The main reason I've done it as a full week is then the assignment begins to look at habits of media use across various rhythms of different sorts of days they may have (days when they're mainly in class, days when they're at work, weekends, and so on). And with a week you can begin to address questions of habit and routine. It is a lot to ask, but I think they find it interesting (and a challenge). Cheers, greg -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark D. Johns Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 6:07 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] digital literacy takes a field trip to a farm Greg Wise wrote:
... The first part of the assignment is for them to keep a diary of every encounter with the mass media throughout a week,... The second part was called the NO MEDIA WEEK....
You're a hard taskmaster, Greg. I've been doing a similar assignment in my Intro to Mass Media course for quite a few years now, connected with having the students read the first chapter of Bill McKibben's book, The Age of Missing Information. But I only require them to log their media use for three days, and then go just ONE DAY without any mass media at all -- including books, magazines, newspapers, music, TV, radio, 'net, etc. We have an 800 acre campus in a rural area, so it's not hard to send them out into the woods. Most of them are going through iPod withdrawal symptoms within a few hours. An essay is written and much discussion ensues. -- Mark D. Johns, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Communication Studies Luther College, Decorah, Iowa USA http://academic.luther.edu/~johnsmar/ ----------------------------------------------- "Get the facts first. You can distort them later." ---Mark Twain _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/