New Project Assigned! (June 9th)

Today's class kicked off by sharing each group's lesson plans. My team fabricated our syllabus after exchanging opinions on what were the most memorable topics this term. Scrutinizing my previous blogs, I came across a blog passionately elucidating on my reactions to the Kisha club. Reflecting on my previous reactions, I analyzed that my tendency is to find topics relating to Japan most interesting. So, I suggested keeping topics that have to do with Japanese media in the course, because they directly relate to our lives. Other than that, we settled on implementing lots of experiential learning and decided to conclude our course with students writing news reports. After comparing and contrasting my team's ideas with other groups, what I found consistent in all groups was the stressing of active learning. I think as students, we can all agree that outputting the information we receive in some form is crucial in keeping that knowledge ingrained into our memories. Other groups suggested doing biographies because that is a very manipulated piece of writing and also will be a good way to introduce yourself at the beginning of the course. Also, many groups indicated the imperative of presentations because it is effective in relearning and communicating what we learned, in our own words. Moreover, when presenting, research is obligated so further and deeper information will be gathered. 

After an interesting discussion on methods of pedagogy, we were assigned a new project. As this first semester is coming to an end, I was not expecting an entirely new project, but it sounds very interesting so I am pretty excited. Most importantly, a lot of free choices can be made so I am stimulated to deepen my understanding of a topic I am zealous about. To decide on the people I was going to form a team with, we conversed about which topic we found most interesting in Mr.Paterson's class. In my opinion, I was most intrigued by the documentary about rBGH in milk, so a few other classmates that pursued similar interests formed a group. Once we got together, I struggled to decide on one topic to write about on the website. To this day, I am still curious about how Mr.Paterson finds all this information that is hidden from traditional newspaper outlets. The tactic I came up with was to watch a few videos and documentaries on Netflix and Youtube that uncover inconvenient truths. After many more hours than I had wished to dedicate, I came across a documentary on Al Jazeera exposing the reality of food authenticity in China and a "profit-hungry industry". Since my family and I lived in China for over a decade, I asked my mom if she had any prior knowledge about this reality. She told me that she struggled with food picking in China as well. As an ardent lover of Chinese cuisine, and also as someone who has a strong interest in the correlation between health and food diets, I decided to dive into this topic and research the health/food industry. Witnessing the burgeoning demand for cheap, tasty, and fast food in China with my very own eyes has invigorated me in proceeding with this project and writing a relevant article for our team website! 

notes: 

visual attractive website - logo, catch copy name, color scheme (whos your audience), 

global style, or one issue. 

landing page - everybody has their own information. stories of their own interest. 

bring in everything that we've done. journalist bio statement. 

media manipulation vs media omission