Fall SAVY 2018, Day 1 – Media Mania! (3rd/4th)
Dear Media Mania parents,
We had a wonderful first day exploring media as a class! It is clear that each student is coming in with a lot of media experience and great ideas about how some media work and can affect us in our everyday lives.
To get everyone in the researcher mindset, we discussed what qualifies as media, both electronic and non-electronic. We used our discussions to devise a working definition for media: tools that we use to store, receive, and/or deliver information.
Your students worked in groups to determine the target audience and intended purposes of some of their favorite media products. The students quickly realized that each medium we discussed had many common intended purposes: to educate, entertain, communicate, or provide information. On the other hand, some media can also result in unintended consequences – both good and bad. For example, one “good” unintended consequence we discussed was the benefit of certain apps of attention and motor control.
On the other hand, there are also many “bad” or unintended consequences caused by media. For example, we talked a lot as a class about how media can give us access to content intended for a different audience, privacy concerns, multitasking, and conditions such as internet addiction.
Armed with a new understanding of what media are, the class sought out “educational” apps from the app store and were given the opportunity to critique the apps like real researchers! As a class, we have completed the first step towards becoming media scientists. Your students are now critically thinking about the impact media can have on human behavior. The next step will be to determine how we tangibly evaluate that impact.
This week, we encourage students to spend time at home evaluating different forms of media and determine what types of consequences, both good and bad, can develop from their use. Can Crossy Road make me more patient? Can Prodigy improve my math skills? Can I become addicted to playing Slither.io?
Next week, we will discuss the questions students bring to class and determine how we can use the scientific method and statistics to evaluate human behavior and the effectiveness of media. Looking forward to continuing our research!
Regards,
Israel
Critiquing Apps on Our Ipads
