Final Class post

Final Post

The semester is over and on to my next class for the summer session. This class has been  different than other classes that I have taken at the Master’s degree level. Some of the reading was a bit confusing and as the semester went on they started to make sense and penetrated my thick skull. I have a new outlook on how I view items such as images for example.

I found myself fascinated by Marshall McLuhan and how far ahead of his time his outlook and predictions were.  Even though, we were assigned one video to view his theory.  I found myself on you tube for hours looking for other videos and interviews with him. I found myself entertained by how smart he was and how every single person who conducted an interview with him could not match wits with him. His view on the world was so much different than anyone  during his era and was even more intrigued by his analyzation of the presidential debate in the 1970’s. His lecture on the medium is the message was spot on and make you sit back and think he is correct.

There were two other assignments in the class that I enjoyed and learned a great deal from, and they were the dissection of the alcohol advertisement and the literacy guide module. The literacy guide assignment came at a good time for me because I am currently trying to teach my kids how to save money. If it were up the then, they would spend it all and keep asking for more. I was able to put together a learning guide for kids and how to save money and banking basics. The dissection of the alcohol add was fun. I was able to find a Corona Beer ad to direct. After going completely the parts of the assignment and answering all of the questions it is amazing how many addition pieces are in a beer commercial. For the longest time I thought the commercial was about the beer. I was not correct in my thoughts. The beer is a small part, how it makes you feel, how and where you may want to go. The commercial has you hope you were the one into commercial or at least into a location where the commercial was filmed while cracking open a cold beer on a nice tropical beach.

The media aspect of this learning experience is what intrigued me in this class, and I do find myself paying more attention to the pictures and advertisements.  The reason is that I have learned that they are more than about the image or the product they are selling. I will continue to be fascinated by influential people like Walt Disney, Milton Hershey and now have added Marshall McLuhan to the list of people that keep my coming back for more.

Literacy Guide

A Guide to a Child’s First Bank Account

Why should I teach my children to save?

Why should I open a bank account as a child?

Why use a bank to save money?

Opening a bank account at a young age can help a child learn how to manage money at an early age

Helps keep them from losing their money

Maintains records of deposits and interest earned on the money in the account

Establish credit in later years that can be used to obtain loans

All banks and credit unions are regulated by the FDIC. All savings institutions are required to comply with the laws of the FDIC which are designed to protect the consumer or saver

The FDIC is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Insures your deposits in regulated financial institutions. This means that your  individual savings account is protected by the federal government in the amount

 up to $250,000 such as bank mismanagement and other banking issues

  

Is a savings account for me?

Yes saving accounts are perfect for kids. Why? Savings accounts provide a safe place to set aside money for the future while in most cases paying you interest on the money in your savings account. Banks accounts a designed for making deposits and limiting the withdrawals of money. For accounts where money will be withdrawn often a checking may be a better choice. Also sometimes when you make frequent withdrawals you may be subject to fees.

How do you open a Savings Account?

Fist ask your parents if you can open a bank account.

Once your parents are ready to help you open a bank account for you to start learning how to save they will need to bring you to the back to open the account for you.

This account will need to be a joint account with your parents as the guardian of the account.

They will need to bring with them items such as a form of government issued ID for example a drivers license or pass port

Your Social security number

They will need to bring the money you have been saving in your piggy bank for your initial deposit into your account.

Who manages your account?

Only those who are registered as account owners when the account was opened with the bank. Most likely this will be you and your parents. No one else will be able to withdraw any money from your account. In some cases they will be the only one who can deposit money into the account.

Still not sure if you should open a bank account

Some banks and even credit unions are more inviting than others which means some may be less scary for you to walk into and some may be fun since your there all the time with your parents. You also can ask your parents to introduce you to the people at the bank that the deal with when they deposit money into their savings accounts.

Getting to know your Bank.

Getting to know your bank and creating a relationship with your bank can help with future needs when you grow up such as Car loans, Credit cards, student loans and even a home mortgage,

Most importantly once you choose a bank and open the bank account. Don’t be afraid to call them for any questions or issues. The people at the bank are there to help you start saving for you future and can answer questions or fix any problems

Watch the Video for more info kids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPvjyC4TSuE

Literacy Guide

Trying to figure out how to attach a word doc to this so I can post the work

Adolescent Interview

Scott Bruno

New Media New Literacy’s

Week 10 Adolescent Interview assignment

Professor Susan Forbes

My Adolescent interview results are below. The interviewees consisted of a handful of teenage girls from my daughter gymnastics team. Their ages ranged from the ages 13 to 16. All of them were asked the below questions in a group at the same time. I conducted the interview this way in an effort to make sure I was receiving truthful information from them, and nothing hidden. I was amazed how quickly they answered and how they all were on the same page with most of the answers the questions and the answers are below for everyone to review. These questions are questions that I asked other family members and friends. The reason I asked friends and family is I wanted to use questions that parents would ask or want to know. In addition to those I added questions that I have used in the Information Security

After the survey, I put together a brief summary of what I learned about the interview process. Again I was very surprised of the results and how willing the girls where to give the answers to the questions.

General Usage of Technology:

What is your favorite website?

Instagram, Twitter, and swap chat

What do you do on these sites?

Post things such as “selfies” or gymnastics related things.

What websites are your friends into these days?

The same ones that I use

Are you ever contacted by someone online that you don’t

know?

Yes

 If yes, what did they want? What did you do? How

did you respond?

They didn’t want much they were mostly other younger gymnasts from other teams trying to get along with our gym and team. I was nice about it, and more than likely did not respond to a question or comment.

Have you ever received a text message from someone that

made you upset?

No

How did you respond?

How do you keep yourself safe online?

We make sure We don’t give out too much personal info and make sure all of our posts/ messages are private and block people who look scary or stalker-like.

Do you get concerned that people will read what others

have written about you online that is not true but think it's

true? 

 Yes

Do you ever talk to anyone online that isn’t in your school?

No

Cyberbullying:

Do you ever argue or post hurtful updates on your Instagram,

Facebook, Twitter or other social media site?

No, because we know better than to get involved in something we don’t need to.

Have you ever had to delete a post or comment on your

Page that was written by someone else?

No

Does cyberbullying happen a lot? Would you feel comfortable

telling me if you were being cyberbullied?

 It does happen a lot and yes I would tell you or another adult right away if something was to pop up.

Do you think your school takes cyberbullying seriously?

Yes, because most schools have multiple assemblies and discussions on cyberbullying

Have you ever had to contact a teacher or someone else at

school because of a cyber-threat? If so, did they do something

about it and did it help?

No I did not need to contact a teacher about a cyberbullying problem

Have rumors ever started about you in school, based on

something said online?

No

Have you ever blocked somebody online because you felt

harassed? If so, did that make it stop?

Yes, we have blocked an old teammate that we never really got along with and when she left the gym we really wanted nothing to do with her and her nasty attitude towards us and to attack my our friends.

Pictures and Images:

Do you send pictures through text? Do you receive pictures?

If so, from who?

Yes. Friends or teammates. It would just be the homework that I missed at school that day or pictures of the team that was on someone's phone that I wanted the pictures

Are kids in school taking a lot of pictures with their cell

phone cameras? What do they do with them?

Yes, but not bad pictures. It would be just a normal picture at school with friends wearing the same clothes or something similar to that. They just post them.

Do you ever Skype or Facetime with friends?

Yes.

Do you use Snapchat? Can you explain to me how it

works?

Yes. You basically take a picture, and you can type only a certain about of words and you can add emoji or turn the text to a different color and you send that to a specific person or groups of people and they see it once and it is never to be seen again. Or you can even post it on your story that will last 24 hour and once the time is up it is gone forever.

Do you think pictures are really completely gone?

No, because somewhere deleted pictures go have to be saved whether it be a hacker or something involving the government.

Have you ever had anyone do or say anything inappropriate

on Skype or Snapchat?

No

Social Networking:

What social networking site do you use most frequently?

How many friends or followers do you have?

 It’s a tie between Instagram and Snap chat. On Instagram, I have 512 followers and on Snapchat I have about 70 friends.    (This was my daughters answer as I did not feel I should post the other kids answers)

What kind of people are you meeting on Instagram and

Facebook?

 I mostly meet people from my school that I don’t talk to in school or other gymnasts from other gyms.

Are you connecting with people that you know?

Yes

Or are you meeting people around the world?

No

Do you get a lot of friends or follow requests from

strangers?  Yes

If so, how are you handling that?

We ignore their request, and if they look scary we block them.

Do you use Twitter? What for? Who do you follow and

who follows you?

Yes. Mostly to look up gymnastics related things and just what people are saying about the latest trends going around. I follow school friends, teammates, and college gymnastics to look up stats about the team. The same people mostly follow back.

Do you know how to use the privacy settings on Instagram,

Facebook and Twitter?

Yes

Do you have them set so that only those you accept as

friends can see what you post? How do you know who can

see your information?

Yes.  It clearly states it in the process of changing your account to private.

Do you feel like social networking sites should be used to

vent your frustrations?

No. because that is what starts rumors and cyberbullying

Do your friends vent on social media?

Yes mostly on Twitter.

Do people comment? What do they say?

Yes. They usually comment on a “selfie” saying how pretty that person is and stuff like that.

What kind of videos are you watching on YouTube?

Do you post videos?  Music videos or gymnastics videos.

I post videos of my gymnastics to get colleges to look into me.

Have you ever reported inappropriate videos that you

have seen on YouTube? Or any other website?

No.

Does anyone else know your password or passcode for any

site or social media app? What about for your laptop, or

Cell Phone?

No one but my parents know my passwords to social media apps. Only my parents and very close friends know my password to my cell phone.

Conclusion:

I have learned a great deal conducting this survey with the girls and learned a lot from them answering the questions above.

The first thing that stuck in my mind during the interview process was the amount of knowledge the kids had about what was going on in society. The girls were very aware of how to use the basic technology. They knew what it was, and the had a very good idea of how to use it properly and in a safe manner. What I could not figure out are they learning this from each other or are they learning it in schools are just hearing it all the time from their parents.

They were very up to date on cyber bullying. I asked theses questions for a specific reason. That reason was how do you find out if your kid or any of her friends were having issues with being bullied at school or even online. When I asked the questions, they all answered with confidence and not one of them seemed to have any issues with any bullying.

The girls are very knowledgeable about safe Internet practice, and overall knew what to do and why they should.

As a student, this was a fun exercise because we did share a lot of laughs while they girls were answering the questions. Even thought it was fun it was a very important survey in my opinion as a parent. I feel comfortable my daughter and her friends can use the technology available to them and more importantly they are using it safely