Adolescent Interview-Chris Age 15

 I conducted an interview with Chris who is age 15 lives in Indian Harbour Beach Florida and a freshman in high school.  Chris is an avid skate boarder and basketball player on his school team.


Below are the questions I asked him via e-mail, our original plan to meet via face time didn't work out since he was on spring break and visiting his Dad.

Chris uses an iphone as his main electronic source. He states that he is only on social media for about 15 minutes a day, and uses snapchat and instagram.  He is an avid watcher of you tube videos on skating and basketball and likes to shop on RageOn and Adidas.  He does play video games but not the games I expected he plays NBA2k15, Robot unicorn attack 2 (which I had never heard of). his younger 11 year old brother is an avid World of Warcraft player and I thought Chris maybe of been playing that game too.

In school Chris is in honors classes, he states that the Internet is used in Marketing and a World History Honors class which are two of the 7 classes he takes in his high school. He uses the internet rather than the library to do research and prefers ebooks; "eBooks because it's easier to get to the information you need faster than regular books. You can also save information from eBooks to print out and make copies of. " He does not use blogs in his classes nor does he follow any blogs. He will begin to start to study for the SAT soon and said he will prefer to prepare online for this exam. When asked if he feels that he could be distracted when doing research on the internet he stated " Yes, but I can move around them efficiently."

Chris said that he does post photos and other personal information to social media via his iphone. He said that he mostly posts about skating and other athletic activities. He doesn't accept friend requests from people he doesn't know. He is aware of the dangers of social media and his parents have spoken to him regarding internet safety. He is familiar with the term cyber bulling but has not been effected by it. He only shares his passwords with his parents. One thing that concerned me is that he isn't concerned about any internet privacy issues.

When asked about his personal relationships I was happy to learn that he feels more comfortable with physical relationships than those online. He shares his online interests with his friends in the physical space but again enjoys being with people more than being online. When asked how he would feel if for 30 days he would have no access to the internet his response was "I would be fine, I can go without it." That was not the answer I was expecting to be honest but I'm happy to know he feels like that.

Chris is an exceptional kid, I have been friends with his mom over 20 years and watched him grow up. I'm usually on the mom side of the conversation learning from her his likes and dislikes. His parents do a wonderful job keeping him and his brother engaged in family activities especially living in Florida they are able to enjoy the weather year round. They are a family who surfs, rock climbs, skateboards and camps together and has dinner as a family and my friend stated that at night internet usage by both children is monitored and done in the same room as the parents. I'm sure that I may have learned a bit more if I wasn't his mom's friend and he maybe telling me what he thinks I may want to hear but I do know that as a family they are committed to "family time" and I think that and his interest in sports keeps him more engaged in offline relationships.

Media Education-Participatory Culture, Video Gaming and Real World Skills

Media Education Post

   The article Participatory Culture, Video Gaming and “Real World skills” details how many researchers believe that video gaming provide players valuable skills that can be transferred into real world settings.  Educators have differing opinions on the merits of video gaming and question their effectiveness.  Video games fall into collaborative problem solving which is one of the four forms of Jenkins’ participatory culture; it’s described as working together in teams, formal and informal, completing tasks and developing new knowledge through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, or spoiling.  The research in this article took 40 participants who played world of warcraft and asked them to identify how much they used the following real world life skills while playing the game; knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  The study found that the forty participant’s skills used the most while playing were analysis, synthesis and evaluation. 

  This articles key issued can be interpreted by using Green’s approach to literacy.  Culturally the players must understand the content and the context of the game to continue to play and succeed.  Operationally players must use the language system (the rules) of the game they play to decode and incode a range of texts.  Players need to follow the rules to be able to play the game and to understand the prompts that they are given throughout the game to continue to play.  Finally video games use critical thinking to ask questions of themselves and others when playing the game, to inquire and to construct their own method of success while playing.

  Although this is not a large study by any means it does open up the doors for discussion on the validity that these types of virtual reality video games have for use in the classroom. I agree that according to Jenkins’ theory of participatory culture the skills that gamers acquire through gaming can be beneficial both within the game and in the classroom and into the future as they will need critical thinking and the ability to make and evaluate decisions.  One could say that these skills are priceless and the place to learn them would be in conjunction with traditional school and virtually through a video game.  That learning these types of skills through gaming is a benefit and that trial and error learned virtually could better prepare students for their future.  My only concern is that many of the teenagers I know spend countless hour’s online playing video games and not enough time in the real world to use the skills that they are learning virtually.  The advantage of these skills learned online I believe are only beneficial if students are spending an equal amount of time in the real world.

References:Brown, K. T., Mino, M., Cooper, J. E., & Bertelsen, E. (2007). Participatory Culture, Video Gaming, and "Real World" Skills.International Journal Of The Humanities, 5(5), 1-10.

I choose to deconstruct the Shopkins commercial.  Shopkins are a collectible toy geared toward girls who are age 5+
Shopkins Commerical

Observations
This commercial is geared toward girls with its colorful pink tones and colorful pink and girly bubble type lettering.  The only gender represented is female.  The girl in the commercial is age appropriate for the product.  Shopkins are listed for ages 5+ on the packaging.  The girl in the commercial is wearing an outfit which is complimentary to the colors which are used throughout the commercial.  Her outfit doesn’t distract from the product but compliments the coloring.  She has a happy expression throughout the commercial as you would imagine a child would be playing with their favorite toy.  The camera pans in and out to show the 148 toys that that can be collected.

Assumptions the ad makes

The commercial and the product are assuming that girls will be interested in collecting shopkins since they are female and since women are the traditional grocery shoppers in the family.  The assumption is that girls will want to emulate their mothers and will be interested in this type of toy.    The commercial for this product continues to maintain many of the stereotypes that are prevalent in girl’s products today. The toys are bright pink and the commercial is in pastel and candy colors.  The logo is in a big bubbly font.  The commercial only features a female and the products are all grocery store items.  The accessories are pink shopping carts and pastel blue shopping bags. 

Possible Consequences

Unfortunately we as parents buy items that we may not always agree with.  As a parent to a little girl I have always been very gender aware when buying toys.  I’m not a fan of buying the pink colored blocks or the pink telescope.  Unfortunately as the years have gone by and many Christmas and birthdays have past my daughter has received many of those items along with a whole arsenal of princess attire.  We have tried to do our best to buy “boys” toys for her on each holiday and to make sure that our home has an equal number of gender neutral items such as trains, trucks, cars, army men.  Reality is that as great as that is she still is drawn to pink and pretty girly things and loves to collect things.  Shopkins for her are fun and something she can relate too because she goes grocery shopping with both of her parents and actually enjoys shopping.  She is at an age where belonging is important and since these toys are the “hot toy” she feels like she is special.  The ad creates unrealistic expectations in that your child is never going to collect 148 items and the commercial shows them as a close up so that when the child sees the commercial they get more excited seeing what they could collect.  At 4.99 each (for a set of 2) that’s an expensive collectable that will probably only last a few months.