“However, people’s dependence on multimedia, rather than on traditional text-based sources of information, could make them particularly susceptible to what scientist, writer, broadcaster and member of the House of Lords Professor Susan Greenfield calls “the ‘yuk’ and ‘wow’ factors”. The more exciting the presentation, the more likely they are to be impressed by it. So, for an obvious example, young people using the net to get the truth may decide between creationism or evolution not on the quality of the arguments but on the cleverness of the web designers’ pyrotechnics. But healthy amounts of adolescent skepticism (“whatever”) kick in at about the same time as acne. So, if we are able to equip young people with the skills to evaluate different sources in the context of a media-rich world, pupils will know how important it is to take everything they find online - however wicked the graphics - with a huge pinch of salt.”
Sometimes I include the random PowerPoint slide of a rabbit in a football costume or of Darth Vader teaching grammar to young students. It’s fun stuff: I see how long I can carry on the ruse as if the slide is actually part of the real lesson, and make wild connections and long, drawn out, and detailed anecdotes that give credence to the notion that, “Oh yeah, after the Star Wars series Darth often appeared in elementary schools to teach the past participle to ten year olds,” or, “Yes, definitely the first mammal besides homo sapiens to get drafted into the NFL was a rabbit—of course, they are both fast and can change direction on a dime with those sturdy hind legs—and rumor has it that this rabbit was a distant, if not direct, descendant of the hare that was the inspiration for Warner Brother’s Bugs Bunny.”
I am not really very funny, and the kids know it. I am only funny because I am not funny, and I generally apologize on the first day of class in September for all of the unfunny hyjinks I will drag my students through over the course of the school year. I don’t even use flashing lights or music (very often) to get a reaction out of my students—I just insist that my story/PowerPoint slide/random video is in fact true and entirely related to the task at hand—and yet they still remember such jokes at the end of the year (or the end of their high school careers) much more readily than they remember the symbolic significance of the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn (much to my chagrin). Action research for my master’s degree thesis involved investigating the correlation between the use of humor in the classroom and levels of student engagement. It turns out there is one, and the trick is to try and infuse that humor with images and ideas that are also relevant to the lesson/idea/task at hand so as to ensure better and longer-term understanding for students.
But I’m just one person and, again, not very funny—nor am I bestowed with expensive tools and expertise in the areas of persuasion. Nonetheless, students believe my most ridiculous claims when coupled with a mere (ridiculous, at that) picture. And this concerns me.
If a noticeable number of my students are gullible enough to (time and again) fall for Mr. Fuller’s in-class song and dance, just imagine what they might be susceptible to believe online—when actual marketers with actual agendas and actual tools and actual expertise place a well-aimed and actual advertisement in front of them on the internet. “No problem,” you say, “young people can tell what is a commercial and what is ‘real.’” Yes, perhaps. Most of the time. But how about when those same “marketers”—or “designers of content,” as seems a more apt description of today’s online authors—deliver information within a context that is seamlessly integrated with other, seemingly important and legitimate content? What then?
At its most basic levels, the ability to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent, sincerely wise and merely flashy—whether in an online environment or a very real physical environment, say, at the grocery market (are online environments “real” or not?)—is the ability to distinguish between reality and unreality, between truth and hoax. I sometime wonder in what ways P.T. Barnum might have leveraged the internet. Certainly, he would have been master orchestrator of wows and yuks.
What kind of symphony do we want our future-adult students to play in? What kind of symphony will they play in? Who will be the conductor, and who will be willing to call out the conductor when his directions are, well, just wrong?
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