The Medium is the Message REFLECTION ~ Part 2

Welcome to the second part of the Medium is the Message Reflection! If you were wondering what happened in the first part of the project, you can check it out here!

Oh goodness, where to start… where to start?

We ended off last time at the completion of our individual drafts for our chosen companies.

…But I have to say, a lot has happened since then (which was only like a week ago, wow time flies fast.)

This time, I’m going to try my best to make my writing not sound like a 18th century english maiden… but no promises!

Also, I’m going to try to keep it short, concise and try not to ramble (cough, points at the last post which was who knows how many words long, cough.)

Anyways my fellow nerds, let’s continue on to the actual reflection!

(This is getting out of hand… now there are two of the same meme in different trilogies!)

As I mentioned before, I’ve reflected through the first two parts of the project path; the Launch Phase, and the Building Knowledge Phase. We also briefly scratched the surface of Develop and Critique with the “start” of our LAUNCH journals (I’ll explain more later), and creating an individual draft.

So… let’s begin with where we left off!

During this unit, our class was slowly reading through a new novel introduced to us by our teachers specifically to help us learn the answer to our main question. This book is called, “The Gospel According to Larry.”

Continuing on, we submitted a reflection sheet for every section of reading that was assigned to us weekly, and participated in a discussion with our South groups. We then analyzed and collected what we individually discovered during that specific part, and shared it together in a “book club-like” setting.

Looking back at this book, I would probably say that it is now one of my most favourites and that it was definitely worth reading. I found the plot to be interesting and hooking; especially at the end where we, as the readers, were left on a mysterious unknowing note.

Check out the following links for my reflection sheets on this wonderful novel:

Week 1: the-gospel-according-to-larry-discussion-work-week-1.pages

Week 2: the-gospel-according-to-larry-discussion-work-week-2.pages

Week 3: the-gospel-according-to-larry-discussion-work-week-3.pages

We also used the knowledge and ideas we gained from reading this book to complete other assignments.

Through “The Gospel According to Larry”, we learned how someone even as young as Josh, has the ability to share a message with the world, and embrace his own voice. Age shouldn’t determine whether you’re able to communicate your opinions or not; sometimes even the world needs a younger voice to help guide the way.

During this short assignment, we were asked the question; “If you had a message to share, how would you share it?”

We considered our message, and quickly chose a medium to communicate through. Finally, we were then given about 15 minutes to create an ad for our idea, which could be a book, podcast, article, or anything really that allows you to share a message.

Here’s what I ended up creating:

I found this assignment to be particularly exciting and fun to accomplish. I love graphic design, and personally enjoy finding excuses to create random graphics for things.

For my advertisement, I’m projecting my idea of a website/blog (quite like Josh’s in the book) where I share my viewpoints on certain words or subjects. Although I’m not too fond of giving out my personal opinions unless it’s necessary, I believe that this could be a cool idea to go through with in the future.

Another one of the continuous projects given to us while working over the duration of this project is the Advertising Photo Journal. In this assignment, we created a photo journal presenting one advertisement we saw each week, and some analysis on the techniques, messages, and persuasion used in them.

Here’s mine: advertising-photo-journal-reflection.numbers

I found that this was a cool opportunity to look around, and see all these advertisements that cloud over our every day lives. It was incredible… yet a little frightening to actually realize how much influence marketing, mediums, and advertising as a whole has over us.

Speaking of mediums, that word leads us on to another assignment… the true meaning behind “The Medium is the Message.” Of course, you would know it as the title of this project. However, it is a whole lot more than that.

But… what is “The Medium is the Message?”

(Lol, I just really wanted to include this gif…)

So basically, our teachers took the title of this project from a Canadian media philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, who became famous in the 60’s from a book named “Understanding Media.”

He studied the many aspects of thoughts and behaviours influenced by the mass media. However, he was probably most famous from this one concept he created, which was “The Medium is the Message.”

The original text was probably too complex for a bunch of 8th graders, so we read W. Terrence Gordon’s variation, which was called “McLuhan for Beginners.” To be honest, the variation was complex as well, but I think I got a quick grasp of what McLuhan’s text could mean.

And… this leads us onto our 5th milestone! (Don’t worry, I’ll review on the 4th milestone later)

For milestone 5, we were asked to reflect and connect what we’ve read in “The Gospel According to Larry” to the text we read on McLuhan’s theories. We were assigned to write a paragraph on how Larry wanted the medium to be his message and if it did work.

Here’s what I’ve written: milestone-5-the-medium-is-the-message-analysis-1.pages

From my understanding, basically, McLuhan believed that some forms of mediums can become so important and influential, that it is the message.

To be completely honest, I found his work to be very complicated and, as I soon discovered, purposefully paradoxical and contradictory to itself. You could say that the title, the medium is the message, which is the medium of his work, was actually more complicated than his actual message.

I believe that the variation we read made his concept sound inevitable, when it actually isn’t really. For example, the medium would always be more important than the message, or that it will become the message, when nothing in life is certain (except for death and taxes).

I think it’s more of a personal perspective or opinion on which is more important and influential to society.

But that’s just my interpretation.

I would say that this was the most difficult milestone I’ve completed so far, but I’m glad it’s over with. (I never want to hear the words “The Medium is the Message” again lol!)

Oh yes, I guess you’ve noticed by now that I’ve gone backwards with these milestones in this post… Yoda I am, yes yes.

I swear, it wasn’t intentional…

So, this milestone is basically a chart of what our North Groups has done over the span of this project based on our advertisements.

I’m not going to insert the chart because it’s huge and my app is crashing like crazy-

Just, like, imagine a big chart thingy, with lots of colours… yeah, I think you get the idea.

During the span of creating advertisements for our business, which was “The Local Lift” if you didn’t read my heap of writing in the last post (I don’t blame you if you didn’t lol), my group has learned a lot.

We got a ton of critique with our peers, and rose from that. Sure, it was a long process… but in the real world, it takes tons of drafts to get better and improve!

I believe I went over this process more in the other post, go check it out if you want to loose a couple braincells!

In present and reflect we did many things, like completing our advertisements and getting some feedback and advice from professionals.

Most importantly, this was where we came to an end with this project.

Here’s our final advertisement:

Our business told us that they didn’t really like the colour scheme, and that they wanted it to be horizontal. And unfortunately, we were given this information at very short notice, so we didn’t have that much time to really tweak it to perfection. Well, it did suck to start again when we were this close to finishing, but in the real world, that’s just what happens.

ALSO, I SWEAR, EVERYTHING WAS PROPERLY CENTRED IN CANVA, I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED HERE!

Well, besides the weird centring problem, I’m satisfied with it. Sure, it’s not the best advertisement in the world, but we worked together, got it done, and learned how to make an advertisement.

I believe that, in the end, that’s an achievement in itself.

Let’s end this project by looking back at the driving question, or, in other words, the main question we wanted to answer through all this learning.

Our driving question was…

This project has taught me that everything we hear, read, and see actually does influence us. Companies can use herd mentality to influence and pressure teenagers to buy certain products. We can be influenced by these concepts and get inspired to create things like them. The things we do mindlessly can inspire others to, for example, dress in similar ways, change the way they talk, and read the same subjects.

Everything around us was inspire us in different ways, and can even be considered as dangerous if used wrongly. We need to be aware of these influences so that we can be become educated citizens, and make decisions on our own account.

You could even say… “With great power comes great responsibility.”