AM

After taking a thorough look at Kate Brigham's MA thesis project entitled "Decoding Visual Language Elements in New Content," I was motivated to develop some skill lessons for my 9-12 media units. I'll record here some of Brigham's points which I would like to use with my juniors and seniors.

[katebrighman.com/thesis]

Brigham's analysis of Ann Marie Seward Barry's "reusing" of the Branden and Horten material on visual literacy helped me to understand a way to begin presenting this material to students. To define the term visual literacy as "the ability to understand and to use images, including the ability to think, learn, and express oneself in terms of images," includes, (as Brigham packages it for us,) a two-tiered concept. The visually literate are aware of the logic, emotion, and attitudes suggested and possess the ability to produce meaningful images for others. To help high school students with these skills implies that they can not only analyze what they watch, but also produce (with intent) their own persuasive visual "documents." I appreciated Brigham's comments about the brain's amygdala - the brain's adaptation of light, shadow, and color - and the importance of repetition. I'd like to look more closely at the science of that. // Brigham began to talk about visual intelligence, using the H.G. Wells' radio play "The War of the Worlds," and I was more intrigued. Brigham writes: "Barry says that visual literacy implies not only recognizing that what we see may not be reality, but also breaking through the merely apparent to understand that what we see may have been engineered as well" (Brigham 68). Helping students look for those visual (and audible) clues - as well as helping them plan to incorporate their own clues in their own produced pieces - would be graspable and teachable skills. I thought the example about the Leslie Stahl work on Reagan (good pictures, bad messages) made an astounding point - that the audience doesn't really hear the bad words if the good pictures can completely capture their senses. The symbols take over. // Brigham's camera angle comments reviewed the work of Chapter 3 in our textbook, and watching the news footage for low and high angle shots is proving to be helpful. // Also helpful from Brigham's work was the "agency vs. structure" information and her analysis of the use of the word "terrorist" instead of others on the continuum. // Finally, her analysis and use of some of John Hartley's work from Understanding News was extremely practical to me. Useful were the definitions of 1) frequency, 2) threshold, 3) unambiguity, 4) meaningfulness, 5) consonance, 6) unexpectedness, 7) continuity, 8) composition, and the "extras," 9) elite nation news, 10) elite person news, 11) personilization, and 12) negativity. My asking students - for example -to study at local television news, BBC news, and MPR radio news will allow for a worthwhile conversation of Hartley's conclusions (as cited by Brigham) about how a "news organization sets up parameters for what events, people, and countries are newsworthy...a culture and a society projects a sense of what it considers important and valuable." Thinking about how this simple idea could help formulate the visual products students create to "tell" their school's story fascinates me. We will, I am sure, have some valuable conversations about how what one student views as "important and valuable" to include in telling a story about school climate and activity could differ greatly from the next student's view. I believe that will be a good starting point in planning material selection - no matter what the focus.// The "Framing, Focusing, Realizing, and Closing" information in Brigham's work also provided practical, helpful information for developing this skill segment for juniors and seniors.

Local News Analysis: KSTP 5, 10:00 P.M. [Sunday]

Teaser comments leading up to the first story ... 1) high speed chase in Minneapolis, 2) three die in plane crash while on a medical mission, 3) MN is having a problem with false ID cards...

Lead story ... another assault on the U of MN campus [ 2.30 minutes] ... story included interviews with three U of M female students who live in dorms, use of the language "tailgating" - allowing others to slip into the dorm behind someone else who has swiped a pass card, and a comment about the one million dollars the U spends on security each year

High speed chase story ... [2.00 minutes] ends in violent crash, footage mostly of mothers and children in the neighborhood where the crash occurred and of the tow truck hauling away the damaged vehicles... interview with a couple whose car was rear-ended during the chase...

Violent home invasion in Burnsville... [45 seconds] bloody man goes to neighbor's for help after surprising invaders in his garage...

U of Wisconsin, Madison Hospital helicopter crashes in La Crosse on a life-saving mission...shows wreckage, shows pictures of the three medical personnel who died in the crash, shows footage of helicopters from North Memorial and Mayo systems while concluding the segment with some facts about the use of helicopters in medical missions in the region... [3.00 minutes]

State government story [ 30 seconds ] about "no news" progress of the on-going legislative session...

Governor Pawlenty [10 seconds] fishing and "top-candidate" for McCain's V.P. choice...

Tornado teaser... repeat of the ID card story about "duplicate names"... and an On-The-Road ad for a story about Haiti...

Commercial break: 1) Wealth Enhancement, 2) Northland Ford Trucks, 3) an ad for the news itself - featuring the investigation about the crash that killed three children on a Cottonwood bus in late Feb.

When the news resumed... the story began with a focus on the Hispanic woman who was using a false driver's license when she hit the school bus in Cottonwood in February... feature story then went on to talk about the 36 cases of ID card problems in the state... Worthington, MN, was featured... investigators went door-to-door to Hispanic households in Worthington, MN, asking people if they knew "name" who was listed "at this address"... this feature concluded with a Caucasian investigator talking with the Worthington Chief of Police and a Representative from the MN State Department... the Worthington law officials claiming they have reported the problem to the state, the state reporting it has not been told... [5:00 minutes - longest story on tonight's news] ... clear opportunity for conversation about ethnicity...

Tornadoes in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Georgia [30 seconds] ... footage included wreckage and one 10 second interview...

Myanmar (Burma) hurricane comment about the death toll and the internal hindrances causing aid from around the world not to be helping fast enough... [10 seconds] ...

Bridge repair in MN [ 30 seconds] ... lane closures will slow traffic tomorrow...

Minnesota sesquitennial celebration ... [1:00 minute] ... footage depicted Native Americans with drums protesting what happened to the Native American population during the time when Minnesota was receiving its statehood... footage of Mr. Bellecourt was shown to follow-up the announcement of the protesting... mention was made that the governor spoke... no footage... AGAIN, clearly an opportunity presents itself to discuss ethnicity...

[16 minutes were used for news stories]

[Weather information followed for 4 minutes.]

A sports' teaser preceded a lengthy set of commercials: 1) Vote 2008, 2) Slumberland, 3) Discount Tires - Michelin, 4) Target, 5) Qwest Business, 6) Slumberland - repeat of the same commercial, 8) Subaru.

Sports began at 10:23. Twins, one minute...men's golf, 45 seconds... women's golf, 25 seconds...
hockey, 15 seconds...

Final ads: 1) HOM, 2) GMC trucks, 3) Mills Fleet Farm, 4) North Dakota tourism, - featuring Native American dancers (contrast to the local story of protest,) 5) AARP.

News ended with an ad for the Jason Davis (upcoming) report from Haiti in On-The-Road.

All but one of the reporters and the news anchors were Caucasian in this news program. The choice of stories demonstrated Kate Brigham's "terms." The ideas I have for how I will use a "news-watching-survey activity" will be included in my final project.

AM