Friday, September 25, 2009

The REAL Digital Natives

ENA students are clearly the real digital natives while CEM students are merely digital immigrants. The statistical result shows this. Among the students, 48.9 % of ENA students versus only 35.9 % of CEM students accept technology when asked how they feel about it. Also 2.6 % of CEM students versus 0 % of ENA students claim to be uncomfortable with electronic devices. Furthermore, we can observe that ENA students are more likely to use a computer for varied reasons with 75 % using one for both work and entertainment whereas only 59 % of CEM students use computers this way. In addition, ENA students have a bigger tendency to get their news from technological devices such as television, radio and internet. CEM students mostly get their news from friends and family which is far from being technological. Finally, ENA students show a better understanding of the dangers of technology. Indeed, 38.5 % of CEM students blindly assume a news report is true and will feel better informed. Only 25 % of ENA students react this way. For their part, ENA students show that they are more aware that many journalists give their own point of view and are trying to influence our opinion. In conclusion, ENA students are more at ease with technology and use it better than their CEM counterparts. They are the clear digital natives.
Bob and Hugo

Digital natives

A few weeks back, students from two institutions in Quebec – the Édouard-Montpetit College (CEM) and the National Institute of Aeronautics (ENA) – had to answer a survey named Who are the real digital natives? The first thing to know is that the questionnaire was available on internet so the participants needed to be already familiar with the computer technology. There were 48 students from ENA who answered and only 40 from CEM which could prove that ENA students are more comfortable with technology.

Despite of this, the data that was gathered shows that ENA students are more versatile with their computer since 75% use it to do both work and entertainment while only 59% are able to do so. The survey also showed that in 95.7% of the cases, ENA students love or at least accept technology while the percentage is of 92.3% for the CEM students. The survey showed that 2.6% of CEM students are not comfortable with electronic devices while this number drops to 0% of the ENA students.

With all the data captured we can say that the ENA students could be categorized as ‘’Digital Natives’’ and the CEM students as ‘’Digital Immigrants.’’ What these terms mean is that the CEM students had to adapt more and still have to adapt to technology when the ENA students are more familiar and comfortable with it.

Longueuil Students Are Obviously Digital Natives

For multiple reasons, CEM students are obviously Digital Natives. We concluded this based on the results obtained by a survey given to all the students of the class of English from both campuses, which are ENA (Saint-Hubert) and CEM (Longueuil). The students from the CEM chose that they loved at 56.4% the technology, but here in ENA, we accept it and love it equally at approximately 47%. In Longueuil city, the students share more stuff on the internet than people in Saint-Hubert campus. A lot more blogs are created there too, 30.8% of the learners at Longueuil do it instead of 2.1% here. More CEM scholars use the computer mainly for work, and more people use it for entertainment, here we use it for half and half. Every disciple at the CEM knew what a blog was and some Digital Natives were also some expert creators, 5.1%. Here, 6.3% didn’t even know what a blog was. Much more people at Longueuil upload stuff on the net than here in Saint-Hubert, that gives us the final reason why the apprentices of CEM are Digital Natives. Briefly, at the ENA, the people are more serious on the computer than at Edouard-Monpetit, because they use it more for entertainment and communication.
Jérémy and André

Longueuil Rules the Digital World

It`s clearly shown that Longueuil student love technology more than ÉNA students. Longueuil students overpower the others in creating websites and blogs with 28.7 per percent greater than those of ÉNA. Furthermore, 12.8 per cent of Longueuil students post themselves as experts and creators when it comes to using You Tube and Facebook. The students at Longueuil are from a younger generation and are brought up with computers, so they are the digital natives. Statistics will show that 71.8 per cent of Longueuil students will get their news from the Internet opposed to TV and radio. Students at ÉNA use computers for work 2.1 per cent of the time opposed to Longueuil students who use it more. According to statistics, there are 2.6 per cent of students in Longueuil that aren’t comfortable using electronic devices; however, there is still more than half of the students that like technology. The statistics show that Longueuil students have better interest in using computer or technology than ENA students in every category. The fact that at Longueuil there are more women and that explains why there is a higher percentage of chatters, bloggers and Facebook users. In conclusion, students in Longueuil uses technology more than students in ENA and by far.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Buydehydratewater.com

The website buydehydratedwater.com is a site that uses false information to sell a product, the website is a front organisation. The word dehydrate means ‘’no water’’ or to extract water from somewhere or from something that is one of the reason to confirm that this website is unreliable. Furthermore, there is no information on the creator or sponsor of the website to check a background. The website was created to sell dehydrated water, they use false information to make people buy their product. There is none reliable information inside. The website’s trying to change the readers opinion, for example they said ‘’ Stop drinking tap water. Stop drinking well water. Refuse to touch water from desalination plants’’. The creator used lots of visual contents to attract people to buy the product. There are many hoax websites which uses the falsehood to present information like true, but people should be aware to avoid being duped.

Buydehydratedwater.com

This site is obviously a hoax. There is no information about the author, the address of the company is not a real one, not having and actual street name or number and the phone number that is provided is actually a number to call telemarketing services (Google search). Though the text is generally error free, there are a couple spelling mistakes which reduces their credibility. As for the subject of the site, it is the main clue that the site is a hoax. This site promotes the sale of dehydrated water, which cannot exist by principal of dehydration. They basically sell you an empty package with the name dehydrated water on it. Also the site advertises career and franchise opportunities that are very sarcastic in nature such as Free transportation to work by mule″ or ″Ketchup packets from McDonalds″. Overall the site is pretty convincing and well made, but once you think about the concept itself and rummage through the site a bit to see the touches of humour, you soon realize that it is a scam.

Buydehydratedwater.com

The website is owned by a company which name is the same of their internet address. No names are given on the website. The formation of the people that sells the dehydrated water is unknown, so we don’t have any references about the product reliability. No links are present about the author/sponsor of this product, only phone numbers are given. No reputable sources and pertinent information are present. No spelling and grammatical errors are apparent. There is no information good for any research on this website because they only tell us that the water in the world is polluted and they give us testimonials about people that drink dehydrated water. There is no information on this website that can be found easily, because no valuable things are said on this website. The last update of the website is not given. The latest date given is in the year 2004. The links given are correct, but refers to things that have nothing in common to dehydrated water (example: http://www.universityofnigeria.com/ ). The headquarters of the company is located in Los Angeles, CA. But there is no address given. The website is designed to tell people that water is polluted. They are trying to sell us “dehydrated water”. The way that the website is constructed let us doubt about the legitimacy of it. In the background of the site there is publicity about the product itself. It’s obliviously a hoax site. The information given on this site is worthless.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Funding for the Arts.

The ad starts with a famous French Canadian singer trying to promote his culture to English Canadian jury to get some money to promote his culture in France. The ad is filled with funny dialogs. In fact, dialogs between French and English speaking Canadians are funny because it shows a couple of misunderstandings. While the French Canadian is singing his song, the jury understands few words that may sound vulgar in English. At the beginning and at the end of the ad, we can hear the narrator to put us in the concept of the ad. The ad does use music, but not as background music, but as a sign of French Canadian culture. The jury isn’t as clear as the singer is. It looks like it represents darkness. At the end, we can see a big printed statistic that clearly shows the idea of the ad. The target audience is all the French speaking Canadians, and not for the English speaking Canadians. The main goal of this ad is to persuade us that our culture is very important and we should fund it. The statistic they give us at the end greatly shows that it is important to promote our culture around the world, even in an economical view.

Molson Beer (Canada)

The commercial features a man named Joe, who is standing in the front of the screen of a movie theatre. He is trying to define what a Canadian is and is not in his monologue. The commercial is using a humorous method to describe it, and camera angles are not putting him in the center. In the beginning, he is shy and searching for his words, but as the commercial moves on, he gains confidence in himself. In the end, the camera angles are centering on him. At the end, he is really valorising Canada, and at that moment, we see our Canadian flag, followed by the words “I AM CANADIAN”. At the moment the word CANADIAN appears, it’s shown on a glass being filled with Molson Canadian beer. This creates a climax at the end with the product, letting us know that true Canadians drink Molson Canadian beer.

Berlitz

BERLITZ
The ad tells a story of a new German Coast Guard radio operator who receives a distress
call from a sinking ship. He misunderstands the distress call due to his poor English
language literacy. The main actors interact by radio communication. The radio operator is unsure of his tasks and is unconfident of his communication skills. The tone of the ad is serious with a humorous twist. It employs the music Carmina Burana which expresses the desire for directness of communication. The target audience is English non-speakers.
The message of the ad is that English language skills are vital for critical international tasks. The intention is to inform people to learn English. The commercial is very effective at delivering the message and is very inspiring to all who yearn for good communication in English.

Molson Canadian beer ad

In the Molson Canadian beer commercial the company use an original idea to advertise their product. It is a guy on a stage with a big screen behind him displaying images related to Canadians. The ad uses myths about Canadians to make it look funny and more attractive. The guy on the stage doesn’t really have a dialogue; it’s more a monologue that comes with a dramatic music to push the effect further. To make the commercial even more interesting, the company use various camera angles. The tone is humorous and serious at the same time. The target audience is essentially young Canadian because in the commercial the actor looks young and the speech is about Canadian. They want the people to watch that commercial and see themselves in that guy because they’re proud of being Canadian. He drinks Canadian beer so they want to drink it. Personally we think that the ad is effective because it delivers the message clearly and shortly. The only problem with the commercial is that the product only targets a small public: the Canadians.

"Use seatbelts" advetrisement

The advertisement which is about using seatbelts in cars begins with calm music and a beautiful landscape as a background. Then the sound of a crash can be hear and you see the “soul” of the dead people in car, going up to heaven expect one men which was wearing his seatbelt. In this advertisement, there is neither dialogue nor narrator and the tone of the ad is very serious. The music in the ad reinforces the idea that the seatbelt is a saviour, that it can save your life if a car accident happens. Special effects (the spirits) are use in the advertisement. Without them, it couldn’t have been made. Also, at the end of this advertisement, the words “Heaven can wait. Belt up” appears which one more time reinforces the seatbelt importance. This ad is targeting people around 20-30 years old that are driving because the three people in the car are around this age. This advertisement intention is about the security on the road and it perfectly delivers his message.

Funding of the Arts

As we all know Quebec is a little French province inside a big English country. Because of history people from Quebec grow up with a negative prejudice on Federal government. This video expresses it in a very particular and especially funny way. It is a parody of the representative from Quebec trying to get funds for culture and arts from the Canadian Government. In real life the Federal Government made a large cut on Quebec’s cultural and arts funds. As this video is made by Pro-Quebecois, they are trying to laugh at the Federal government to give a revolution feeling to the population. They want us to let the Federal government know we’re not happy about that cut. In fact, the main difference between English speaking and French speaking people is the language. As a result, people who speak a language they don’t need or care about will automatically have major oral and written weaknesses and this is what they are trying to exploit in this video. This video is really attracting because it has many things inside that are liked by Quebecois, such as “La complainte du phoque en Alaska”, a very popular song from Beau Dommage. We can see two really well known faces from Quebec in this video too: Michel Rivard and Stéphane Rousseau. Another thing that hits our curiosity is the last sentence brought at the complete end of the video; it mentions that every simple dollar put in the culture and arts will bring up to 10 or 11 times more direct or indirect earnings. All this put together makes a very successful advertising because it gets to Quebec people feelings and brings out the inferiority complex many Quebecois have against the Federal Government. We can be sure it brought many discussions around the dinner table.