Tuesday, July 23rd

Today's topic was educational programming and media literacy.

I decided to watch an episode of Barney for my assignment here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i4CbrnkiuA.

This particular episode of Barney starts off with a song about how fun and exciting it is to go to school, and the different things you can learn. It conveys a message to children who are even too young to go to school that school is something to look forward to. They do so by showing Baby Bop ( a green dinosaur friend) crying because she is too young to attend school. Throughout the episode, the show emphasizes the importants of helping people out several times. For example, BJ (a yellow dinosaur friend) complains that he does not want to line up or sing the "itsy bitsy spider song". However, the other characters teach him that sometimes, you must make sacrifices to help others. In order to increase believability, the show uses school-aged children who seem slightly older than the target audience. In addition, this episode and the show in general portrays an idealistic image of school being a place where students have many opportunities for hands-on learning such as flying a kite. Yet, in most classrooms, it is more common to have test-based instruction, which is not mentioned in the show.