Monday, February 25, 2013

Knowledge-able - Wesch

Arguement

Wesch argues that kids today in higher education classrooms are not learning how they should be. He says they don't ask the right types of questions, instead the questions are just solely based on how to pass the class. Instead higher education should be teaching today's youth how to navigate the world through the media. He talks about how knowledge floats through the air today, we have so may devices that connect to the internet, and so much at the tips of our fingers, but many of us don't know how to use it all.
He argues that all this media shapes our relationships with everything. Wesch talks about how when the television first came out and the whole living room change to fit the TV into it. It rearranged the lives of American people. The TV also gave the media new control. There weren't many channels, and it was controlled by few, it was there to entertain the masses, and it showed only what the people who controlled it wanted.


Rooms went from looking like the first picture in the 1920's to the next revolving around the TV in the 1930's.

Wesch also talks about the Dove commercial that shows thousands of images of women's bodies, and what women go through to be thin, and so on, and ends with the statement that you should talk to your daughters about these things. The message is a good one in my opinion, you should let young girls know that this is what they're gonna see but they don't have to live up too it. The better message though comes from the spoof video that was made. It actually got Unilever to stop cutting down rainforest for the palm oil that was used in Dove products. I think that choice of media was wonderful. 
Finally, Wesch really argues to teach students to use these forms of media. He wants to embrace the real world problems that students with face. He wants to answer these problems with them, and he hopes by doing this it will help them live their lives. 

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