I checked in to the conference at 8:15, I had the hardest time waking up that morning. I found some girls from our class and we sat together waiting for the conference to start. I was already ready to go back to bed.
The first workshop that I picked to go to was Marco McWilliam's "The Media Made Me Do It." There were a number of students from our class in this workshop so I felt comfortable. I really liked this workshop. Marco talked about the different messages that the media portrays in advertising. He started his presentation with a number of interesting statistics. For example, "children 2-5 view more than 32 hours of television a week." That is more hours than I work in a week!! If children this young are watching this much TV, that means that they are absolutely subject to the images that are shown by the media. This scares me. Granted the more explicit advertising occurs late at night, but I have seen many erectile disfunction commercials during daytime television. My dad would say "kids that young don't know what these things mean so they don't pay attention anyway." I disagree with him. Just the other day I was watching the movie Sorority Boys at home on network television and there are a number of dirty scenes in this movie. Some images weren't even blurred out. When my younger brother and sister walked in the room I jumped up to grab the remote and change the channel. My dad yelled at me. He said "Jessica, they don't know what that is or what it means, when you make a big deal of it that's when they realize its bad...its psychology!" (That's his favorite phrase, even though he doesn't really know too much about psychology.) However, my sister is 13 years old, there are girls that are pregnant in her grade. She absolutely knows about these things! My brother is 9 and is very perceptive. He knows more than we assume.
Anyway, I went off on a tangent. I really liked how Marco showed images and asked us to describe what we saw. He showed us this image
Powerful stuff huh? I couldn't believe it when I saw this. He showed other images that showed the belittling of women and such. I really liked this talk. I was sad that it seemed to end quickly.
The next workshop I went to was called "The Power of Numbers." I picked it when I registered because I thought it sounded interesting. I wasn't quite sure what to expect though. This workshop was held in a computer lab. One of the first things that the instructor asked us to do was to take out our cell phones and to text a code that summarized our feelings about math to a specific number. What was really cool was that as people began texting, a poll was adding up on the smart board! I have never seen anything like that before, I was really impressed. Anyway, the point of this was to see how people think of math. The instructor then went on to talk about different things that can hold an illiterate person back in life. In small groups we created lists and shared them with the other groups. Then she said what are the problems that people who can't "read" or work with numbers are? What types of issues might and innumerate person suffer from in life? I had never really thought of it that way but when you do think about it, many important things in life involve numbers and calculation such as paying bills and doing taxes.
I really liked this workshop as well and it also went by pretty fast. So far I was really enjoying my experience at the Promising Practices Conference.
Next was lunch and the keynote speech. The food was great! The best food I've had at Donovan so far. And the speech by Tricia Rose was FANTASTIC! I love how she incorporated so many stories in her speech. That type of storytelling speech keeps me engaged and interested. Also, when I can think of a real life application of these different theories I tend to understand the points more. I feel like everything that she said somehow connected to everything we have learned in class so far and that was exciting! Also, I really liked the pledge she made us take also. She was really insightful and her speech, which seemed to be mainly on the spot improvisation, was so smooth!
I was able to connect so much of what I learned at the conference to many of the theories that we have learned in class. One of my main connections was Christensen to the Marco McWilliams workshop. In her piece, Christensen talks about the power of the media and how to interpret it so that you can recognize the stereotypes and oppression that are present. Marco did the exact same thing.
I was able to connect Tricia Rose to so many of the author's theories from class. The main one that stuck out to me was Johnson. Johnson argues that we must learn to say the words and that we should not get defensive about racism. Both of these point directly relate to Tricia Rose's speech. First, she kept saying that we need to learn how to "unpack" the difficult issues in class. We cannot just breeze over them like they never happened. We need to learn to say the words and explain. Also Tricia Rose's pledge made us promise not to feel directly responsible or guilty for racism, but instead to be the change which is another of Johnson's points.
I am really glad that I had the opportunity to go to the conference. I found it really interesting and I learned a lot.
The next workshop I went to was called "The Power of Numbers." I picked it when I registered because I thought it sounded interesting. I wasn't quite sure what to expect though. This workshop was held in a computer lab. One of the first things that the instructor asked us to do was to take out our cell phones and to text a code that summarized our feelings about math to a specific number. What was really cool was that as people began texting, a poll was adding up on the smart board! I have never seen anything like that before, I was really impressed. Anyway, the point of this was to see how people think of math. The instructor then went on to talk about different things that can hold an illiterate person back in life. In small groups we created lists and shared them with the other groups. Then she said what are the problems that people who can't "read" or work with numbers are? What types of issues might and innumerate person suffer from in life? I had never really thought of it that way but when you do think about it, many important things in life involve numbers and calculation such as paying bills and doing taxes.
I really liked this workshop as well and it also went by pretty fast. So far I was really enjoying my experience at the Promising Practices Conference.
Next was lunch and the keynote speech. The food was great! The best food I've had at Donovan so far. And the speech by Tricia Rose was FANTASTIC! I love how she incorporated so many stories in her speech. That type of storytelling speech keeps me engaged and interested. Also, when I can think of a real life application of these different theories I tend to understand the points more. I feel like everything that she said somehow connected to everything we have learned in class so far and that was exciting! Also, I really liked the pledge she made us take also. She was really insightful and her speech, which seemed to be mainly on the spot improvisation, was so smooth!
I was able to connect so much of what I learned at the conference to many of the theories that we have learned in class. One of my main connections was Christensen to the Marco McWilliams workshop. In her piece, Christensen talks about the power of the media and how to interpret it so that you can recognize the stereotypes and oppression that are present. Marco did the exact same thing.
I was able to connect Tricia Rose to so many of the author's theories from class. The main one that stuck out to me was Johnson. Johnson argues that we must learn to say the words and that we should not get defensive about racism. Both of these point directly relate to Tricia Rose's speech. First, she kept saying that we need to learn how to "unpack" the difficult issues in class. We cannot just breeze over them like they never happened. We need to learn to say the words and explain. Also Tricia Rose's pledge made us promise not to feel directly responsible or guilty for racism, but instead to be the change which is another of Johnson's points.
I am really glad that I had the opportunity to go to the conference. I found it really interesting and I learned a lot.
Really excellent job describing the day and all that you got out of it. Such a great use of the links, images and technology as well. You make good connections to 2 of our class authors and I like the 3 links you chose as well! I hope you will go to Promising Practices again next year!!
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