Foucault and media education

I believe that media education can learn a lot from Michel Foucault's theories about the relationship between young people and the media and the manner in which media education should aim to intervene in that relationship.

Foucault's theories would suggest that rather than being the victims of a power hierarchy, young people actively produce power that contributes to discourses circulating in society. This has a number of consequences:

- their actions and decisions contribute to existing power relations in society, of all types, including those utilised to exploit and control others.

- although young people "produce" power, the system of power relations cannot be "escaped" - it is culture as it exists and young people cannot learn to step outside that system to challenge it.

- however, because they activity produce power, they can also be involved in challenging unethical power relations from within the system of relations.

Media education might have the following roles to play:

- to help young people to recognise when power is being used to exploit or control through techniques which aim to "discipline" individuals in relation to their performative identities. For example, the media can be used as an instrument of "discipline" that aims to make certain behaviours and actions hegemonic. For example, advertising is part of a system of discourses that aims to make consumption hegemonic.

- to provide young people with opportunities to experiment with their performative identities in an environment which is as free from regulation as possible. Students should feel safe in such an environment and diversity and creativity should be celebrated.

- to provide alternatives and variation to young people so they can experience examples of media, and think about media in new and provocative ways.

The great challenge with all these approaches is to design curriculum that doesn't simply reinforce existing power relations. Genuine, imaginative learning experiences must be designed.

Online soaps and media education

Prom Queen is a new soap being produced for distribution primarily via MySpace. It is a short form soap (each episode is only about 1 minute long) that will screen for 80 episodes. Of course, its presence on MySpace allows for a significant amount of online fan culture and social networking around the show.

This show presents media educators with a unique opportunity to explore the key concepts of media technologies, institutions and audiences through the unique case study of an emerging form. This is a new type of "television" that is using an old format to help develop new audiences. The benefits for the media institutions responsible for developing and distributing the show are potentially enormous, given the global reach, and relatively low cost, of distribution via MySpace.
A number of critical questions could be explored in relation to Prom Queen:

• How does the internet, particularly online video, change the nature of what television might be, who can access it, and how they will experience it?
• What are the implications for traditional television? Will there come a time when all television is viewed via the internet? (Check out Apple TV - which sends video downloaded from the web to your television). What will this mean in terms of distribution? Will local television companies become obsolete as consumers download shows directly from overseas?
• How will audiences change if television is viewed online rather than via broadcast? Will they become hugely fragmented as small niche audiences seek out specialised shows, or will some shows remain broadly popular. What are the implications for advertising?
• Will anyone be able to make a show, distribute online, and have it become a hit? Or will the big companies continue to dominate?

All these questions, and the myriad of others that could be asked, demonstrate that we are living through a media revolution that will continue for some time yet, and that this presents numerous opportunities to to learn about media in meaningful and provocative ways.

Micro Movies

Tomorrow I will be conducting a workshop for a group of teachers that will focus on ways to use digital still cameras and simple editing software like Windows Movie Maker to make micro movies about specific ideas or topics.

In this case we will focus on advertising. The teachers will use the digital cameras to "deconstruct" advertising in their local communities. They will load them into Movie Maker and record voice over commentaries about the advertisements. It's a fun and hands-on way to analyse advertisements.

The great thing about micro movies is that you get results fast, and that's very motivating for students, especially in primary and middle years. It's hard work to keep students motivated to make a short film or doco over ten to twelve weeks. It is much more satisfying to have them produce something quickly about something that matters to them. It doesn't matter if some (or many) aspects of the production are un-polished. The aim is not to build expert technical skills, but to positively engage students in the processes of using media to challenge media.

Media "Essential Learnings"

The Queensland Studies Authority recently released the second draft of the " Essential Learnings" for years 3, 5, 7 and 9. These have been produced by the QCAR team (Queensland Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting). This project was partly established to address a perceived concern that parents believed the reporting framework associated with the Years 1-10 Key Learning Area (KLA), outcomes based syllabuses was too complex and didn't provide clear and plain information about their children's achievement levels. It also responded to the claim that teachers found it difficult to plan with the outcomes because there were too many listed across the eight key learning areas.

The response has been the development of "Essential Learnings" (ELs) that are to be gained by all students and measured with an A-E rating at years 3, 5 , 7, and 9. The "ELs" for media read as follows:

Ways of Working

Students are able to:
• develop, analyse and evaluate ideas for arts works by considering style, function and purpose of arts works and exploring arts elements
• create arts works by adapting and modifying arts elements and using genre-specific techniques to shape and communicate meaning
• perform, present and/or display arts works using genre-specific techniques to communicate meaning to a range of audiences
• reflect on and critically examine arts elements, how meanings of arts works can change and the use of representations in own and others’ arts works.

Knowledge and Understanding

Students understand that elements of Dance, Drama, Media, Music and/or Visual Arts and their conventions are manipulated and shaped by artists to create arts works and communicate meaning.

• in Media, techniques specific to genres (e.g. news reports, advertisements) and special effects are used to create media texts

Students understand that The Arts is a way of thinking and expressing artistic ideas, and that arts practice involves traditional and contemporary practices, skills and procedures.

• Media involves using contemporary technologies and adopting production roles to capture, edit and mix elements to create media texts

Within these ELs the statements from lower levels are also assumed to be embedded, so the ELs should not be read in isolation from the ELs at lower levels.

The main concern I have about the draft for media is the lack of thought given to new forms of media. The reference to "special effects" seems especially out of place, when a reference to new media techniques would seem much more reflective of contemporary culture. Also, it is clear that to be effective, teachers will need to dive back into the 1-10 syllabus document and support materials to find resources to address these ELs.

In addition, these statements do little to highlight the key concepts of audiences, representations or institutions. While these three areas can be read into the statements, they are essential enough to what we do in media education that they should be clearly visible.

The other issue is that the ELs seem to have been made non-mandatory in the most recent draft, with an and/or between each of the Arts forms. It raises the question of when an "essential learning" is not essential!

Virginia Tech / V-Tech Game and media education

The Melbourne Age reported today that a 21 year old Australian man has produced a 2-D video game based on the shootings at Virginia Tech and uploaded it to the web. Ryan Lambourn uses an image of the Virginia Tech campus and the names of the shooter and some of the victims in the game. He has offered to take the game down if he is paid US$2000.

This kind of response to such an horrific event is the type of thing that many might use as the motivation and justification for media education. They would argue that young people need to learn how to use media ethically and sensitively. Of course it is also the sort of thing that is likely to have many people arguing that video games cause violence and that young people's minds are being polluted by media and popular culture.

It's the sort of event that raises many questions about youth, media and education:

• In this new media environment, where it is so easy for individuals to produce and distribute unregulated and uncensored products, how do we help young people develop an ethical approach to production and consumption?
• Should we simply read this sort of response as aberrant, and not typical of the vast majority of young people?
  
• Should we react less vigorously to these types of incidents? Could it be argued that the game is a legitimate form of expression and that the author was simply aiming to work through his response to the Virginia Tech shooting, in a way that is meaningful to him?
• Or should it be regarded as a cynical attempt to profit from the misery of others? If the latter, should we distinguish it from other media outlets that have run numerous stories about the event?
• If this type of game was produced in a media education classroom, by one of our students, how should we react? Would it be productive to simply ban this sort of production?

Nearly all these questions could be vigorously debated and this shows the complexity of what media educators are trying to achieve.

We are working with young people who have an unprecedented ability to represent themselves and their work to the world. The ethical implications are striking. I think part of the answer is that the media education classroom should be a "safe" environment where young people are able to experiment and debate the consequences of their choices.

Of course, boundaries need to be established, but if those boundaries are too restrictive it is likely that we will miss many important opportunities to help young people learn to act ethically.

4 things wrong with the "critical" part of critical media literacy

The most significant claim made in the name of media education is that it helps young people to become "critical" users of media - which is questionable on several levels. That's not to say media educators should abandon this worthwhile objective, just that some thought needs to go into what a "critical" response to media might look like.

1. Using critical language doesn't mean you're critical.

The ability to use the sophisticated language of media analysis does not mean that you are necessarily "critical". David Buckingham argues in Teaching Popular Culture that all it proves is that students are able to use a meta language, and potentially nothing more. However, media education assessment often requires students to "prove" their critical ability through written analytical response which primarily involves using such language as evidence of understanding. Using terms like 'gender bias' doesn't mean you have an understanding of gender theory or that you will be less gender biased in your daily experiences.

2. Critical in whose opinion?

When is a critical response emancipatory and when is it simply evidence of being incorporated into a particular ideological position? This depends of whose opinion you listen to. For example, are you critical if you read a Michael Moore documentary as a fair representation of an issue, or if you argue that Moore has distorted facts to suit his cause, or only if you can see both sides of the argument?

3. Critical or elitist?

Some forms of criticism make judgements on the basis of cultural value. That is, specific examples of culture are assumed to be superior to others. It has become less common for media education to be based on these sorts of judgements in recent years, but it is sometimes still evident. This is often reinforced through the choice of texts students are required to study. For example 'The Simpsons' is more likely to be chosen than Family Guy because it is popularly judged to be more satirical, funny and worthwhile. Texts might also be derided for their lack of production values or because they don't represent Australian 'cultural values' - for example, Big Brother.

4. Aren't we already all "critical"?

Cultural studies theorists suggest that we are all active participant in media culture and therefore already 'critical' to some extent. Becoming more 'media educated' becomes a matter of learning the correct terminology to describe what you already know. Therefore, media education should focus on helping students to participate more fully in media culture by helping them gain the means of media production and through helping them critically reflect on their experiences, and to make their understandings and knowledge explicit.

My podcasting experience

This semester I introduced podcasting into one of my undergraduate units in two ways. I delivered the unit content via podcast lectures and I designed the first student assessment to be the creation of a podcast about media education or new media.

I created the podcast lectures using Garageband on my Macintosh Powerbook. This was an extremely simple process. I simply opened a new project in Garageband, and then pressed record and started speaking. There were a few little tricks I learnt along the way to improve the process (like turning off the "metronome" feature to remove that sound from the backgroud). I also learnt that using an external microphone and recording in a very quiet room significantly improved the quality of the sound. I purposely kept the recording to about 30 minutes to avoid file sizes being too big, and because I suspected that my students' attention span wouldn't hold out for much longer than that.

Once I was satisfied with the recording and I wanted to export the file, I simply used Garageband's "Share" function and sent it to iTunes. In iTunes I set the preferences to the MP3 encoder and to quite a low quality to create a compressed file of the podcast that was small enough for the students to comfortably download. This generally ended up being about 8mb. Once the file was created, I uploaded it to the university's Online teaching site. From there the students were free to download it and listen to it at their leisure. I made this part of the students' reading for the week. They were still required to come along to three hours of "lecture and tutorials". However, the time was significantly freed up to allow some much more student centred workshops and production tasks.

For the student assignment, the students learnt how to use Audacity for their sound recording and mixing. I chose this program rather than Garageband as it is a free download for both PC and Macs. I intended that the students would be able to download it at home and complete their mixing on their home machines. For their field interviews, the students used portable digital audio recorders. In most cases this worked well. A few students were unable to successfully download the program, and needed access to machines at the university to complete the task. Furthermore, the digital audio recorders recorded very "tinny" sound which didn't really match the sound of the voice overs recorded directly into audacity via the computer. Next semester I will have Audacity installed in one of the computer labs for students to use at their leisure. I will also investigate the cost of purchasing better quality portable digital audio recorders.

However, the main issue with the podcasts was not so much technical as creative. Although we spent time in class learning about structure, podcast conventions and so on, some of the students did not put enough time into planning the productions or reserching their topics. So this is where we will focus much more attention next time around.

Overall I was very pleased with the success of introducing this new media form into the unit. A number of the students expressed their enjoyment of the assignment task, commenting that it was a pleasant break from writing research papers, and that it made sense to make media in a media education unit.

The CamcorderInfo Blog

In an earlier post I introduced the DV Guru Blog, saying it was a great resource for media teachers, but that it had shut down. Well, the good news is that several of the guys who blogged on DV Guru are now with the Camcorder Info Blog (thanks Randall).

This blog is an excellent source of all the latest information about new camcorder products, competitions, industry development and so on. There are also often links to resources for video production and tips and hints for use of production software.

All media teachers involved in digital video production would be well advised to check the blog regularly.

Media Education podcasts and video interviews

I am using del.icio.us to collect a number of podcast and video interviews and presentations relating to media education, youth media and new media.

http://del.icio.us/Zed31/Podcast

So far I have some excellent presentations by high profile researchers such as David Buckingham, Danah Boyd, Henry Jenkins, and James Gee - just to name a few. I am slowly working through them, and it's quite an amazing experience to be able to create your own online mini-conference in this way.

It also really raises questions about traditional ideas of how academic knowledge is controlled and distributed. If you can create your own "Media Ed Radio or TV" online, you can certainly circumvent the traditional processes as either a presenter or audience member.

Machinima in the Media classroom

On Friday I took part in a Machinima workshop held at Education Queensland's ICT Learning Innovation Centre. This was part of a special project being trialled in several schools by media teachers in Queensland.

In simple terms, machinima involves making animation using an exisiting video games engine. The most famous example is Rooster Teeth's Red Vs Blue machinima series made using the Halo game. It has exciting potential for media education classrooms for two reasons. Firstly, it allows the production of great looking animation without the need for high end animation skills, or the need to create an animation frame by frame. That means it's a much faster and cheaper method of production than traditional digital animation - which is ideal for the school situation.

Secondly, it allows students to use their high end video game playing skills for a purpose other than game play - to be creative, and to perhaps subvert the video game form - or at least to use the form in a creative and unexpected way.

Of course, their is still much skill required to make good machinima, and we should not expect it to be a given that successful game players will inherently make good machinima. Of course, much of the success of any machinima will come down the development of a good script. Furthermore, to manipulate games' characters in a convincing manner, to make them come alive as charatcers with attributes not intended by the original game, is also a huge challenge.

We explored several potential processes for making machinima. The first was within virtual worlds like the Sims and Second Life. In this situation, the virtual environment is used like a virtual film studio - whole worlds and charatcers are purpose designed and built and then manipulated to "act out" scenes. This is then recorded using software like Fraps. The second was within the game "The Movies", which allows players to script and produce their own movies using a set number of settings and charatcer actions. This option appeared t be most suitable for use with lower secondary or middle years students. The third option involved networking three X-Box game consoles, with one hooked up to a computer to capter the on-screen action. Two players interact on screen, while the thrird acts as a "camera" - the charatcer's point of view becomes the camera and this is what is captured on the computer. It can then be editing, sound dubbed and so on. This is the method used to create Red Vs blue.

We had some lively discussion about the educational purpose of machinma and issues related to assessment of student work. For example, as with most production in media ed courses, there is a significant debate to be had about skills development Vs the exploration of issues and ideas. As media educators (for example, as opposed to technology educators), what would we want student to learn from making machinma, what attributes would we value in relation to student produced machinma and how would we identify these to assess them?

Machinima.com is a great place to start exploring different types and examples of machinma.

Online media lessons

Recently I have found a couple of new online banks of media lessons. One is at the Adobe website - the Adobe Digital Kids Club. This site provides a number of lesson ideas for practical video production. One of the things I like about it is that it focuses on practical video production projects that can be achieved directly in the school environment in relatively short periods of time.

Another is the Open Educational Resources site, which provides examples of lesson plans covered by a Creative Commons licence. This is a site with a number of tools for searching for and sharing educational resources across the curriculum. A search for "media literacy" or "film", for example, presents many lessons related to these topics.