End of the term

Eventually we came to end of this semester. I hadn't expected so much from Eng 101 before the term. However, I wish I could had some interesting topics for me. We had two main topics in this course; one and half of them is gender and the rest half of them is media. I divide media into two parts because in the half of the media we also discussed the gender.

It would be great if we mentioned environment, global warming, technology, future. I hope in Eng 102 there will be more interesting topics for me.

What we learned so far..

In this term, there is a new term called 'copyright permission'. When we want to use a photo -or another copyrighted works- we have to ask permission of the copyright of it from its owner. However, this process may be very complicated or expensive. We learned a new thing this term in Eng 101 to deal with this problem: Creative Commons. So, we can easily use the pictures we found thanks to creative commons as long as we use the APA format.

We also developed our presentation and blogging skills.

Presentation

We presented two presentations in this term of Eng 101 ; one of them was practice. The practice presentation is really good opportunity to experience. I remember that I caught some tips and strategies I tried to implement next presentation. Firstly, we prepared the slides with well data but we hadn't organized talking part - who would talk to which part. I tried to help Albert but it turned out I became dominant. Secondly, we hadn't prepared a reference slide.

In the real presentation, our topic was media and we was going to present the popular movie "The Truman Show". We tried to be more careful this time about reference and copyright. So, we emailed to Paramount Pictures to ask copyright permission of the official poster of the movie:) (the mail is in end of the post). Of course, they didn't returned us and we couldn't put the poster on slide. In this presentation, we tried to be more interactive. Especially, we didn't just read the article but interpreted and tried to participate audience.

One of the good side of this course is that teaches students being interactive. Presentations and blogs are great experience to learn proper communication, interactivity and expressing themselves.

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Hello,

We are two students from Sabanci University in Turkey. We have an assignment about media and have a presentation which we are considering to associate with Truman Show. We want to use official poster of Truman Show, however, we would have to show copyright permission in references section. If you give the permission just for only one projection we would be very appreciated. We assure you, It is not going to be commercial presentation and we will only present that to within 15 people.

Thank you for your time.

Erdem Duru & Albert Ciprut

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Edit:

Here is the news; They eventually returned us and gave the permission. Here is the full mail:

**********

We have no objection to your use of The Truman Show poster as part of a

classroom presentation. This waiver of objection does not extend to any

publication or broadcast of the image outside of the classroom setting.

Sincerely,

Larry McCallister

Paramount Pictures

-----Original Message-----

From: Erdem Duru [mailto:erdemduru@su.sabanciuniv.edu]

Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 2:19 PM

To: Terms Of Use

Subject: Copyright Permission

Hello,

We are two students from Sabanci University in Turkey. We have an

assignment about media and have a presentation which we are considering

to associate with Truman Show. We want to use official poster of Truman

Show, however, we would have to show copyright permission in references

section. If you give the permission just for only one projection we

would be very appreciated. We assure you, It is not going to be

commercial presentation and we will only present that to within 15

people.

Thank you for your time.

Erdem Duru & Albert Ciprut

This email (including any attachments) is for its intended-recipient's use only.

This email may contain information that is confidential or privileged.

If you received this email in error, please immediately advise the sender by

replying to this email and then delete this message from your system.

*****************

Photojournalism

Photojournalism. According to some, it is unethical way to show people's weakness. According to some, it is humiliation and just a taking a frame for money or being popular.

Everyday we see on news countless incidences of murdered peoples , raped women, accidents, catastrophes, child abusers... We so love to play high-tech FPS type (first-person shooter) computer/video games. We so adapted to that kind environment and world that when we heard 'violence' or 'dying people for some reason in somewhere' they make sense not more than nothing. So, there should be some 'striking' tools that would shake us, wake us, take our attention to make us see those people. I think the photojournalist try to accomplish this mission by jeopardizing their life.

Reality TV

When I read the Steven Reiss' and James Wiltz's "Why People Watch Reality TV" article something drew my attention. In the article human's basic desires are categorized and explained. There is also a table that shows 16 basic motives of human with their brief explanations such as; power, curiosity, status, social contact and so on. So, reality TV is actually very smart idea to take people in front of TV because they are basically created by using the possible weak sides of human and their psychology. Reality TV shows -despite its name- does not represent the usual or "real" people as we see on the street but extreme characters who have lots of money or status which ordinary people envy them or have an extreme life-style which people are curious to learn more.

There is a remarkable description about

Reality Show in Wikipedia. "Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, utilizing sensationalism to attract viewers to generate advertising products." So, It is not so hard to understand about these shows when It is watched that the people on these shows does not act like normal people, I think their extreme dialouges, fightings, scandals are just fiction created by producers to make some sensations to attract more and more people. However they do not realize -or do not care?- actually they are gradually leading to moral corruption in society.