[Air-L] digital literacy takes a field trip to a farm

Mark D. Johns mjohns at luther.edu
Tue Apr 29 18:06:35 PDT 2008


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



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