Reflection on Blogging

I had some struggles at first with the amount of online work and the amount of websites that were mentioned on the syllabus on the first day of class. I remember feeling worried about not being able to do all the work with all the websites, registering, logging in and out of a variety of sites that I haven't heard of.
                But then, with time and practice, I actually enjoyed the websites and I enjoyed blogging a lot. In fact I am going to keep on blogging, now that I have experience and confidence in terms of how to use and benefit from it.
                One of many things that I've learned from the blogging tasks is to express myself through internet with full capacity. Sharing thoughts, opinions, videos, comments with each other was a great experience. Now I can apply everything that I've learned in this course not only personally, but also in my future career. I've learned a lot about myself as well while taking this course. My interests, how I actually like using technology and online forms of expressions in comparison to before, when I had certain taboos about the whole blogging and any form of online expression. From this experience I've learned that even if we have certain prejudgments about "the way things are being done" we still should give it a chance and try to go along with it. Because when it is done with an open mind and the will to understand, then the process is sure to be enjoyable at the end and the gain will be tremendous.
Not only I learned many different things, but also I was able to draw connections from my past experiences and other university courses that I have taken.

                If I were to take this course again, I'd take less courses per term in order to be able to give my full attention to it, because then I'd be able to share more of my thoughts and opinions about the things I want to say. But this is only the beginning and there is a lot more to come for me in this newly discovered "way" of teaching and learning.

Media and Advertising

An article by Anup Shah


"Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it."

- Chuck Blore, a partner in the advertising firm Chuck Blore & Don Ruchman, Inc., quoted by Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), p.185.
Ever since mass media became mass media, companies have naturally used this means of communications to let a large number of people know about their products. There is nothing wrong with that, as it allows innovative ideas and concepts to be shared with others. However, as the years have progressed, the sophistication of advertising methods and techniques has advanced, enticing and shaping and even creating consumerism and needs where there has been none before, or turning luxuries into necessities. This section introduces some of the issues and concerns this raises.

Free media channels have a cost

Various free media such as the numerous channels available in America and other nations are naturally subsidized with advertising to help pay the costs.
As corporate competition has increased, so too has the need for returns on massive expenditures on advertising. Industries spend millions, even billions of dollars to win our hearts and minds, and to influence our choices towards their products and ideas. This often means such media outlets attract greater funds than those outlets funded through public funding or TV licenses. It can mean that such outlets can also then afford better programming of key events and programs.
Given the dependency media companies can have on advertising, advertisers can often have exert undue influences (knowingly or tacitly); if something is reported that the advertiser doesn’t like or the media company has funded a documentary that exposes bad practice by an advertiser, the media company can risk losing much needed revenue to stay alive.

The Audience as the Product

Additionally, as Noam Chomsky points out in his article, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, for a company such as the New York Times, it too has to sell products to its customers. For the New York Times and other such companies, Chomsky points out that the product is the audience, and the customers are the corporate advertisers.
This at first thought doesn’t seem to make sense. However, although readers buy the paper, he argues that readers fit a demographic and it is this that is valuable information that can be used by advertisers. Hence, to the advertisers, the product that the New York Times and such companies bring to them is the audience itself and it is the advertisers that bring the money to the media companies, not the audience.

"[T]he New York Times [is] a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. … You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations."

— Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, Z Magazine, June 1997.

Manipulating images of people in commercials

It has long been known that advertisers will photoshop” (slang for editing photos to touch up or airbrush out imperfections) photos to make the subject more attractive. But many have pointed out that this subtle manipulation often goes too far.
For example, young people — girls in particular — are often bombarded with imagery of the perfect bodies. Younger minds are more malleable and impressionable, so even when it may be known that these images are manipulated, the constant message everywhere a young person turns says the same thing: this is how you should look and behave and something must be wrong if you are not achieving these (unrealistic) expectations of perfection.
As such it can contribute to anxieties and stress when growing up and even last into adulthood.
Globally, there is very little regulation about this kind of manipulation as there are many grey areas making it difficult to provide definitive guidelines. However, some very obvious cases are easier to target.
For example, in 2009, France introduced advertising legislation that retouched images had to be explicitly identified.
In the summer of 2011 in UK, two advertisers had their adverts banned for airbrushing an actress and a model excessively to the point it was too misleading. A campaigner against this kind of misleading and a Scottish member of parliament, Jo Swinson added that the concern here “is half of young women between 16 and 21 say they would consider cosmetic surgery and we’ve seen eating disorders more than double in the last 15 years.”

Megan Gibson, writing for Time, added that Swinson’s concern was that, “The ads are purporting the effects of make-up, when in reality they’re showcasing the effects of Photoshop.”
PetaPixel reported the above UK ban too, also noting that it came about a month after the American Medical Association called upon ad agencies to stop the “altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image”.

PetaPixel quotes an American Medical Association board member:

"The appearance of advertisements with extremely altered models can create unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image. In one image, a model’s waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist. We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software."

— Barbara L. McAneny, Quoted by Michael Zang: American Medical Association Speaks Out Against Photoshopped Ad Photos, PetaPixel, June 24, 2011

shout out

Hey All,

Sorry for the late post. As you know I was in Turkey and then came back to Cyprus, however Cyprus didnt like my new shoes so I fell and injured my leg. But its all good now :))

Okay so I've missed some of the material that was covered in class, therefore I have some catching up to do..just wanted to give a general shout out about whats up...

keep up the good work,

Y

Lessonwriter.com !

Technology contributes majorly to the modern teaching techniques. Especially for current instructors and educators, www.lessonwriter.com is a very useful website.

All you have to do is to find an article and paste it into LessonWriter, add class info and you are done ! The site provides you with bunch of different practice options such as vocabulary, pronunciation, word roots and grammar support for students.

I do believe that this makes things so much easier and worry free...also very time consuming. Add it to your "Favorites"  :)



click here to watch a summary of LessonWriter !



:)

Accents?!!! Funny or die....

Ok, I know in our last class we talked about certain accents in English. It seemed like a lot of us had fun while listening to accents and the differences among them, so here are a couple of videos that I've found online, they are pretty funny. So, check 'em out ! ;)











 This is also very good listening practice especially for the EFL majors. Try to listen to these accents a few times so
next time you watch news or a movie, you will be able to tell differences among foreign and local accents. And eventually, with time, you will name the accents like a boss ! :)









  So far so good ?? If you get this video with the comedian to your right, you are already making progress ;)








Can you actually imitate some of the accents that you've heard? Me and my roommates are doing it right now...its good fun :)

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity ??

"If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”"

(Ken Robinson)

 
At first, this whole idea of schools killing creativity sounds way too critical and hard to relate to. But if we keep an open mind and try to relate to where Sir Ken Robinson is coming from, all of a sudden his ideas do make sense in terms of thinking critically and thinking "outside the box".

I definitely agree with his constructive criticism towards the pressure or fear of making mistakes not only in schools, but also in our everyday lives. Not only the educational systems but also political systems contribute to this.

The times we were raised in or where we grew up play tremendous roles in who we are today and how we think. So it would be safe to assume that political systems do shape the mass psychology of a current society, and educational systems therefore are shaped by that current political system. It is a chain of interactions between systems that lead us to the smallest particle in this chain of action/reaction, and the smallest particles are -> individuals.
 
For example, from my own personal experiences I can tell that in Russia we had "must" courses such as vocal training, piano, dancing, drama...From my generation it is hard to come across someone who doesn't know how to play the piano, or can't read notes, or isn't familiar with the art forms of impressionism or expressionism, who doesn't have a basic knowledge of world literature classics, skating, skiing, etc. The reason of this is the previous political system, mentality of which still exists in today's Russia. When we go deeper into the social motivation of "being able to do everything or knowing everything at a decent level" mentality, we can see that underlying urge or even ambition is to represent Russia by being successful in world events, competitions and draw a politically strong, proud image of an average individual who grew up there.

But why have such social pressure of succeeding and being "the best" in everything you compete as a nation? The answer to this question is again pressure. For example when Russia wins a Gold Medal in the Olympics, what kind of image of a nation or of an individual who grew up in Russia does it impose? Or it is not a coincidence that Russia is one of the most successful nations when it comes to the Olympics or fields of Classical Music, Ice-Skating, Dancing, Literature, Arts, Space, Mathematics, etc. All of these winnings, I'm not even counting the popularity that it brings, based on an international platform add into the national image of Russia being "strong" or is enough to cause fear on a political level.

Ken Robinson mentions one of the Picasso's quotes:
"All children are born artists". And yes, as we grow up we also grow out of our childhood, creativity and so forth, but the reason of this is not only educational systems, but also political systems, history and social psychology of a nation.

Click here to watch Ken Robinson's speech of schools killing creativity.