Profile and Anti Profile Assignment

This semester I had an opportunity to read the novel Feed by M. T. Anderson for my Adolescent Literature course. The novel is set in the future and highlights some of the invasive threats that unchecked technology poses to American liberties and human privacy. The novel portrays a group of teenagers who have been implanted with internal computer chips called "feeds". The feed allows people to "m-chat" without even speaking (a telepathic way of instant messaging), it allows the characters to watch their favorite shows, and it grants them access to a world of information without accessing computer, watching television or reading a book. Although this is an interesting idea theoretically, the novel shows how the media and corporations that own the feed begin to streamline personalities, create and control demographic profiles of each user and market products that will render the users dependent, illiterate, uncreative and antisocial. One of the main characters, Violet, who has enjoyed an alternate and more traditional upbringing (a well-educated outcast who challenges the pervasive ideology) begins to resist the feed, generating an 'anti-profile' which defies any possible categorization, creating many hiccups in the chip that is implanted in her brain. Her friends stand by and watch as she quickly deteriorates. The story is a tragic account of how lonely the path can be when you dare to disturb the universe.

For my project, I wanted to implement technology and have my students create a profile and an anti-profile assignment and then present it to the class in order to display their knowledge and understanding of Feed to their fellow students. I created very flexible guidelines that would encourage them to use technological tools to display their work. If they were unable to access the internet at home, there was an option for students to create a hodge-podge artifact collection that would illustrate their understanding of the book's themes. Below are the guidelines:

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Guidelines for Profile / Anti Profile Project
Feed by M. T. Anderson

During this unit, we have explored the novel Feed and the challenges that future generations will face with technology and the media.

Your assignment will be to create a project that displays these textual themes in a creative, conscientious manner.

Pick a character in the novel you’d like to simulate and create either a profile or an anti profile of demographic information. Some questions to consider before you begin may include:

How old is your character? What is their gender? What music do they like?
What are the brands they value? How do these brands ‘define’ them?
What does this say about their relation to the media and their peers?
Do they question their social roles or are they pawns of the media?

Select a medium on which to display your hodge-podge or artifact collection and ensure that you can defend your work in front of the class.

You can use traditional scissors and glue to create a poster board, or if you’re interested in multimedia, you can create a Powerpoint, write a blog, or design a MySpace page / Facebook profile that will display your selections. Again, you will be presenting and defending this in front of the class. Here are some examples I designed, using MySpace as a canvas:

http://www.myspace.com/467078756 Profile

http://www.myspace.com/467076081 Anti-Profile

Feel free to use any images, music, video, book, story, etc. that will display your understanding of the themes we’ve covered and your character profile.

Please provide at least three paragraphs in which you ‘perform’ your character’s role and illustrate your understanding of the text. This may involve a close reading of a scene, use of the novel’s jargon, and the character’s tone (which can be portrayed through content and style).

Include citations for your direct and indirect quotes.

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After beginning the assignment, I realized that there were a few concerns I would have about the explicit content on MySpace; however, if the project were done at home and parents were informed about the pitfalls of allowing their children on the internet unsupervised, as a teacher I would probably be safe after notifying parents and the administration of the project ahead of time. Because there are other avenues to take (PowerPoint, Facebook, Blogger.com, or even a poster or artifact collection) a myriad of mediums are available to suit different students' needs and maturity levels.

The wonderful outcomes and learning advantages of this project would be:

1) students would be teaching themselves and students, thereby involving multiple intelligences and the constructivist principles of learning,

2) students would learn new technological tools that they will need in the professional and academic world,

3) the technological component of this lesson is a catalyst for learning, and not as an entertaining game,

4) students would be able to gain personalized responses from the teacher and other students to help them grow,

5) they would be able to create something and save it for a future academic portfolio, thereby creating pride in their work

6) this activity involves a high amount of synthesis, critical reading and technological immersion into a simulated character, forcing mastery of the subject.

All in all, the project could be slightly refocused; for a computer lab, I would ask students to use blogger.com for their entries because it is more user-friendly and students would not run into the questionable content aforementioned. I am glad I took the risk of doing this project because my own learning experience was enhanced. Reflection is a powerful tool and I believe that the 'failures' I meet as a teacher are opportunities.