Media--"Seeing, Not Reading Became the Basis for Believing"

The 20th century sparked my interested yesterday about how media has changed drastically over the last couple of centuries. Much of this post is thoughts and readings from the book "Amusing Ourselves To Death" by Neil Postman.

The forms of media has change by and through technological advances and through innovations. Also media has changed largely on how and why we use it.

Back in the 1700's media was in the form of newspapers and books--printed material. It was devoted to education, to reason for understanding. They tried to encompass all forms of education through the printed works. They believed that "to read law exclusively will damage the mind." (book) They believed in a well rounded education and learning, to dive into books and read everything they could.

Advertisements began in the late 1700's. They began as just written words that told readers the product or job plainly and simply. There was no catchy terms, nothing to suck you in. It wasn't until the 1800's that slogans and photographs/illustrations even became a part of advertisements and media. Also interestingly, they were to appeal to understanding, not to emotions or passions.

Does this sound like today? Well of course not. Media had morphed into a whole new giant. Instead of understanding through reading It is now seeing, not reading that has become the basis for believing. You know the quote "a picture is worth 100 words?" well its true. We can see, depict what's going on, and even feel what is being portrayed in the photograph.

Media didn't stop with photographs but continued on to television. Television as well as radio began as a means for news and governmental issues, this still takes place in 3rd world counties. They rely on talking heads which the government has a large influence on.

Television in our society is the means of understanding. How horrible! "The understanding of any subjects is slapped by the biases of television." (book) Are we believing the biases of media? The majority of television is not serious or realistic. Are we living in a made up world???

As we talked about in class, media can create a paradigm shift in the society and population. It can influence us without us even knowing it. Furthermore, the group spoke of how media began to start feeing off of us. Our likes, passions, what riles us up. Even education has been influenced by media.

I would like to pose a question, has education turned into an entertainment field? There are shows constantly on Tv that try to educate children and adults. Teachers are said to be better if they are more entertaining. It has went as far as virtual reality within some school systems.

What do you think? I see major benefits but I'm sure it has its downfalls.

To conclude, media has shaped us, groomed us whether we like it or not, to be more of the mind set that believing is seeing. We are influenced by its biases and without further research and study on our own, will we know the real truth.

How can we change the television culture of today?

Reflecting Back

Whenever I think of the word reflecting, I think of a really still pond of water and me looking into it, looking deep into myself. But really this isn't quite that deep but its always good to take a look back and see your progress.

Over the past semester I have found several topics that have stood out to me. They are the following:

--Education: This was a big one. I have primarily focused on how our education system has changed our culture and economy. Also I wrote a lot about how we aren't truly getting all we can out of our education, that they aren't providing us with an education that will benefit us as we go into the work field.
There are many ways to improve our education system and I mentioned several.

--Technology has changed our culture: It has affected our family settings, how many children we have, how much time we spend with them. It has affected us in our social interactions with others. We now have artificial intelligence that is a great asset but can be damaging to our interaction with others. Even in the realm of medicine, it has changed the doctor and patient interactions.

--Control: Governmental and Educational.
The government controls more then people understand and realize. I spoke of the example of farming in California and how the government shut down farms because they wanted to save an animal from extinction but really were damaging thousands of human lives and the economy in California.They have the ability to push and pull us around without much thought. 
Educational control is shown through our conveyer belt school system. They tell us what to do and what to become and without it, we cannot go far in certain fields regardless of the experience we have.

One way I hit hard on to get out of the unwanted and unnecessary control is to use participation against it. Whether its collaborating via social media or through your community involvement, it is necessary to make a change.


I connected many of these topics to history and created a valid setting for belief. Education systems have made the big loop from control to less control to even more control now. Technology has continued to develop and changed and so has our culture and economy.

Even as I am writing this, I begin to see an overlying theme; to stand up and not be ignorant, nor let anyone take what's most important from you. If you want something bad enough, then take the steps to make the change. Don't let technology and the digital age destroy you, use it for your benefit!

Finnish Education--Leading in the World

Finnish education is nothing like ours (US).  It is amazingly quite different and yet, as American's we believe that Asia and us are on the for-fronts of discovery and intelligence. This however is untrue. Did you know that Finland students are ranked in the top 3 for all categories of standardize testing (PISA, which tests a range of skill of knowledge)? It was not until the 1960's that Finland changed their education system after acknowledging voices that said that education has a direct impact on our economy. They soon realized this to be true and began the changes. 


A question I would like to pose is; is the competitiveness within our country actually benefiting us? As Garrett Bassett mentioned, the competitiveness in part is what makes our country ours? It's growth in economy, entrepreneur philosophy etc... But what about now, as our economy is failing us? Could it all be a result from our education system? Could it be because it's too competitive, not enough people can gain educations?

To continue on with Finnish education, In the 1960's they began a top-down education system, restructuring their school systems to focus on equality. The have no private schools, no private universities and everyone who finished a level of education, can move on to the next. They moved from standardizing everything to no standardized tests at all and they letting each teacher test and assess how the student is doing individually. Finland also has more confidence in their professors, and they are looked up to within the society. I think this plays a part on the success of the education greatly. 


"Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location." Reference There is no separation of classes.  I would like to ask, what has happened? I believe that there is so much separation of classes now and it all started with John Dewey. He believed that dividing and making it noticeably different classes was a great idea. Dewey rearranged our whole education system back in the 1800's to what it is today. He implemented super structured schools, such as blocks of classes, scheduled and at the same time day after day with standardized tests. 


Our education has had the whole turn around. It went from one-room schools, to factory schools and now, maybe we can go back to what it once was. Individualized. 


In part, we can thank John Dewey for this great innovation......or NOT. Within the Finnish system, the amount of time they spend in school is far less, they don't start school until the age of 7, after they have had some time to grow up a little and play. They even stay with the same teacher year after year. The teacher then is able to aid in each child's learning and literally grows up with them. 


I have heard that as you age your brain is constantly upgrading. That many people actually do better if they wait a year or so to start school and it is not forced upon them at such a young age. Like your brain is able to comprehend things better. This has happened to me personally in my life. I had a really challenging class, O-chem last year that I just could not get. I dropped it part way through and began taking it again this semester and it just seems to click so much better.--I want to research more on this subject. 


There is so much to do and to consider in order to make the change of our educations system such as, How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers? With such a big government run program, that is nation wide, how can you implement something new? Is there as way to run beta tests and keep revamping until golden? 
 Pasi Sahlberg, who is an expert on the Finnish education reform stated the following, "First, we don’t necessarily need new schools like charter schools to develop innovative educational changes in our school systems. First and foremost we need less standardization and testing in our schools. What we need more is flexibility, educational leadership, and trust in schools and teachers." http://www.pasisahlberg.com/blog/


This topic sparks my interests tremendously and I think could play such a huge role in the building back up of our economy and further supplying a nation with intelligent individuals who are ready to make a difference in the world. 


References:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/learn-from-finland-pasi-sahlberg

http://www.pasisahlberg.com/blog/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm

https://www.msu.edu/user/frassine/EAD845%20-%20Educational%20Reform%20in%20Finland.pdf

Autistic Children and Virtual Reality

Children with autism generally have problems with social interaction, language and behavior. Autistic children pay attention to the details and have a hard time focusing and grasping the main point. 

As Dr. Zappala mentioned in class about how research has shown that autistic children do better in a interactive environment. Since then I've looked up a lot of great information on it and its amazing how much these children really do benefit from it. 


There are many reasons why it has been show to help. Virtual reality and digital interaction can be designed to help the child focus and be apart of the learning process instead of just being lectured to for hours. Many have a touch screen, not as much movement and activity at a quick pace as the outside world, and less cues that can lead to distraction. 


They have used this virtual training to help social skills such as interactions with piers, crossing intersections to restaurants etc. Also in the class room it has been a tremendous success. 

“A teacher observing a child interacting in such a virtual environment may gain access to a range of behaviors from individual children that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to observe in a classroom,” Quote from a article on autism and digital technology. It just isn't possible to get those experiences like that in the class room, or is it? I think of not only those who are diagnosed with autism but those who deal with ADHD, ADD or maybe children who aren't auditory learners, who need interaction and hands on learning to really put it into memory or learn. Could this possible help more then just autistic individuals?


I know I harp on our education system quite often but as I research more on technology and the history of where our education has come and gone within the last 2 centuries, I'm finding more and more options that are plausible in a school setting. Many people think that having personal digital technology (ipads, smart phones, virtual reality games) in the class room setting will distract from the topic trying to be taught. 


What do you think? I know that in college, technology on my lap can totally help me stay on task and learn better but many times it really does distract me because there are so many things I could do on that piece of technology (my computer). 


If virtual realities and digital technology can help autistic children, why not everyone?

Intelligence Smelligence...Who is Smarter?

Are computers really smarter than we are? Can they really do what we do? Is artificial intelligence really going to become better than us?

I want to put a firm stance that no, none of the above are true. It was human intellegence that programmed their intelligence. How can it be smarter than us? It is just another algorithm WE MADE! It solve problems, analyzes information and has a crazy large memory that far exceeds ours. Yes it can calculate faster than us, maybe even do tasks faster than us, but it can't make up for the lack of it's creative ability. It cannot take the place of face-to-face interaction with another human being. It doesn't have a heart....it's "artificial intelligence" not real intelligence.


I first thought about the "artificial" dogs or babies we had growing up....you know the ones that would bark or wag its tail when you pet it, or would cry and fuss if it "needed food or to be held?"

As a child I always thought these were so lame and not worth my time, although there were millions of children in the world that loved them and treated them like they were living. Was it the lack of attention these children needed or social interaction? Is artificial intelligence really trying to take its place?


What's crazy to me, and I think why many people believe that these machines are so much smarter is because of its ability to store memory and spit back information. But as we have discovered in this class is that that's not really what we want anyways. This education system is all about quickly learning the material and regurgitating it back out with no real thought put into it.


That is the beauty of us, as humans, we have the ability to take a step further and use and apply the new information we obtain in any direction or form we want. On the other hand artificial intelligence have to be programmed in, of what to do with the information, otherwise the information would be put in a blank file and never used. Once its actually put into our memory, we have the ability to retrieve that information and apply it however and whenever we want.


Now that I've hopefully convinced you that we are much smarter :) I would like to pose a few questions that have been on my mind about this subject.




What is artificial intelligence really doing to our social interaction with people? 
Is it influencing our learning?


Is it affecting the value of ourselves?

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Is a Diploma Better Than a Badge?

 We all are beginning to realize that we can't just walk off the stage at graduation and land ourselves a job. We do not stand out anymore with just a bachelors. Employers want to see experience, badges/certifications and trainings of all kinds. What good really is our bachelors? There are more and more trade school out there and more certifications that help you specialize in a certain area.  What people learn in school is often not enough. It often takes the extra badge that creates the bridge, over into the other side of a sought for employee.

According to The New York Times, " badges spotlight skills that do not necessarily show up on traditional skill verification documents. Unlike regular degree programs, which provide a macro education on a general topic (say, Computer Science), badges certify micro-based competency in a very specific skill (say, JavaScript)"

I recently read a great article titled Why Get a Pricey Diploma When a Badge Will Do. It goes into depth about why badges are seen as much better avenues for obtaining a job. Also as I have been researching information and how it has effected the economy, I think this topic and it are totally related. There now are not many needs for mundane human labor tasks that technology has provided an escape for. More then ever there are less jobs available to the "ordinary public" people who don't specialize. A study done in 2005 showed that in 2005, 70,000 jobs were lost due to music downloads and music innovation. It used to take 4 people to run a camera, and now it only takes one. While there are countless benefits from information innovation, there seems to be some downfalls. It shows up in our schools, with our work, in our disciplines etc.

I, like many of you might be, am a little nervous about leaving school. I feel like I have a general education down but no specialized field. Our education is not hands on--its face down, into our books. How is this really helping us in the future? Not only do we have a rigorous general education but we must gain experience outside of school along with obtain certifications. Don't you think it should be all combined into one? Why waste effort on the non-important stuff? Is the economy going to continually fall because of lack of specialization within the general public?

Blogging: A Participation Act

As I have been looking up and review articles and content on participation. I came across an article that emphasizes the importance of participation while blogging. It is not enough to merely just post and then complain that no one is looking at your blog. I myself have fallen into this mishap. I still find it challenging to have enough time to read others blogs, post on my own and research material.
But as this article states that you can't go crying to mommy that your blogs doesn't have many hits if you haven't taken the time on others.

The best way to gain attraction is through commenting on others. It of course needs to be something that you are interested in and would like to get involved in the conversation about.

The more participation you put into others...and you can at the end of your comment ask them to take a look at yours, the more participation on your blog you will receive back. Participation is key for blogging, FB or other social medias. You know those who are constantly updating their status on FB are usually the ones that are commenting on others as well.

I think this principle can apply to almost anything you want to be successful at or get feedback/recognition for. If you want to start a business, well you better get out there and start looking at others, making comments and drop by's to theirs to help gain your recognition so they remember you. If you want to make friends, then you better start talking with them and be interested in what they are doing in order for them to turn around and do the same.

Ratings and Reviews--Has it Changed Us?

I was talking with my boss today about finding recipes online and he made a comment of how nice it is to have the access to millions of recipes right at our finger tips. We continued our discussion and we brought up how we both check the reviews and ratings before we make a recipe.

Reviews are super helpful. Continuing along with the recipe idea. The reviews can twique the recipe just a little to make it more spicy/creamy/less of an ingredient etc... BUT it is all up to you, to make it whatever way you want. It gives you options, suggestions, ideas and a confident attitude as you dive into the kitchen.

As I have been researching openness, this topic just keeps coming to mind. How has reviews and ratings changed the way we buy, make and create? There are countless website that all use the philosophy of ratings and reviews open to the public. "Let the public sell the product."

I use ratings and reviews almost constantly. In fact, Ratemyprofessor is one of my favorites on web browser. Anyone can write a comment and rate their professors. I don't know how many times I have saved myself so much hassle because I checked out the professors ratings first.

The drawback that I foresee is that it can be crippling the product or company. Many people don't look at the fine print to see HOW MANY REVIEWS there are. It could just have one that says its amazing or terrible and we go with it.

Does it just save us time, or does it improve our way of living? Is it hurting some companies/products that weren't given a chance and just have one really bad rating? Do you think this is a good thing to continue?

The Destroying of America Through It's Monopoly

If the United States has a monopoly of digital technology, what is it doing to the rest of our economy?
In the last class, the first history group mention how in the 16th century that the Spanish had a great monopoly of metals. It was such a huge monopoly that the rest of their agriculture and industries declined. They had to start importing wheat, clothing etc because all their efforts were concentrated on the one thing...metals.

How is that like today? Will this happen to our country? Well let me tell you, it already has. We import almost everything. All the best cars, all our clothing, even food is imported from all over the world. There are some farms still standing but it seems like the government is even trying to destroy them. For example some of the major farms in California were made into dust bowls because they government wanted to protect an endangered species (a fish) and stop all irrigation routes, which they did stop many. It put many people out of work and less produce and agriculture in our own country.

Here is an article on the subject. The government is going too far and trying to control everything. Well I'm sorry to inform you, but they just can't and if they try it will create more mess. http://biggovernment.com/spoizner/2010/05/20/california-water-shortage-exposes-big-government-run-amok/

The more this happens, the more we have no reliance on our own country. If we went to war with the country we bought the majority of our produce from, we would starve, same is if we went to war against china, we would have no clothes. The government is trying to save an endangered species and yet they are risking our species instead? Something seems wrong here.

The US is just booming with technology and information that the whole world wants to be apart of but if we keep that our main focus, our country will suffer as the Spanish did with their government and economy eventually being destroyed.

There are many factors that contribute to this. Control of government, information of technology and lack of the desire for self sustainability.

We seem like such a successful country, but what is it really doing to our true economic stance? Are they just brain washing us to believe that we can rely heavily on other countries forever for our goods we purchase? There needs to be some line drawn.