Respect the Hoff.

When I was a youngster in the 80s, my family went to Universal Studios as part of a summer vacation. One of the exhibits was the car from Knight Rider (Kitt), which was one of my favorite shows at the time (God bless David Hasselhoff). For the few of you who aren't familiar with the show, Kitt had artificial intelligence and was able to talk with people (and drive himself). Check out the opening:



At the exhibit, after waiting in line for hours, you could get in the car and have a real conversation with Kitt! I remember my 8-year-old brain being completely blown away by this (although I’m sure there was just a person acting as the brain and voice of Kitt—I had absolutely no clue at the time). Anyway, at one point some Mexican kids hopped in the car, and as soon as they started asking questions, Kitt immediately responded in Spanish! It was hilariously cool. I wonder if Kitt ever experienced any of the same kind of abuse that “Jane” experienced from the Veletsianos, Scharber, & Doering study.

While these students’ behavior is unsettling, it is not particularly shocking. Students want to test the limits of the technology, and they know that they will not be held accountable because they know that Jane isn’t going to tell anyone. I think that in order to avoid this kind of behavior, the programmers need to develop a way to send alerts to the teacher if certain “off limits” words or terms are used. This way, teachers wouldn’t have to go through pages and pages of transcripts (like we don’t have enough to do already). If students knew that inappropriate interactions would be reported to the teacher (and potentially the administration and their parents), I’m sure that relatively few would attempt it. Another thing to consider is that students might just need to get it out of their systems…in other words, if students were to use this technology repeatedly throughout the course of a semester or year, I bet the kinds of inappropriate interactions would drastically decrease. Once they realized that Jane’s responses were relatively limited and the novelty of asking these awful questions wore off, it might prove to be a more effective tool. Another thing that would decrease (but probably not eliminate) this behavior would be to tell students that the teacher is sent transcripts…although if any student did try it, I bet word would get out. I wonder if just teaching students about reliable sources and how to effectively research using various tools like Google might not be a more effective way of spending class time.


On a complete tangent, this article’s ideas concerning students need to treat the agent as subordinates in order to “maintain the power differential between themselves and the agent” (pg 4), had me thinking about the amazing TV show Battlestar Galactica (If you haven’t seen it, it’s less sci-fi nerdy than you would think. It’s one of the greatest television dramas of all time!). The premise of the show involves robots who evolve into super intelligent beings called Cylons who rise up against humans and attempt to exterminate the human race. Man, the students from this study would be at the top of their list for sure.

Digital Matt

Don't believe it when you see it.

(Note: this is the second lesson plan that's due 6/25; #1 was posted on 6/22)

Computer programs such as Photoshop and Smoke allow media developers to adjust images of reality in order to fit their purposes. This results in audiences not always being able to know if what they are seeing is an accurate reproduction of reality. Rather, they are being manipulated to feel or think a certain way.

First, students will watch this great short video from the New York Times about magazine retouching.

Next, students will examine the following examples, and answer these questions:

How has this image been altered?
What is the purpose of this image (to sell a product, a service, a business, to frighten, to entertain, etc)? What are the motives of its creator? Why was it altered?
Why WOULDN'T the creator of the image want to show the real image?
What does the creator of this image want me to do? How are they trying to position the viewer?

1. Iran's altered missile photo(which ran in several American newspapers before the altering was discovered)























2. Fox News alters photos of NY Times reporters - students will watch the video to determine the producer's motives.

























3. Videos of aliens/flying saucers


4. Photoshop and Magazine covers - this website lets you see the before and after of various changes to the image.






















5. Computer transforms into spaceship that flies away:


This activity will help students to look critically at the images they are presented, and consider if and how they may have been altered. In addition, it gives students the opportunity to consider WHY these images might have been altered.

One could take this activity in a number of directions from this point. Here are a few ideas:

A) Students will find an image (still or video) that they suspect has likely been altered in some way. They analyze it using the same questions listed above.

B) Exposé of their own school newspaper. They will interview the editor for if/how/when/why Photoshop is used.

C) If your school has access to Photoshop, you could have students create a News article, or Persuasive piece that involves a doctored image.

While we're on the subject of the News...

Time Machine: The Internet in 1996.

While we've talked about analyzing advertisements in this course, for this assignment, students will analyze the role that websites play in advertising political candidates. I'm a big fan of the website The Living Room Candidate which archives television advertisements for presidential candidates going back to 1952. One could develop tons of lessons using the materials available at this fantastic site.

One interesting part of the site contains links to a partial archive of websites of past presidential candidates, which of course, only goes back to 1996. As you can imagine, Bill Clinton's 1996 website looks A LOT different from Barack Obama's website (which is not "locked in" to its 2008 campaign look, but is constantly updated). Further resources on past presidential websites can be found at http://www.4president.org/ (including still images of Obama's website in 2008, as well as other candidates' websites).

For this assignment, I would have students explore either Clinton or Dole's 1996 website (not all links on the pages are active, but many of them are), and analyze it for the following things:
1. the layout. how are things laid out on the page?
2. how are text and images used? What about color? Font? Amount of text and images? Videos?
3. how are links incorporated?
4. in what ways is it "interactive"
5. in what ways do the candidates try to explain their positions on issues?
6. how do the candidates attempt to "connect" with voters?
7. regardless of the victor of the race, is it a successful website?

Next we would have a brief discussion about how many people have said that Obama's savy use of the internet played a big role in his winning the election. Next, I would have them look at www.barackobama.com and look for the same things they examined in the 1996 websites. How is Obama's website different from the websites form 1996?

Next, students would draw, and/or write about a website for a presidential candidate in the year 2020. What will change? How will they look? How will they involve voters? How will the technology have advanced in the next decade?

One of the goals of this assignment would be to see how the internet has changed and developed over time, and also the ways that candidates are using campaign websites has changed. In addition, this assignment gets students thinking about the future development and potential of the internet.

Another idea...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Morning Joe's Sarcastic Starbucks Sponsorship
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

I haven't written up a lesson plan for this idea, but another interesting thing to analyze in the classroom would be one of the skirmishes between John Stewart and a "legitimate" news source. A recent example involved Stewart criticizing the MSNBC show "Morning Joe" for its sponsorship by Starbucks. Stewart argued that this sponsorship affects their ability to objectivity report the news; he included a clips where MSNBC hosts interviewed the CEO of Starbucks and appeared very agreeable and non hard-hitting, he also included numerous praisings of the company's beverages. After this segment aired, the host of Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, shot back that Jon Stewart is angry and short and has a "Napolenonic complex." Initially, Stewart focused his argument on ideas and journalistic integrity, and while Scarborough defended their sponsorship (in an almost non-sensical way which Stewart further criticized) he quickly resorted to personal attacks on Stewart. I think it would be interesting for students to analyze the kinds and types of arguments made by these very different television hosts.

School Newspaper Parody

For this assignment, students will be writing their own parody of their school newspaper.

First, students will examine stories from The Onion, and then perform research in the computer lab to find a corresponding story from a "real" news source (bbc.com, nytimes.com, news.bbc.co.uk, cnn.com). What are the similarities in the stories? Where do they differ? Where is the "humor" in the parody piece? What are some common characteristics of a "parody" news article? How much is based on real facts or events? What is the audience of each piece?

Next, students will examine past issue of their school newspaper to find stories that they find particularly interesting (or poorly researched/reported). Then they will write a parody of this article. We will try to get a wide variety of stories and subjects (national, local, sports, etc) and we may then attempt to construct an actual newspaper that we can distribute in the school. (Of course, we'll probably have to get check with the administration to get the okay).

Rationale: By using stories that have relevance to students lives, it will help to engage students in the process of incorporating the news into their lives. By producing work for an authentic audience of their peers, students will be more likely to put serious effort into their work (as opposed to an assignment that is for the "teacher's eyes" only). This assignment will give them experience doing multi-media research online as well as the experience of analyzing and evaluating messages from the news.