The Class

Media and Communications

"A major aim of the class is to develop the ability to think critically about publications in a historically- informed way. Students will examine and create publications that change in relation to the target audience in an attempt to understand who publication can be used most effectively." - Mrs. Pritchard

Trimester 1:

I chose to take Media and Communications as my English class this trimester. I have always been interested in the field of Communications and was surprised and excited to be able to learn more about the subject and get graded on it in school.

The class started out with learning about the history of a yearbook. We looked at different yearbooks and themes and learned that there is a lot more that goes into creating a yearbook that just throwing some pictures on a page. You have to explore a theme that describes the year and have it flow throughout the entire book. Then you have to decide on fonts, and color schemes, and how to lay pictures and text out on the page. I applaud all of those on the yearbook staff, as I do not know if I would have the patience to properly put something of that magnitude together.

After learning about the history of the year book we explored the different types of presses. We looked into newspapers, and blogs, and learned the best ways to get a story across and what ways you can draw in your reader and keep them reading. This led into the learning of how presses are printed, like a newspaper or magazine. Mrs. Pritchard arranged for us to take a field trip to a printing press where we saw the inner workings of a printing room. For this unit we also watched a movie called The Paper, which has now become one of my favorite movies. The movie was exciting and informative, and depicted how quickly the news can change so many peoples’ lives in just 24 hours.

The knowledge we gained on how to attract readers in articles and the way presses are laid out, swayed into another project. We had to create our own newsletter. This project was very time consuming but we learned a lot about the time an effort that goes into a project like this.

After handing in our newsletters the remaining time of class, Mrs. Pritchard taught us about social media and the power it has to influence and reach so many people. We studied hashtags, including one she created herself, #OnceASEMGirlAlwaysASEMGirl. These project educated us on how to search for different aspects of trending information and how social media can be an advantage and disadvantage when getting a message across as sometimes you don’t always have control over what other people tweet about your hashtag.

Overall Media and Communications has taught be a lot about the media world I didn’t know before. Thinking some things were “easy” to put together, I learned that a simple font can mean so much more to an overall meaning of a work than just looking “pretty.” Media and Communications was one of my favorite English classes I have ever taken, it was interesting and the writing we did was practical and something I can take with me to my interested field of study. I wish the class was a whole year because I believe there is a lot more I can learn about the world of media.

Thank you Mrs. Pritchard for a great trimester!

Trimester 3:

I LOVE media and communications. Not only do I personally find the topics and overall theme of the class, but the projects, research, and readings are interesting and can be applied to everyday life. We did a series of projects in this trimester of Media. We focused more on advertising, broadcast, product marketing, and the history behind it all. We made over ad campaign, analyzed commercials, created an entire campaign pitch for a product, and analyzed product placement after watching the Greatest Movie Ever Sold. One of my favorite things we completed this trimester, was watching and analyzing the Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I had never known the exact definition of product placement and after seeing that movie I now notice the products promoted in TV shows and movies all of the time. It is a clever way to market products to a consumer, as long as it is a subtle advertisement and not super in your face. I discussed over kill on product placement in one of my projects where I described how obnoxious the TV show 90210 is in regard to product placement.

All of these elements contributed to the overall understand of just how present the media and advertising is in our lives. It surrounds our everyday environments and can take over any blank space in your world. Media is a presence that cannot be overlooked nor ignored. Now is this a good or bad thing? I have come to a conclusion that it is a natural part of the evolution of technology and growing society. Media is extremely influential in the way that it is presented. Target audience, fonts, slogans, branding, are few of MANY factors that play a massive role of how products and services are sold and promoted to a consumer.

Throughout the class I have gained the knowledge and skills to put a lot of interesting tactics of marketing and advertising into my everyday life and field of intended study in college. With every project we have completed in class, we have been exposed to different websites that can make it easy to create video commercials and advertisements. However I have had some difficulty using some of the sites offered to me. For my ad makeover project I had a good image in my head of how I wanted the commercial to look, but had a hard time navigating the site in encompasses my vision. It was a good learning experience to be able to adapt to the tools I did know how to use on the website, and make it work for the requirements of the project. The commercial ended up being very simple, but I created a plan to make it go with the message of the product I promoted in my commercial (mechanical pencil).

Throughout this entire class we have also been keeping an online portfolio. I chose to extend my first trimester portfolio by using Wix. I am pleased with how far my portfolio has come along. I now have a nice collection of projects that reflect the skills and talent I have accumulated. I have referenced my portfolio countless times to college professors that are interested in the work I have done in my high school classes. This was one of my favorite classes because of how interesting the class, readings, and projects were, but also because it taught me real and useful skills that I can take with me outside of high school.

The Field Trip(s)

Duel Print and Mail is a local printing press Mrs. Pritchard took the students of the Media and Communications class to visit. We arrived ready to explore and wearing our fancy SEM press passes. We toured the facility and saw the printing process in stages. We learned about the original print from the computer onto big metal slaps that then get put into an ink machine. There are different machines used for different quantities of printings. The ink for a smaller amount of ink use is loaded manually. There a different colors used, Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black. These colors are rapidly printed onto the sheets of paper with their design inserted through a computer and transferred from the slabs. They then go through a heating and cooling process that makes the ink image permanently stuck onto the page. We then entered another room, a very loud room with large amounts of paper is rolls larger than our entire group clumped together. The room was buzzing with people and machines all over the ceiling that were quickly doing their printing jobs and then bundling them into stacks that were ready to be cut. Entering the third room we watch very sharp paper cutters cut the edges of newsletter and brochures to make clean edges. These scrap edges we found out, are then put into one room, where they are bounded together and then sold back to another company who will recycle the paper. The field trip was very cool and I learned a lot about the large amounts of effort, time, and money that goes into printing something. After the field trip we then took a nice journey to Starbucks J Thank you Mrs. Pritchard.