Thursday, September 13, 2018

Technology teaches about Race/Racism

When thinking about how to approach teaching about race/racism in the classroom, I feel as though it needs to be brought up gently because of the tension that it may create at first, but also the seriousness in the lesson should be acknowledged. I have looked into and thought of different ways to approach this topic using technology and one of the activities I thought would work well is having students watch and analyze different TV Advertisements. The lesson idea came from Breaking prejudice. org where there are suggestions for possible ads and a link to discussion questions also.

I thought of breaking students into groups, for example, a class of 25, having five groups of 5 students. Each group could choose an Advertisement to view (An advertisement of choice or they can choose from a list provided), analyze and then present their finding to the rest of the class. Each group of students would look at the different social groups in the Ad and the stereotypes that surround the groups. The groups can then discuss what they could do to change the Ad to be less bias. The students can then make connections to previous readings, personal experience or things happening around the world. 

Examples of Ad:

Image result for chinese monks pepsi ad


1 comment:

  1. We actually did an activity like this in SED 445 and it had us thinking way more critically than you might think! I was floored at the time by how much hidden information we were able to dig out in such a short time together, stuff that I wouldn't typically think to even look for. This is a great one. Since you mention connecting to previous readings, another interesting activity that's similar -- since TV ads use cameras -- is checking out book vs. movie adaptions as a class. Considering questions like "why would the camera zoom in here?" or "why was this person out of sight in this scene" raises really great, occasionally uncomfortable, questions.

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