MAGIC at the 28th Gymnasium of Thessaloniki, Greece

Friday, January 10, 2014

Advertising theme description and timetable

Hello dear MAGICians!

It’s about time to move on to our second theme which is advertising. All of us will be working in the following fields: TV, radio, magazine, Internet, junk mail and billboard (or street) advertisements or, to keep it short, ads.

Learning Objectives

Through the completion of this theme you will be able to:

Understand the intersection of ads and art and their impact on consumerism.
Develop criteria for determining statements of opinion and practice discerning statements of opinion in advertisements.
Identify types of ads, analyse them, and respond to them.
Analyse the persuasive techniques in ads
Discover the rules of ads and check whether certain type of them bent or not the rules.
Create your own artistic interpretations of advertisements, present them, and reflect upon the nature of consumerism in your lives.

Weekly topics

Week 1: Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising: January 14 - 20
Weeks 2 & 3: Fact vs. opinions in ads: January 21 - February 3
Week 4: Truth in ads - Understanding the media: February 4 - 10
Week 5: Persuasive techniques in ads: February 11 -17
Week 6: Consumerism, ads and art intersection & rules in ads: February 18 - 24
Week 7: Creation of a marketing campaign of students choice: February 25 - March 3
Week 8: In class presentation of campaigns - uploading on blogs: March 4 - March 10
Week 9: Review and conclusions: March 11 - March 16

Collaborative tools

As we walk through the theme material you will find ads you want to share with the rest of the students from other countries and reflect on them. So what do you do with them and how do you share them with the rest of us? Well you can pin them using our pinterest board so everyone can see them! Sign up at Pinterest using your facebook or google account.

Also do not forget to regularly check for our facebook group updates and share your comments and ideas!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Theme one: Social media

Students teams have completed working on social media, the first theme of our project. Students were divided in five groups and were given five units - guidelines to follow, material to work and investigate and finally reflect on. Below you may read some of the questions students were faced and the slides they were provided to work with.

Unit 1: What is social media? In this unit students had to explore some of the popular types of social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and then try to find what are their differences and/or similarities. They were also proposed to watch a couple of recommended videos and write what most surprised them and/or what is their opinion. Finally they were invited to check out http://mystarbucksidea.force.com for some interesting practice ideas and discuss them with their classmates. They all had to share their findings with their Comenius classmates. Here are the slides of Unit 1.

Unit 2: School policies. Working on this unit students had to find their school website, whether it embraces any types of social media to it and if it hosts webpages in other languages than Greek. In order to get to know their classmates from abroad they were proposed to start at magicteachersthess.blogspot.gr and then try to locate and access their Comenius classmates school websites reporting if these websites provide a good idea of how their school work. They also had to access two educatioanl websites: 1) http://edubuzz.org/about/ and share with their classmates what strikes them most about it and 2) Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall website and discuss why this is a very progressive in social media school. So should or shouldn’t set up a school social media account and which social media account would you suggest for their school and why. Here are the slides of Unit 2.
Unit 3: Pedagogical aspects. Students were invited to watch a short video on education reform and discuss in which ways it challenges the traditional models of education. Another issue to explore was cultural relevance. Based on the hypothesis that “young people are engaged when they are learning about things or with things that they can relate to or that are relevant to them”, students should give examples of the above statement from their own experience and share them on their blogs. Real-time data is a hot topic in social media so they were invited to share some ways of using Twitter in their classrooms. Collaboration may be achieved by using Google Apps for Education and Google Plus tools to assist with learning and teaching. Finally students were invited to investigate in which ways can blogs and YouTube channels provide an audience for student’s work. Here are the slides of Unit 3.
Unit 4: Internet safety and responsible use. The main issues discussed in this unit were privacy and digital footprints. Students were invited to comment on the following statements: “Not only pupils, but also teachers need to think before they post” and “Schools should teach pupils how to analyse and evaluate the reliability of online information, how to reference the sources they use, and how to safeguard one’s privacy when using social media”. Here are the slides of Unit 4.
Unit 5: Challenges to adoption. In this unit students had to consider what is a school social media policy and discuss if it is necessary for their school. They were also invited to work in teams to create a stand-alone policy with things/rules to include, consider some technical challenges of social media adoption and locate which ICT organisations cooperate with schools for Internet safety. Here are the slides of Unit 5.

All conclusions were sent to MAGIC 1 team that has to summarise them and upload them on their blog.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Workshops in Tilburg!

One of the most interesting parts of our visit were the three workshops organised by our Dutch partners. One of them was about the presentation of the French mockumentary by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick. It features some surprising guest appearances, most notably by Donald Rumsfeld, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Vernon Walters, Buzz Aldrin and Stanley Kubrick's widow, Christiane Kubrick.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Visit to the Odulphuslyceum, Tilburg

This is a photo with all MAGIC Comenius students and teachers that visited the Odulphuslyceum in Tilburg!

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Visit to the De Pont Museum

While in Tilburg, the Netherlands , our Comenius team visited the De Pont Museum of contemporary art.

You are welcome to vies a short video from our visit!

Monday, December 9, 2013

The Dark Side of the Moon

While in Tilburg the Comenius teams followed three interesting workshops. One of them was about the "Dark Side of the Moon", the French mockumentary by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick. It features some surprising guest appearances, most notably by Donald Rumsfeld, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Vernon Walters, Buzz Aldrin and Stanley Kubrick's widow, Christiane Kubrick.

While watching the documentaire students were invited to complete a work sheet and reflect on what they watched.

Our visit to the Netherlands

Between the 26th of November and 3rd of December the MAGIC Comenius teams were met in the Netherlands! The educational visit proved a great experience for all students and teachers teams.