Our Media Studies students experience new learning opportunities with Seniors attending a Workshop on establish positive working relationships and the Year 10's interviewing Alex Horvarth a photographer and journalist from the Los Angeles Times.

Level 2 & 3 Media Studies Workshop

On the 22nd of March the Level 2 and 3 Media Studies students from Marlborough Boys’ College and Marlborough Girls’ College meet at Marlborough Youth Trust for an afternoon workshop.

Our focus for the workshop was to establish positive working relationships between our akonga, provide an experience working in a mixed-gender environment and develop communication skills outside of students’ known peer groups, and the classroom environment.

Students had the chance to share their work and were encouraged to discuss the challenges they have been encountering in their process thus far, and support one another in offering solutions or advice. We also facilitated conversations that enabled students to build connections. They supported one another to find sources to interview and helped connect each other to contacts that will ultimately enhance their media product.

We also provided an opportunity for students to learn from a professional journalist. Chloe Ranford, a journalist who used to work at the Marlborough Express as the Local Democracy Reporter shared her top tricks and tricks when it comes to creating a piece of media for a target audience and interviewing sources. She answered students' questions about working in the industry and creating an effective piece of journalism. She also provided support in group conversations and provided students with some one on one consultation after the workshop ended.

The feedback from students regarding the workshop was overwhelmingly positive. Students enjoyed connecting with someone in the industry and felt this enhanced their ability to do an effective piece of work. Students requested more opportunities to work together and wanted to connect with more people in the community who work in the journalism industry.

Year 10 Newsroom Students

On Thursday the 30th of March our Year 10 Newsroom students had the opportunity to interview Alex Horvarth a photographer and journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Alex has been a journalist for the last 35 years and was the lead photographer at the Los Angeles Times when the Covid19 outbreak occurred.

This term students have been learning about a variety of complex concepts such as bias, confirmation and negativity bias, propaganda, ethics in the media, gatekeeping, misinformation, misleading information, satire, sensationalism, algorithms, and representation. Students were required to generate questions for Alex based on what they’d been learning in regards to these concepts.

Here are some of the hard hitting questions the students asked Alex:

• How have you seen the media change during your time working as a journalist/photographer? Can you explain why you think these changes have occurred.
• What is your perspective on how different generations interpret information?
• What are your top tips when it comes to differentiating between fake news and real news?
• In your opinion, what news is unbiased and how do we ensure we don’t access information that is driven by a political bias?
• Do you think that if you had grown up in an age with constant access to false information, your perspectives towards what the truth is would be different?
• Why do you think people create fake news? How do you think Fake News affects people and can you give an example of this from your own experience?
• How does the Los Angeles Times deal with controversy and misinformation?
• How do you know if the source you are talking to is reliable? 

At the end of the day Alex emailed me to say how impressed he was with the questions the students generated. He also shared that the experience gave him a lot of hope about the future. He shared, “Your students are thinking critically about the information they consume and have a thirst to know more. I can’t thank you enough for this wonderful opportunity.” He was impressed at how intently students listened and took notes during the interview and was also taken aback by their ability to think on their feet and come up with questions based on their reflections of what he had shared.

It was a wonderful learning experience for all involved.

Alice Wilson, Media Studies Teacher