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