Wednesday 26 January 2011

Lesson 11 Tasks

Today I would like you to make a profile at Xtranormal.com and explore what the site can do.
Decide how you will present your film, i.e. will it be a debate between 2 characters or a monologue from one character.
What location will you use and which character.


Then you must make a start on your scripts - all scripts must include the following:

*An explanation of your theme i.e. what does contemporary media regulation mean?
*Indicate which two media areas you are looking at, what specific examples you have researched.
* Include reference to at least two contemporary media theories and how your specific examples prove or disprove the theories
*Include a summary of how you would answer each of the 4 prompt questions using the media theories and your textual examples.

SCRIPT DEADLINE: All scripts must be completed by end of Tuesday's lesson to be approved by Andrea.

Monday 24 January 2011

Lesson 10 Tasks

Collective identity group - here are your theories.
Please look through the powerpoint and complete the tasks on the last slide.

Everyone else - read on:

Please read through this presentation and then discuss in your groups how these theories can be applied to your media area (i.e. social networking sites) and your specific media texts (i.e. Facebook):

Friday 14 January 2011

Lesson 6 and 7

1. Go through all tasks for the previous lessons and ensure you have done all of the tasks. The tasks for lesson 5 are particularly important.

2. Present your blog and your 2 media areas, with your specific examples to Andrea.

3. Tuesday's lesson is cancelled. Ensure that you read the handout given to you by Andrea. Write notes on how it relates to your area on your blog. Consider how far this new information may help you to answer one or all of the 4 prompt questions.
Be prepared to present your summary notes on the reading to Andrea on Wednesday.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

Lesson 5 tasks

Each group has a set of questions that they must answer, in detail, on their group blog by the end of the lesson.
Each group will have some question tokens left over from last lesson - use them or lose them!

Media and Collective Identity
  • What collective does your example illustrate?
  • How has the representation of that group changed over time? What examples do you have to support this claim?
  • What are the advantages to representing this collective in this way?
  • What are the disadvantages to representing this collective in this way?
  • How can you express your identity in the world? What barriers are there to expression, what facilities are there to express identity?
Contemporary Media Regulation
  • Who is regulating what?
  • What authority do they have – who gave them that authority?
  • Who needs protecting? Why?
  • Who/what are they being protected from? Why?
  • What examples do you know about where media regulation works? Why does it work in that example?
  • What examples do you have of when regulation doesn’t work? Why didn’t it work then? What could have been done to prevent it?
We-Media
  • How has we-media evolved in your media area and what evolution (possibly technological) caused it to occur?
  • What do you think are the concerns that media institutions have about we-media in their area and why?
  • What do you think are the advantages to we-media in your chosen media areas?
  • What do you think are the disadvantages to we-media in your chosen media areas? (Give me some specific examples of cases where we-media has been a negative thing).
Media and the Online Age
  • How has the internet changed how products are made and how consumers access products in your media area?
  • How were products made and how did consumers used to access those products prior to the internet?
  • How do you think this has changed the industry?
  • What is technological convergence?
  • How has technological convergence changed or effected your media area? Give specific examples of how this works in action.
  • How can you relate wikinomics and the long tail to the specific examples from your media areas?
Wikinomics is a term that describes the effects of extensive collaboration and user-participation on the marketplace. Companies are being forced to change their business model in order to be successful in an online world.
The Long Tail - Our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

Global Media and Democracy
  • How do audiences consume and/or participate, in the media areas you have selected, now compared to in the past? Give specific examples.
  • How ‘global’ is your media area? Can everyone in the world access it or is it still dependent on access to the internet? How many people in the world have access to the internet?
  • What do you think are some of the problems of global media in terms of a community’s identity?

Monday 10 January 2011

Lesson 4 tasks (Tues 11th Jan)

All of your blogs are looking very interesting and it is clear to me that you are beginning to engage with the content for this unit.
What needs to happen now is that we need to build on these initial findings and begin to mould them into something you can use for the exam.

The examiners want you to be able to discuss clear case studies, now you have all begum to define specific media areas such as television or online gaming. You must now pick some specific examples. i.e specific companies, films, tv programmes (be episode specific), YouTube channels.

1. By the end of the lesson I would like each groups blog to have clearly set out your examples for each media area.
IMPORTANT: Your examples must cover the past and the present.

2. You have 4 question tokens today and you must use a token every 20 minutes or you will forfeit your question token and you will have less tokens next lesson.

Friday 7 January 2011

Lesson 3 tasks

1. Look back at the tasks for lesson 2 and ensure you have completed them all

2. You must ensure that by the end of today's lesson you write a post on your blog confirming the two media areas that you intend to cover, i.e. tv, film, news, videogames, music, social networking etc.

3. All of you need to demonstrate that you know and understand some media theory so the following links are the starting point for this process. Read and begin to make some notes on the following links:

Global Media
http://www.shirky.com/writings/national_identity.html
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm

Media and the Online Age
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/05/xkcds-online-communi.html

We Media
http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007331/preview

Contemporary Media Regulation
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/actionplan/index.shtml
http://www.slideshare.net/rikhudson/media-regulation-booklet-ocr-media-conference-2009

Media and Collective Identity
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism09.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtS24lqluq0

Tuesday 4 January 2011

Lesson 2

In today's lesson each group will be given 5 question tokens, therefore you must think about what questions you want to ask Andrea before you do because once your tokens have run out you need to find the answers yourself.


1. Continue to research the key phrases of your theme, ensure you write up everything you find out on your blog.

2. Write a summary paragraph explaining what you understand your theme to be about and what types of things it could include.

3. Make some notes as an initial response to your prompt questions

4. Read the blog post entitled exam requirements - copy it to your group blog.

5. By Friday you must confirm to Andrea what the two media areas you intend to look at will be so begin having some initial discussions as to the best two media area to select for your theme, i.e. For Media and Collective Identity I would recommend film and /or television.

6. Begin making some notes on possible case study examples for the media areas you are focussing on.

Your blogs and some useful links

Well done on a great lesson today guys - you are all getting the hang of your themes.
Here are the links to your blogs, just in case any of us forget.

Media and Collective Identity
http://collectiveidentitymedia.blogspot.com

Contemporary Media Regulation
http://regulation-media.blogspot.com/

'We-Media' and Democracy
http://wemedialads.blogspot.com/

Media and The Online Age
http://Theonlineage.tumblr.com

Global Media
http://post-modernmedia.blogspot.com/
http://globalmedia93.blogspot.com/

Other useful blogs are:

This is a blog put together by the Chief Examiner for OCR.
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.com/

This blog is put together by Dave Harrison and is specific to Media and Collective identity
http://collectiveidentity.posterous.com/

This blog was put together by Andrea Joyce and is specific to Media in the Online Age
http://meintheonlineage.blogspot.com/

This blog is authored by Julian McDougall - the principal examiner for OCR. Some of the content is for teachers but some of it could still be relevant and useful.
http://getaheadocrmedia.blogspot.com/

Postmodern Advent Calendar
http://www.longroadmedia.com/advent/

Monday 3 January 2011

Lesson 1 tasks

1. Get into a team of 3-4 people. It doesn't have to be the same as your production group.

2. Select a number from Andrea to reveal which theme is your groups focus

3. Create a group blog using blogger.com (you may need to create a googlemail account to enable you to create a blog i.e. globalmedia@gmail.com)

4. Read the prompt questions for your theme on this blog

5. Begin to discuss in your groups what you understand your them to mean and what it might incorporate. Define key words such as postmodernism (use the internet and the books in the classroom to assist you)

6. Post a summary of your discussion and research onto your blog

7. Email Andrea (ajoyce@longroad.ac.uk) the link to your blog by the end of the lesson.

Exam Requirements

In preparation for the exam students must:

*Engage with a range of theoretical perspectives

*Demonstrate a personal position on the issues

*Know about research carried out to discover audience practices and habits (this could be research carried out by themselves)

*Exam answers must have a historical, contemporary and future perspective, focussing mostly on the contemporary.

*Emphasise the active audience i.e. how people 'give meaning' to cultural products (media texts).

*Have an understanding of two different areas of the media ie. film, television, internet, magazines, etc.

'We Media' and Democracy

1. What are 'We media'?

2. Where/how has 'We Media' emerged?

3. In what way are the contemporary media more democratic than before?

4. In what ways are the contemporary media less democratic than before?

Post-modern media

1. What are the different versions of post-modernism(historical period, style, theoretical approach)?

2. What are the arguments for and against understanding some forms of media as post-modern?

3. How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation?

4. In what ways do media audiences and industries operate differently in a post-modern world?

Contemporary Media Regulation

1. What is the nature of contemporary media regulation compared with previous practices?

2. What are the arguments for and against specific forms of contemporary media regulation?

3. How effective are regulatory practices?

4. What are the wider social issues relating to media regulation?

Media in the Online Age

1. How have online media developed?

2. What has been the impact of the internet on media production?

3. How is consumer behaviour and audience response transformed by online media, in relation to the past?

4. To what extent has convergence transformed the media?

Global Media

1. What kind of media are increasingly global in terms of production and distribution?

2. How have global media developed, in historical terms, and how inclusive is this trend in reality?

3. What kinds of audience behaviour and consumption are increasingly global?

4. What are the arguments for and against global media, in relation to content, access, representation and identity?

Media and Collective Identity

1. How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic/social/collective groups of people in different ways?

2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

4. To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated?

Task Introduction Film

Task

You will work in 6 teams to find information for, research, plan and create an info film.

The purpose of the info film is to act as a revision guide for yourselves and the rest of the class.

It must include a guide as to what essential elements need to be included in preparation for the exam, textual examples and make reference to contemporary media theorists.