Plan a Desktop Video

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #7: Create a video or photostory

Title of Movie: How to Make a Movie

Storyboards:

Page 1

Page 2

Video (5:51): 

Media Writ Large

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #6B: Select a commercial online and analyze for its persuasive techniques. Reflect on the commercial and its use of persuasion.

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Commercial: Mac vs. PC

1. What is the commercial about?   The Mac vs. PC commercial series is about the comparison of Apple’s brand of computers vs. those running Microsoft’s Windows Operating System. The commercials are from Apple’s point of view. NOTE: The YouTube link goes to a collection of commercials which allows you to see a variety of persuasion techniques being employed.
2. Who is the intended audience of this message?   The overall intended audience are users looking to buy a new computer. However, each ad attempts to address smaller groups within this audience such as people who want more built-in equipment, access to pre-install photo and movie-making software, or those fed up with the constant battle against computer viruses.
3. What values, lifestyles and points of view are being transmitted in this message?   The commercials are meant to portray Apple computers as fitting the lifestyle of the average person who wants to be able to use a computer with relative ease and without a lot of time devoted to maintenance. PC is often portrayed as being for the business world while Apple is portrayed as for the family and users both young and old.
4. What creative techniques are used to attract your attention?   The commercials use the basic persuasion techniques of association (e.g. for the family), beautiful people (e.g. making a movie), bribery (buy a Mac, get a built-in webcam), fear (vulnerability to viruses), and repetition (their introduction is very well-known and often parodied). Intermediate techniques include charisma (Apple obviously), euphemism (PC often tries to downplay his issues), and simple solution (whose is more ready to use “right-out-of-the-box?”). An advanced technique employed in some of the ads is analogy, such as when PC is going in for “surgery” to upgrade to Vista. There were also several examples of card-stacking, but not in Apple’s favor. In one instance PC has a “cold” and Mac claims that he doesn’t get viruses, but that’s not the whole story (e.g. the recent MAC Defender virus). And I don’t care what type/kind of computer you have, every computer needs a restart once in a while.

One of the reasons I chose this commercial is because I just came across a great parody made by two 7th grade students from Michigan entitled, “Hi, I’m A Textbook And I’m A Tablet.” This is a example of how an idea turned into a commercial has provided a vehicle through which students can tell their own stories.

Media, Men and Women…

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #6A: Watch two movies that make claims about how media influences people, then write a reflection based on the following questions:

• What do you agree or disagree with what they claim? Explain.
• What is your perspective on the media's influence? 
• What evidence or counter-evidence of what they are claiming do you see with your own students?

Video #1: "Touch Guise" by Jackson Katz

Video #2: "Advertising's Image of Women" by Jean Killbourne

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Good golly is this a huge topic, with so many points of views, philosophies and conclusions that is hard to know where to start…

Jackson seems to come right out of the gate attaching the media as the source from which men learn how to commit violence. But later on he points out that the media is not necessarily creating the violent culture but rather is a reflection of the violence that is in our culture.What is so scary is that our society, at least with respect to our opinions of what good “media entertainment” is, seems to be okay with this. As I listened to Jackson talk about how men are getting tips on what it means to be masculine from the media, it makes me wonder how much of the masculinity we see portrayed is an accurate representation of the real world, or is it more what a small group (e.g. the entertainment industry) thinks masculinity is? He also goes on to look at how the media portrays violence by students at school in the vocabulary they use, i.e. using the term children and rarely that of boys or young men. Unfortunately, I think there are times when the news media is less concerned with the facts or being specific then with being politically correct and/or gender neutral.

For Kilbourne, she attempts to take on the huge powerhouse that is the beautification of women. Just like Jackson who says it takes more courage to challenge the ideas of perceived masculinity, Kilbourne points out that challenging the stereotypes that clothing, cosmetics, and even plastic surgery advocates claim as femininity requires great strength and perseverance. Another interesting point she makes is what would happen if the media took their attitude toward the female body and applied them to the male body. 

When I look at my own students there are some that I can see potentially fitting into some of the stereotypical labels, but others do not. I have also seen counter-evidence to claims that it is males that are the primary source for violence; often female teachers tell me that girls are much meaner to each other than boys, and I think we may be beginning to see this surface in the entertainment media via reality TV. And speaking of girls, now that the weather has turned warmer we at the middle school had to address the issue (again) of appropriate school attire. 

As educators and parents and well, adults, I think we need to stress to students the difference between what is “real” and what is entertainment and fiction. Going back to Week #4’s assignment, one of the reasons why I love DVD technology is because it gives us the opportunity to see the “Making Of…” and see the work that it took to create all that drama and action and violence…and how nobody got hurt doing it. Interviews with cast can also show them what it takes to create the image of the characters we see, such as how much weight the actor had to loose in order to “fit into” the role. The point really hit home about how the media has gotten very good at dehumanizing people, creating artificial expectations for women about what it means to be beautiful and for men what it means to be masculine.

Magazine Media Literacy: Step Two

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #5C: Select ONE magazine that you normally would not read. Post your answers to the following questions:

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1. What is the name of the magazine?  Us Magazine
2. Explain why you  wouldn’t be interested in the magazine you’ve selected.  This magazine is all about celebrities and the exploration of not just the work they do but what goes on in their lives as well. Reading about the lives of such famous people would not be my first choice, not that I haven’t sat down in the break room at work and read a similar magazine, but in those situations it is more out of boredom than interest. If the articles are about what the person is doing for work then that’s fine. It’s when the articles are about what their person is doing in the private life that often times turns me off, especially when the tone of the article comes across as exploitive and intrusive. To read such articles I feel disrespects their right to privacy and encourages the paparazzi to continue to stick their noses/cameras where perhaps they shouldn’t be.
3. Are there offensive stories or ads?  Some of the articles, those that seem intrusive, I would consider offensive because if I were in their shoes I would not appreciate that level of invasion into my private life. What I found truly offensive was the constant notices from my web browser that it had prevented the site from opening a pop-up window. It is bad enough the number of animated ad banners strewn about the webpages, but the pop-up windows cross the line because they are a popular vehicle through which viruses and malware are delivered.
4. Are you simply not the targeted audience?  Based on the ads for female clothing, cosmetics, and other products I would guess that I am not part of their target audience.
5. Are you not amenable to the techniques of persuasion the magazine uses?  The magazine clearly uses the two basic persuasion techniques of beautiful people and celebrities to draw readers in. If you can find the text within the forest of images, many headlines use intensifiers to get the reader to click on the article.
6. Are there images that you object to?  The majority of the images posted throughout the articles are of celebrities at public events, on the set of a television or movie productions, or from photo shoots. Anyway has to be ready for themselves to show up on someone’s camera at such events regardless of who you are, so I don’t find these images offensive. It’s the images taken with telescopic lenses that intrude on the celebrity’s privacy that I have an issue with, but I didn’t see any images like these on Us’s website.
7. Include the URL for the magazine.  http://www.usmagazine.com/

Magazine Media Literacy: Step One

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #5B: Select ONE magazine that is online and captures your interest. Post your answers to the following questions:

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1. What is the name of the magazine?  The Week
2. Who is the target audience?  It took some digging, but under the link at the bottom of their site entitled “AD INFO” I found a brief description of their intended audience: the “busy executive.” Now, I’m by no means an executive or anywhere near it, but I am busy being a teacher and a learner. [http://ads.theweek.com/ad_info/home.php]
3. What are the titles of a few articles?  One of the reasons why I like to read this magazine is because of its variety in articles from national and international stories to both written and video entertainment. On Wednesday, June 1st the following articles were available for reading:
   ~“The House’s ‘phony’ debt-ceiling vote: A win for the GOP?”
   ~“Can a ‘general amnesty’ save Syria’s Assad?”
   ~“Could solar panels on the moon power the Earth?”
   ~“Is 4 years old too young for kindergarten?”
4. What kinds of visual images are displayed?  Almost every article heading is paired with a photograph or illustration meant related to the topic. Opinion articles are tagged will illustrations of the authors. Almost every page contains sections with images and title headings that try to connect the reader to other stories, from a “featured articles” box to a “Must Clicks” horizontal header bar. Sometimes these images are paired with the article titles and other times subject areas (e.g. opinion, technology, lifestyle). And of course, what news magazine would not be without a political cartoons section (and I’ll admit to it, this is one of my favorite sections).
5. What are typical advertisements selling?  First and foremost the website has advertising for itself spread throughout the site. The majority of the self-ads promote subscribing to their magazine in paper form, followed next by downloading their iPhone or Android app. (these are currently free). The site does support advertisements from a variety of businesses including other news outlets, hotels, manufacturing, information technology and service-oriented businesses.
6. What techniques of persuasion do the articles, images and ads use?  In their “about us” section they use the basic persuasion technique of intensity, stating that they pull news from the best sources and cover the latest developments in a variety of news categories. In ads, when you look at how many times and in how many places they advertise themselves via subscriptions or their portable app. you can’t help but thing of the repetition form of persuasion. Within some of the articles I sense some advanced card stacking persuasion going on or rather, an attempt to remove this persuasion from the issue being discussed in that commentators are responding to an initial author statement and debate its merits, including additional information and/or disputing other data. Sometimes I will take what might be considered the very basic approach of noting to which side of the room a commentator seems to lean, specifically the commentator who speaks first in the article and who speaks last, essentially getting the last word for the story.
7. Include the URL for the magazine.  http://theweek.com/

The Making of a Movie…

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #5A: Watch a "Making Of…" special feature on a commercial, television show, or movie and write a reflection about what you learned about the movie-making process.

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When the Lord of the Rings came out on DVD, I had to buy them. J.R.R. Tolkien (author) is an unbelievable storyteller and Peter Jackson (director) did a great job of transferring the book to the big screen. However, when the “extended” versions of the movies came out I had to buy them as well with a need greater than before because they included so many clips and extras about HOW they did, well, everything. In fact, there was so much to the “Making Of…” that they had to divide it up into sections such as locations, costumes, special affects, miniatures, props, the editing room and more.

One section of the “Making Of…” dealt with how they chose the locations for filming the scenes in the movie and then what they had to do to transform that location into a place from Middle Earth. For example, when they found the mesa that would become Edoras the government informed them that they would have to restore the location to exactly the way it was before they arrived. So, we got to see the green houses they built to keep the local flora and fauna that they removed alive while they filmed and would then replant afterward. In the section about costumes, one of the actors commented that, while he was putting on his armor costume he noticed that the artist had carefully chiseled a beautiful crest into the inside of the chest plate. Now, the camera would never see this attention to detail, only the actor. This realization made him feel special and used it as a vehicle to get into his character before filming.

When you watch the “Making Of…” section about how the movie was edited together, you get to see what footage the director is willing to part with and what he simply can’t live without. It taught me that directors often go back to film additional scenes or “pick-ups” to help fill in missing pieces or better connect two scenes together. And, being a techie, I now make a point to try and determine what type of computer the team used as well as the computer software they used to edit the film. 

Demonstrate Branching with PowerPoint/Keynote

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #4: Create a nonlinear slideshow where the user can view the slides in any order they choose via a built-in table of contents.

Troubleshooting Technology

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If there are problems viewing the Medieval Help Desk videos, you can access them here:

• w/English subtitles
• In English

MSK Science Podcast - Episode #1

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #3: Write, record, and post an audio program relevant to your classroom or school.

Script

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INTRODUCTION

Narrator 1

Welcome to the MSK Science Podcast! What follows is a short story about two elements from the periodic table: Hydrogen and Helium.

Narrator 2

This podcast was written as a demonstration for 6th grade students on how a podcast could be used to demonstrate and share understanding.

SCENE

The playground at Periodic Table Elementary School. The bell rings releasing the elements from class and into recess. Hydrogen, seeing Helium emerge from the building, calls out.

Hydroden (H)

Hey Helium…over here! How’s it going?

Helium (He)

Not bad Hydrogen, not bad…considering I am the coolest element around.

(H)

Well Helium, I don’t mean the brag but I am the first element on the periodic table you know.

(He)

Oh big deal! I can lift balloons high into the sky!

(H)

Well you see, I was doing that long before you were. Have you ever heard of the Hindenburg?

(He)

Oh yeah…did that thing blow up?

(H)

Hey, that wasn’t my fault, The Myth Busters proved that.

(He)

So, you think you’re better than everyone else, huh?

(H)

No, I’m a team player. For example, when two of my get together with my friend Oxygen, we make one of the most powerful and important substances in the whole world!

(He)

Oh, peanut butter!?

(H)

No, try again.

(He)

Okay, let’s see. Two Hydrogens and one Oxygen…put them together, hmmmm…OH, YOU MEAN WATER!

(H)

You got it.

(He)

Well, I can’t argue with that. I guess you are the coolest element around.

(H)

I’m not the coolest. We’re all cool in our own way. Remember you, in addition to making balloons fly high in the sky safely, you help make peoples’ voices really squeaky-sounding!

(He)

Hey, I do do that, don’t I? Thanks H!

CREDITS

Narrator 3

This has been an MSK Science Podcast.

Narrator 4

Original story idea by Mr. Shuman and Mrs. Scott. Refined and edited by Mrs. Scott’s 6th grade science students.

Narrator 3

Podcast introduction recorded by David and Samantha.

Narrator 5

Hydrogen voiced by Mr. Shuman.

Narrator 4

Helium voiced by Mr. Shuman.

Narrator 5

Podcast credits recorded by Jared, Eliza and Cassie.

END

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