StoryCorps in the Sociology Classroom

I love a good story. Don't we all love a good story? This is why StoryCorps is my favorite podcast. I am so excited to begin the conversation of how we can integrate it into our classrooms.

Here is an introduction to StoryCorps from their founder, Dave Isay:

StoryCorps reminds me of Humans of New York because it displays raw emotion from real people and real relationships in a small glimpse of these people's lives. These short stories serve as a great free supplemental resource for our Sociology class.

Due to the diversity of stories they have recorded, there are limitless ways to incorporate this resource into your classroom. By searching their website by theme, you could find a story/podcast to introduce almost any of our units. (The transcripts of each podcast are also available for each story.) Hearing these short podcasts, from real people could make our course come alive for our students, they can help our students relate to our content, and is an excellent way for students to apply their sociological imaginations!

Here as an example of how you could use a podcast:

You could use this story about two black men who moved to Hollywood in the 1960s to become stuntmen to begin a discussion about the history of race, or the state of racism in different industries, or to connect current issues to the race unit (2016 Academy Awards).

Another idea is you could assign your students to record an interview with someone important in their lives, like Ms. Mieliwocki did. After listening to various podcasts throughout the course, it would be very empowering to "hand over the mic" to our students and to allow them to uncover powerful stories in their community. (Official project write up will be in the Google Drive folder before school starts.)

If you aren't intrigued yet, here is a glimpse of the impact StoryCorps has had:

The Sociology classroom can serve as the perfect platform to increase these understandings in our high schools. 

Please tell us your ideas of how you would like to use StoryCorps in the comments below!

Culture, Media and Photography of Athletes

I ran across this article while reading some others on Slate.com.  The title got me:  "What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball?"  I knew exactly what they were referring to--the obsession to objectify and de-head the photos of the players and focus on particular body parts.  Granted, the uniforms for beach volleyball are already tiny bikinis for the females and board shorts for me, but check out this article and see the examples of how men would be photographed in the same style.
http://www.metro.us/philadelphia/international/article/1148979

You could use this in a gender and media unit or in the culture unit.  Great examples.  I'll let the reader check out the link rather than posting them here--I would rather make this high school classroom friendly without some contextualizing.

The Teaching High School Sociology web site

Media Literacy: A Clearinghouse for Resources

After Friday's post, I saw a comment from Frank Baker about his own website devoted to media literacy.  It can be found at:  http://www.frankwbaker.com/default1.htm

He organizes sites he has found into both subject area and department topics.  There are so many sites to check out off his website.  Wonderful stuff.  Be sure to check it out.


The Teaching High School Sociology web site

Media Literacy

One of my favorite sites is the one at medialiteracyproject.org

It takes many ideas from both psychology and sociology and helps teachers and students become more aware of the techniques used as well as the tools to examine and decipher the myriad images we see in the various media we consume.  I will be posting various other aspects of that site as time permits.  Meanwhile, check it out if you are doing any kind of media literacy in your sociology course. Great content for some semiotics.

This link I am sharing below may be the best thing I share related to media literacy both in terms of excellent content, but also in terms of techniques.  Simply a great handout.

One particularly good overview is here:
http://medialiteracyproject.org/sites/default/files/resources/Intro_to_Media_Literacy.pdf


The Teaching High School Sociology web site