10th November - Back to school

Trying to get in touch with schools

Now the school I had in mind was a primary school that attended and left in 2002. Now I thought being a former pupil this school may allow my group to go in and speak to the current pupils. The problem I 1^st noticed was that most of the teachers I had during my time there have moved on to different schools or have retired.  The remaining members of staff that knew who I was asked, asked me to go through the official approach and email the school.  This was the 1^st draft of that email

Hi we are a group of Media students from Liverpool john moores university. As an assignment we have been asked by the games company rebel play to find out why girls don’t play console games. We have some hypothesis on why this is we feel the best way to research these ideas is to start by interviewing pupils at the age of 11 because we believe this is when girls turn away from console games and when boys start to become a part of the gaming culture. We are hoping that you would allow us to come into your school and speak to your year 6 pupils. Give them a small presentation then have them precipitate in activities which we will have prepared so ultimately using that data we can either prove or disprove of hypothesis    

Now after speaking to my fellow team members we edited that email slightly to make it sound more official and less informal. But the result was no response when I spoke to a former teacher they told me that no matter how many times I emailed them the likelihood of the school letting us speak to the year 6 was rare. As the year 6s are seen as the most important year group in the school and that we were more likely to be able to speak to a year 7 class in a secondary school.

This was going to be my next approach anyway as the plan was to try and speak to both. For the approach to speak to a secondary school I went through a specific teacher as I knew it was more likely that he would allow me to speak to his year 7 students even if it was in exchange for me speaking to his year 11 and 6^th form students about university and the course I do. Now the 1^st question he raised was are me and the members of my group CRB checked. The teacher stated he couldn’t let us in to speak if we weren’t.  The answer being I’m not and neither is one of the other members of the group but one of is which gave us chance because that meant that even if one member couldn’t go one could and that we were going to find a loop hole on how to allow me into school that in all likelihood being the fact my younger brother still attends the 6^th form.  After this discussion the teacher told us that he is going to what he can do and try and get us into the school well just have to wait for him to get back to us. 

3rd of November -What When and with Whom?

The question/ getting put into groups

After a 2week delay we finally found out what question we would do. The delay caused by an overwhelming number of people who wanted to answer the question set by rebel play. This surprised the lecturer but not me I assumed this would be the most popular choice as it sounded the most interesting as well most people came up with ideas on ho to approach this question straight away. Also the idea that the target audience for the question being females this meant that answers would be able to be found inside lectures. This was my choice of question because straight away I had numerous different hypotheses on why don’t girls play console games. Luckily enough through the fact I had attended all my lectures I was given this question.

The group I was put in was team 4 which included Tom Munns and Senay Kiflom. This interest group because I had worked with Tom on numerous projects last year and in all likelihood if we were to pick our own groups me and Tom probably would have been in the same group. Whereas I had never met Senay before as he was Imedia student but this didn’t bother me as his area of expertise should be different from mine and Tom’s. This is useful because to make a presentation we were going to have to use some software I had never used before.

Together we came up with a few hypotheses to prove or disprove these being

·         That women would rather spend their money on other things such as clothes

·         That Men compare competing more than women

·         Women don’t like the failure factor (once you fail a mission you have to start again)   

We decided the best females to focus on would be girls in their early teens as this is the market that can be created/exploited because it’s unlikely that a girl at the age of 16+ would change her mind on games now if she has never had any affiliation with them before. With that being the case we decided what maybe the best way to research this was to try and get into a secondary school and speak to their year 7- 9 girls. Or possibly go to primary school and speak to year 6 only. We delegated roles in the group we decided that Senay and Tom should do the research and I should try and get us into a school as well as create the questions we shall ask them. This was fine with me as I was the most local person in the group and already had two schools in mind that I may be able to get into as they were I went to school and a younger sibling currently attends one. They are also easy to commute to making it easy for everyone to travel.

how do you get females interested in console games

i have been asked by a company called rebel play how do you get girls interested in games? they gave a few ideas on why the majority of females aren't interested in the mainstream gaming community. As their research shows that the best selling games like call of duty are not played by women. the reasons they gave were that it is possibly to violent for most women to enjoy but this hypothesis is almost disputed by the fact in other forms of media e.g. violent films the audience is usually split 50/50 men and women. but can be backed up by the fact you rarely see a group of women in the cinema watching a violent film. another hypothesis they gave was the idea that the sorts of games girls buy games which is open ended like Sims were as males prefer games with a target to accomplish were you either succeed or fail.

i have my hypothesis on why girls don't main stream games the 1st of which was that i said gril's were less competitive then men which is was quickly shot down by the the other females around me who stated they believe the women are more competitive than men as you by the way in which women constantly judge each other as there walking down the street. i then realise what i meant wasn't that men are more competitive its the fact men love to compete. as when i thought about men will compete over everything from who out of whom is the faster runner to who can throw the furthest. When im with my friends the things we find most fun all in vole competing whethers is playing football playing pool of playing computer gamers were constantly trying to see who's better than who. were as maybe women don't find this as enjoyable because they may feel the need to constantly compete all the time with strangers.

another theory i have was much more obvious and it goes back to around what boys an girls at the age of 12 would want to buy and what their interested in. at the age of 12 most boys when they get money are only interested in buying either new games or sports equipment. were as the girls are more interested in buying new clothes or jewellery. this was backed up by a conversation i had with a few of the girls off my course when they themselves stated that its not that they don't like games its the fact if they had £40 for a new game they rather buy a new handbag or something.

hurricane passes through

this is my second blog unlike the 1st one this one is a lot more specific to a presentation i witnesses presented by hurricane films http://www.hurricanefilms.net/ an there project http://www.peoples-stories.com/ now before the presentation i did have a brief look around their website to see what the company was about having never heard of them before. i found that they had been nominated for a British academy film award this was surprising that they would be willing to give up there own time for free to present a question to students as they must already be successful so how much networking do they need to do? but i did realise that the reason why is that you should never stop networking because you never know when contacts will come in handy. the presentation was on a project called people stories which was based on the idea everybody has a story to tell. which is very true i my opinion as i am also often looked to tell a good story of what had happened in the week by my friends. so if i usually have a story within a week what kinds of great stories must someone who has live 70 years have seeing the huge changes in the society during the 20th century must have. he mentioned how he found about one person a sound engineer originally from st Helen's then went to university in Liverpool was nominated for 8 academy awards winning 2 who he had never heard of. with this prestige you would imagine he would be much more famous. his name is George Groves i wrote this down and went to research him myself as i was intrigued how someone from the same county as me could find the right breaks to be a Hollywood legend i found this website http://www.georgegroves.org.uk/ During this presentation i was thinking about how this project could make a lot of profit because people will pay to help them be heard. this was in the back of my mind right until when asked about it (his name eludes me right now) the presenter said something i found very interesting he said this sort of thing should be free for everybody to access people shouldn't have to pay to tell a story nor should you have to pay to hear someone else's. this got me thinking why should you have to pay to find out your own history shouldn't you be entitled to that information? it is your history after all! now the question he asked is how to you get the older generation involved in new media ways of story telling. this is question i have pondered over the last week an i think that is quite difficult because i find the older generation to be very proud people and having almost completely missed out on the computer age they don't see the need to learn how to use computers now after not needing them before in the lives. also when trying to teach the older generation about new technology you have to explain as slowly an as simplistically as possible now though not intended sometimes the older generation feel as if they being condescended when trying to explain also this is more likely to happen if they get frustrated . which frustrates the teacher an thus the condescension may begin. so in answering the question how do you get the older generation to get excited for new media i found this is a tough question to answer

12/10/2011

by Thomas Jennings

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it begins

It begins

It begins I have started blogging as part of university course at ljmu. The idea is to introduce me to new forms of media and networking. I have never made a blog before but have occasionally wondered about whether to but the same stumbling blocks have always occurred; would I have the time? Would I remember to constantly write my blog? What would I actually blog about? And finally the main stumbling block would people actually be interested because what’s the point of writing a blog if nobody reads it. Why I pondered these questions I realised that another reason why not to blog was in case what I wrote was really cringe worthy. I’ve just round the room on expression on everybody’s face is the same what do I write on this thing, how do I write it, and how formal do I have to be.

 How did i end up in university?

The course I am studying at ljmu is media professional studies with television. I ended choosing this course in a slightly different way than most people, I never thought at the age of 16 I would go to university and do media infect at the age of 16 I had never studied media. I actually thought if I went to university I would do history but at the age of 17 I lefty the college I was attending mainly due to my  own lack of interest in studying as I wanted to get a job. Once I had a proper 9 to 5 job even though I was on minimum wage there were promotion opportunities I realised this wasn’t for me and quit I went to my old schools 6th form studying media print, video and history. I chose the 1st to courses on at random but as the two years progressed I realised that I preferred doing media work than history. Also I realised then studying history how much media plays a role into politics. So I had a voice in media I can share my views on politics. Surprisingly though as I went through this course I have realised that I am actually more interested in working on fiction.

 How do i use social netwroking?

What part of the social network media I am involved in now are Facebook and YouTube. I am also on twitter but I have never tweeted nor do I follow the usual celebs or my friends. I actually only use twitter to follow football, boxing and American football correspondents so I am in touch with all of the latest sports news because I am not interested if some z list celeb went to an after part thrown by a host who didn’t attend.

Fianl thoughts  

After writing this I still wonder the same question does anyone actually care what I have wrote, the answer is probably not. Also another question to be asked have I bored people senseless with my 1st line of this blog? Well if I have I like the idea that I had that kind of power an also I wrote this for university so what I put on this blog has to be regulated. Also once I’ve posted this blog it’s in the public domain so future potential employers can see it so I don’t want to write something to ruin a chance of getting a job

 If you want to what type of work I do here is a link to my YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/JesusJenno

 This is where I plan to upload all documentary’s skits and sketches I make.