Mastering Media – The Sequel

One of the ASEF ClassNet Award winning projects at the 6th ASEF ClassNet Conference, this project was aimed at mainly senior high school students (16-19-year-olds). Young people spend a lot of their free time watching movies, as was revealed in our survey from the previous year. Are films just ‘chewing gum for the eyes’ or are young people equipped to interpret and analyze the messages they are sent through this entertaining medium? Young people need to learn how to access, analyze, and evaluate media more effectively. Most importantly, they need to be guided to be critical about the information overload surrounding them; not just print but visual messages, too, since in today’s virtual reality and computer simulations “seeing is not believing”.

Today’s technologies frequently make it difficult for us to discern illusion from reality, fact from fiction. Responsible citizens need to possess the ability to question the accuracy and authenticity of information in all its forms. The students saw some films from new cultures, instead of the overflow of mass produced Hollywood films. Students were then given tools to analyze films and to spot national stereotypes, and how not to let them guide their thinking and interpretation. Analyzing a globally popular film together helped students identify the values and ideologies these films try to persuade them to buy into. The teachers then provided worksheets and instructions to guide students through the project tasks.