Teenagers taking a revamped A-level in media studies will earn a fifth of their marks by podcasting or blogging, it emerged yesterday.
They will be able to present almost half their coursework in podcasts - voice-presented video clips which can be viewed on iPods and mobile phones - or blogs, which are internet diaries often written in an informal style.
Youngsters will no longer be able to submit any coursework in the form of traditional essays, as examiners attempt to ensure sixth-formers master the latest technology.
I'm not sure I agree with OCR's revamp (not that I like OCR much anyway).
What if some schools don't have enough computers fot students to blog or podcast in the lesson?
I also feel that newspaper journalism should carry more weight on the course.
However, the Daily Mail seems to be running a campaign against media studies.
Don't they want students to understand the media?
Are they afraid of competition?
It's not like the Daily Mail doesn't report on what goes on online.
My experience of Media Studies.
I did a Media Studies A-Level and I'm proud I did so.
It didn't do my writing skills any harm- I got a place studying English Literature at Sussex University.
I also studied media studies electives there.
Media Studies and English were the most interesting subjects to me at school, followed closely by my third A-Level, Biology.
They have been of more use to me in my life than "traditional" subjects such as chemistry or geography.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not staying they shouldn't be studied.
I love history and often dip into Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt, a 900-page tome.
I also have a good grasp of geography, as every blogger writing for a global audience should.
Magdalen's Media Studies Department.
I studied media under three excellent teachers, David Brunton, Jennifer Rowsell and David Barr.
David Brunton introduced by to the tricks of print journlism, sparking a desire in me to be a journalist.
David Brunton is why I am studying at the University of Westminster.
He taught us Herman and Chomsky's Five Filters, debated with us the news values in various newspapers and discussed the current state of the Briths press.
And we had fun as well, something that might shock the Daily Mail.
I've still got most of my notes.
One sheet is part of an analysis of local newspapers, a case study being the Oxford Mail, published by Newsquest and owned by comglomerate Gannett.
Another compares three stories on Major James Hewitt's book about the late Princess Diana.
The Daily Star call him "Major James Spewitt",while the Guardian refers to the 75,000 copies sold at the time of publication, as well as the response from Buckingham Palace.
Jennifer Rowsell taught us how to analyse adverts, and myself and a friend did a presentation on Becks (the industry gave some feedback in an e-mail).
David Barr taught us to analyse the Western genre, with films such as Red River and Blazing Saddles.
We also discussed Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, an unusual subject for a coursework essay.
That's Media Studies-the shocking and the odd are part of the course.
I would rather OCR had a Newspapers strand (I studied under AQA, for some reason Britain does not have one single exam board as would make sense.)
Quibbles over the course aside, I would like message board posters and journalists to stop knocking Media Studies.
Even a fellow teacher at our school used to joke about Media Studies, saying "Do you spent your time watching Coronation Street."
This knocker taught Science, and spent most of his time being fussy.
Queen's English Society:
Dr Bernard Lamb seems to think that students should do A-levels so they can write good essays.
I most strongly disagree.
Anyway, many pupils do English and Media Studies at A-Level.
It may interest Dr Bernard Lamb to know that we wrote essays for all my media electives, and they were marked around 60% on average.
However Dr Bernard Lamb, president of the Queen's English Society, warned that students' chances could be jeopardised if they failed to get enough practice at essay writing.
He said: "This is nonsense. There are very serious issues around literacy - the more pupils are allowed to get away with not writing in proper, well-constructed English, the worse it will be for them.
"Students must be able to concentrate for more than five minutes and produce a piece of work on their own.
"They must be able to put arguments together and put a series of linking paragraphs together which express and develop an idea."
I will give a former Media Studies and English teacher the last word.
This is a typical Daily Mail article.
I doubt very much that the more credible press will report news like this in such a way (in any case, this is a very biassed report, as I am quite familiar with the new modular changes OCR and AQA are making to their Media courses).
Learning about new technological changes is useful. None of you, who are on this forum A LOT, seem to detect the irony in learning about designing websites - although the Daily Mail calls it the more derogatory term of 'blogging'.
As an English teacher, who has taught film and media studies, I consider the latter subjects to be very credible, in many ways.
I think you can knock a subject when you have first hand experience of it; not from reading a C/conservative, right wing report in the Daily Mail. Each subject has its own worth.
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