Midterm For Peter

1. The biggest most important thing I personally have learned from our class is that the media is such a big and influential part of our lives today we need to know how it works. This means that by studying our media we are educating ourselves to tell sense from nonsense. We learn to understand how our media goes about working, so in turn we know what’s going on with the world and we are not fooled by anything that may be falsely presented to us via our media.
2. Critical Reader- I feel I have learned to read a bit more into my readings now. I want to know the why behind the writing now, and I actually try to use the power tools to figure it out. Critical Writer- As a writer I’ve definitely gotten better. Having to write blogs all of the time has actually forced me to become better. Critical Thinker- As a thinker I try now to think of how people are affected by medias differently. For example the Reel Bad Arabs is one of the things that really made me think.
3. I probably would have studied my power tools a little harder in the beginning because I had some trouble later on because I didn’t know them as well as I though I did.
4. I would actually like it if you had us bring in examples of media that is controversial because I feel that this way people are fully interested in their topic while at the same time people can share / debate their point of view.
5. The power tools are very helpful because we use them in class all of the time. Plus they can be used to break down just about any form of media to figure out what the real purpose of it is. The course blog is also useful because it got me involved with blogging while learning about our media. Also very helpful for funding homework. The personal blog is useful because it allows us to expand our own styles of blogging and conveying ideas we have. The quizzes are good because they reinforces the power tools for me and also are a nice way to keep your grade up. As for the films and books they are a good way of providing real world examples. Also a nice change of pace.

A link to Reel Bad Arabs a movie I found interesting in class.