Midterm Reflection: I'm Still Alive!

1. After studying media for eight weeks in this class, what have you learned?

I have always realized the power of the media and its influence in our society. After spending time in this class I can have an intelligent conversation with almost anyone about aspects of media that are often overlooked. The power tools that we are studying is one of the specific things I have learned about. After many media classes at Champlain, I am well informed about the idea behind the power tools, however in this class I have seen them clearly illustrated and it makes me think about content in a way that I have never thought about it before.

2. What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself as a critical reader, a writer, and a thinker in this class so far?

Everything has a meaning. Its easy just to consume video, literature or image without realization behind the motivations of the individuals who created it and the message they were trying to convey.

3. What’s one think you would do differently this first half of the semester if you were to take this class again?

Upon doing the midterm, I realize that I needed to study the power tools more. I overestimated by ability to illustrate them by name.

4. What’s one thing you would like me to do differently this first half of the semester if you were to take this class again?

One thing I did notice about class is that we have had discussions about reading assignments that we had done in previous weeks. As a student, its hard to discuss previous readings, especially when we have had more recent assignments. We do alot during classes.

Please comment of the usefulness of the power tools, our quizzes, the course blog, your personal blog, our films, and our books (AMUSING, FEED, MEDIA/SOCIETY) as learning tools.

The quizzes in this class are surprisingly useful. As first, I thought that the quiz at the beginning of each class was just stressful more than anything else. However, I soon learned that even though this was the case, it was also forcing me to learn something. Repetition is an excellent way to learn and this was the case with the quizzes.

The course blog is an excellent way to outline assignments for the semester. I find it very easy to keep up with assignments using this blog. It is much better than Angel could ever be. Other instructors use Angel for a similar purpose but the blog is much more interactive and interesting. In fact, according to Safari on my computer, its one of my top visited websites! Our personal blogs work well for similar reasons. They are interactive and easy to organize information.

I enjoyed Feed the most out of all the readings we have done this semester. Novels with a story are enjoyable to read and this one was especially relevant to our class. Postman was very interesting and the extensive amount of information in Amusing Ourselves to Death was amazing. I also enjoying the blogging that corresponded with the readings, as it encouraged me to analyze and pay more attention to the reading. Even though I felt like I learned a lot from these two reading, I don’t feel like I learned as much from Media / Society. While I was blogging about the things I learned, I kept thinking to myself. “I already knew that.”