I am continuing to enjoy our Second Life class experience. Our most recent project involved the creation of a "culture jam." I created a Power Point “movie” focusing on images of women in print media. We see advertisements in magazines and newspapers, on billboards, trucks, busses, and store displays, Americans see an average of 247 advertisements in a single day. There are an astounding number of images in advertisements and other forms of print media, such as calendars, which portray images of women put into positions of sexual submission, sexual domination and the physical assault (sometimes sexual), or the dead body, of a woman. The first portion of my presentation displays images from modern advertisements which either place women in positions of sexual submission to men or in positions where they are being sexually dominated by men. The second portion of my presentation addresses images that are perhaps even more concerning than the first group because they involve the threat of physical violence and death. In a culture that aspires to equality between the sexes, it is unacceptable to simply absorb images of submission, domination and violence against women into our visual cultural subconscious. I hope encouraging active participation in “reading” this images will, result in a population with a more developed visual intelligence, and the subconscious will become conscious.

You can view the presentation at this website. It will take a few minutes to load since it has music and it is best if you cick the "view full screen box" so you can really see the images.

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/nonstop16-161111-images-women-print-media-advertisements3-others-misc-ppt-powerpoint/

I am really enjoying this semester! I have found the technology to be an interesting way to connect students from different areas. While at times the are some technical difficulties, overall I feel that the technology is an enhancement to the class. I really enjoy the class meetings which are held entirely in second life using the type chat feature, I personally find this to be the easiest way to conduct this type of long-distance class that we have tried so far. In addition I love the ability to display our work in our second life world!

Second Life

Here are the A&M and UNT students meeting in Second Life. We are overcoming the tech obstacles!

A Great Opportunity

One day last spring, Dr. Christina Bain and Dr. Stephen Carpenter had a great idea to bring their students together. So, during the spring 2009 semester, UNT art education graduate students are collaborating with their peers at Texas A & M University and Professor Carpenter on a course examining visual culture. The class will be held in Second Life, allowing the UNT students and the A&M students to "meet" weekly in cyberspace. The students and Dr. Carpenter will also meet in Dallas a few times this semester and, hopefully, get together at the National Art Education Association annual conference.

To document the experience, students from UNT's art education graduate program will offer their reflections on this blog. Please be sure to visit regularly to keep track of what is going on in this great collaboration!