Teaching Critical Consuming

I'm so proud of my 8th graders. We've begun an extended project in which we use an Elgg community, each student with her own blog, to share weekly observations about media. They are assigned to post any thoughts, observations, or discoveries they have during the week related to media, whether it's about advertising or production. Already I've seen two gems: One student student submitted a video clip from a food blog about subliminal advertising on the Food Network (seriously, a huge red "I'm lovin' it!" splashed across one single frame of the Iron Chef) and another noticed that the characters on the OC were all talking very conspicuously on their Verizon phones. I have 28 students. It's like one big Media Awareness Detective Agency gathering mountains of data.