How can this assignment be used in a Secondary Classroom

    Having completed my own Media Diary, I can see how this assignment can be easily be adapted for a Secondary School classroom.  One possibility would be to have the students chart their media usage for one week on a bar graph.  From that bar graph they are to pick one of the media outlets they used most often and write an essay pertaining to the history of that company and the influences they have (ie: what other companies are they affiliated with).  This will give the students insight into what is going on behind the scenes and realize that all of these media outlets have their own agenda's.

  However, I believe teachers need to be careful when they bring media into the classroom.  For example, this week one of my private trumpet students came into his lesson and was very down about school.  When I inquired as to why, it turns out he had failed an assignment because he did not understand the instructions. The assignment was to read a short story and write a Twitter feed as one of the characters. This student is an ELL student recently arrived to this country, he does not use Facebook or Twitter.  From what he could understand from his peers, Twitter was a search engine.  I believe the language barrier was a problem in this instance.  As an ELL student he not only had to grasp the English language in this assignment, he also had to grasp the complexity of Twitter's idiosyncrasies.  Hashtags, @ signs and abbreviations such as ROTLFMAO (rolling on the floor laughing my ass off), YOLO (you only live once), IDK (I don't know) and NM (never mind) which are synonymous to writing a tweet in 140 characters, it must have been overwhelming.  Therefore I believe it is important for teachers to present media in the classroom as an option.  The students should have a choice between a media based assignment and a more conventional assignment, both of which can achieve the same goal.  We cannot assume that all students are proficient in online media.