Whether you’ve got too much time on your hands or you have a genuine question, the Wired How-to Wiki is something everyone should have in their bookmarks.  I discovered it recently when a friend posted the “How to Bake a Cake in a Mug” link on Facebook, and voila–just one more reason why I love the web.

The reason I highlight the wiki is because we find many of our students (usually the adults) are so bombared with all the new stuff out there that they don’t know where to start, how to use it or what it does.  This wiki is a great resource because it covers many of the basics, like “Copy a DVD” or “Speed up Your Mac,” but it also goes into topics that are for more advanced users, such as “Optimize BitTorrent To Outwit Traffic Shaping ISPs.” No matter how literate you are, there is something for you.

Another fun thing is that the wiki covers topics extending beyond the digital world and into the physical one.  Suppose you want to be more fit but don’t have much time–see “Lose Weight While You Work.” Not sure what to do for planning your child’s next birthday party? Check out “Throw a fantastic children’s party.” There are many more examples of articles, both useful and just for fun, but one of the best things about the wiki is also one of the best things about Web 2.0–you can talk back to it.  You can join a discussion, add your own article, suggest an article and also reach the folks at Wired with questions and comments.  (Which is good, because I haven’t yet seen any articles here about media literacy.)

And, just to be clear, the LAMP is not supported by Wired or Wired.com in any way.  We just genuinely like their stuff.  But if you want to support us, we accept and need your help!  Please use the link at the bottom of our website to make a tax-deductible donation.

The historic election of Barack Obama to the post of United States President brings to mind the notion that one would like, no matter which candidate one supported, to collect as much memorabilia as possible for posterity’s sake. In fact, it seems that this is what most Americans did. According to Reuters blog, the New York Times printed an extra 50,000 copies of its November 5th issue, and for the first time in a long time, the New York Daily News printed an “afternoon edition” and longer lines than normal were reported at news kiosks in Chicago where people were buying five or more copies of the Tribune and Sun-Times.

I admit that I too wanted to have a piece of history for myself and purchased a NYTimes on my way into work. It just seemed to make sense, that decades from now, it would be nice to have a keepsake, a single relic that indicated the spirit of how people felt the morning after the first African American was elected to this country’s highest office. It got me thinking about a question I pondered earlier, regarding Google’s tool allowing folks to see how some of their favorite sites looked in 2000 as part of their 10 year celebration. How do we record history when our traditional form of memory-keeping is no longer sitting on shelves, behind glass cases or in a scrapbook? There is much discussion about the supposed “demise” of print media. I understand the argument that people read newspapers on their computers and mobile devices, which causes a decrease in demand for the physical printed material. But, that is primarily for the information we seek and then promptly dispose of. What of those editions that capture history or a unified human moment? I find it hard to believe that we’ll someday be capturing our favorite screenshots of web pages to record important, record-breaking, history-making events. That seems cold and not nearly as warm as a tangible, physical archive.

I could be wrong, but I’m nonetheless reluctant to declare the death of print media.

Unless you live under a rock, you’re aware that today is Election Day here in the United States.  I hope that each and every one of you who are registered voters are going out and performing your civic right and duty to cast a ballot for our next President.

I’m no historian when it comes to presidential campaigns, but I would be willing to bet that, just as in this campaign, media has played a huge role.  From pamphlets distributed in the pre-bellum era to blog postings published moments ago, our votes are impacted in some way by media.  The trick for the candidate is in the strategy for creating his/her own media image, and in the response to media produced by the opponent.  Given that, it is worth noting for a second the power of new media which has reached a new height with this election cycle.

The online presence of both candidates has been much discussed already, but let’s do a quick recap: Barack Obama picked up where Howard Dean left off, and rallied a good many of his troops through online social networks.  A visit to his website will bring you to 16 social networks where he is registered, while videos are posted to BarackTV–which is divided into eight channels, each of which are filled with dozens of videos.  After his win in South Carolina in January, online donations poured in at the rate of $500,000 per hour.  John McCain has also designated a portion of his website to multimedia, but he has not ulitized social networks nearly to the extent that Obama has.  A search on his website for Facebook turns up nothing.  I was unable to locate figures for how much McCain has raised online, but he should get an honorable mention for having raised $2.2 million online during the week he won the New Hampshire primary…back in 2000. For a side-by-side comparison of online activity related to each candidate, be sure to check this out.  It should be clear that more and more, democracy is taking place online.

Politics aside, one must respect the staggering number of people who used new media to learn about or campaign for a candidate.  It reminds us that it is time to rethink the innumerable ways people interact with media, and the ways in which new media in particular is changing how we do…well, everything.  Like how we teach our children, or what skills we need to be competitive in a modern workforce.  Media literacy addresses both of these things and much more, and is imperative to an increasingly digital society.  If you or someone you know ever doubted the power and importance of new media, it’s time to wake up.  As they say, attention must be paid.

Please consider making a small donation to the LAMP today, using the button at the bottom of your screen for NYCharities.  Every little bit helps us in our mission to build a media literate culture in a media saturated world.

I opened the paper this morning to discover that yesterday, 16-year-old Nicholas Browning pleaded guilty to shooting his parents and his two younger brothers last February.  As the story goes, he was playing video games at a friend’s house, and suddenly got up to go home.  He used his father’s gun and afterward returned to his friend’s house to play video games, pretending that nothing had happened.  The next day he went with his friends to a mall, then (according to one story, also linked earlier in this article) invited a large group over to his house for a party.  Upon arrival, he feigned surprise in front of his horrified friends who had been told that his family was out of town for the weekend.  Another statement is that a friend’s father drove him home from the mall, and after entering his house Nicholas came outside to tell the father that something was wrong.

I seized upon the video game detail.  Whether or not video games are the direct cause of violence is difficult to know, and studies have been done which point both ways on the issue.  In the case of Nicholas Browning, there may have been other elements involved–relatives and friends told the defense psychiatrist that they had seen Nicholas being by parents, and that he and his parents abused alcohol as well.  Friends recall Nicholas venting a great deal of anger about his father, and that he joked about killing his family.  However, I think there is something to Nicholas’ recollection of being in a trance-like state on the night of the killings, and also to the reports that he was playing video games immediately before and after the killings as well as the day following.  Nicholas may have played video games every day of his life, so logging several hours in front of a console (his house had two) might not have been unusual, but that doesn’t weaken the point that the teen may have had an unhealthy relationship with video games.  It can be hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially when video games are used as a retreat–the world you want to live in and the world you actually live in start to blur together.

In themselves, video games are not necessarily a bad thing, but like any other unchecked addiction, too much time spent with them can lead to trouble.  Nicholas Browning certainly represents a worst-case scenario; more often, video game addicts grow alienated from friends and family, or their health suffers from a sedentary obsession.  None of the above is acceptable, and it is just one reason why all of us here at the LAMP feel so strongly about media literacy.  If you’re worried about violence in your community, media literacy might not take away the guns but it can take away a lot of reasons for pulling the trigger.  Violence is glamorized in many aspects of popular culture–as a path to fame, fortune, strength, power, sex and more–and that has to stop.  It will stop when we demand that it stops, and not a minute sooner.

Help us in our mission to make New York City a happier and healthier place.  You can make a difference by sharing this post, or by making a small donation through the link to NYCharities.org at the bottom of your screen.  Thank you in advance for your support.

If you have children, you probably already know how difficult it is to find age-appropriate websites that you will be comfortable to let them to visit regularly. Far too many of the children sites out there are nothing more than advertising ploys for kids TV shows and toys.

Woogi World games, activities and adventures teach and promote positive behavior and character development. Woogi World is a social networking site and an online world for children with the goal of training elementary-age children to use the internet safely and to balance that with community service and family time so that children may become good influences in their homes, schools, and communities. Woogi World is also a resource for parents and teachers to use to teach children about Internet safety and some great characteristics, such as leadership, community service, responsibility, health and nutrition and, surprisingly, how to balance being online with being offline.

For many of us, we can condone certain Internet games and activities if we perceive that there is an educational benefit to them. To our children – it’s fun. But to a parent and an educator we want the benefits that we see in activities such as soccer, basketball, baseball and playing house –the all important benefits of exercise and teamwork and letting one’s imagination grow.

Woogi World’s parental interaction feature allows parents to monitor the amount of time their child is online and determine if they want their child to “chat” with other Woogi’s. A parent can also limit the days and amount of time the child can play as well as view the history of the account.

To sum it up, Woogi World offers a safe environment for children to get connected, socialize, and keep up with world around them. To that end, Woogi World launched an “Every Kid Votes” Campaign that allows children to participate in the voting process. Here, children get the opportunity to vote and learn the importance in our nation’s democratic process by involving children in the upcoming election, the Republican and Democratic parties, the candidates, and the candidates’ platforms.

Although my child isn’t learning his ABC’s and 123’s from Woogi World (I’ll save that for our Mommy and PoohBear reading time), he is nevertheless learning valuable skills. So, if you’re looking for an educational, and a fun place for your child on the Internet, go to Woogi World, create your own Woogi and one for your child, and have some fun — especially since Woogi World is absolutely free!

-Ellen Uzonwanne

In one of our adult workshops about a year ago, we got on to the topic of credibility in blogs and of web news in general.  One student raised his hand and said that he gets confused because you can’t trust everything you read on the web, but you can trust what’s in a newspaper, which is why he doesn’t read blogs or online news.

It’s true that you can’t trust everything you read online, and we at the LAMP encourage our students to ask questions rather than take something at face value.  However, you also shouldn’t trust something in print just because it’s in print.  In fact, I would argue that in some ways you should be less trusting of print news than of web news, all for a little thing called the hyperlink.  When I read a news story online, I love it when every claim made by the author is backed up with a hyperlink which brings me to the source of the information, because it helps me make my own decisions about what I’m reading.

Let’s make an example: Suppose Jimmy Journalist claims that yesterday the sky was green and the grass was blue in Boise, Idaho.  To me this sounds crazy, and I’m inclined to ignore it, until I click on the hyperlink attached to the claim and see for myself that the source he used is a highly respected professor who is able to explain, from a scientific perspective, how and why this phenomenon is possible.  I still don’t have to believe it, but I have respect for the fact that the journalist made his reporting transparent enough that I can check things out for myself.  Imagine if William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had to use hyperlinks when writing about the destruction of the Maine.

Therein lies part of the problem–nobody is required to use hyperlinks today.  Most articles I read in online versions of print newspapers (like the New York Times) do not link back to their sources.  This makes sense sometimes, as not all sources are from the Internet, but in most cases there is something online that can be used to back up a claim.  As far as I know, it’s never been standard practice for newspapers to include complete bibliographies for every article I print, but I wish it was.  Until then, long live the hyperlink, and journalism that makes use of it.

Upon hearing of plans by the MTA (New York City’s subway authoritative body) to ramp up their advertising throughout their property, it brought to mind a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report where the main character is trying to avoid surveillance in a world where advertisements are customized based on a scan of your retinal that identifies who you are.

The MTA has already rolled out plans where they are placing ads on the floor and ceiling of subway cars, but also now they are placing ads on the exterior shell of the subway car. The bombardment of the captive commuting audience is reprehensible, blurring the lines between the real world and the advertised world even further. But, it doesn’t stop there.

The MTA plans to gobble up every available piece of its real estate, and slather it with advertisements. That means soon the turnstiles will be covered in Nike Swooshes, the platforms of the subways will be pasted with Absolut Vodka ads, and even the walls of the tunnels will serve up the latest Microsoft gadget they’ll do their damnedest to convince you that you can’t live without.

In a city where the average adult sees over 600 instances of advertisements already, how much more are we going to take? How much more can we handle? How much more invasion into our daily thoughts and activity will we tolerate?

I was pointed to an incredible site that displays internet memes in a very unique fashion. Essentially, a meme comes from the Greek word “mimeme” which means “something imitated” (it is also literally translated from the French word for “same”). We’ve all seen them, either on our favorite blog (or our own blogs) or in an e-mail. A very simple form is someone sends you a list that asks you to list five thoughts no one knows that you had when you were a kid. This person has filled out the list with their own five thoughts, and has essentially tagged you to do the same thing, and pass it along to your contacts. And then they perpetuate this cultural game of digital “telephone”.

The term meme was coined back in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, who referred to things such as jingles, melodies, catch-phrases, rumors, etc. What Dawkins wasn’t referring to (because they really hadn’t yet emerged) are viral videos and other viral digital media. That’s where the Internet Memes site comes in. It displays the release and the phenomenon of each big viral video/song/site in four very innovative ways. I always enjoy seeing new refreshing and engaging ways of displaying information, this site is definitely that.

You can see the history of Internet memes as a timeline, that stretches all the way back to August of 1970, where the term “Internet” was developed to refer to the connections that existed with the early web prototype, ARPANET, maintained by the Department of Defense. You can also view each meme as a pushpin in a map, showing you where in the world these came from. I invite you to check it out. It’s likely you’ll find out something new. I did:

In 1982, the first emoticon was created. It was the beginning of a new way of expressing ourselves, some would even say a new language. And to think, our children have never known a world where they didn’t use their characters to make facial expressions.

In our news workshops, we talk a lot with our students about how the news is made.  One thing we discuss is why some stories get lots of  coverage, and others get none at all–essentially, what is traditionally considered news and what is not.  The lesson that “if it bleeds, it leads” is not an easy one, especially when there are so many other important stories out there which also deserve the level of urgent reporting that is afforded to a story about a car crash.  So, on Blog Action Day, when we’re asked to consider poverty, think about it: How often does poverty make the news?

With this in mind, I started doing some research and found that the answer is, for the most part, not very often.  Poverty is an ageless problem, and like AIDS or cancer, it’s hard to imagine it being eradicated.  There have always been poor people in the world, and we know that, even if we don’t all have to think about it every day.  Generally, we’re not interested in the news media telling us something we already know, and so the challenge becomes making an old issue newsworthy right now.

We have seen that this is no minor feat. Before he confessed to the media about cheating on his wife, John Edwards was one the most prominent Americans especially devoted to the issue of poverty in our country.  In May, he announced the Half in Ten campaign to cut poverty in half ten years from now, and embarked on a three-day tour of some of America’s most impoverished communities.  As reported by journalist Peter Dreier, only one major newspaper covered the event in Philadelphia where the campaign was unveiled, perhaps because it was drowned out by news of Edwards’ pending endorsement of Barack Obama.  The 2007 poverty tour got more coverage, happening as it was during the North Carolina senator’s campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.  In both cases, we have to wonder if John Edwards or poverty was the real story.  If John Edwards runs a 2009 poverty tour, will the coverage be about the issue, or will it be about a fallen politician trying to restore his career?  (Let’s also not miss the irony that coverage was minimal when Edwards was trying for change that actually affects our lives, but coverage on his private life was top priority.)

As I continued to look at poverty in the media, I realized that perhaps an even greater issue may be the way that poverty is represented.  Impoverished individuals and nations are often portrayed as “the other,” making it hard for us to relate to them or otherwise be inspired to help.  There also exists the pervasive stereotype that poor people are a class of uneducated, unemployed, lazy addicts who may even be abusing the federal welfare system paid for by our tax dollars.  When statistics about poverty are presented, it’s easy to feel that the problem is so overwhelming that it is totally out of our hands.  Giving up is simpler.  Move on to something more manageable.

And, unfortunately, this is true.  The problem of poverty is not something one of us can fix on our own, and it isn’t manageable if only one person is addressing it.  But when we all work together, the fight against poverty is one we can win, and one that must be won.  If you think you’re not affected by the fact that, as of 2007, 37.3 million Americans are at or below the line of poverty, then think again.  When massive amounts of a population cannot afford permanent housing, basic healthcare or food for their families, we are all at risk.  Microloans, like those given out by the Grameen Bank, have proven effective–58% of Grameen Bank borrowers have been lifted from poverty.  Poverty is a huge problem, but you do have the power to make a difference.  Visit the Blog Action Day website for organizations to which you can make a donation, or, if you can’t spare the money, take time out to volunteer.  Work at a soup kitchen or food pantry, donate clothes and blankets to the homeless, build houses, help out at a free clinic–the possibilities are endless, and they won’t cost you a dime.  I like volunteermatch.org and idealist.org for volunteer opportunities, but there are several websites that can help.  Perhaps years from now, poverty will be a thing of the past.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Emily Long, Communications Director

The LAMP

718-789-8170

http://www.thelampnyc.org

The LAMP Announces LAMPlit Series

Resource guides offer real-world ideas for cyber-world issues

Brooklyn, New York: The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) launched the first volume in its LAMPlit series of multimedia resource guides, entitled “LAMPlit: A Beginner’s Guide to Going Online.” All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit. The guides are written and disseminated by the LAMP without corporate sponsorship.

The first guide focuses on helping adults and young people have a safe and positive experience online, and is released in coincidence with National Cyber Safety Awareness Month. During Symantec’s Norton Online Living Report in 2007, 1 in 5 children reported doing things online that their parents would disapprove of, while only 50% of parents have spoken to their kids about practicing safe online habits. One reason parents may be hesitant to get involved is because parents tend to hear more about the bad things that can happen online, says LAMP Executive Director D.C. Vito.

“The stories about online predators and cyberbullying tend to be the ones that get the most coverage,” says Mr. Vito. “It creates a culture of fear around the Internet and new media, and we’ve seen a lot of emphasis on the negative. We wanted to create a guide that is balanced and fair, that does not deny any of the bad things that potentially can happen online, but that also hits on the ways that the Internet is really a great thing. People just have to know what they’re doing.”

In addition to addressing privacy concerns, LAMPlit also aims to support parents who might avoid getting involved in their children’s online activities because new media can be overwhelming.

“It can be difficult for parents to start a conversation with their kids about what they’re doing online, but it’s absolutely imperative,” says Katherine Fry, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Media Studies at Brooklyn College and Education Director for the LAMP. “Too often, adults are intimidated by new technology, so they just ignore it. They miss using media as a chance to bring their family closer together instead of farther apart.”

All of the guides in the LAMPlit series will be available for free download from the LAMP’s website at www.thelampnyc.org/lamplit.Future LAMPlit guides will target gaming, social networking, Internet ethics, news, advertising and more.

About The LAMP:

The Learning About Multimedia Project (The LAMP) is a non-profit organization which strives to provide critical media literacy skills to the inter-related groups of youths, their parents and educators throughout New York City. Free media education workshops and events offered by the LAMP demystify the constant flow of media these three groups encounter, bridge the digital divide, and provide workforce development skills for future generations.

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