Approaches to Teaching Scholarship
Fundamentals
· The material should emerge from the course work
· The student needs to take an area of interest from the coursework and run with it – investigate differing angles and READ/WATCH/LISTEN TO as much as they can on the subject
· Use the information and resources people are placing on the scholarship thread on the forum
· Build a tight knit group of students – feed them (in every way!)
· Organise regional workshops by industry people/ university people
· Collaborate with one another and encourage discussion between students in different schools/regions
§ Scholarship debates (with the audience as adjudicator)
§ Outings to movies/speakers/etc
§ Set up a scholarship wiki and encourage others to contribute
Two examples:
http://skc-scholarship-media.wikispaces.com/
· Use the local media agency websites like http://www.bsa.govt.nz/mediastudies/ http://www.censor.govt.nz/schools.html
· Use industry websites
· Obsessively trawl the newspaper EVERY day – get the students to take turns in contributing interesting articles/websites
· Encourage creative thinking – use quotes, statements to argue for and against, questions, Prompt words, What if’s, So what’s, Binaries (Creativity vs Business, Intellectual Property vs Free Internet access)
· Use the Assessment Specs and past Scholarship information (exams, assessments schedules)
Make them responsible for wide and close reading – it’s the wide knowledge of TEXT and CONTEXT that will get them scholarship success. In the end they need to do the hard yards!
Some websites I’ve found that could be useful:
What is Web 2.0?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2
Conference papers from the Journalism organisation – mostly about Print and News
http://www.jeanz.org.nz/Archive%20Conference%20Papers.htm
Media History Project – including a timeline of Media developments
Media Reform Quotes
http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/media-quotes.htm
Fabulous quotes about the media and using the media to create democracy. Compare these quotes with those on the following site!
Media Quotes – a collection of comments on the state of entertainment
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/facts/mediaquotes.asp
NOTE: this is a bunch of quotes from people about the BAD effects of the media – it is very one-sided and on the whole is a media bashing frenzy. It could be good for a devil’s advocate discussion about how Audience negotiate their own meanings from text. This site also contains some very negative media facts
The History of film page
http://www.cln.org/themes/history_film.html
Adventures in Cybersound – Technology and Society: Related essays (film, radio, TV, internet, communications, media – you name it!)
http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/phd8400.html
Online Videos Go Mainstream
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/552/online-videos-go-mainstream
Research on Social Network Sites
http://www.danah.org/SNSResearch.html
World Electronic Media Forum 2 (2005) – download the report, on the left of the homepage.
Includes focused discussions on the role of the electronic media in the digital age. With a global context and focusing on equity
Media Lens is a site created as “our response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change”
Go to the about page for a more detailed rationale that’s bound to engender some interesting discussion.
For those of you doing the NZ film Industry – this link is about sustainable futures for the industry (with a great links page). It also has a link to a case study about Wa$ted (for you telly types!
http://www.greeningthescreen.co.nz/
UK school websites with New Media content and other cool stuff (NMT is an exam subject for Media Studies in the UK)
http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/alevel/
http://www.northallertoncoll.org.uk/media/newmedia.htm
Deb Thompson October 2007
deborah.thompson@auckland.ac.nz