Posts Tagged media
The medium is the message
Posted by kmcg2375 in books, digital storytelling, education, english, Lit_Review, research, technology on June 30, 2011
“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. (from Wikipedia)
The more I think about this issue of medium, the more unsatisfied I am with the way that medium of production is dealt with in the English curriculum.
While English teachers continue to be led by debate over the definition and role of Literature in English, and over the best way to teach language, questions of medium have been significantly sidelined.
It also seems clearer to me now why subjects like Drama and Media (content areas that technically sit under the umbrella of English, if you accept that English is a study of how meaning is made through language and texts) go off and take up their own space in many curriculum. It’s not just because those fields have their own traditions and pedagogies that need space, or because they have industries that create an economic drive for the subjects to continue. It’s also because those field require keen attention to production elements, including issues of medium.
Little wonder that Drama, which often deals with live performance of language, dies a slow death in English classrooms where the curriculum is still dominated by print literacy.
Little wonder that we still can reconcile the gulf between ‘literary’ and ‘digital/electronic’ texts in the Australian curriculum (medium is not a genre!)
To move anywhere with this line of thinking will require some careful thought about the overlap between the words:
- media as-in-the-artisitic-means-of-production and
- Media as-in-the-field-of-media-studies.
Thanks to carolyn for stimulating my thinking on this. Connecting the concept of medium back to the concept of narrative helped the penny drop today!
List of Artistic Media
Posted by kmcg2375 in books, digital storytelling, english, Lit_Review, social media on June 9, 2011
Some more thinking about what we mean when we say ‘medium’ in English curriculum…this list of artistic mediums has been helpful in contextualising English as a subject area within a broader notion of ‘arts’:
In the arts, a media or medium is a material used by an artist or designer to create a work.
- Architecture
- Carpentry
- Digital
- Drawing
- Film
- Light
- Literature
- Natural World
- Painting
- Performing Arts
- Photography
- Printmaking
- Sculpture
- Sound
- Technology
- Textiles
Wikipedia ‘List of Artistic Media’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artistic_mediums
Within that list, the medium of literature appeared with the following explanation and links:
Literature
Main articles: Literature and Writing implementThe art of writtenwords and typography is traditionally an ink and printed form on paper or is creatively written with many forms of media.
Common writing media
- Digitalword processor and internetwebsites
- Letterpress printing and computer printing
- Marker
- Nib (pen)
- Pen and ink
- Pencil
- Quill
Common bases for writing
This is food for thought.
The investigation into medium continues…
Media – Definition
Posted by kmcg2375 in english, Lit_Review, social media, technology, university on June 8, 2011
Was looking for a good defintion for ‘medium’ in English and along the way have found my new go-to definition for media:
MEDIA as a word derives from the plural of Latin medium, meaning ‘middle’ or ‘between’ (hence ‘mediator’ as a ‘go-between’, also medieval, coined in the nineteenth century to label the age between the classical period and the Renaissance). From the early twentieth century, however, it has become increasingly common to talk of ‘the media’ (definite article and plural). The media thus understood mean two interrelated yet distinct things:
- those specifically modern technologies and modes of COMMUNICATION which enable people to communicate at a distance, characteristically through print (especially newspapers and magazines); the various telecommunications (‘tele-’ comes from the Greek word for ‘far’, hence telegraph/’far-writing’, telephone/’far-sound’, television/’far-sight’), as well as film, video, cable, satellite and the Internet;
- by extension, the institutions which own and control these technologies as well as= the people who work for them (e.g, newspaper proprietors, TV and film companies, advertising agencies and governments, as well as reporters, camera operators, editors, producers, presenters, etc.).
Pope, R. (2002) The English Studies Book: An introduction to Language, Literature and Culture (2nd edition)Routledge, London. p.68
Franco and Hathaway
James Franco *swoon*
After seeing John Stewart interview this guy, who I had only known from Pineapple Express (classic) I am psyched about the Oscars host for the first time in…ever.
Did you make it to the bit in the interview with Stewart when Franco talks about doing a PhD in English Literature? What a hero!
The shape of the Arts curriculum
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, social media, technology, video games on October 14, 2010
For those who have yet to check it out, the draft shape paper for the Australian Curriculum for the Arts is now available on the ACARA website.
Given that up here in Queensland the school subject ‘Media Arts’ is separate to the subject ‘English’, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to intervene in the text and see if I couldn’t just find the crossover between the two subjects.
It wasn’t hard.
2.3.3 Defining Media Arts
Media ArtsEnglish is the creative use of communications technologies to tell stories and explore concepts for diverse purposes and audiences. MediaLanguage artists represent personal, social and cultural realities using platforms such as prose fiction, poetry, dramatic performances, television, film, video, newspapers, magazines, radio,video games, the worldwide web and mobile media. Produced and received in diverse contexts, these communication forms are important sources of information, entertainment, persuasion and education and are significant cultural industries in Australian society. Digital technologies have expanded the role that mediatexts play in every Australian’s family, leisure, social, educational and working lives. Media ArtsEnglish explores the diverse artistic, creative, social and institutional factors that shape communication and contribute to the formation of identities. Through Media ArtsEnglish, individuals and groups participate in, experiment with and interpret the rich culture and communications practices that surround them.
As I spend more time in Queensland I find myself having to wrestle with my identity as an English teacher because of this overlap with Media Arts. It’s not that media texts don’t still feature in the English curriculum – they do. But the culture here is that, while student might study visual language and analyse some/increasingly visual/multimodal texts in English, it’s Media Arts you have to go to if you want to make anything serious.
On one hand, it’s like Media Arts teachers get to do a lot of the fun stuff, which kind of sucks if you’re an English teacher from New South Wales!
But on the other hand, I have to admit, compared the rigour in the Media Arts curriculum up here…well, I have to admit that as an English teacher I always seemed to run out of time to ‘do the fun stuff’ anyway (do you know how LONG it takes for students to rehearse and record their own 10 minute version of Act I of Romeo and Juliet? Fricken ages!) And it would be nice, for just a short while, not to have to feel like I am dragging my English colleagues kicking and screaming toward increased multimodal study…now if I need to find a like minded media teacher, I can just go and, well, find one.
Leaving aside the ‘are knowledge silos good or bad’ debate, what thoughts do people have about the picture I’m painting here? NSW people, if you came up to the sunshine state would you want to specialise in English, or Media Arts?
NSW syllabus gets some good press!
Thank you David Dale, for your refreshing column in this week’s Who We Are column in the Sun Herald “Better living through English”.
Dale describes his reading of the NSW 7-10 English syllabus, and finds “that it doesn’t just give students tools for communicating clearly in adult life, but it actually wants to turn them into decent people.” He also was surprised to find such a high level of rigour in the syllabus, observing that in contrast: “In my day, the teacher was happy if you left school able to quote a bit of Shakespeare and tell the difference between a metaphor and a simile.”
One element that Dale praised especially was the fact that English is “not just about books any more. The syllabus uses the word ‘text’ to cover movies, TV shows, articles, books, plays and even video games.”
This column made such a nice change from the usual (misinformed) bile that we see from the likes of Donnelly and Devine. Nice to start the teaching break on a positive note…it sure has been awhile!
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