Video Production Lessons
by: Jeff Dahm, Teacher
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Media Scavenger Hunt | Media WebQuest
Lesson Topic: Ratings Basics/Collection, Measurement, and Use (Usually 2 class periods, but take more if needed for better data collection)
Lesson Objectives: Students will be able
to collect demographic data.
Students will be able to analyze viewership patterns and predict how they
might change if programming changes.
Students will be able to strategize about how to sell hypothetical products
to their peers.
Students will be able to recognize factors that change results and reliability
of data.
Instructional Techniques: Introductory lecture and discussion and group work
Instructional Materials: Demographic
Data Sheet
Ratings 101 sheet (from
AC Nielsen web site)
Primetime Television Grid (From Yahoo.com)
(Use national Grid from Bottom Right paste into Word and print out)
Chalkboard or Class
Rating Report sheet
Top 20 rating
list from the current week/past season (USA Today)
Q & A on lesson
(possible homework or in class assignment, time permitting)
Theoretical Perspective: Students should know this information because TV is the # 1 consumer product that children use, which is used in turn to sell them other products. They should be educated consumers that know how information about their viewing patterns is used to market products and programming. They need to make knowledgeable choices about how to spend their money on products that they see on TV, and to be aware of factors that guide TV executives to make the programming choices that they make.
Curriculum Frameworks: History and Social Science
Economics, Economic Reasoning. Students will demonstrate understanding
of supply and demand, price, labor markets, the cost of capital,
factors affecting production, distribution, and consumption, relations
among such factors, the nature of goods and services, incentives, financial
markets, cost benefit (including marginal cost benefit) analysis, fairness,
and the value of trade.
English Language Arts/Media : Obtain information
by using a variety of media and evaluate the quality of the information
obtained. Select appropriate electronic media for research and evaluate
the quality of the information obtained.
Mathematics: Number Sense- Use the algebra of
matrices to solve problems involving finite graphs.
Media Literacy: Understanding of Media products
and services and the impact it has on the public and the economic motivations
behind them. (Not as yet an official strand in the frameworks, but I am
sure it is coming.)
Procedure: Introductory Activity: Have the students answer the following question on an index card as they enter the class. "Why did NBC cancel the XFL after 1 season, even though they had a 2 year agreement?" alternative: "Why do TV stations run school cancellations in the morning?" Collect the responses and set them aside until the end of class.
Step By Step: Hand out Ratings 101 sheet.
Briefly detail the terms HUT, Rating, and Share.
Hand out the
Demographic Data sheet, and have the students fill them in.
Hand out the
Primetime Television Grid for a particular night of programming. Tell students
to indicate on the grid if they would be watching a program at a particular
time by choosing a program on a channel and circling or highlighting
it. If a student would not be watching TV at that
time have them write OFF next to the time at the top. For simplicity
it might be a good idea to limit choices to the 3 or 4 major networks.
Have the students hand in the data and program reports.
Read off rating
reports out loud and compile statistics on chalkboard or on Report sheet.
Have a student assist if needed.
Determine
the HUT, Rating and Share of each time period/show. Discuss trends
in viewing, and note if there are differences in viewing pattern among
gender, or age (Freshman vs. Senior)
Discuss how
data might change if the ABC Movie was Monday Night Football instead. Also
compare the movie title's potential impact, replace Cinderella with The
Terminator for example and discuss those potential impacts. Does
time of day change HUT numbers?
Ask students which shows would be a good buy if the advertiser's
primary customer was a young female or male, and which shows would be a
waste of ad money. Was our sample large enough to be accurate? Do we need
to ask more people? Would asking parents change results?
Closure: Pass out Top 20 Program list. Compare
shows on the list with shows that students watch.
Pull out index
cards from the start of class and read the answers aloud. Have the class
talk about the answers in light of the exercise they just completed.
Pass out Q
& A and have students complete in class or as homework and collect.
Possible Adaptations: Have students compile information
in small groups instead of the teacher doing it.
Have students poll 5 friends each if they feel the samples are too small,
and continue lesson the next class.
Homework: Next time the student sees an ad for potato chips, have them make note of the show and time. Ask if they felt it was a good or bad place to show the ad.
Evaluation: Collect Q & A and check answers for understanding of concepts. Help students individually if they are unclear about specific topics. Have the students talk about their answers in groups or in class.
Concerns about teaching this lesson: Sample
sizes: small classes will definitely need to get input from friends
or other sections of the class to get good data.
Limiting
channel choices: It may be unrealistic, but it is a good way to demonstrate
the basics and get larger reported viewership for certain shows.
After the class demonstrates understanding of the concepts, perhaps discussion
of cable TV choices and video rentals are a good extension of this exercise.
Math
intensive: Kids hate doing math outside math class, but it is data
about themselves so it may be more interesting to them. Plus, it is a good
interdisciplinary lesson.
Lesson Development:
This
lesson was created to meet the need for alternative lesson plans that do
not involve using the equipment in my studio. There is a limited
amount of equipment and sharing 4 cameras among 20 people creates some
down time from time to time. I need ways to instruct students on
topics related to Video Production, yet are more theoretical than the nuts
and bolts lessons I already use. I also have become aware that students
have no clue that the ads they see on TV are a direct reflection of research
and targeted marketing, and that they make other people rich by buying
products that they see and may not need. The more students are aware
of these processes, not only of the making of the commercials themselves,
but by their placement on the airwaves, the better chance they have of
making responsible, or at least informed decisions about their money.
I am
already acutely aware of the process of marketing and commercial TV advertising,
so I looked for content on the web that would illustrate my knowledge and
help students see it for themselves. I found some good basic information
directly from the ratings gurus themselves, AC Nielsen Research, and found
many resources that helped me out, namely the Ratings 101 sheet.
The specific information on demographics and the viewership patterns is
not available on the Internet because that is the very information that
they sell to the TV stations, so getting it for free is out of the question.
However they do release national summaries of weekly and seasonal Top 20
shows, and the press uses those figures to write media columns, and are
widely available on the net from all sorts of places. Since the information
I needed was not free, I formed a fictional company and decided to use
my students as the data. I needed a site that listed TV schedules.
TV Guide was a great place to start, but they were so comprehensive that
if I had polled 20 kids about which show they watched, I could have had
20 different answers, with channels leftover. I found another site
that listed the nightly prime time schedules for the major networks only
(and 2 networks the web site is affiliated with too!). It was a much
cleaner presentation and fit the bill so I printed out the Monday Schedule
and decided to limit the research to the 4 major networks. I developed
the Demographic Data Sheet and the Rating Report Sheet to meet the need
of data collection and analysis. I also decided to use the Top 20
summary for the current week to have a means of comparing our data to real
life data, even though it contained data from all nights and not just Monday.
Besides, the lesson could be repeated for all nights of the week if students
get into it and are curious.
I learned
that there is lots of free information for the taking on the net, and that
lots of information comes with a price. This is exactly the point
I am looking to make with the kids. I could trust the information from
AC Nielsen because they are the industry leaders in audience measurement.
(As a sidebar, they have launched a service which measures web site traffic
and ranks them in similar ways to TV shows.) Students already have
some experience with TV shows that they watch being canceled, and I can
use that past experience as an activator to show them the why behind that
knowledge. Then, with the lesson, hopefully they will see the very
real results that the mere act of turning a TV on can have on the world
around them. Fortunes are made and lost every time a channel is changed.
(And they just thought nobody would notice them sitting on their couches!)
You can be sure I will rack my brain to come up with more of these lessons.
I need them to fill the quieter moments, and they need the information.
It WILL come in handy!
Unit Topic: What's News?
Grade: 9-12
Lesson Topic: Producing a News Broadcast (2 class
periods)
Lesson Objectives: Students
will be able to collect news and information via the Internet.
Students will be able to evaluate the credibility of the information based
on its source.
Students will be able to evaluate the relevance of the information to our
newscast's intended audience.
Students will be able to recognize factors that make certain types of information
newsworthy and organize it into a coherent presentation for the audience.
Instructional Techniques: Introductory lecture,
student work in pairs, presentations, and group discussion
Instructional Materials: Computers
with Internet access
"What is News?"
handout
News Rundown sheets/discs
Theoretical Perspective: Students as current and future consumers of mass media news and information programming should be educated consumers of these services. They should know the basic processes of how these programs are put together and the logic behind them. Then they will be able to discern the quality of the information that they are looking at in the future and be able to make responsible choices in the places and manner in which they collect the information they are most in need of or interested in.
Curriculum Frameworks: English Language Arts/Media- Explain how techniques used in electronic media modify traditional forms of discourse for different aesthetic and rhetorical purposes. Identify techniques used in television and use their knowledge to distinguish between facts and misleading information.
Procedure: Introductory Activity: Have the
students answer the following question on an index card as
they enter the class. "Name a situation (real or made-up) where a weather
event could be considered "big news"? Collect their responses and
set them aside until the end of class.
Step By Step: Have students break into pairs.
Have them look at the "What is News?" handout. Talk about the situations
that effect a story's news worthiness to a local news producer. Issues
like severity, proximity, and the uniqueness of events should be discussed,
and examples of current events near and far away should be used to illustrate
situations where "news judgment" must be used. Factors such as the interest
of the information to large numbers of viewers (i.e. next door neighbor
gets divorced, NOT NEWS. President Bush or another well known person gets
divorced, MIGHT BE NEWS) Also discuss situations where weather
and sports news might cross the line into "Big News".
Hand out the
"Rundown" Sheets. (could also be done on a word processing document on
a disc and handed in that way). Inform them that our target
audience is all viewers in Western Massachusetts. Have students
look for information on the Internet that has happened in the last 48 hours,
or new information on an older event that has just been made public. Have
students try to get at least 5 world stories, 5 national stories, and 5
local stories. Also, have them gather weather and sports information
that might be of interest to our target audience. Talk about types of
web sites might be smart to look at to get the various information (for
example CNN's web site would be a poor place to find a story that
takes place in Palmer MA. on a typical day), and who we can trust for accuracy.
Have them write down the URL of the source of the story, a brief summary
of the story and which category they fit under, and a "Slug," or title,
of the story.
After
gathering enough stories, tell them to consider our target audience one
more time, and to identify the top 3 stories in each category.
Then have them begin to evaluate which story is their #1 overall
story. This story is the "Lead Story." It could be a local, national,
or world story, depending on the day and stories. (all groups, of
course, do not have to agree, in fact some groups may not even be
looking at using the same stories, but that is OK.) Then have them look
at the remaining stories and pick a good follow up story. It might
be related to the lead story in some way, or it could be another
big story in another part of the world. Have them fill in the Rundown
with the remaining choices until they feel they have a well rounded newscast.
Closure: Gather the class into 1 group again and
have each group present their rundowns. Ask them to articulate
the rationale about which story was the lead, and also which stories did
not make the cut. Talk about stories that perhaps only one group
chose, and if they were right, wrong, or just different.
Talk about how "if a Nuclear Bomb were detonated in downtown Paris" it
might totally change the look, order, and content of the newscast,
or if our target audience was changed to all of the USA
Also ask students to compare the stories by allotting and amount of time
to tell each story. Which ones should be 2 minutes
and which should be 30 seconds?
Also read the index cards from the beginning of
class and talk about the role of those stories, and if anyone changed
their minds about what they had written.
Possible Adaptations: ESL students could look at web sites in their native language and still easily participate in the lesson.
Homework: Have the students make note of
the lead story in a national newscast and a local newscast.
Were they identical, why or why not?
Evaluation: Collect Rundowns and check answers
for understanding of concepts. Have a 1 on 2 "news meeting" with each group
and ask them about any unusual choices, and look for good reasoning, and
remember, articulating good thinking and judgment are more important in
this exercise than agreeing with the teacher's personal opinions.
They can disagree and still have learned the lesson well.
Concerns about teaching this lesson: Not many, but one major concern is monitoring the traffic on the net. Due diligence must be kept to keep the students from wandering more than I am already encouraging them to. Also, this is a largely opinion driven exercise, so grading on correctness of answers is an impossibility. While groups often reach a consensus opinion in this exercise, recognizing effort and thought are more important than results in this case, and realize that in weeks ahead, their opinions may evolve as similar discussions are repeated on related topics.
Lesson Development: This lesson was
developed to help students understand the process that news undergoes before
it is presented on the TV. Stories must be gathered, written, evaluated
for the audience, ordered, and time constraints placed on them. This
is not an exact science, and the opinions of those developing newscasts
heavily influence the presentation. For example, a news program may
choose to ignore a story about a child who sets a small fire in the backyard
of his home. That news story may have little interest, unless he
was copycatting something he saw on a TV program. That enhances its news
value because of the added dimension of the controversy about broadcast
standards, and whether children should should be watching certain programs
due to content. Add to the mix that the child was the son of a famous
person, now you have a poster boy for a national story, and debate to follow.
Students must be aware that the factors
that go into newscast production influence the stories they see.
They must develop strategies that help them distinguish a biased story
from an unbiased one, and develop these skills for when they search for
information on the internet as well. Much of this information is
unfiltered, and unreliable. It is more important than ever to teach
journalistic skills to everyone regardless of their career goals, because
they will run across more and more information in the years ahead that
has not undergone the traditional evaluation processes of professional
journalists. It is both good and bad that there is such openness
in the world today, so responsibility and media literacy must be a part
of modern cirriculums in order to equip the students of today with the
ability to think for themselves about information rather than taking it
as fact every time they see it on TV or any other medium.