The Reality of Mediated Reality:What’s Real and What’s Make-

Believe?

Success in First-Year Composition

February 3, 2006

Ann Parker

Southern Polytechnic State University

Reality? Are you Kidding Me?

• *What do students really “SEE?”

• *How does the media skew what we perceive as real?

• *Do students take mediated information as fact or fiction?

• *Where does this fit into a freshman composition class?

Connecting Seeing to Writing

• I-Search Paper

• Film: “The Truman Show”

• Traditional Library Source

• Two Internet sources

• Field Research

• Personal Interviews

• Photographs

Student Topics

• How college is portrayed in the media (fun, girls, free time) vs. the realities of being a college student

• Growing up as a gang member vs. media portrayals of gangs

• Choosing a major (job reality vs. student perceptions)

• Living gay vs. gays on television• Teen attitudes about sex vs. media’s portrayal of

teen sex• Electronic reality vs. real life

Resources

• Lukkonen, Josh. “Relevancy in the Classroom: Bringing the Real World into School.” Classroom Notes Plus. Oct. 2003. 8 – 10.

• Macrorie, Ken. The I-Search Paper. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook. 1988.

• McQuade, Donald and Christine McQuade. Seeing and Writing 3. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005.