Learn something.

I’ll be posting updates occasionally this summer, so be sure to check in every once and a while because I just might be writing about you.

In the meantime, have a great summer and know that I miss you and think of you often.

much love amigos,

ephraim

We’ve decided to end the year in style!  On the last Thursday (the 19th) of school (Friday will be a minimum day), the Ross/Frias team will be heading out to Frazee beach in Carlsbad.  We’ll be leaving at about 9 am and students will need to bring a sack lunch.  Sunglasses, sunblock, towels, beach reading, etc. are also strongly suggested.  Please avoid bringing ipods or other valuables that could easily be damaged or lost.

If you think your parents might be able to help drive please let us know!  We’ll be at the beach for the better part of the day, so even if they could just help drop-off and pick-up - but couldn’t actually stay - that would be a huge help.

This page has had stark few updates recently, and for good reason.  As many of you are aware, my computer crashed last Friday.  This was no ordinary crash.  Jason has tried every trick in the book, and there seems to be no means to recover any of my data (save some rather expensive firms that specialize in data recovery cases).  Needless to say, the better part of a year’s data is lost.  Certainly a frustrating year, following the server crash this winter where much of the data for this site was lost, and where even the partial recovery and site rebuild took a long two weeks.

Jason has today outfitted me with a replacement computer so I’m back in the game, and can better update the grades and site.  I will be posting updates here about tPOL’s, DP requirements, our class field trip, final class reflections and the like.  Make sure to check in daily.

Only two weeks left, we’re so close.  Let’s make sure its a strong finish amigos.

much love,

e


In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Thought you’d all enjoy this bit of Onion Newsroom Humor. If you haven’t ever read The Onion, definitely take some time to check them out tonight. It’s delicious.

As you’re putting together your Media Analysis piece be sure to find a tool to put together professional, clean looking graphs. I’ve found one that looks pretty good and offers a plethora of customization options - whether you want to do pie charts or bar graphs or anything else. Check it out HERE.

Also, remember to study your vocabulary every night. You’re final test is Wednesday the 28th. Additionally, make sure your meeting my expectation that you’re reading at home for 30 minutes every night. Whether it’s a book or articles online, you should be reading.

I’m excited about the work I’m seeing in class.  Seems we’re going to have some funny, creative, interesting news broadcasts.  Just make sure to take the content and news portion seriously, whether it’s simultaneously fun and creative or not.

A couple things.  I’ll be flushing out this post during class, but in the meantime a couple important links:

Daily Project Benchmarks

10 News Transcript

As I mentioned before, this is an ambitious beast of a project.  Some of you have expressed an interest in help organizing and outlining specific goals each day.  So, we will be using this daily project accountability worksheet.

reMedia Daily Project Sheet 

Note that the above link is to a generic project sheet.  You will need to copy and paste and create a new document specifically for your group.  You will then need to invite me to “share” the document so I can view it.  Make sure you and your producer have it filled out at the beginning and end of each class period.  Half of your project grade will come from these daily project sheets.  At the end of each class I will be inputting your grades.

UPDATE: Though it’s not quite fair for us to draw news from two different days, I realize that we were probably not mentally prepared in terms of focus and determination to do all of our research on one day. So, you may use a total of two different days’ news for your broadcast. So yes Derek, you can talk about the volcano.

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Here we go, our last massive project of the year. There will be a few other small projects along the way, but this is the ambitious beast of a project that will take us to the end of the year. We’ve been talking about it for months, and it’s time to put our noses to the grindstone.

Why is it that television news - local and national - seem to spend so much time talking about celebrities? Why is it that so much of the news is negative, dealing with crime, fear, or death? Why is it that so few of the stories are really relevant or have any bearing on the audience that actually watch? Why is it that television news slowly seems to becoming more and more like Access Hollywood?

Why is it that persistent problems aren’t reported regularly - can you imagine a news show that started every single broadcast with “20,000 died today of malnourishment”? Or, “Today represents one more day we’ve failed to overhaul our educational system. That brings our ticker up to almost 15,000 days of empty promises and shallow attempts” (and how long would it be before we all started demanding change)?

Instead persistent problems go largely unreported. Is it because they’re nothing new? Therefore they’re not news? And why is it that complex problems and stories don’t tend to receive the depth of reporting required for an audience to really understand the issues? Is the news even worth watching anymore? How could it be improved? Perhaps the more interesting question is: Could we do better?

Let’s find out.

You’re already in groups of six. You have three laptops dedicated to your cause. You’ve each received a 30 minute local news broadcast. This is your comparative anchor point, and we will begin by analyzing the broadcast - emulating the constraints in terms of timing and commercials, but otherwise making a completely, creative, unbound, and new news broadcast.

You may choose a day between May 1st and May 6th to be the day you’ll be reporting on. You may only choose stories that happened during the day that you’ve chosen - or stories that are ongoing. It’s only fair. If we’re going to try to raise the bar on the professional news teams, we have to keep some of their constraints. We obviously don’t have the training, or the professional tools, or the efficiency that comes with experience. But we also have a few weeks where they have a day. A very stiff deadline that comes each day. Everyday.

The stories you choose to report on - and indeed even how you choose to report them - is entirely up to you. You can choose local stories, national stories, international stories. Stories about the economy, stories about people, trends, science… it’s up to you. It’s also up to you how much time you spend on each story. The only thing that matters to me is that you choose your stories intentionally.

You should be able to tell me why you chose to cover one story over another. You should be able to explain why you chose to spend 30 seconds on one story and 3 minutes on another.

Consider your audience. Who is watching? Why should they care? How will this affect them? How is it relevant?

Consider balance. How much time do you spend on local vs. international stories? What percentage of your stories are positive? Keep in mind that however much time you spend on the weather, or anything else… that is that much less time to spend on any other story. And remember: ultimately almost half your broadcast is devoted to commercials.

For this project you’ll be doing it all. You’ll be choosing stories. Researching them. Writing the scripts. Storyboarding. Designing and building the set. Creating logos and branding. Filming, directing, acting, editing, analyzing, transcribing, etc. There’s a thousand little jobs to get done; and it should be fun. Let’s get rolling.

Here’s what I want more specifically:

Analysis - As a class the producers will divide the 30 minute broadcast into 8 minute chunks (more or less), and transcribe them. You will need detailed information about how many stories were covered in the broadcast, which categories they fall into (local, international… economy, crime, health… positive, negative, etc.). How much time was devoted to each category. How many words per story, and averages also. The length of each story, and the average length. The amount of time spent “previewing” a story before it actually ran. The length of a story vs. it’s preview. All of these things. We want to really tear the broadcast apart and look at it from every angle.

Creative Piece - Each group is responsible for creating an art media piece (a poster, a painting, it’s up to you) that creatively represents your analysis of the news broadcast. Maybe it’s a print version of the tv news -> what would the tv news look like in newspaper format? Maybe it’s a poster with a bunch of graphs comparing data with a collage of images from the stories covered. It’s entirely up to your group. But this part should impress us.

Quality Lo-Fi - I know you don’t have the most professional tools, or much training, or any experience making news broadcasts. But you’re intelligent and creative and have plenty of time. Dedicate yourselves. Get into it and have fun. Lo-fidelity doesn’t mean low quality. Consider the examples from our conversation in class. Consider the sweded Tron and Star Wars scenes, which I’ve included links to below to refresh your memory.

TRON excerpt (original)

TRON remake (sweded)

Also, see Sweded Star Wars

Story Rationale - I would like a short summary explaining your story choices and how much time was dedicated to them. You will need to include data analysis of your own news broadcast, just like the real news broadcast we started with. How much time did you spend on positive vs. negative news? What was your balance between local and international? How many stories did you cover in your broadcast? Etc. I’ll break this down further for you soon.

Final Production - This is a large category. It includes set design, filming, editing… all of the actual final product aside from the above. Get creative, dig in. There’s lots to do but you each have a good mix of talents on your team, you have the time and tools to do it. This is our last shabam, make it count.

Deadlines:

Wednesday, May 7: Story stack. A complete list of headlines you will be covering in your broadcast.

I’ll update the deadlines soon.

Some relevant links:

South Park - Parody of TV News

The Corporation - Unsettling Accounts (Fox - Monsanto)

How Informed Are We? - Audiences Compared (Pew Research) (summary here)

Media Matters

Doctors Without Borders - Top Ten Underreported Stories of 2007

I’ve been a longtime fan of Jack Handey and his “Deep Thoughts” from the old Saturday Night Live. There was a recent article in The New Yorker that you just might appreciate, so I thought I’d share it here.

A quick excerpt, with the link following:

“Things tend to even out. Religion, some people say, has caused wars and fighting. Yes, but it’s also boring to sit through a church service, so it evens out. One moment you’re depressed because your doctor tells you that you have alcoholism. But then you cheer up when you go home and find a hidden bottle of vodka you had forgotten about.
Things are evening out all the time, if you take time to notice, like I do. Let’s say you want a big cupcake, with lots of icing, so you go buy one and eat it. But then you realize, I don’t have the cupcake anymore. Or maybe you take a bite of salsa that’s labelled “HOT,” and it doesn’t seem that hot, but then about a second later it seems really hot.
You might hear that some guy you know is having a party, so you call him up, but he says there’s no party. But then you call back, using a different voice, and suddenly there is a hings tend to even out. Religion, some people say, has caused wars and fighting. Yes, but it’s also boring to sit through a church service, so it evens out. One moment you’re depressed because your doctor tells you that you have alcoholism. But then you cheer up when you go home and find a hidden bottle of vodka you had forgotten about.
Things are evening out all the time, if you take time to notice, like I do. Let’s say you want a big cupcake, with lots of icing, so you go buy one and eat it. But then you realize, I don’t have the cupcake anymore. Or maybe you take a bite of salsa that’s labelled “HOT,” and it doesn’t seem that hot, but then about a second later it seems really hot.
You might hear that some guy you know is having a party, so you call him up, but he says there’s no party. But then you call back, using a different voice, and suddenly there is a party.

So frequently decisions about Education are made without anyone ever bothering to get input from the very people those decisions affect. I posted an article while I was sick last week that we finally had a chance to discuss in class today. Your homework was to brainstorm a response to Mr. Baxter’s commentary positing that we should be spending much less money on educational technology with thoughts of your own.

I’d like at least 2-3 well reasoned paragraphs. What does he get right? Where is he off-base? No one is closer to the gamut of how technology is, isn’t, and could be used in schools than you. If you don’t have an intelligent opinion on the topic is it really fair to expect politicians making the decisions? How long has it been since they’ve sat in or worked in one of the classrooms they’re debating?

Make sure to bring your response to class tomorrow, typed. Be polite. Yes, these will be online comments, but I definitely don’t want them to look like typical youtube-ish commentfare. No “first post!” or “in Soviet Russia educational technology cuts you!” or whatever joke that would somehow reference WOW.

Be a good ambassador of our school and the classroom.

Here’s the article again, make sure to reread it before composing your response. I want you to be in the habit of knowing you can have a voice in the world. Whether this is something you particularly care about or not, I’m sure you’d be less happy with our school if we didn’t have any of the technology we do. Imagine… you could be reading chapter 29 of a textbook right now and summarizing key terms. Just like I did when I was your age. For four terribly boring years of high school in a row.