Our group has completed our planned fun night over a month ago at Madison Elementary on October 10th which took place from 6:30 till 8:00. We all participated in different activities during the fun night with the diverse groups of children present. We interacted with these children by participating in the many activities that we had planned.
Since our project we feel that we are better able to understand why kids act they way they do. Since our interaction with children and their parents at Madison Elementary we find through watching other kids we can get some sort of grasp on how they might have been raised. We are better able to estimate the upbringing of children from viewing their interactions with other kids and their parents.
If parents aren’t there to reach to their children and do activities with them and just allow them to watch TV all the time then they will model themselves after the media they have been exposed to. Mass media affects children in many ways. The word mass implies a large number of recipients of the same message and part of mass media is advertising, marketing and entertainment. Children are affected so greatly by mass media because of the visual and colorful aspects they use to entice the younger population. From our own experiences watching children’s shows and what is aimed at children since we have been young we’ve noticed a drastic change in the way media is aimed and portrayed for children. Even in the past ten or so years the visuals and colors have been much more intense and studies have been done to see what attracts children. Mass media has even gone as far as promoting adult products to children just so kids will beg their parents for the product.
Kids now days are also becoming more technologically savvy at a younger age. As a group we reminisced about the fourth grade days when everyone asked each other if they had a computer at home, now fourth graders don’t even go to school without their cell phones. The use of different media at a younger age by children will consequently effect how children view interpersonal communication in the long run.
In conclusion our overall experience at Madison Elementary has incorporated many ethical concepts and theories throughout this term. It was a fun, interesting and valuable experience interacting with these children and learning a little bit more about how upbringing effect s overall perspective and communicative relationship with others.
http://z.hubpages.com/u/160070_f248.jpg
www.childdevelopmentinfo.com
www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopment/
11 comments:
Since we completed our fun night about a month ago, it's a little harder to relate terms directly to the fun night itself. The terms to be used now are more or less related to how our experience at Madison Elementary as impacted my every day interactions with diverse people.
The first term I am going to use is intercultural communication, which is basically communication between at least two people from different cultures. As an adult, communication with other adults of different cultures is a lot like speaking with and interacting with children. When you are communicating with someone from a different cultural you adapt your speaking to fit the person of a different culture. In turn, communicating with children, like at Madison Elementary, is using intercultural communication. My experience at Madison Elementary has brought me out of my box as far as intercultural communication goes. I can adapt and see what different verbal and nonverbal cues are given to communication effectively.
The second term that relates to my experience at Madison Elementary is gatekeeping, a term used in Mass Communication. Essentially, gatekeeping is the term used to decide what to print and what not to print. In this day in age, children are exposed to a lot of print and other media. I can look at gatekeeping in two ways when interacting with the children at Madison Elementary. One, because children are exposed to media everyday, is every thing that is printed appropriate? Was gatekeeping effective? In all instances, no it was not. This is where interacting with the children could get tough depending on what they were exposed to that perhaps they shouldn't have been; for example, violence on T.V. I remember when I was little if I saw something inappropriate on TV I would always remember that my parents said it wasn't real and that it is just TV. Some children watch TV as if it is their real life. They learn from TV. So, if gatekeeping were tighter, would TV have the same negative effect on children? This is sort of a stretch, but I also look at gatekeeping in a way that controls what I should and should not say or do. While working with the children at Madison Fun night, conversation was limited for "adult language" and censored because of our surroundings. I am not saying that we have filthy mouths, but controlling and deciding what language and actions to say and use and vice versa is an example of gatekeeping for my self.
The last term to relate to the Madison Elementary fun night is Ideal Speech Situation. This term is used in the chapter of Communication Ethics and Disabilities. Ideal Speech Situation occurs when restraints are put on communication or discussion. There were no children with disabilities that I worked with at the fun night however, I am much older than the children so I had to adjust the way I communicated with them as opposed to how I communicate with my friends and other adults. I followed rules one through three while demonstrating an ideal speech situation. The first is defining the set of potential participants, which were all of the children, and their parents that attended the fun night. Rule two is guarantee all participants have an equal opportunity. I did this, which was tough at times. The toughest part was treating the children fairly when there were a few children that wanted to keep getting back in line and not allowing the other children to get their turn at the fishing wall. The third rule sets down conditions under which the rights for equal participation for all. This was demonstrated through my instruction to the children when they were doing something that wasn’t allowing their peers to have equal participate of the fishing wall.
This experience at Madison Elementary opened my eyes to the possibility of theory relating to anything.
One thing that relates diversity with communication that I have been thinking about lately is how does the availability of technology to children at younger and younger ages effect how they will communicate with others? When I attended elementary school it was common for households to not posses personal computers nor cell phones even for the parents of the children. Computer mediated communication and communication technology are terms our text uses to describe communication through mediums such as the computer and cell phones. Kids in elementary school now are using technology to communicate and because of their age it may have an impact on their perceptions of communication and ethics for some of the following reasons.
First, an example of how technology has affected me that our text brings up, an effect that may be amplified for younger children, is how keyboarding for an extended period of time without a need to write longhand can lead to deteriorated grammar and spelling. There is no such thing as spell check and grammar check on a piece of paper. With technology things are done for you easily without the need to think which may negatively affect these younger children.
Another ethical issue our text brings up is the availability and ease of cheating with new technology, specifically cell phones. Since kids have cell phones at younger ages they may become used to cheating on assignments or may not see the ethical significance of cheating because they are so young. Kids that cheat when they are young may rely on it to get them through tests in subjects that they need to know later in life and may not realize that they are cheating themselves out of an education until it is too late.
A final ethical issue that correlates to technology and younger children is how children’s susceptibility and innocence can be manipulated with ease by online predators. Children do not understand how powerful of an impact things like communicating with strangers over the Internet can have on their lives, if they even know they are communicating with strangers at all. Our text offers an example of this with the case study in which a girl believes she is going to be meeting a boy at the mall but luckily turns out to be a detective instead of a predator. It is important for parents that have the Internet to monitor their children online to ensure their safety and innocence. Hopefully, young children like the ones we put on our fun night for will realize sooner than later how large of an effect communicating with others through the medium of technology can have on their lives.
I agree with your groups thoughts about people especially children being influenced by the media. So often children are just set in front of a television and told to entertain themselves because parents, babysitters or day care providers are busy with something else.
Not all media is negative. There are several programs that can entertain children while teaching them things as well. But there are things on television and the internet that children should not be exposed to. And naturally kids are curious and will look into things if they are not under supervision. And a lot of people do not realize how much the media shapes people, even at a young age.
This post could use more specific terms in relation to your experiences, though we too had trouble remembering specific parts of the experience because the event was so long ago.
3. The blog focuses on children and mass media. Although much of what is on television is inappropriate there are many positive, educational television shows for children. Two very popular television shows Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go are good examples. These programs are informative and teach children Spanish, about animal, and how to be a good friend. A different aspect of TV shows for children are the commercials during the shows. Many of these are commercials are about food, toys, and clothing. They are portrayed as “cool” and that the children tell their parents they have to have the item. This shows the negative side of the media and children.
4. I found a some pictures and links that could enhance this blog.
This first website is about a study done on educational television shows for children. I found this interesting because they study says most “educational” TV. shows aren’t educational at all.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/102421.php
Another website I found is about the media and family and the relationship between violence and the media. There are many interesting facts listed that could change the way parents may feel about TV and how much they are going to let their children watch.
http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_vlent.shtml
This picture shows how the some children seemed to be almost obsessed with television.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/10/kidsTV_228x334.jpg
Another picture I found shows that the commercial was geared toward children.
http://www.gmp-vfx.com/www/worldwide/img/productions/easter05.jpg
Our group hosted a Family Fun Night at Madison Elementary School a little over a month ago for our group project. I feel that there are many terms from our class that can be applied to our project. The first term that I feel relates to our project is Intercultural Communication. Our textbook describes Intercultural Communication as, “… interactions between at least two people, each from different identifiable cultures” (158). I believe that this term applies to our project because the children at Madison, along with some of the adults helping our group, we from different cultural backgrounds. When dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds you have to keep in mind some differences that may arise, such as what is considered to be appropriate social behavior or even language barriers. I believe that our group worked well when it came to some of the cultural differences that we faced while we were at Family Fun Night.
Another term that I found from class that relates to our project is email ethics. Not everyone in our group lives in Winona. Many of us also have jobs, making it hard to find time when we all could get together to work on our project. Because of this we often relied on email as a way to get in touch with each other and let each other know what progress and issues we were having. Communicating ethically through email was something that we did as a group. We were able to stay in contact with each other and were mindful of what is considered ethical when communication through emails.
The last term from our textbook that I feel applies to our Madison project is Gatekeeping. This is when people decide what to say to the public and what spin, if any, to put on it. A lot of time and effort went into planning this event. Posters were made and sent home with the children at Madison Elementary explaining Family Fun Night and some of the games to expect to be there. We did not think that it would be appropriate to list all of the activities that we were planning on having, instead we decided to give a broad overview of what would be taking place that evening.
Family Fun Night at Madison Elementary School was a great success and I feel that it was partly due to the ethical choices that we as a group made. We took into consideration the diverse group of people that we would be working with and how best to ethically interact with them.
Having completed our group activity over a month ago it is a bit harder to relate current ideas from class to the event. However, with the general theme of communicating and interacting with children in mind, there are several terms that are applicable. The first idea that I feel applies is intercultural communications, which is simply communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. During the Madison Elementary Family Fun Night there were families of several different cultures and as with any communication situation it was easy to notice subtle differences in the way that they communicated with each other. However, although there may be noticeable differences between communications in different cultures it does not alter the way that I myself communicate with others. Sticking to the life rule of treating everyone with the same respect and communicating the same way with everyone still definitely applied while volunteering at the Family Fun Night.
The second current theme from class that I think is interesting when dealing with communications with children is Technological Ethics. Children today are exposed almost constantly to current technologies such as computers, the Internet, email, and cell phones. With these types of technologies being the norm of communication children are exposed to things like explicitly sexual marketing, age-inappropriate materials, and online predators much more abundantly than people my age were as children. I think that this effects today’s childrens communication negatively because since the technologies are so ever-present the dangers behind them are taken lightly. It seems that not enough precautions are taught or given to children by their parents on using these technologies given the risks. It isn’t out of the ordinary to see even elementary aged children today texting on cell phones and chatting on the Internet. I believe that parents need to intercede and regulate more when dealing with these things when children are so young so that they are educated on the possible risks they face.
The final thing that I think ties in almost directly with the idea of technological ethics is that of Gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is basically people within the media making decisions as to what is and what isn’t okay to print in newspapers, magazines, and internet ads, as well as what is okay to be shown on TV shows and commercials. Once again focusing on children being exposed to more vulgar materials through today’s technologies I feel that Gatekeeping may be too lax for children and that parents should be involved with teaching their children what is appropriate and what is not and controlling more of what exactly their children are exposed to. As a volunteer at the Family Fun Night I myself had to act as a Gatekeeper upon myself with the language that I used and the way that I behaved. I think that self-editing or Gatekeeping is an important skill to have when dealing with communications with children.
Thinking back to our family fun night a month ago, I think about how much communication with young children has changed since the invention of technology. The way children learn drastically changes throughout time, even just from when I was in elementary school. Many kids are taught how to do things by the use of computers these days even before they are school age. Through the development of computers for kids, such as leapster, children learn how to communicate with a machine even before they might learn to communicate with people. It is very interesting to look at how fast times change and how that affects many other aspects such as education and socialization. Because technology is not available to all children, situational ethics also play a big part on how children learn and what modes of learning they get to utilize. There are always barriers that you may face when it comes to raising children and trying to educate them as best as you know how. Everyone has different situations that arise in their lives and different backgrounds that may clash when communicating with diverse others. It is really fascinating to have actually gotten to learn about how to communicate with children and why they may be the way they are because of life differences through our event. I think I am I person that really holds ethics of care highly in my belief system and therefore believe a lot in nurture. I have very strong feelings on how I believe children should be educated through communicate and almost feel that technology has become a slight barrier in the learning process. Advances in technology have taught kids that communicating through their phones and computers is the natural way of having a conversation and I have a hard time facing that reality. Call me old fashioned, but I’m really apprehensive on depending on technology for most of our means and wish that people would keep old tradition values in mind.
I think the group did a good job on their links, covering the issue of parental involvement well. The only thing I would like to see different was that I felt there were a few statements that were said as a sort of common sense fact, and I might not have necessarily agreed, or I might not have seen the study. Links covering those ideas would have been appropriate.
5. I would say that the group’s reflections are very good, but could perhaps use a bit more evidence behind them. There were a few claims I found that sounded like they were just stated as accepted fact, but might not have really been agreed on by everyone.
“If parents aren’t there to reach to their children and do activities with them and just allow them to watch TV all the time then they will model themselves after the media they have been exposed to.” This is probably pretty well known, but I still feel that more specific facts related to this issue might be an appropriate link to follow up with. I feel that many people would refute this claim as it is, perhaps saying that no matter how much TV a child receives, they will still look to their parents for examples. I should note that I personally do agree with the groups argument, I just suggest a link might be a good idea.
“Even in the past ten or so years the visuals and colors have been much more intense and studies have been done to see what attracts children. Mass media has even gone as far as promoting adult products to children just so kids will beg their parents for the product.” I’m not exactly sure what the group means by adult products, but this claim I felt was also said as though it were just fact, and could use some evidence. The group might link us to one of the studies they referenced for support.
“As a group we reminisced about the fourth grade days when everyone asked each other if they had a computer at home, now fourth graders don’t even go to school without their cell phones.” I found this one particularly surprising, and would, again, love to see the data behind this. I had no idea that fourth graders were all carrying cell phones, but I’d be curious to hear what percentage do.
I do think the group had a several great points, and for the most part I have noticed the same things the group had cited, particularly how important parent interaction is in the development of children.
4. To go along with a couple of my previous points, here are two links to sites with more information on things the group mentioned:
This site not only cites specific facts about TV, but also offers alternatives:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elementary/?article=toomuchtv
I found this article interesting on the effect of TV on children.
I think the group did a good job on their links, covering the issue of parental involvement well. The only thing I would like to see different was that I felt there were a few statements that were said as a sort of common sense fact, and I might not have necessarily agreed, or I might not have seen the study. Links covering those ideas would have been appropriate.
5. I would say that the group’s reflections are very good, but could perhaps use a bit more evidence behind them. There were a few claims I found that sounded like they were just stated as accepted fact, but might not have really been agreed on by everyone.
“If parents aren’t there to reach to their children and do activities with them and just allow them to watch TV all the time then they will model themselves after the media they have been exposed to.” This is probably pretty well known, but I still feel that more specific facts related to this issue might be an appropriate link to follow up with. I feel that many people would refute this claim as it is, perhaps saying that no matter how much TV a child receives, they will still look to their parents for examples. I should note that I personally do agree with the groups argument, I just suggest a link might be a good idea.
“Even in the past ten or so years the visuals and colors have been much more intense and studies have been done to see what attracts children. Mass media has even gone as far as promoting adult products to children just so kids will beg their parents for the product.” I’m not exactly sure what the group means by adult products, but this claim I felt was also said as though it were just fact, and could use some evidence. The group might link us to one of the studies they referenced for support.
“As a group we reminisced about the fourth grade days when everyone asked each other if they had a computer at home, now fourth graders don’t even go to school without their cell phones.” I found this one particularly surprising, and would, again, love to see the data behind this. I had no idea that fourth graders were all carrying cell phones, but I’d be curious to hear what percentage do.
I do think the group had a several great points, and for the most part I have noticed the same things the group had cited, particularly how important parent interaction is in the development of children.
4. To go along with a couple of my previous points, here are two links to sites with more information on things the group mentioned:
This site not only cites specific facts about TV, but also offers alternatives:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elementary/?article=toomuchtv
I found this article interesting on the effect of TV on children.
I just noticed my link got cut off... I'm not sure what happened to my original link, but I can't find it now... so here's a new one!
This is a study done by the Federal Trade Comission on the "Children's Exposure to TV Advertising." It's focused on obesity, but it has some segments that are relevent:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2007/06/cabecolor.pdf
The Madison School Fun Night was an interesting project to undertake. Thinking back to my own experiences in Elementary school and growing up and comparing it to the environment today's children are growing up in makes me realize how much things have changed in the last 15-20 years. Chapter 13 in our book covered a lot of interesting aspects of communication and technology. One thing it said was that advances in technology may be making people numb to ethical considerations or risks of electronic communication. It is not all that uncommon nowadays for the younger generations to have access to cell phones and instant messaging. Younger kids are often fairy trusting and, as the chapter 13 case study showed, can be susceptible to being deceived.
The Digital Divide is another topic from Chapter 13 and is a real key issue in today's society as the use of technology increases and as the job market here in the States shifts away from traditional labor jobs towards information and service jobs that require higher degrees of education. I've worked in very different school districts. Some are more affluent while others are clearly behind or underfunded in appearance.
As the use of technology becomes more prevalent among the rising generations, ethical questions must be raised about the influence of the media. The gatekeeping function of the media comes to mind as the media is a powerful influence in shaping public opinion. When the media portrays stereotypes or represents the truth inaccurately it is tough for children to tell the difference. Since children are being exposed to the media more often and in larger quantities then previous generations it becomes even more imperative that we help children see and think for themselves to protect them.
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