Yangzi

Our mission is developing a broadcast journalism curriculum for the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush (AABR), with a strong media literacy focus. The curriculum will not be practical and effective until we entirely know the AABR, which including its students, teachers, etc. Therefore, I divide the research questions into two chunks – questions about the AABR, and questions about creating the curriculum.

A. For the first chunk – questions about the AABR, I think we should focus on three major parts:

**·** Are they interested in broadcasting journalism? To want extent? **·** Which part of broadcasting journalism are they most interested in? Radio? Television? Hosting programs? Scripts writing? Or technical things? **·** What is the students’ average level of broadcasting journalism knowledge? **·** Are they expecting a new program about broadcasting journalism? **·** If so, what do they want to learn from such a program? Do they have some suggestions about the new curriculum? (Ex. the form, content, timeline, workload, etc.)
 * 1. Questions about the students**
 * · **Did they take the courses that related to broadcasting journalism before? If so, what kind of course is that? What did they learn from that course?
 * · **Did they have any experiences about broadcasting? If so, what are they?

I found a very interesting resource that might be helpful. Students’ media production (Podcast):http://rushartsmusic.wikispaces.com/Podcast

It provides us a preliminary understanding about the students there, as well as their media productions. The students created radio show broadcasts about any musician of their choice, and the content is very informative. Overall, it is a lovely media production, although most of the shows seem like “script reading”. I think there is not a big gap between their radio shows and professional ones. This means that the students are smart, and already obtained certain knowledge in broadcasting. This is a good news for us.Also, I found that half of the shows are about pop music. This phenomenon makes me wonder if we should focus on pop culture text in the new curriculum

The equally important thing is getting to know as much as possible about the students’ individuality and characteristics. Perhaps we can observe students’ in the classrooms, and develop some inform conversations with them so that we can have an in-depth understanding about the students opinions. Chances are some unexpected and thought-provoking opinions will be found, which will be very valuable for our curriculum designing.

We also need to listen to the teachers’ opinions about the new curriculum. We can interview most of them in order to know their attitude toward the new curriculum. Also, I think they will provide us some valuable suggestions about the new curriculum.
 * 2. Questions about the teachers**

Another important thing is that we can know better about the students from the teachers’ mouths. We can interview the teachers and get to know the average level of the students’ media literacy skills, as well as their writing skill, communication skill, reading comprehension skill, and speaking skill.

By interviewing Ms. Brown, hopefully, we can know the following information: · Details about her opinions and expectations on the new curriculum. · The quality of AABR teachers. How many of them qualify to teach the new curriculum? · Do the teachers have enough time to prepare such extra courses? Or, Ms. Brown planed to hire new teachers? · how well the equipments there? What kind of media equipments do they have? Is the school planning to enhance the equipments? · What does the existing curriculum look like? How many of the existing courses media literacy-related? If there is any, what kind of media literacy is focused on?
 * 3. Questions about the Principal**

When I visit the AABR’s Web site, I found there is an interesting article (available at: @http://rushartsonline.org/wordpress/?p=380) written by the Principal. She says, “It is clear that when students work on well organized media literacy projects, they end up learning beyond the content objectives that were intended. Often the research takes them further into places, ideas, etc. that were unexpected. It goes without saying that the technology skills that students are mastering will prepare them for the future in multiple ways.”

I could be totally wrong, but my understanding is that the Principal is more interested in helping students enhancing their technology skills. As we know from our previous readings, the true MLE should be cautious to the “technicist trap”. Perhaps Ms. Brown and us have different understanding to MLE, but I think this will not be a big problem if we frankly exchange opinions to each other, and negotiate constantly.

B. Questions about creating the curriculum · Are we going to design a curriculum that can be integrated into the existing curriculum? Or we design an independent program that can be implemented in the after school club? Which one do students prefer? Which one seems more realistic? · How many lesson plans are proper? What text books are proper? · What kind of teaching materials are going to be used? Video clips? Online resources? Printable materials? And where to get them? · Are we going to focus on pop culture or not? · How are we going to evaluate the curriculum? ……………… I think it is a little bit early to ask questions about the new curriculum, because the first thing we should do is talking to the people of AABR.