attended. The friend mentioned that he had sit in on a presentation by a Masters student who had presented her thesis. He complained that it wasn’t anything he could use in his teaching. I noticed a slight twitch in his face as he realized that I was the Masters student (and teacher) he was talking about, and so he quickly added in, “she did a good job presenting, though”. And herein lies the problem. Teachers are still in the “tell me what tools to use and show me how stage” when they need to be at “how should these tools be used effectively, what are my expectations, and what outcomes can I project from using this technology”? Along with “does this tool help me stimulate critical inquiry and collaboration in my classroom”?
Maybe teachers expect academic sociologists to be on top of all the research so that those in the classroom don’t have to think about their selections. It’s an extremely strange and troubling stance to take, as teachers are the ones who are immersed in the classroom on a daily basis and know the way each of their students learns better than anyone in some academic lab. That’s not to discount the value of sociologists. They are an extremely valuable and necessary part of our team, rather I am working to establish teachers as valuable members of this team, as well. So does it not make sense that all teachers should become “in-service researchers” and ensure there is reflection and critical thinking in their own practice? Does it not make sense that they would share their findings with their colleagues to help support and form an effective educational learning framework, a.k.a professional development? And worse still, do teachers who want to be handed the tools actually think all of this emerging technology has been researched in advance to ensure optimal learning environments? Often what we are doing is re-purposing web applications that have been born with business productivity or entertainment in mind. There is little monetary value in developing educational applications so we are left picking through the pile of emerging apps. Again, even more reason to use an “educational filter” that calls on our knowledge of the science of learning when selecting appropriate tools.
Maybe teachers expect academic sociologists to be on top of all the research so that those in the classroom don’t have to think about their selections. It’s an extremely strange and troubling stance to take, as teachers are the ones who are immersed in the classroom on a daily basis and know the way each of their students learns better than anyone in some academic lab. That’s not to discount the value of sociologists. They are an extremely valuable and necessary part of our team, rather I am working to establish teachers as valuable members of this team, as well. So does it not make sense that all teachers should become “in-service researchers” and ensure there is reflection and critical thinking in their own practice? Does it not make sense that they would share their findings with their colleagues to help support and form an effective educational learning framework, a.k.a professional development? And worse still, do teachers who want to be handed the tools actually think all of this emerging technology has been researched in advance to ensure optimal learning environments? Often what we are doing is re-purposing web applications that have been born with business productivity or entertainment in mind. There is little monetary value in developing educational applications so we are left picking through the pile of emerging apps. Again, even more reason to use an “educational filter” that calls on our knowledge of the science of learning when selecting appropriate tools.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Quit Blaming the Technology!!!
I work in education, an area that is slow to roll with the times of change. Technology has become ubiquitous in the lives of our students, as youth continue to embrace mobile technologies. Yet, there are many educators who just want to shut the door on technology, claiming that it is too much of a distraction. Common are the complaints about texting at inappropriate times, teen compulsion to stay connected 24/7, and the disruptive nature of incoming calls and texts… and the complainants are absolutely right. It is disruptive. There is no disputing that. But we need to ask, “why is technology disruptive?”
The shorter answer has its beginnings in big businesses’ quest for ultimate productivity carried over from the turn of this century when it was thought that multi-tasking meant more work would always get done. The longer and more pertinent answer to the question at hand is that technology is not being used for its greatest benefits because adults haven’t been around to guide youth in setting boundaries and defining good purpose for use. We’ve left youth out on a limb to discover possibly the most life-altering evolution of their lives all on their own. This, at a time when McLuhan's description of technology being extensions of the self has never had more resonance.
Technological determinism does not happen in isolation. Human beings have the opportunity to mold technology just as much as technology has to mold us. Teachers need to help set the parameters for use by embracing technology, teaching good purpose, and modeling appropriate use both academically and socially.
The shorter answer has its beginnings in big businesses’ quest for ultimate productivity carried over from the turn of this century when it was thought that multi-tasking meant more work would always get done. The longer and more pertinent answer to the question at hand is that technology is not being used for its greatest benefits because adults haven’t been around to guide youth in setting boundaries and defining good purpose for use. We’ve left youth out on a limb to discover possibly the most life-altering evolution of their lives all on their own. This, at a time when McLuhan's description of technology being extensions of the self has never had more resonance.
Technological determinism does not happen in isolation. Human beings have the opportunity to mold technology just as much as technology has to mold us. Teachers need to help set the parameters for use by embracing technology, teaching good purpose, and modeling appropriate use both academically and socially.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Groundhog Day
My head is spinning this morning as I think about how to keep course work organized, relevant, accessible, organized and engaging for my students. I’ve tried numerous platforms out there from free online web 2.0 apps to sponsored education sites and apps. As I migrate my material to different platforms and sites, I feel my frustration mounting. Betas are dropped, apps are modified or commercialized and I’m left scrambling looking for the next best “fit”. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Groundhog Day.
I started using Ning last year because students love social networking. They enjoyed being able to comment on each other’s work and posts. They spent a good deal of time making their own page individualized and personalized by choosing their own page formats, colour schemes; adding videos, photos, and audio of their work. The live chat feature came in handy when I was absent in Boston. I was able to converse in real time with students as they worked on the tasks and video tutorials I had left on the site. I even linked to my Google Docs and calendar. Then Ning commercialized their site and I was lucky enough this year to get a sponsorship from Pearson for a “mini-plan”. Now I can’t create groups, post videos or music, students can no longer use their Facebook account to access the site, and I have to approve every single blog they write. I don’t have 500 dollars from my budget to open this back up to the capabilities that come with a full membership. So I started checking out other sites but then ran into the same sort of problems as these sites worked to monetize their services. It seems like there are roadblocks wherever I go.
I use Google Groups for some of my personal learning networks and for collaboration. Unfortunately, Google is taking out the page and file capabilities this January. I stumbled upon the Google Notebook, which allows for the placement of notes in a linear fashion but also uses labels as cloud tags for those who prefer being hyperlinked. It also linked in with Google Docs and Presentations, but Google took away the sharing capability of Google Notebook and has stopped support for the project.
There’s got to be a working formula some where for education.
I started using Ning last year because students love social networking. They enjoyed being able to comment on each other’s work and posts. They spent a good deal of time making their own page individualized and personalized by choosing their own page formats, colour schemes; adding videos, photos, and audio of their work. The live chat feature came in handy when I was absent in Boston. I was able to converse in real time with students as they worked on the tasks and video tutorials I had left on the site. I even linked to my Google Docs and calendar. Then Ning commercialized their site and I was lucky enough this year to get a sponsorship from Pearson for a “mini-plan”. Now I can’t create groups, post videos or music, students can no longer use their Facebook account to access the site, and I have to approve every single blog they write. I don’t have 500 dollars from my budget to open this back up to the capabilities that come with a full membership. So I started checking out other sites but then ran into the same sort of problems as these sites worked to monetize their services. It seems like there are roadblocks wherever I go.
I use Google Groups for some of my personal learning networks and for collaboration. Unfortunately, Google is taking out the page and file capabilities this January. I stumbled upon the Google Notebook, which allows for the placement of notes in a linear fashion but also uses labels as cloud tags for those who prefer being hyperlinked. It also linked in with Google Docs and Presentations, but Google took away the sharing capability of Google Notebook and has stopped support for the project.
There’s got to be a working formula some where for education.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Google Earth-Not Just For Geographers
Oh, the possibilities.
Moving beyond Web 2.0 into augmented reality. That's what Google Earth does. But it's not simply useful for creating tours and viewing the world. It can be used for digital story telling, portfolio building, and social awareness projects.
I had the opportunity to present at ECOO some of the story-telling projects I've been working on with my students. Afterwards, we collaborated on ideas for even more projects. I added those ideas, along with some tutorials and links to helpful sites to my PowerPoint presentation to share with other teachers. Here's the link if you would like to download it.
Moving beyond Web 2.0 into augmented reality. That's what Google Earth does. But it's not simply useful for creating tours and viewing the world. It can be used for digital story telling, portfolio building, and social awareness projects.
I had the opportunity to present at ECOO some of the story-telling projects I've been working on with my students. Afterwards, we collaborated on ideas for even more projects. I added those ideas, along with some tutorials and links to helpful sites to my PowerPoint presentation to share with other teachers. Here's the link if you would like to download it.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Cellphones in the Classroom: A Response
Recently, I responded to concerns about cellphone use in the classroom that a member of one of my Personal Learning Networks at Classroom 2.0 had posted. I've re-published my response here on my blog.
This is the post I responded to:
"I think cell phones don't belong in the classroom. They are a major distraction and are not worth the trouble they can cause. How can you regulate a student's personal cell phone? How can you keep them from texting each other and help them to remain on task? What do you do about students who don't have cell phones? How will they participate? What happens to their self esteem when they don't have a cell phone to pull out with the rest of the class? What about the students with really nice phones? How do you keep them from getting stolen? I could go on and on... cell phones in the classroom are not a good idea."
Here's my response:
We can't forget that cellphones are powerful mobile mini-computers. There is a period of normalization that occurs with any new technology. We need to guide students through digital citizenship and appropriate use. We also need to get to the point in which students are self-regulating, which means some initial guiding and regulation on our part as teachers working with students. I guess what we have to ask ourselves is "do we want to pretend we don't know students are texting behind our backs anyway" or do we want to be open and find an opportunity to teach them appropriate use and guide them towards self-regulation by helping them manage their attention?
Try putting students in groups when not all your students have cell phones. You'll find the "haves" are willing to share with the "have-nots" during this time as many have data plans (though you should never insist on sharing and I can bet it would be a very rare case that someone objects anyway). This way everyone gets an opportunity for deeper learning, instead of no one. Working in groups of 3 or 4 is great. If you're worried about the self-esteem of the ones who don't have phones, it's not like they don't already know who the "have" and "have-nots" are. I remember back in high school when many of the girls around me were wearing designer clothes and I was wearing regular clothes. It's a life lesson they've already learned.
I've actually never had a cell phone stolen in class before. When they're out in the open, it's pretty obvious which phone belongs to whom and kids rarely let them out of their sights. Though yes, it is a potential problem and you would need to share those risks with your students.
Right now students are texting with their phones because it's a great tool in their social world, as they look for ways to keep adults out of a space while they work to find their identities. They engage in shifting social circles as they try to establish long-lasting friendships like the ones we now have in adulthood. I have spoken with students who feel pressured by their friends to text back immediately upon receipt. They get into a dangerous cycle of compulsion that is full of internal interruptions and social pressure. This is very different from how adults use texting. We can take our time getting back to people without feeling quite the same stress. As teachers we can try to get rid of the external interruptions in their environment but they will find ways around it. Controlling their external environment by banning cell phones does nothing to quell the internal interruptions that take place in the head, repeatedly popping up and reminding them to "take a look at that screen" and check where they stand in each other's friends' lists.
In order to address this issue and help kids control their compulsion, we need to teach them how to become autonomous.
In order to address this issue and help kids control their compulsion, we need to teach them how to become self-regulators and how to engage in appropriate social etiquette. This can happen through allowing use at appropriate times during class, guided by helping them manage the type of attention required of the task at hand. We do this through adult guidance, attention cuing, mentorship, and teaching digital citizenship. You can't teach these when you ignore what they're doing anyway and your risk putting yourself outside of their world.
I produced a 37-minute documentary on this topic for my Masters. I interviewed David Buckingham, author and Director of the London Knowledge Learning Lab; Danah Boyd, author, Berkeley fellow and researcher for Microsoft and Harvard; Linda Stone, retired Executive from Apple and Microsoft; Dr. David Meyer, Psychology professor at the University of Michigan; and Neil Andersen, author, media consultant, and speaker with the Association for Media Literacy. I also interviewed teachers and school administrators, parents, and most of all..teens. You can view some of the clips from my documentary at www.janemitchinson.ca
This is the post I responded to:
"I think cell phones don't belong in the classroom. They are a major distraction and are not worth the trouble they can cause. How can you regulate a student's personal cell phone? How can you keep them from texting each other and help them to remain on task? What do you do about students who don't have cell phones? How will they participate? What happens to their self esteem when they don't have a cell phone to pull out with the rest of the class? What about the students with really nice phones? How do you keep them from getting stolen? I could go on and on... cell phones in the classroom are not a good idea."
Here's my response:
We can't forget that cellphones are powerful mobile mini-computers. There is a period of normalization that occurs with any new technology. We need to guide students through digital citizenship and appropriate use. We also need to get to the point in which students are self-regulating, which means some initial guiding and regulation on our part as teachers working with students. I guess what we have to ask ourselves is "do we want to pretend we don't know students are texting behind our backs anyway" or do we want to be open and find an opportunity to teach them appropriate use and guide them towards self-regulation by helping them manage their attention?
Try putting students in groups when not all your students have cell phones. You'll find the "haves" are willing to share with the "have-nots" during this time as many have data plans (though you should never insist on sharing and I can bet it would be a very rare case that someone objects anyway). This way everyone gets an opportunity for deeper learning, instead of no one. Working in groups of 3 or 4 is great. If you're worried about the self-esteem of the ones who don't have phones, it's not like they don't already know who the "have" and "have-nots" are. I remember back in high school when many of the girls around me were wearing designer clothes and I was wearing regular clothes. It's a life lesson they've already learned.
I've actually never had a cell phone stolen in class before. When they're out in the open, it's pretty obvious which phone belongs to whom and kids rarely let them out of their sights. Though yes, it is a potential problem and you would need to share those risks with your students.
Right now students are texting with their phones because it's a great tool in their social world, as they look for ways to keep adults out of a space while they work to find their identities. They engage in shifting social circles as they try to establish long-lasting friendships like the ones we now have in adulthood. I have spoken with students who feel pressured by their friends to text back immediately upon receipt. They get into a dangerous cycle of compulsion that is full of internal interruptions and social pressure. This is very different from how adults use texting. We can take our time getting back to people without feeling quite the same stress. As teachers we can try to get rid of the external interruptions in their environment but they will find ways around it. Controlling their external environment by banning cell phones does nothing to quell the internal interruptions that take place in the head, repeatedly popping up and reminding them to "take a look at that screen" and check where they stand in each other's friends' lists.
In order to address this issue and help kids control their compulsion, we need to teach them how to become autonomous.
In order to address this issue and help kids control their compulsion, we need to teach them how to become self-regulators and how to engage in appropriate social etiquette. This can happen through allowing use at appropriate times during class, guided by helping them manage the type of attention required of the task at hand. We do this through adult guidance, attention cuing, mentorship, and teaching digital citizenship. You can't teach these when you ignore what they're doing anyway and your risk putting yourself outside of their world.
I produced a 37-minute documentary on this topic for my Masters. I interviewed David Buckingham, author and Director of the London Knowledge Learning Lab; Danah Boyd, author, Berkeley fellow and researcher for Microsoft and Harvard; Linda Stone, retired Executive from Apple and Microsoft; Dr. David Meyer, Psychology professor at the University of Michigan; and Neil Andersen, author, media consultant, and speaker with the Association for Media Literacy. I also interviewed teachers and school administrators, parents, and most of all..teens. You can view some of the clips from my documentary at www.janemitchinson.ca
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Importance of Teaching Digital Citizenship
The story out of Vancouver this week about visuals of the gang rape of a teen-aged girl being passed around Facebook and cell phones was so horrifyingly sad. The speed of transfer of information can seriously amplify situations when teens are not taught digital rights and responsibilities. We have to remember that it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the use of the technology. The user's values dictate the way a medium is used. This is why we need adults to be present in teen social space as guides. We can do this partly through the implementation of a mandatory digital citizenship and literacy course in all our schools. Teens need adults who are available to them and can be trusted to act on their behalf.
I do not advocate for complete invasion of teen social space, but we need to have a presence. This is a very delicate balance since teens need some of their own private space to practice socializing within youth circles and for finding their identities. If they feel adults are encroaching too far into this territory, they will look for alternate spaces to keep adults out. That's what made texting among youth popular in the first place.
The lack of empathy and humanity these youth showed is heart-breaking. The keen interest and voyeurism displayed over such a violent act -alarming. We have to ask ourselves what society will look like in the future if we fail to find the delicate balance of adult presence in teens' online and linked worlds.
I do not advocate for complete invasion of teen social space, but we need to have a presence. This is a very delicate balance since teens need some of their own private space to practice socializing within youth circles and for finding their identities. If they feel adults are encroaching too far into this territory, they will look for alternate spaces to keep adults out. That's what made texting among youth popular in the first place.
The lack of empathy and humanity these youth showed is heart-breaking. The keen interest and voyeurism displayed over such a violent act -alarming. We have to ask ourselves what society will look like in the future if we fail to find the delicate balance of adult presence in teens' online and linked worlds.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Questions from Teens
Great discussion is being generated in class with all the media buzz around cell phones in the classroom. I took the opportunity to discuss texting with one of my grade 11 classes, asking students to think about the fears around teens and texting and to frame questions around those fears. Here's what we discussed:
"Is texting really making us become more anti-social?"
Texting is actually quite social. In fact it's hyper-social. Teens are connecting with each other around the clock and staying more connected to each other than ever. Adults worry when teens go off to their rooms and text because face-to-face interaction with them drops off. Adults equate your physical absence with anti-social behaviour because they have learned to be social by being physically present. They are worried about being kept outside of your social space. Spend some face-to-face time with your parents every day.
"Won't we have a harder time communicating face-to-face?"
Just because you are communicating less face-to-face doesn't mean you'll forget how to do it. It's just another form of communication that you can choose from. That means you'll need to assess the most effective way to get your message across when communicating. For example, teens enjoy using sarcasm with each other. That's difficult to read in a text. You're probably already reserving that for face-to-face interaction.
Some teens I interviewed during my documentary said they use texting to help them think about what they want to communicate when responding in a difficult situation, instead of acting impulsively. This can be a benefit in preventing a situation from escalating, however, teens do lose the opportunity to read body language. Sometimes what we say or write isn't exactly how we feel. Teens need to think ahead about the possible outcomes of using each kind of communication before they engage in a difficult conversation. It's not much different than before cell phones when teens used notes to express themselves instead of dealing face-to-face. Teens have already been negotiating between written forms of communication and face-to-face.
Another question that came up was "is texting ruining our ability to spell correctly and use proper grammar?" The response will appear in an upcoming post.
"Is texting really making us become more anti-social?"
Texting is actually quite social. In fact it's hyper-social. Teens are connecting with each other around the clock and staying more connected to each other than ever. Adults worry when teens go off to their rooms and text because face-to-face interaction with them drops off. Adults equate your physical absence with anti-social behaviour because they have learned to be social by being physically present. They are worried about being kept outside of your social space. Spend some face-to-face time with your parents every day.
"Won't we have a harder time communicating face-to-face?"
Just because you are communicating less face-to-face doesn't mean you'll forget how to do it. It's just another form of communication that you can choose from. That means you'll need to assess the most effective way to get your message across when communicating. For example, teens enjoy using sarcasm with each other. That's difficult to read in a text. You're probably already reserving that for face-to-face interaction.
Some teens I interviewed during my documentary said they use texting to help them think about what they want to communicate when responding in a difficult situation, instead of acting impulsively. This can be a benefit in preventing a situation from escalating, however, teens do lose the opportunity to read body language. Sometimes what we say or write isn't exactly how we feel. Teens need to think ahead about the possible outcomes of using each kind of communication before they engage in a difficult conversation. It's not much different than before cell phones when teens used notes to express themselves instead of dealing face-to-face. Teens have already been negotiating between written forms of communication and face-to-face.
Another question that came up was "is texting ruining our ability to spell correctly and use proper grammar?" The response will appear in an upcoming post.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Cellphone Use in Classroom topic on a roll
I rushed to the CTV studios right after school yesterday and did the taping for Province Wide. I was 15 minutes late after getting out of the building and then finding on my drive that Wellington Street was closed. I was a little frazzled but managed to shake it.
Daiene asked me what I thought about banning cell phone use in schools and I explained I felt it was sad that some boards that ban the devices are missing out on opportunities to teach students about appropriate use. We chatted about parents who don't know how to set boundaries as role models for students and how students need to work through their compulsion so they don't end up like the generation before them. What a great opportunity for education to guide them through this. By the way, Daiene's cell phone went off during the taping and we had to re-start a question. Her daughter needed a ride home and I had probably kept her later since I came in a little late. It really wasn't her fault, but it was still pretty funny.
After supper, my husband showed me a news post on the Internet that Premiere Dalton McGuinty had been asked by Toronto reporters what he thought about cell phones in the classroom. The Toronto Board had just announced it had decided to review its cell phone policy. I immediately thought, "Yeah Neil!" Neil Andersen, who appears in my documentary is a retired media consultant for the Toronto Board of Ed. I was so glad that people were starting to talk about the issue. It's been a long time coming.
This morning I was surprised to see a negative backlash to what McGuinty had said. All he had said was that schools need to help students find appropriate use for ell phones in the classroom and that we need to consider a place for them. That's exactly what I had been saying Tuesday morning. I guess the fear-mongers ran with that one and attacked him for not considering the distraction of cell phones in the class. It's strange how people can twist things out of proportion because bringing them in to class is what we needed to do in order to deal with the compulsion to be on call. I wish people could see my documentary so they could understand the issued a lot better.
Before lunch, I got another call from the office that the CBC had been trying to get a hold of me again. CBC's radio syndicate requested 11 interviews for between 3 and 6 PM. I'm so glad I got up early this morning to write down some of the counter talk I could expect from people. It came in handy on the circuit. Some interviews went easily with talk show hosts that were open to the issues, but a couple went much tougher with the announced out in Halifax calling himself a curmudgeon and David Gray calling me crazy. I think David was just upset because I caught him on one of his own points. He said that teens shouldn't have cell phones in the classroom to use as tools because it's unfair to the ones who don't have them. I said it was an easy fix and that I had never had a problem with it. Students work in groups and the ones that have them are quite happy to share. He asked me if I really thought it was okay to ask the kids who have cell phones be asked to share with the ones who don't. I explained again that the haves are quite willing to share with the have-nots if you ask them, it's not a requirement. The haves don't mind sharing their phones while working in groups and don't see it as a big deal. It's all in how you use them in class and that's something the teacher can set up with the students; is how and when to use them. David asked "isn't that drawing a line between the haves and the have-nots? Shouldn't we level the playing field?" I said, "Are you saying that students should miss out on deeper opportunities for learning just to level the playing field when teachers can create equal learning opportunities through putting students into groups? He quickly changed the question.
There's several more points I made through 3 hours of talks. The battle with David Gray really stuck out because he challenged me. I have taped some of the interviews and will go over them to accumulate some of the issues that were raised and post them later. I also want to write about the questions my students had for me today. We had a great discussion on the fears that people have around texting. I could tell they had been sitting around the supper table talking with their parents about it. Great questions included: "is texting making us become more anti-social?" and "is texting ruining our ability to spell correctly and use proper grammar?" I will save these discussions for the next post as this one is getting quite long.
Daiene asked me what I thought about banning cell phone use in schools and I explained I felt it was sad that some boards that ban the devices are missing out on opportunities to teach students about appropriate use. We chatted about parents who don't know how to set boundaries as role models for students and how students need to work through their compulsion so they don't end up like the generation before them. What a great opportunity for education to guide them through this. By the way, Daiene's cell phone went off during the taping and we had to re-start a question. Her daughter needed a ride home and I had probably kept her later since I came in a little late. It really wasn't her fault, but it was still pretty funny.
After supper, my husband showed me a news post on the Internet that Premiere Dalton McGuinty had been asked by Toronto reporters what he thought about cell phones in the classroom. The Toronto Board had just announced it had decided to review its cell phone policy. I immediately thought, "Yeah Neil!" Neil Andersen, who appears in my documentary is a retired media consultant for the Toronto Board of Ed. I was so glad that people were starting to talk about the issue. It's been a long time coming.
This morning I was surprised to see a negative backlash to what McGuinty had said. All he had said was that schools need to help students find appropriate use for ell phones in the classroom and that we need to consider a place for them. That's exactly what I had been saying Tuesday morning. I guess the fear-mongers ran with that one and attacked him for not considering the distraction of cell phones in the class. It's strange how people can twist things out of proportion because bringing them in to class is what we needed to do in order to deal with the compulsion to be on call. I wish people could see my documentary so they could understand the issued a lot better.
Before lunch, I got another call from the office that the CBC had been trying to get a hold of me again. CBC's radio syndicate requested 11 interviews for between 3 and 6 PM. I'm so glad I got up early this morning to write down some of the counter talk I could expect from people. It came in handy on the circuit. Some interviews went easily with talk show hosts that were open to the issues, but a couple went much tougher with the announced out in Halifax calling himself a curmudgeon and David Gray calling me crazy. I think David was just upset because I caught him on one of his own points. He said that teens shouldn't have cell phones in the classroom to use as tools because it's unfair to the ones who don't have them. I said it was an easy fix and that I had never had a problem with it. Students work in groups and the ones that have them are quite happy to share. He asked me if I really thought it was okay to ask the kids who have cell phones be asked to share with the ones who don't. I explained again that the haves are quite willing to share with the have-nots if you ask them, it's not a requirement. The haves don't mind sharing their phones while working in groups and don't see it as a big deal. It's all in how you use them in class and that's something the teacher can set up with the students; is how and when to use them. David asked "isn't that drawing a line between the haves and the have-nots? Shouldn't we level the playing field?" I said, "Are you saying that students should miss out on deeper opportunities for learning just to level the playing field when teachers can create equal learning opportunities through putting students into groups? He quickly changed the question.
There's several more points I made through 3 hours of talks. The battle with David Gray really stuck out because he challenged me. I have taped some of the interviews and will go over them to accumulate some of the issues that were raised and post them later. I also want to write about the questions my students had for me today. We had a great discussion on the fears that people have around texting. I could tell they had been sitting around the supper table talking with their parents about it. Great questions included: "is texting making us become more anti-social?" and "is texting ruining our ability to spell correctly and use proper grammar?" I will save these discussions for the next post as this one is getting quite long.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Texting and Teens Generates Interest
As I drove away from the CBC battling Toronto traffic to get back to the Waterloo Region, I felt a huge sense of relief. My documentary got handed in on time to Ryerson with my bound paper and I had a great time visiting friends and celebrating the end of my work. Appearing on Metro Morning and the provincial morning show felt like the wrap-up.
About a half hour after I'd arrived back at Waterloo Oxford I got a call from the office that CTV had been trying to get a hold of me. I was asked to appear on Province Wide for the coming weekend and reporter Frank Lynn asked if he could come out to the school to do a story. I made plans to tape Province Wide today right after school and asked for an extra day to get media releases all organized from the students so that we could be ready to have CTV come in Thursday.
I don't have the questions for Province Wide, but I have a feeling they're going to be around cell phone policies. Diane mentioned that my talk on CBC around trying out with students that they keep their cell phones on and out in the open intrigued her.
About a half hour after I'd arrived back at Waterloo Oxford I got a call from the office that CTV had been trying to get a hold of me. I was asked to appear on Province Wide for the coming weekend and reporter Frank Lynn asked if he could come out to the school to do a story. I made plans to tape Province Wide today right after school and asked for an extra day to get media releases all organized from the students so that we could be ready to have CTV come in Thursday.
I don't have the questions for Province Wide, but I have a feeling they're going to be around cell phone policies. Diane mentioned that my talk on CBC around trying out with students that they keep their cell phones on and out in the open intrigued her.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Documentary, "Conditioned To Be On Call" Finalized
Finally, the re-edits of my documentary on teens and texting are done. I have just burned the project to Blu-ray and will hand it in to Ryerson tomorrow.
This project has really got me thinking about how we can address the issues of cell phone use in schools. We need to start talking about it and come up with some solutions. I'm going to be interviewed on CBC's Metro Morning Tuesday about my doc and plan to talk about the compulsion that students feel to text using their phones and all the social pressures that surround that. I haven't received the questions for the interview yet, but during my pre-interview I talked a lot about self-regulation to fight compulsion so I'm hoping that will be the focus.
This project has really got me thinking about how we can address the issues of cell phone use in schools. We need to start talking about it and come up with some solutions. I'm going to be interviewed on CBC's Metro Morning Tuesday about my doc and plan to talk about the compulsion that students feel to text using their phones and all the social pressures that surround that. I haven't received the questions for the interview yet, but during my pre-interview I talked a lot about self-regulation to fight compulsion so I'm hoping that will be the focus.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Typical reactionary response to bringing Facebook to education
I wasn’t surprised at the negative comments that appeared in the story write-up about the Waterloo Region Public school board planning to open its firewall to Facebook this September. Any time anything “new” is explored in education, wide-spread skepticism and reservation become rampant. I do find it hard to believe that not one student The Record spoke with felt that Facebook should be openly welcome in the schools. Or, maybe students weren’t asked about the potential benefits at all. Certainly, the experts in social media were not consulted.
I just returned this week from Scotland where I interviewed Dr. Tracey Alloway of Stirling University about using Facebook as a learning tool. Alloway has completed extensive research in the area and is currently meeting with her research team to write up and publish the results of her findings. What she told me was that social media, particularly Facebook, builds and exercises working memory –an important part of processing and managing incoming information. She likens working memory to a series of post-it notes that are sorted and pieced together to develop comprehension of a greater concept. Her studies also showed that using Facebook can actually increase the IQs of teens, improve multi-tasking skills, and raise Oxytocin levels –a chemical in the brain that helps us feel pleasure and fight depression.
While it is likely that students will continue to use Facebook to socialize, the novelty will wear off and with some guidance, they will find academically productive uses for the social media tool as well. Cyberbullying will become much less of a concern as teachers and parents become a guiding presence. Study groups, peer tutoring, and career networks will continue to develop as learning continues during and after school hours. With some lessons in digital literacy and digital citizenship, students will have a safe and empowering forum in which to communicate in the anytime, anyplace world they have created for themselves.
I just returned this week from Scotland where I interviewed Dr. Tracey Alloway of Stirling University about using Facebook as a learning tool. Alloway has completed extensive research in the area and is currently meeting with her research team to write up and publish the results of her findings. What she told me was that social media, particularly Facebook, builds and exercises working memory –an important part of processing and managing incoming information. She likens working memory to a series of post-it notes that are sorted and pieced together to develop comprehension of a greater concept. Her studies also showed that using Facebook can actually increase the IQs of teens, improve multi-tasking skills, and raise Oxytocin levels –a chemical in the brain that helps us feel pleasure and fight depression.
While it is likely that students will continue to use Facebook to socialize, the novelty will wear off and with some guidance, they will find academically productive uses for the social media tool as well. Cyberbullying will become much less of a concern as teachers and parents become a guiding presence. Study groups, peer tutoring, and career networks will continue to develop as learning continues during and after school hours. With some lessons in digital literacy and digital citizenship, students will have a safe and empowering forum in which to communicate in the anytime, anyplace world they have created for themselves.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Lone Shooter
I miss having my friend Mike with me on shoots. We were a great team. Mike took the stills and looked after the audio while I operated the camera. This year I have been filming on my own a lot. I feel like one of those one-man bands with a drum attached to my front and a drumstick rigged to my arm, harmonica at my lips, tambourines in between my knees and a horn on my belt. I often wonder if that's kind of how I look to people when I go out on shoots.
I find it tough to have to think about and monitor all the equipment myself. I've been interviewing people while having an ear bud placed in my ear to monitor for interfering background sounds. I am constantly scanning the camera viewer for proper headroom, noseroom, leadroom, light balance, tonal mergers and the audio v/u levels. My mic stand holds the boom now and I'm constantly checking it so that it's not in my shot, so that it's pointed in the right direction, so that it's not placed where someone will trip over it.
Over the next two months I will be flying solo to Boston, Vancouver and the U.K. to shoot my documentary. I'm having nightmares already of forgetting to white balance, charge my batteries, put a battery in the boom, plug my XLR in all the way, forgetting to check for stereo sound and failing to format my SDHC card properly. There's a lot that can go wrong on a shoot, especially when there's no one else looking out for you. Just as the airplane pilots will be doing before taking me away to shoot my doc, I'm going to follow a standard checklist. I'll post it once it's finished, though it's specific to my equipment set-up. Maybe I'll even have a story later on about how the checklist saved a shoot.
I find it tough to have to think about and monitor all the equipment myself. I've been interviewing people while having an ear bud placed in my ear to monitor for interfering background sounds. I am constantly scanning the camera viewer for proper headroom, noseroom, leadroom, light balance, tonal mergers and the audio v/u levels. My mic stand holds the boom now and I'm constantly checking it so that it's not in my shot, so that it's pointed in the right direction, so that it's not placed where someone will trip over it.
Over the next two months I will be flying solo to Boston, Vancouver and the U.K. to shoot my documentary. I'm having nightmares already of forgetting to white balance, charge my batteries, put a battery in the boom, plug my XLR in all the way, forgetting to check for stereo sound and failing to format my SDHC card properly. There's a lot that can go wrong on a shoot, especially when there's no one else looking out for you. Just as the airplane pilots will be doing before taking me away to shoot my doc, I'm going to follow a standard checklist. I'll post it once it's finished, though it's specific to my equipment set-up. Maybe I'll even have a story later on about how the checklist saved a shoot.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
2-time Emmy award winner and Documentary film-maker Paul Saltzmann
Recently, Paul Saltzmann spoke at TEDx Waterloo. I had a chance to jot down some notes.
Paul Saltzmann worked at the NFB in the Montreal office at the age of 23. What he learned while working at the NFB is to “pause” and not to try to fill the void. The universe will give us opportunities.
As a young man, there were parts of himself that he didn’t like. Eventually, a voice inside of him told him to get away from the environment he grew up in to get a clearer view of himself.
Paul told the story of how he heard an NFB Director was going to Bombay, India and he wanted to get out of Montreal and find himself so he asked the director if he could go as his cinematographer. The director had already hired someone from the UK, but instead of walking away, he paused, and Paul stood in front of him, pausing as well. It was a long enough pause that the director asked, “Have you ever done sound?” Although Paul had never done sound, he said “yes” anyway and was soon off to Bombay India.
In India, Paul worked on a film for six weeks before receiving a letter from his girlfriend that she had moved in with “Henry”. Heartbroken, Paul tried meditation to heal his broken heart. The Beatles were at a meditation facility overlooking the Ganges in India recording an album. The place was closed to the public. “Not at the PRESENT time” a man at the gate told Paul when he asked if he could come in and learn how to meditate to heal his broken heart. Paul heard the word “present” and asked “can I wait?” He slept eight days outside waiting. Eventually, the man who taught meditation came back and let Paul in. After a week of meditation, Paul says his broken heart was healed and he felt better. One day he was walking past an open area of the complex with a beautiful view off a cliff and saw members of the Beatles including John Lennon and Paul McCartney sitting at a table with their girlfriends and spouses. McCartney offered him a chair after Saltzmann asked if he could take a chair. Paul’s internal voice told him they were just regular people and he began to talk with them. McCartney told him they had everything they ever wanted but it didn’t mean happiness. That was still something else you had to find for yourself. I suspect the broken heart story was a great excuse for getting into the complex, but Saltzmann is a fantastic storyteller and can be forgiven for being so ambitious.
Recently, Paul produced a documentary for the NFB called “Prom Night in Mississippi”. It took five months to film in Charleston. Actor Morgan Freeman had offered to pay for a black and white mixed race prom 10 years earlier. Paul called him and asked if the offer still stood. There was silence on the other end and so Paul paused and let the silence continue. Morgan Freeman answered that the offer did still stand. Paul went down and documented the whole process leading up to and including the event.
Saltzmann’s sage advice…slow down and notice the spaces the universe offers you…listen...and you will see opportunities open up for you.
Paul Saltzmann worked at the NFB in the Montreal office at the age of 23. What he learned while working at the NFB is to “pause” and not to try to fill the void. The universe will give us opportunities.
As a young man, there were parts of himself that he didn’t like. Eventually, a voice inside of him told him to get away from the environment he grew up in to get a clearer view of himself.
Paul told the story of how he heard an NFB Director was going to Bombay, India and he wanted to get out of Montreal and find himself so he asked the director if he could go as his cinematographer. The director had already hired someone from the UK, but instead of walking away, he paused, and Paul stood in front of him, pausing as well. It was a long enough pause that the director asked, “Have you ever done sound?” Although Paul had never done sound, he said “yes” anyway and was soon off to Bombay India.
In India, Paul worked on a film for six weeks before receiving a letter from his girlfriend that she had moved in with “Henry”. Heartbroken, Paul tried meditation to heal his broken heart. The Beatles were at a meditation facility overlooking the Ganges in India recording an album. The place was closed to the public. “Not at the PRESENT time” a man at the gate told Paul when he asked if he could come in and learn how to meditate to heal his broken heart. Paul heard the word “present” and asked “can I wait?” He slept eight days outside waiting. Eventually, the man who taught meditation came back and let Paul in. After a week of meditation, Paul says his broken heart was healed and he felt better. One day he was walking past an open area of the complex with a beautiful view off a cliff and saw members of the Beatles including John Lennon and Paul McCartney sitting at a table with their girlfriends and spouses. McCartney offered him a chair after Saltzmann asked if he could take a chair. Paul’s internal voice told him they were just regular people and he began to talk with them. McCartney told him they had everything they ever wanted but it didn’t mean happiness. That was still something else you had to find for yourself. I suspect the broken heart story was a great excuse for getting into the complex, but Saltzmann is a fantastic storyteller and can be forgiven for being so ambitious.
Recently, Paul produced a documentary for the NFB called “Prom Night in Mississippi”. It took five months to film in Charleston. Actor Morgan Freeman had offered to pay for a black and white mixed race prom 10 years earlier. Paul called him and asked if the offer still stood. There was silence on the other end and so Paul paused and let the silence continue. Morgan Freeman answered that the offer did still stand. Paul went down and documented the whole process leading up to and including the event.
Saltzmann’s sage advice…slow down and notice the spaces the universe offers you…listen...and you will see opportunities open up for you.
Advertiser Terry O'Reilly "Friction is the Secret Ingredient"
O’Reilly’s job as an advertiser is to create the easiest, speed bump-free path to the sale. This takes skill, though Terry told us he wasn’t going to talk to us about it at TEDx Waterloo. Instead, Terry talked about the quirk in the collective psyche, saying sometimes people need friction before they will buy a product or buy into an idea. Friction, he says, can be the key ingredient in persuasion.
Terry told the story back in time of when housewives ignored a company making instant mix cakes. The company researched and talked to housewives and determined the emotions that surround the process. What they found was that the women felt they weren’t involved enough in the work of making a cake. They needed to be persuaded that they actually had something more to do in the process. The manufacturer went backward in the process and removed the egg from the mix. They then asked the women to put the egg back in so that they felt like they were more of the process in making the cake. By increasing the friction and adding the extra step women were attracted back to the product. Sales spiked.
O’Reilly talked about Johnson and Johnson having a marketing problem with their antiseptic cream. People would not buy the cream a second time. Johnson and Johnson brought human nature into their research. If we don’t feel pain, we don’t feel we are being healed so they put alcohol in the cream to give it a sting. The added friction of pain gave the product credibility and as a result, sales spiked back up.
Clairol introduced a hair product back in the 70s. The instructions for how to use the conditioner were 1. work conditioner into hair 2. let sit for 30 minutes 3. rinse…but it only took 2 minutes to work and not the 30 minutes that women were used to in the salon. So, Clairol suggested 30 minutes to give their product credibility by keeping the instructions for use in line with what the salons were doing. Friction aligned the new product with an existing belief system and made it legitimate.
O’Reilly’s message…Take a look at marketing over the last 100 years…friction can be a powerful tool to persuasion. You can take the concept of friction and apply it to fundraising. Terry cites a donation form for a charity with 3 donation boxes to choose from: a 500 dollar box, 50 dollar box, and 5 dollar box. There is friction with 500, 5 dollars is barely worth the stamp. They framed the desire of the 50 dollar box with the shock of the 500 dollar box and the shame of the 5 dollar box. 50 dollars was always the target.
O’Reilly also mentions an instance of setting up on-line shopping on an e-commerce site. The man designing the site looked at the 5 steps to the checkout process and replaced it with one step. He even added advanced error checking and retrieval of the page if the Internet went down. The idea failed miserably. The 5 steps created a friction that made the customers feel they had added security. Terry compares it to shopping. The narrower a store aisle, the more crowded it is…the more buying is done. More friction means more shopping as choice is a way to exert control over your environment. You control the experience by exercising choice. When the aisles are wide open, people won’t buy. They lash out by buying more in narrower areas.
O'Reilly says Steve Jobs understands his customers. 50 percent of products that are returned to stores actually still work. It’s just that people have a fiddle tolerance. People will only fiddle for 20 minutes. Jobs took this understanding and it applied it to unpacking the computer mouse. He purposely wrapped up the individual mouse so that you would have to become more familiar with it as you were unpacking it. No mice were returned after purchase. If you can embrace this concept, you will have less returns.
Lastly, in looking at human nature… Atul Gawande wrote a book called The Checklist Manifesto. He looked to others to see how they prevented mistakes…ie/ aircraft pilots. Gawade created checklists for hospitals. The hospitals that used this had the number of mistakes go down 8 percent. Unfortunately, only 1 fifth of hospitals in the U.S. use this. Although some surgeons felt offended (20 percent) when asked if they would want a surgeon operating on them to use a checklist , a whopping 95 percent said “yes”.
Friction works. It gives credibility. It can guide and steer people to positive outcomes. There is a real human nature element. O”Reilly looks back at books published in the 40s and 50s…Madison Avenue. He says the more things change, the faster it happens, but the study of the aspects of desires in man never change. These are fundamental traits of our species. Terry closes with the quote, “Friction is the secret ingredient to life” and Mary Poppins was wrong when she said a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, a spoonful of sand might make it go down quicker.
Terry told the story back in time of when housewives ignored a company making instant mix cakes. The company researched and talked to housewives and determined the emotions that surround the process. What they found was that the women felt they weren’t involved enough in the work of making a cake. They needed to be persuaded that they actually had something more to do in the process. The manufacturer went backward in the process and removed the egg from the mix. They then asked the women to put the egg back in so that they felt like they were more of the process in making the cake. By increasing the friction and adding the extra step women were attracted back to the product. Sales spiked.
O’Reilly talked about Johnson and Johnson having a marketing problem with their antiseptic cream. People would not buy the cream a second time. Johnson and Johnson brought human nature into their research. If we don’t feel pain, we don’t feel we are being healed so they put alcohol in the cream to give it a sting. The added friction of pain gave the product credibility and as a result, sales spiked back up.
Clairol introduced a hair product back in the 70s. The instructions for how to use the conditioner were 1. work conditioner into hair 2. let sit for 30 minutes 3. rinse…but it only took 2 minutes to work and not the 30 minutes that women were used to in the salon. So, Clairol suggested 30 minutes to give their product credibility by keeping the instructions for use in line with what the salons were doing. Friction aligned the new product with an existing belief system and made it legitimate.
O’Reilly’s message…Take a look at marketing over the last 100 years…friction can be a powerful tool to persuasion. You can take the concept of friction and apply it to fundraising. Terry cites a donation form for a charity with 3 donation boxes to choose from: a 500 dollar box, 50 dollar box, and 5 dollar box. There is friction with 500, 5 dollars is barely worth the stamp. They framed the desire of the 50 dollar box with the shock of the 500 dollar box and the shame of the 5 dollar box. 50 dollars was always the target.
O’Reilly also mentions an instance of setting up on-line shopping on an e-commerce site. The man designing the site looked at the 5 steps to the checkout process and replaced it with one step. He even added advanced error checking and retrieval of the page if the Internet went down. The idea failed miserably. The 5 steps created a friction that made the customers feel they had added security. Terry compares it to shopping. The narrower a store aisle, the more crowded it is…the more buying is done. More friction means more shopping as choice is a way to exert control over your environment. You control the experience by exercising choice. When the aisles are wide open, people won’t buy. They lash out by buying more in narrower areas.
O'Reilly says Steve Jobs understands his customers. 50 percent of products that are returned to stores actually still work. It’s just that people have a fiddle tolerance. People will only fiddle for 20 minutes. Jobs took this understanding and it applied it to unpacking the computer mouse. He purposely wrapped up the individual mouse so that you would have to become more familiar with it as you were unpacking it. No mice were returned after purchase. If you can embrace this concept, you will have less returns.
Lastly, in looking at human nature… Atul Gawande wrote a book called The Checklist Manifesto. He looked to others to see how they prevented mistakes…ie/ aircraft pilots. Gawade created checklists for hospitals. The hospitals that used this had the number of mistakes go down 8 percent. Unfortunately, only 1 fifth of hospitals in the U.S. use this. Although some surgeons felt offended (20 percent) when asked if they would want a surgeon operating on them to use a checklist , a whopping 95 percent said “yes”.
Friction works. It gives credibility. It can guide and steer people to positive outcomes. There is a real human nature element. O”Reilly looks back at books published in the 40s and 50s…Madison Avenue. He says the more things change, the faster it happens, but the study of the aspects of desires in man never change. These are fundamental traits of our species. Terry closes with the quote, “Friction is the secret ingredient to life” and Mary Poppins was wrong when she said a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, a spoonful of sand might make it go down quicker.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Another Look at Pointless Populism
William R. Seaman's “Active Audience theory: pointless populism”, 1992
Active audience theory grew in practice during the application of ethnographic research methods in the study of TV audience viewing practices in the 1980's. In John Fiske's 1987 book, “Television Culture” he explains how ethnography came to be a valid method of studying television and its viewers. David Morley (who Seaman actually criticizes in his 1992 paper), felt that Stuart Hall overemphasized the role of class in producing different readings (Hall's work was in encoding/decoding, examining preferred reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional readings). There were some cross similarities between people of different social backgrounds such as bank managers and apprentices, and Morley surmised that the two were similarly constructed as subjects of capitalist ideology, inserting themselves into the dominant ideology in a shared interest of the economy's survival and success. As a result, the emphasis of ethnography shifted away from the textual and ideological construction of the subject to socially and historically situated people. The emphasis in the late 80s turned to studying “the way people live in their culture” and acknowledged the differences between people despite their social construction and pluralized the meanings and pleasures they found in television. (Fiske) Greg Philo later writes that people do read the intended encoded message of a media text the same; it's not polysemic in having different meanings to different groups. He believes instead that audiences are likely to criticize the content of a message in relation to another perspective, which they hold to be correct. “They are therefore aware of the encoded meaning and the manner in which it was constructed -they just do not agree with it.” (Philo, Active Audiences and the Construction of Public Knowledge, 2008)
Summary of reading
Seaman has an aversion to ethnographic research in the field of cultural studies, rejecting the overall view that, “television audiences hold far greater power over the medium than is generally acknowledged.”(301) He also says that an “active audience approach has tended more to mystify than to clarify, to rationalize a set of practices rather than to explain them.” (309) Further, he charges active audience theorists with taking a rhetorical role in theory construction, rather than an analytic or descriptive approach. (306) Seaman also argues against the active audience theorist view that the viewer's individual interpretation constitutes interaction, implying a measure of control over the televisual text, as the text is just an A/V signal and is not altered itself by the viewer. (306) This goes against Fiske's view that TV doesn't have an effect on the individual, but rather on the ideology of a society in that it promotes and prefers certain meanings (that already exist).
Seaman has trouble with the term “free agency.” Unless viewers are aware of the “highly constrained character and content of programming...of the information, analyses, perspectives, beliefs filtered out by mainstream media, it is wrong to suggest they are truly free of their decisions to act.” (307)
Ethnographic Research
-Seaman believes it allows cultural studies theorists to makes self-serving judgements
Seaman's first critique of ethnographic research in active audiences is that it focuses on the apparent characterizations of these theorists in certain cultural practices as “resistant” or “oppositional”. He criticizes Morley's playing with the oppositional reading. Morley countered an earlier view that Thomas Lindlof and Paul Trandt had earlier observed in that television is used to create personal space and may actually be used to avoid conflicts and be used to lessen conflicts within larger families with his own reading that television is used for things such as acceptable zones for private pursuits and provides organizing centres and an opportunity for new types of communicative contexts. In doing so, Morley started to replace words such as “can be seen” with the more definitive “television is”. Another example Seaman gives is when theorists say that the text is being “used” in a particular context, it implies that the subject is controlling the text for his or her own purposes. Other questions must be asked first, such as whether or not the subject is even aware of alternative choices so that essentially I think what he is saying is that comparisons need to be made in order to judge the assessment's validity or plausibility. Seaman warns that theorists must be careful that possibilities are not turned into judgments as this can be misleading.
Audience Interpretation
-Ineffective override and negative reinforcement
A) Seaman warns that mediated effects cannot confirm whether or not a target subgroup interprets degrading representations of that subgroup in ways that overthrow the dominant reading.
He used the example of Fiske's work in stating that “women have told me how much they enjoyed Charlie's Angels when it appeared on their screens in the 70's and that their pleasure is seeing women taking active, controlling roles was so great that it overrode the incorporating devices that worked to recuperate feminist elements in its content back into patriarchy.” The way that the women may have perceived the experience of viewing cannot stand alone as the success of overriding the incorporating devices of a television program. “The word “pleasure” has to be explored in context. Seaman surmises that interpretations that rest on such elements as “viewer pleasure” can be self-serving.
B) He also warns that an oppositional reading of a text by a subgroup may work as an affirmation of their prejudices, giving them even more strength. He cites the anti-Arab racism in the American mainstream media and says the harm is not the demoralization of the subgroup, but the reinforcement of the prejudice and an encouragement to continue racist feelings in the dominant group.
Empowerment and the Active Audience
-Seaman wonders how can Active Audience findings empower, if there's no readable action being taken?
Seaman says viewers do use the information they pick up on TV as reference points in making sense of the world but worries when theorists see this as an empowerment. He argues that viewer empowerment through the use of interaction with television is alarming to the “degree that elite interests dominate our news media and so constrain the field of options for 'reference points', examples and analyses” (305). I think he means that knowing that not all of the information and viewpoints make it to the audience by way of TV, it would be scary that we only see what does make it to the tube as worthy enough of conversation, consideration, or even value. More evidence to this view is on page 308 when he writes, “The problem does not lie with audiences, but rather with a system of mass communication that systematically excludes certain forms of programming and imagery in favour of a profoundly restricted and highly interest driven selection. The problem is not with audience interpreting practices, but with what is available for interpretation.”
Seaman seems to have a problem with theorists who use the term “empowerment” when it doesn't really have a measurable effect in terms of action. On the subject of empowerment, he writes about Madonna as empowering for young women, “does nothing to decrease the staggering risk of date rape and other all too common forms of sexual assault and harassment.” (308) The result deals more with thoughts and feelings, which Seaman says is difficult to characterize, and makes the point that it's not that he feels audience thoughts and feelings should be ignored.
Seaman harshly slams the active audience approach, saying it provides no insight into research in communication and media theory. He refers to the “pleasures made possible by inflected television readings simply will not address, let alone confront, the parochial bigotries, racist and sexist hiring practices, or the conservative voting trends that threaten even the most basic social programs, affirmative action and abortion rights here in the U-S...the violence against women and people of colour. “ (309)
Morley's Rebuttal
In 2006, Morley wrote a response to the backlash against ethnographic research in his paper title, “Unanswered Questions in Audience Research.” Morley feels Seaman's “Pointless Populism” is really “a return to a very old story about media effects and largely readable as the return of a narrowly fundamentalist political economy.”
“It is one thing to argue (as I have myself done) that some recent audience work has exaggerated, and wrongly romanticized the supposed power and freedoms of media consumers, imagining that all audiences everywhere are engaged in a continuous form of “semiological guerrilla warfare” (Eco, 1972) with the media, in which they constantly produce oppositional readings of its products.” (Morley, 2006)
Morley further acknowledges Seaman's criticism of qualitative ethnographic research for not leading to follow-up action. “The further question raised by the critics of cultural studies audience work is whether it matters if people make oppositional or subversive decodings of media material, unless they go out and 'do something' (go on a demonstration; start a petition) about it.” Morley defends himself by saying that the many micro-instances of 'pre-political' attitude change in the cultural sphere acts as the impetus for political change. (Morley, 2006)
Morley ends up calling for a balanced approach to the two methodological practices of qualitative and quantitative. He surmises that there are times when more traditional types of research such as quantitative (number crunching and statistics) may be useful in audience research but warns that too much content can “deaden” under the weight of the “quantity of unanalysed contextual data. He gives validity to qualitative and ethnographic research in that it provides insight into, “the complexities of how audiences “indigenise” the media materials which they consume”, but warns that it runs the “danger of, descending into anecdotalism” and “we should not mistake the vividness of the examples it offers us for their general applicability.” (Morley, 2006)
Active audience theory grew in practice during the application of ethnographic research methods in the study of TV audience viewing practices in the 1980's. In John Fiske's 1987 book, “Television Culture” he explains how ethnography came to be a valid method of studying television and its viewers. David Morley (who Seaman actually criticizes in his 1992 paper), felt that Stuart Hall overemphasized the role of class in producing different readings (Hall's work was in encoding/decoding, examining preferred reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional readings). There were some cross similarities between people of different social backgrounds such as bank managers and apprentices, and Morley surmised that the two were similarly constructed as subjects of capitalist ideology, inserting themselves into the dominant ideology in a shared interest of the economy's survival and success. As a result, the emphasis of ethnography shifted away from the textual and ideological construction of the subject to socially and historically situated people. The emphasis in the late 80s turned to studying “the way people live in their culture” and acknowledged the differences between people despite their social construction and pluralized the meanings and pleasures they found in television. (Fiske) Greg Philo later writes that people do read the intended encoded message of a media text the same; it's not polysemic in having different meanings to different groups. He believes instead that audiences are likely to criticize the content of a message in relation to another perspective, which they hold to be correct. “They are therefore aware of the encoded meaning and the manner in which it was constructed -they just do not agree with it.” (Philo, Active Audiences and the Construction of Public Knowledge, 2008)
Summary of reading
Seaman has an aversion to ethnographic research in the field of cultural studies, rejecting the overall view that, “television audiences hold far greater power over the medium than is generally acknowledged.”(301) He also says that an “active audience approach has tended more to mystify than to clarify, to rationalize a set of practices rather than to explain them.” (309) Further, he charges active audience theorists with taking a rhetorical role in theory construction, rather than an analytic or descriptive approach. (306) Seaman also argues against the active audience theorist view that the viewer's individual interpretation constitutes interaction, implying a measure of control over the televisual text, as the text is just an A/V signal and is not altered itself by the viewer. (306) This goes against Fiske's view that TV doesn't have an effect on the individual, but rather on the ideology of a society in that it promotes and prefers certain meanings (that already exist).
Seaman has trouble with the term “free agency.” Unless viewers are aware of the “highly constrained character and content of programming...of the information, analyses, perspectives, beliefs filtered out by mainstream media, it is wrong to suggest they are truly free of their decisions to act.” (307)
Ethnographic Research
-Seaman believes it allows cultural studies theorists to makes self-serving judgements
Seaman's first critique of ethnographic research in active audiences is that it focuses on the apparent characterizations of these theorists in certain cultural practices as “resistant” or “oppositional”. He criticizes Morley's playing with the oppositional reading. Morley countered an earlier view that Thomas Lindlof and Paul Trandt had earlier observed in that television is used to create personal space and may actually be used to avoid conflicts and be used to lessen conflicts within larger families with his own reading that television is used for things such as acceptable zones for private pursuits and provides organizing centres and an opportunity for new types of communicative contexts. In doing so, Morley started to replace words such as “can be seen” with the more definitive “television is”. Another example Seaman gives is when theorists say that the text is being “used” in a particular context, it implies that the subject is controlling the text for his or her own purposes. Other questions must be asked first, such as whether or not the subject is even aware of alternative choices so that essentially I think what he is saying is that comparisons need to be made in order to judge the assessment's validity or plausibility. Seaman warns that theorists must be careful that possibilities are not turned into judgments as this can be misleading.
Audience Interpretation
-Ineffective override and negative reinforcement
A) Seaman warns that mediated effects cannot confirm whether or not a target subgroup interprets degrading representations of that subgroup in ways that overthrow the dominant reading.
He used the example of Fiske's work in stating that “women have told me how much they enjoyed Charlie's Angels when it appeared on their screens in the 70's and that their pleasure is seeing women taking active, controlling roles was so great that it overrode the incorporating devices that worked to recuperate feminist elements in its content back into patriarchy.” The way that the women may have perceived the experience of viewing cannot stand alone as the success of overriding the incorporating devices of a television program. “The word “pleasure” has to be explored in context. Seaman surmises that interpretations that rest on such elements as “viewer pleasure” can be self-serving.
B) He also warns that an oppositional reading of a text by a subgroup may work as an affirmation of their prejudices, giving them even more strength. He cites the anti-Arab racism in the American mainstream media and says the harm is not the demoralization of the subgroup, but the reinforcement of the prejudice and an encouragement to continue racist feelings in the dominant group.
Empowerment and the Active Audience
-Seaman wonders how can Active Audience findings empower, if there's no readable action being taken?
Seaman says viewers do use the information they pick up on TV as reference points in making sense of the world but worries when theorists see this as an empowerment. He argues that viewer empowerment through the use of interaction with television is alarming to the “degree that elite interests dominate our news media and so constrain the field of options for 'reference points', examples and analyses” (305). I think he means that knowing that not all of the information and viewpoints make it to the audience by way of TV, it would be scary that we only see what does make it to the tube as worthy enough of conversation, consideration, or even value. More evidence to this view is on page 308 when he writes, “The problem does not lie with audiences, but rather with a system of mass communication that systematically excludes certain forms of programming and imagery in favour of a profoundly restricted and highly interest driven selection. The problem is not with audience interpreting practices, but with what is available for interpretation.”
Seaman seems to have a problem with theorists who use the term “empowerment” when it doesn't really have a measurable effect in terms of action. On the subject of empowerment, he writes about Madonna as empowering for young women, “does nothing to decrease the staggering risk of date rape and other all too common forms of sexual assault and harassment.” (308) The result deals more with thoughts and feelings, which Seaman says is difficult to characterize, and makes the point that it's not that he feels audience thoughts and feelings should be ignored.
Seaman harshly slams the active audience approach, saying it provides no insight into research in communication and media theory. He refers to the “pleasures made possible by inflected television readings simply will not address, let alone confront, the parochial bigotries, racist and sexist hiring practices, or the conservative voting trends that threaten even the most basic social programs, affirmative action and abortion rights here in the U-S...the violence against women and people of colour. “ (309)
Morley's Rebuttal
In 2006, Morley wrote a response to the backlash against ethnographic research in his paper title, “Unanswered Questions in Audience Research.” Morley feels Seaman's “Pointless Populism” is really “a return to a very old story about media effects and largely readable as the return of a narrowly fundamentalist political economy.”
“It is one thing to argue (as I have myself done) that some recent audience work has exaggerated, and wrongly romanticized the supposed power and freedoms of media consumers, imagining that all audiences everywhere are engaged in a continuous form of “semiological guerrilla warfare” (Eco, 1972) with the media, in which they constantly produce oppositional readings of its products.” (Morley, 2006)
Morley further acknowledges Seaman's criticism of qualitative ethnographic research for not leading to follow-up action. “The further question raised by the critics of cultural studies audience work is whether it matters if people make oppositional or subversive decodings of media material, unless they go out and 'do something' (go on a demonstration; start a petition) about it.” Morley defends himself by saying that the many micro-instances of 'pre-political' attitude change in the cultural sphere acts as the impetus for political change. (Morley, 2006)
Morley ends up calling for a balanced approach to the two methodological practices of qualitative and quantitative. He surmises that there are times when more traditional types of research such as quantitative (number crunching and statistics) may be useful in audience research but warns that too much content can “deaden” under the weight of the “quantity of unanalysed contextual data. He gives validity to qualitative and ethnographic research in that it provides insight into, “the complexities of how audiences “indigenise” the media materials which they consume”, but warns that it runs the “danger of, descending into anecdotalism” and “we should not mistake the vividness of the examples it offers us for their general applicability.” (Morley, 2006)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
I pulled my first all-nighter Sunday night. I wanted to get my research paper done for Research Methods at least two weeks before it's due. The reason why? I know how weird this sounds but if I write the paper now and leave it for at least a week, I can go back and edit my own work. Besides, I had just read 12 papers on my subject area, "TV is still a part of the texture of everyday life". If I had gone to bed without writing my paper, I would surely have forgotten everything I read by the next day. That's what having kids does to your brain. Well, that and age and probably some stress added to that as well.
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