Artifact 5

The Ethnography project I completed is a web page that I created with six of my classmates in order to present the information we learned from weeks of data collection at a local elementary school. It focuses on children and the media, school gear, the children's reactions to the events of September 11, 2001, and lastly, the corporate sponsorship evident in the school setting.

Context
This Ethnography project was created in the Fall of 2001 under the instruction of Jeff Goodman in Curriculum and Instruction 3750. The media I used to create the web page were Netscape Composer, digital camera, Adobe Photoshop 5.0 and Netscape Navigator. I interviewed kindergarten, first, and second grade students at the school on their preferences regarding television shows, commercials, candy and how much time they spent watching television at home.

Impact
Having the opportunity to work on this project was an absolute eye-opener. I now have a more keen eye when I visit schools as to the media influences that impact those schools daily. Even a mere Coca-Cola machine is evidence of corporate sponsorship that was simply not as immediately obvious to me before I completed this project.

A way in which it will impact me as a future teacher is the way in which I will be more aware of the choices I have to incorporate media influences in my classroom as well as the rest of the school. I plan to implement such a project for my students so that they can become more aware of the media influences that linger in their everyday surroundings. I can offer the children a chance to walk around the school and use digital cameras, video and still, to enable them the chance to discover all of the influences around them that do effect them as consumers.

Also, the students can conduct interviews just as I did with their peers and figure out all of the main media influences in their school. The students can present their materials to their parents, peers, and the community through the creation of a web page.

Alignment
Through this Ethnography Project, I was given an opportunity in which to fly in any way I wished. My group and I chose to use a digital camera to collect images, interviews to collect data, and a web page to display our findings to maximize our learning of the media influences and ethnography involved in the school. This project is great evidence of my ability to collect data, analyze that data, interpret the results, and communicate the findings technologically to maximize my learning (Goal IVB) and give me a chance to come up with ways I can use the same type of activity to maximize my students learning.

An Ethnography project such as this one will aide children in recognizing positive and negative uses of media and technology uses in their everyday environments (Goal VID). It will aide in continuing efforts to promote safe and healthy use of technology resources in a classroom.