The day we tried to Focus The Nation at Champlain

A couple of weeks ago (the week of Jan 28) Champlain College joined millions of students from across the nation who participated in an organized mission to bring awareness to climate change. The project is/was called, “Focus the Nation,” a national educational initiative designed to face this challenge of our generation. More than 1300 schools, including most of Burlington’s colleges, universities and high schools, participated in events, including a simultaneous, nationwide educational symposia, called a “teach-in,” creating in-class dialogue on global warming solutions for America. Champlain’s efforts were (are) co-sponsored and organized by Sustain Champlain (learn more about it here) and Champlain's Student Environmental Club. We even attempted a "car-free" campus on Thurs, Jan 31st, where everyone who commutes to school was encouraged to take an alternative method like bus, walk, carpool.

While in my "Media Issues" class, our multi-dimensional and talented media guru, instructor Rob Williams, asked us to group up and throw together a rough cut of a PSA for Focus the Nation at Champlain. We basically had a day or so to write, shoot and edit. Well, three of us in my group had ZERO video editing experience, and at one point we lost all our initial footage... but Ethan saved the day! NO BIGGIE... and this is what we came up with:



This is another one from another group that is worth mention, and certainly one of the best in class:

The Happiness Blog

Well it's snowing, and snowing... and then melting, and freezing. Lovely. I have spoken to more people and overheard conversations where people are sick of it already. A friend in class mentioned that she was skeptical about the groundhog this year, that he seems to have his own agenda.

This weather is far from inspiring unless you can be a bit grateful for something small each day. If you can't beat it, or move, then you have to join it or you'll drive yourself crazy. It's the little things in the *achem* weather like this that you can try to appreciate; a friend of mine and I walked out of work yesterday and were giddy that the sky wasn't COMPLETELY dark at 5:20 p.m. Take what you can get. I can already hear the pessimists reading this grumbling under their breath.

For some additional tips on finding the sunny days in the middle of winter, life coach and author of The Happiness Zone, Lenora Boyle, has some bright little morsels to help lighten your life in both her blog and her website. She is a "Transformational Coach in the US and abroad, for the past 20 years. She is an Option Method Trainer, Certified TeleClass Leader, Certified Passion Test Facilitator, and Director of her own company, Option Central. As a speaker and coach, she successfully helps people uncover and change limiting beliefs, so they can live happier and more empowered lives."

If that doesn't motivate you to click around her blog and site today, you must not be out of bed yet and haven't looked outside.

It doesn't look like this:

A trip down my media immersion lane...

When I think back to my media evolution, two mediums glaringly stand out in my mind: books and mixed tapes. I started reading at a very early age and used to have a hard time sleeping at night, lying awake in the dark for hours after my bedtime, so I would self-medicate with books. Reading always helped me sleep and helped me escape whenever I was feeling upset. I remember being about six years old and reading the book Helen Keller cover to cover almost every night for a month. I still revisit that book often and revel in wonder at why and how this book mesmerized me so much when I was young.

Books became part of my life very early and I think they helped to stretch my imagination. I wrote a short story in the eighth grade called, “The Magician’s Daughter” when I was sick at home for three weeks with the chicken pox. I handed the story in to my teacher and about three months later she made an announcement at the front of the class that I had gotten first place in the British Columbia English Teacher’s Association Writing Journal contest. I was thrilled and floored, mainly because I didn’t really remember writing it as I was on medication most of the time. Maybe that says something about the famous fantasy writers in history… maybe?

Another medium that has always been with me is music. I remember being young, like first grade, in the early 80s when the Much Music television station was launched (it’s much like MTV only in Canada). I remember sitting on the living room floor and asking my Mom what certain words of the credits were I couldn’t understand that popped up and the beginning and end of each music video. I remember watching Tina Turner and Madonna and signing and dancing along. Because my Mom was young when she had us, these artists were a part of her culture and were influential on me. There is a second grade school photo of me with a missing tooth and in leopard print leggings and a side pouffy ponytail. Oh yes!

I remember being obsessed with mixed tapes. My boyfriends and I would make them for each other and EVERY SINGLE SONG meant something; it’s hilarious to look back now. One thing that really stands out in my mind is a 10th or 11th grade English project that was assigned to us in class. We had to come up with a 15-minute presentation to the class, describing us as individuals and who we were, but using NO WORDS. I was stumped, and then totally stoked because I knew exactly what I would do. Other students struggled, some were inspired, and others just got very creative, as did I.

Back in the day, around the early 90s, my parents had recently purchased a suped-up (is that a word?) stereo system that all of my friends envied; we even had one of the first cd players on the block (I’m dating myself now). However the technology hadn’t advanced enough to be able to mix cds yet. I decided to cut a 15-20 minute mixed tape that expressed about 15 words that I had chosen that described me that I put onto large flash cards. I recorded everything from commercial tunes, clips of television, radio and other tapes and music… you name it; it was on it. I worked harder on that than almost any project I have ever done; HOURS spent lying in the living room editing, rewinding, timing, recording. I was so proud and terrified at the same time to present it to my class. No one else had done anything like it, and it was gutsy. In the end, my class, and more importantly, my teacher, loved it. Everyone laughed and hooted at certain clips they picked up on that went along with the words on the flash cards that I held up. It forced people to have to put the audio they heard and the words they read together in a creative way. I wasn’t allowed to speak to help them make the connection.

I still have that tape and those cards, I carry with them everywhere I have moved to. I recently tried to play the tape for my boyfriend but it wouldn’t play in my tape deck. I was shattered. I need to take it into one of those restoration places because it’s something I want to hold on to forever. That is one of my fondest media memories.

Immersed in the "feed"

In the book I’m reading in my Media Issues class this semester called, “Media/Society,” about industries, images and audiences, we are reminded *yawn* that the “increase in media options in recent years has even led to an increase in ‘multitasking’ – using more than one form of media at a time” (p. 5). Ya think?!?! I can’t imagine my life without media multitasking; I am constantly immersed. Right now I have the television on, I just received a text and sent one back to a friend, all the while doing homework online and managing my RSS feed. I could throw in that there’s some music playing too, but you get the point.

Ya wanna talk about media multitasking? Imagine what life would be like with an embedded brain internet feed? In M.T. Anderson’s book “Feed” we are met with a group of teens set in a futuristic world where uber-technology has converged electronics and telecommunications into the human brain. Called the “feednet” it combines everything we know today about electronics and communication, data collecting and corporate power (and what it might become), and made humans to be completely dependant and obsessed on consumer culture. It’s a bit scary and sad at the same time because it really is a legit theory on the future, that is, if we continue to allow ourselves to be obsessed with immediate gratification in our computer-consumed society.

“…there was this great promotion, where if you talked about the great taste of Coca Cola to your friends like a thousand times, you got a free six-pack of it, so we decided to take them for some meg ride by all getting together and being like, Coke, Coke, Coke, Coke for about three hours so we’d get a year’s supply. It was a chance to rip off the corporations, which we all thought was a funny idea” (Feed p. 158).

But the best part is that most of the teens in the book don’t even realize the feed's wrong or acknowledge the role it plays—until it’s gone, of course. Media/Society, a dated “textbook” (it was printed in 2000, which is pretty much archaic, considering how rapidly technology changes), acknowledges how dependant we are to media TODAY let alone in the future, “One way to recognize the importance of the media in our lives is to imagine life without media” (p. 5).

There is a time in the book Feed where the teens are without their feednet for some time because of a “hack.” Imagine a week in our lives today without the internet, let alone technology, and then imagine that hundreds of years in the future. Moral of the story: America is addicted to technology convergence and consumerism and is submissive to corporate power and advertisements. Think before you log on, cause one day we might not have a choice.