I think it's safe to say that advertising and marketing is much more

advanced than it was when I was a kid. I can't say that ads didn't
directly affect me, because I definitely was a Ninja Turtles, Care
Bears, and Cabbage Patch-loving kid, however I feel like new media
has broadened the world of marketing toward minors tremendously.
Cell phones, iPods, and of course the internet make marketing
exponentially easier and abundantly wide-spread. Companies are
definitely taking advantage of the easy accessibility of these devices,
and the increased amount of "screen time" minors spend daily.
There is a rapidly growing need for not only parents, but also
teachers to educate their students on this issue. All educators, of all
contents, should advocate for the cyber safety of all students. As
seen in the Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of
Childhood video assigned to be watched this week, child
psychologists are even in on developing marketing tactics that assess
what different age levels desire and need, and utilize those
characteristics to create successful strategies. Scary to think that
companies go so far as to watch children in every routine of their
daily lives, dissecting every action and decision children make in
order to relate their product to the consumer most effectively. How
this is legal is a really great question that I believe should be asked
more often.
Students need to be taught to look at the world through a critical lens.
No longer can we accept face value as an answer; information is too
readily available and originates from sources that aren't always
credible. Being able to discern valuable information will help our
students in many ways. I think the six principles presented by Rosen
in Rewired are valuable steps for educators to consider when
teaching media literacy to their students (p.172). I think that these
principles, along with critical questions proposed on pages 173 to
176, empower students of all ages to make informed decisions and
not be passive consumers who were tricked into making decisions.
Teaching media literacy in art education is no different, and if not
more important, as most ads are best remembered with visuals and
catchy jingles. Jean Kilbournes Killing Us Softly discussion is a great
example of this concept. Visual ads are everywhere: billboards,
magazines, bus stops, schools, etc. and no one person is immune to

or exempt from their influence. They take up a huge portion of our

lives. We need to teach our students to examine content more
critically, by comparing and contrasting their own differing opinions
and beliefs. What IS the message you receive when seeing this ad?
And what is it the company WANTS you to do after seeing it? The
questions posed in the Killing Us Softly study guide would be a great
starting point for this discussion.
Because our students are on the internet and are using social media,
its also equally important that we raise and teach them to be valuable
citizens of society, more specifically DIGITAL citizens of society.
Susan Brooks-Young states in Teaching with the Tools Kids Really
Use that todays children face the same challenges that we faced as
children, except they are navigating through a much different world,
and their mistakes are made much more visible through new media
(p.101). It is common that focus is placed largely on these negative
aspects of technology, and forgetting to give credit to it for enhancing
our teaching and learning.
Brooks-Young provides multiple teaching strategies that could help
educators develop successful digital citizens. There were also
specific strategies for this proposed in The Digital Citizen reading for
this week. I found myself comparing the ethical approaches included
in the chapter to I Can statements, of which use is currently being
encouraged in our district curriculum. These strategies are stated
clearly enough that they could be understood by students of various
ages, making it easy for educators to promote and utilize them in the
classroom.
It is important for art educators to utilize and embrace technology as it
promotes world-wide distribution and viewing of artworks. Cat Hope
and John Ryan discuss this in Digital Arts. Students can search for
art online, download it, re-create it, photograph their own works,
record their own art-making process, share works online for others to
see, visit museum collections online, and so on. If we want to fully
utilize the resources the internet has to offer, we must first develop a
foundation for responsible use of new media and educate our
students how to use it most successfully.