Month: February 2018

Bias and Media Unit Reflection

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Bias and stereotype could make huge impacts on the readers, most readers would be affected based on how they view things, such as controversial topics, especially on new generations. However, in this unit, we learned how to detect bias from social media properly which is an important skill that protects us from being affected by media bias which improved my thinking skills based on IB learner profile, thinking, consider whether the content is biased by using bias detection techniques, There are few important skills I need keep for detecting bias effectively, such as find out the primary purpose of the content, then detect biases that are shown in the content based on the way it spreads messages to the audience.

We did some activities that improved our skills at detecting bias, in my opinion, one of the most effective action was probably Checkokology, it has 4 modules in which each module teaches us new skills, module one was pretty basic but it is useful, it teaches about filtering news information, such as detecting primary purpose, and which article is more newsworthy.etc, moving n to the second module, it teaches us civic freedoms, basically, there are five freedoms, which is Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Assemble Peaceably and Freedom of Petition. In the third module, it teaches us about internet personalization and in the fourth module, we were tested if we were a fair journalist. These activities are short but helpful, the techniques from these lessons can be used in daily life for everyone, every age especially when technologies and internet are becoming more indispensable. we practiced detecting news articles and commercials the most, we improved as we practiced more, I see my improvements over this unit based on detecting news articles, at the beginning of the unit, I barely explain about my annotation in my work, I only label it, it was unorganized, no color coded. However, as we practice more, I learn more. so I think this activity was also really helpful, too. What I should improve on and practice more about is detecting bias from commercials or TV shows, it was harder than I thought, that’s is what I have to keep working on.

Activities:

  1. News & TV Bias
  2. Checkology Modules 1-4
  3. Annotation Bias In Media (Summative)
  4. Analysis Bias in Media (Summative)
  5. Product Bias In Media (Summative)

Detecting bias is a great technique that can be used on the internet, news articles or digital articles, advertisements.etc it can be used on everything that involved controversial topics, opinions, issues.etc. We don’t just roughly go through the content, we detect bias from the content, so today’s challenging information from social media, newspaper.etc would not affect us. Overall, this unit brings a huge impact on me, when I applied it to Taiwanese news articles, I realized how bias it is, I realized how many people are being affected by the media every day, every moment, before learning this, that biased news made me so emotional, I just felt the way they wanted me to feel, that’s always the purpose of being biased in news. Now, I would see if the news is biased or not because it’s actually fun to see if the news is biased, after detecting this, I would share my results with my parent, they also joined me, simply put, they can also detect bias now, this is the reason for why I think this unit taught me a lot and brought a huge impact on me.

 

The Impact Of Media Bias

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This summative project shows how we did in overall this unit, which includes annotation, creating products, how to bring awareness to the public.etcIn this unit, we had learned about biases and stereotypes which occur everywhere, we learned how to detect bias from different types of media, annotate the content and see if they are biased, we have done several activities throughout this unit such as annotation, an essay that brings awareness.etc
Bias In Media: this document includes everything except annotation, it has analysis to annotations and how we should be aware of media bias.

News Articles Annotation:
Over this unit, we had done a lot of annotation activities, this pdf shows my both summative a projects, both articles are focusing on politics.

  1. North Korea pushing “vanity projects” as Olympics near, despite suffering in Kim Jon Un’s regime
  2. Pence tweets support for gay US Olympian who trashed him: ‘We are FOR YOU’ :

Print-Ad: moving on to the next section, image bias, we also annotated images in the project, the techniques used for detecting bias from images are similar. However, biases and stereotypes are mostly based on the camera angle and how it portraits the character in the image.

We were asked to creat an product which brings awarness to the public and letting them to be more aware of media bias, I made two products that brings awarness, the first drawing shows bias in media, and the second drawing shows stereotypes shown in media.
The Impact of Media Bias on individuals and society

My first drawing shows the impact of media bias on individuals and society, there are a lot of news organizations trying to be unbiased and reliable. However, I think the biggest issue is the primary purpose of a biased news or viral rumor is money, as the report is more interesting to the audience, the trends and search frequency increases on the internet which makes a lot of money for the news organization. In my drawing, it shows the cameraman is told to choose a reporter who actually produces a fake topic about Republicans instead of the truth of Republicans, from the live stream, it shows that the reporter actually looks like an expert but behind the scene, he is actually wearing an underpants, this shows he disrespects to his job and he is actually not an expert as we see on the TV, the cameraman adjust the camera to the fake expert instead of focusing on the real political expert because the fake expert produces search frequncy on internet. However, the fact doesn’t really grab attention. It also shows the man is asking for money as he is hidden by the camera, it shows how social media keeps the truth as a secret. Most importantly, when people think what they see is true, they would spread the news to people around them, this is why the views of “ONN” live stream is very high, most people would spread the message through social media, it causes extra impressions to people (could be strangers) who haven’t seen this, so more people would see this fake news as a “fact” to something especially when someone spreads this message with adding more personal opinions into this news as he/she shares this.

As a citizen living in Taiwan, after learning the lessons of detecting bias, I realized the danger of social media hidden in Taiwan’s internet, It has a big difference to CNN, BBC. etc these more reliable news sources, the difference is that it is extremely biased, they add their opinions to the news directly, especially to China, North Korea. etc countries that they fight against with, this is a big issue to everyone living in Taiwan, it would really change our opinions to something. I hope this brings awareness of media bias to everyone, especially us, Taiwanese because media of Taiwan is not that reliable than we thought.

Second Drawing:

My second drawing shows stereotypes occur in media and daily life. The title of my drawing is black and white, it represents old-thinking, these 4 doodle characters are the main focus of this drawing, it shows that the boy likes pink and he likes boys instead of girls. However, his parent and people around him think that’s not what a man does and the definition of love is a man and a woman. In my drawing, it also shows stereotypes toward gender, pink is for girls and blue is for boys, boys play guitars and girls play violins, boys wear simple shirts and girls wear dresses, men go to work and women take care of the family and would like to shop. The heart located at the border shows the definition of love is only a man and a woman.

These stereotypes are ironic, representing how most people and the society view things. they stereotyped everything, this drawing is an example of gender. on social media, stereotypes occur everywhere, this impact how people view things, they could become biased, too. social media makes huge impacts on the society, either good ways or bad ways, and the stereotypes of social media is definitely impacting the society in a really bad way, people should break the stereotypes and makes the society becomes more open-minded instead of spreading stereotypes.

2018-2019 G.R.A.S.P Physics Lab Investigation Reflection

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Over this unit, we explored about work and Machines, we were divided into 5 groups and make 5 presentations focusing on five different machines and how they work there were five machines, where is Lever, Wedge, Pulley, Screw, and Inclined Plane, Me, Claire, Hayden, and Amber were in one group and focused on Lever, exploring how it works. the experiments and research simplified “lever” for me, I actually learned a lot from this project, as well as other groups’ works.

About Lever: Lever is a machine consisting of a beam pivoted on the fulcrum, there are three classes of levers, the different class of levers do the different types of works, what they all do is increase the mechanical advantage, which means we are able to move the same load with smaller forces. reversely, as mechanical advantage decreases, we need to apply more force in order to move the same load, but most machines are designed to increase the Mechanical advantage (MA). There are three classes of levers, categorized by the locations of three points, which is the fulcrum, effort, and the load. the first class of levers has the fulcrum between the load and the effort, an example for the first is seesaw, the fulcrum is placed between the load and the effort.

the second class of lever has the fulcrum. the biggest advantage of the second class of lever is that it requires less force to move the load, an example for the second class of lever is nutcracker, as we see in this image, the effort point is placed on the handles, the load is placed between the effort point and the fulcrum, which means the nut would be the load since it is placed between.

The third class of lever has the effort between the load and the fulcrum, the disadvantage of the third class of lever is that it requires more force to move the same load. However, the load will move in a longer distance than other classes. an example of the third class of lever is a baseball bat. Image result for baseball batas it hits the baseball, the top of the baseball bat is the load, one of our hand that holds the middle of the baseball bat becomes the effort point, and the bottom of the baseball bat becomes the fulcrum.

Self-Reflection:

In our experiment, we used the second class of lever in which the load is placed between the effort point and the fulcrum to do the experiment. We were trying to test how how does the distance between the fulcrum and the load in the second-class lever affect the work it requires to lift up a 200 grams weight to 0.1 meters height. for the first trial, we placed the weight on 0.15 meter between the fulcrum and the load, distance moved 0.10937 meters also 0.10937 work had been done, our calculations were more accurate, it is approximate because the corrugated plastic was moving in a curve distance, but Claire calculated as accurate as she could. Next, we moved the weight to 0.30 meter, this time, it moved 0.10205 meter and 0.13607 word was being done, the data shows a rule, the more longer distance between the fulcrum and the load in the second-class lever, the more forces are required to move the same load (200g weight). In the third trial, the distance between the load and the fulcrum increased by 0.15 meter again, at this time ,the lever moved 0.10048 meter curvely and 0.18108 work was being done. From the data, as the distance between the load and the fulcrum increases, the distance that the weight will travel decreases; second, as the distance between the load and the fulcrum increases, more force is required to move the load and more work will be done.

In this experiment, our methods are not as valid as we thought, because there were many variables that could affect our experiment but some were uncontrollable, such as human errors and instrumental errors, our eyes levels could not be exactly the same as 10.1 cm. Instrumental error also occurred during the experiment because we might forgot to readjust the spring scale. It would be better if we used 2.5 N spring scale because it was harder to see the decimals from a 5N spring scale than a 2.5 N spring scale.

 

  1. What were your contributions to the success of your group’s lesson presentation?  Be specific.   What parts did you research, what parts of the experiment did you have responsibility for, what were your responsibilities for the lesson preparation and presentation?   I think I contributed the most at researching  background informations for lever, I researched about section 1 which is background information for our presentation. During our experiment, my responsibility was to stable the ruler straight and also see how much force was being done from the spring scale. 
  2. Describe one part of this project that was a challenge?   How did you respond to this challenge?  One of the most difficult challenge for our group was facing uncontrollable errors, such as human errors, even though we couldn’t completely control it, but we tried our best to make the data as accurate as we could. 
  3. Describe what you most enjoyed about the project? What part are you most proud of–that you say “WE DID GREAT”? I think the best part of this project was the experiment, we had a lot of fun during the experiment through building instruments and I learned the most from the experiment, such as the calculations used in our experiment. 
  4. Long after this project has ended, what parts of the experience will you remember?   (…“the nightmare is over, I have blocked it completely from my mind!”…hopefully not!) This is worth as a memory of mine, I think that I actually learned the most from this project, from my group mates, from the video we watched together.etc, we communicated a lot during this project so I’m pretty sure that each of us learned new things from this project.