Download - Mastering Media 2005-2006
Mastering Media 2005-2006
TV, the Internet, radio, newspapers, magazines, advertising, email messages, SMS, … We are bombarded by information in our daily lives. But how well equipped are our students to deal with all this information? Is written media losing the battle to fast-paced superficial visual media? How actively do young people follow the news or do they just flick through the gossip columns and sports pages? These are only some of the questions that will be asked in this project.
PARTICIPANTS(6 schools, 101 students, 10 teachers)
COORDINATORSKaarina Senior High School, FINLANDMessukylä Senior High School, FINLAND
MEMBERSSt. Michaels Holy Faith Secondary School,IRELANDKykkos B Lyceum, CYPRUSITIS ”Stanislao Camizzaro”, ITALYBeijing No 55 Middle School, CHINA
FINLAND
Kaarina Senior High School
FINLAND
Messukylä Senior High School
IRELAND
St. Michaels Holy Faith Secondary School
CYPRUS
Kykkos B Lyceum
ITALY
ITIS ”Stanislao Cannizzaro”
CHINA
Beijing no 55 High School
Moodle platform
• for our project we used the open source Moodle platform• it has all the necessary functions to manage a project
efficiently, such as sharing documents, setting up discussion forums and news forums
• the Moodle site was gradually built up becoming a kind of project portfolio – in this way everybody could check and refer to all the previous work, discussions and documents
Moodle platform
Student introductions
School introductions
Socializing
News
Aims and tasks
• Awareness of media habits Survey• Media literacy Reading newspapers critically• Comparisons between countries Study survey results and newspaper articles Discussion forums
Survey
- multiple choice questionnaire
523 answers!- made the project known in all
schools
- in the following a few comparative results
Which of the following items or facilities do you have?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TV PC Phone Mobile Internet
China
Cyprus
Ireland
Italy
Kaarina
Tampere
At what times of the day do you watch TV?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Morning Afternoon Evening Night
China
Cyprus
Ireland
Italy
Kaarina
Tampere
What kind of programs do you prefer to watch?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
News
Mov
ies
Politic
al de
bate
s
Sports
Police
serie
s
Mus
ic
Docum
enta
ries
Reality
show
s
Talk sh
ows
Game
show
s
Sit-co
ms
Youth
pro
gram
s
Theat
rical
plays
Other
China
Cyprus
Ireland
Italy
Kaarina
Tampere
How much time a week do you spend reading newspapers?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
None Less than an hour One hour Two hours Three hours More
China
Cyprus
Ireland
Italy
Kaarina
Tampere
Which section(s) of the paper do you prefer?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
International news Domestic news Local news Economy Sports Art and culture Other
China
Cyprus
Ireland
Italy
Kaarina
Tampere
Newspaper week March 6-10, 2006
During the newspaper week, all students from the participating schools read at least one newspaper every day. They were asked to choose 2-3 articles that they found the most interesting. Before this week, everyone had been given instructions on how to analyse the articles they had chosen. This laid the groundwork for what was to be the core of the project: learning and sharing this experience with the others.
Here are some instructions for analysing the articles
• what kind of information does the title of the article give you and is there a choice of words that is somehow eye-catching?
• what do the pictures and captions tell you?• pay attention to the beginning of the article (what or who is
important, what is the basic information offered by the article)• who has/who have been described as active parties in the article,
how does the article address these people?• how much room has been allotted to people or parties representing
different ideologies or points of view?• who has / who have been interviewed, whose opinions are given?• what is the tone of the article; pay attention to the choices of
words, for example verbs, adverbs, adjectives, metaphors…• what has been left out: could the article have included other points
of view?• the reader’s impression of the article; what did you find important?
Articles
Cultural learning
Reading the newspaper articles gave many
good opportunities for cultural learning.
Especially interesting were all the scanned
pictures and even different alphabets in
some of them!
Students also gave some background
information to the newspapers that they had
chosen.
Cultural knowledge
Cultural knowledge
www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2006/0309/index.html
Discussion forumsSpecial attention was paid to facilitating student interaction in the project - one of the key elements of any intercultural school project. A Netiquettewas introduced to guide the discussions.
Three different discussion forums were set up during the project year:
1) STUDENT FORUM – for socializing
2) SURVEY DISCUSSION – for discussing the survey results
3) ARTICLE DISCUSSIONS – after reading the articles the other students had sent
Discussion topicsHi! The weather in Ireland is freezing too but better
than usual and warmer than finland im sure!
Ive always wanted to visit china as it looks beautiful and i love the food.
The school system in Cyprus is devided differenty... We go to high school at the age of fifteen and we choose the subjects we want...
hello my name is coleen devlin. im 15 and i live in dublin. i like to go out wit my friends and play camogie ( its a native
irish sport).. wat do you do in your spare time..
Yeah I love art! Mainly renassiance da vinci, carravaggio, dali and...
...about the Oscars. What do you think, did they choose the right winners? I think Ang Lee really proved himself this time...
Survey discussions
Article discussionsStudents were divided into 7 mixed groups with 1-3 students from each projectschool.Each group was given one article to discuss with questions guidingthem to focus attention on media literacy aspects.
Human rights
Usually the foreign press isn’t reliable in describing present conditions in other countries because it
often represents the ideology of the states that have a negative vision of them and because they don’t
know what happens in these countries.
We are reminded of the fact that human rights also contain the freedom of religion and the limitation of
insulting others’ religion. But on the other hand, northern countries appeal to the freedom of speech.
If the country isn’t very open internationally, the reader should also consider how truthful the news is.
Recycling
I read the article about recycling in China and I thought is was really good idea to inform
other about this! ...I didn’t know that it is possible to do such
thing as use recycled paper to produce pencils.
I think that the press can influence people behaviour. The press could concentrate more on
nature and all the problems we have with it.
In fact it would a main point that the mass-media spoke of this problem, so that the people can understand that it is important to maintain
the correct equilibrium with nature.
Young people’s stress
It came a bit surprise to me to know that the problem is common with so many and, at the same time, so
different countries.
I think that you could also interview young people that could tell us their opinions about this situation, because they are the real
protagonists of the discussion.
I agree about ”the young people missing from the article”. I think it’s important to hear their views and
opinions about stress and its causes.
Evaluationas these examples show,
final project evaluation was very positive
Winners at the 6th AEC-NET conference
in Serres, Greece
TEAM FINLAND
Sinikka Laakio-Whybrow, Jonina Altschuler, Maija Ojutkangas and Merja Laine
Students in Kaarina, FINLANDcelebrate the award with a Chinese meal
In the Finnish media
Ministry Award in Cyprus
Rewarding students with a mealHeadmaster Mr Antoniou receiving the award from the Cyprus Ministry of education and culture