Hobbs Chapter 4

The central idea that made me stop and think while rereading this selection can be found on pages 65&66.

After watching a video clip, a student commented to the reason why “on a busy day in Chicago, the Niketown store receives 20,000 visitors compared to 3,600 visitors at the Chicago Museum of Art,” by simply stating “Art is boring.” This unexpected response drove home a sad fact: “We are stimulated and entertained not by art, but the process of consumption.”

This is a variant manifestation of the ‘attention economy’ that we discussed earlier in the semester; not applied narrowly to a student’s use of the technology but to a much wider critique on where and how attention is drawn. This places a greater need for us to teach students critical thinking skill, so they can safely navigate through both digital and the physical realms.

The study of propaganda seems like a great place to start media literacy, more so than technology it seems, because it offers every student in the class “to participate, and not only those who have done the reading” (67). This would ignite the learning process for even the most reluctant of readers and get them excited about future course work.