It's Meant To Be Thought: Mayıs 2013

Reflection Journal Multi-Media Entry 4: My Name Is Khan

“MY NAME IS KHAN AND I’M NOT A TERRORIST”

This is a reflection to the movie “My Name is Khan” that was an Indian film made up in 2010. Rizvan Khan is an American muslim man who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome that is a form of high functioning autism and this causes to make socialization complicated. The movie is about the challenge of this person to speak to the President seriously. There are a lot of scenes that affect me in many aspects, but it is better to mention about scenes that are related to special education since our dealing is about this issue. In early ages of Rizvan, his mother said that “ there are only two kinds of people; good people wo do good deeds and bad people who do bad.” She taught him by drawing schemas and their relations. Then, Rizvan learnt how to adapt to the society with different types of people. While he was talking, people around him would think that he is mad at first, but this was resulting in his problem that he couldn’t use or show gestures and facial expressions, but again with his problem; he is also very intelligent and doesn’t have any mental disabilities. When people are aware of this fact, they think that he isn’t mad really, even he is better that us mentally. His brother has a company and he wants Rizvan to sell the company’s beauty products ,and Rizvan goes and find a beauty center. When he enters here first, women in the center consider this strange and can not give a meaning. On the other hand, when he began to present beauty products very effectively, they started to think that he is not insane, and products are really good to use. In the last, when he arrived at the president, Rizvan took a permission from him and spoke to the country: “My name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist” and also mentioned about his mother’s saying that I wrote above before. He had become a symbol for peace and had overcome prejudices about muslims. As we understand from above explanations, people with disabilities should not be seen as different and incapable. Their being different is resulting from our bias. Hence, not try to integrate them into society, the important thing is to eliminate any prejudices about them.

Reflection Journal 4: Special Education

Education is one of the main pillars of countries. Many societies have made great progress by giving importance to the field of education. It is a world wide known fact that educated people make a undeniable contribution to the development of their countries. Also, education plays a significant role in transmitting accumulated knowledge, customs and values from one generation to the next. On the other hand, education has certain malfunctions in some stages of its framework. In this article, I want to talk about special education for the students who lack of some learning abilities and the students who are given to special interests by educators. I want to begin with a book that I read before: House Rules by Jodi Picoult. This book tells a special child with Asperger’s syndrome from a mother’s tongue. Asperger’s syndrome is a kind of autism and Jacob has its characteristics. For instance, structure is important for Jacob, that’s why his mom created house rules: 1.Tell the truth 2.Brush your teeth 3.Take care of your brother and so on. One day, Jess Ogivy, caretaker of Jacob, is found dead and nobody knows who really did it and all the suspicions on the boy with autism and nobody thinks the matter between justice and illness. This book affected me deeply and I wanted to share it with you. My another point is the giving no importance to the students’ interests and abilities, and the fact that they are being misdirected are incredible mistakes because these really affect their future career and life in a negative way. Especially, this issue hasn’t been taken into consideration seriously by experts or other authorized persons in our country. People around the students should be aware of the fact that every individual has his/her own interests and skills, and they should leave them kids alone about what they want to be and revealing their predominant attributes. All in all, I wanted to attract your attention and make people more sensitive towards these issues. Also, I wanted to emphasize the roles of parents and teachers about determining students’ future career and development of them in their interests.

Article Reflection Multi-Media Entry 3: Rapport-Talk And Report-Talk

As I mentioned before in my reflection of the article ‘Rapport-talk and Report-talk’, men and women are different from in terms of everything. The conversation style between them is one of these differences and I think it is the biggest one. When we think about this subject, a question comes to our minds: Who talks much? Men or women? According to men, the answer is so simple, of course women talk much than men but let’s consider this subject from another point of aspect. We can answer this question it changes in accordance with the situations. While women talks much about individual states, men talk much about communal ones and we can explain it like the author of the article has done before, as rapport talking and report talking. The youtube video that I indicated above approach this topic amusingly. In this video, as we all know there is animation of cars. Most of us like this animation but surely no one had realized that approximately the whole animation is about this subject. While you are watching the some parts of scenes, you will become aware of the conversation differences between the female and male types of the cars. By means of that video, you will understand what exactly I and the writer of the article mean and what the rapport and report talking are, sweet watchings!

Article Reflection 3: Rapport-Talk And Report-Talk

RAPPORT-TALK AND REPORT-TALK

It is said that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. I think it is a completely true sentence because Mars and Venus are two opposite planets and they sum men and women. Men and women are different from each other in terms of everything; their lifestyles, interests, bodies, needs and so on. Their conversation styles are one of the biggest differences between them, maybe the biggest one. In this article ‘Rapport-talk and Report-talk’, the writer says that men talk for information while women talk for interaction. By means of this, she thinks that men do speak comfortably in public whereas women like private speaking as comfortably. I agree with the writer that the speakings of men and women can change according to the person or people whom they talk with. To start with, women are emotional creatures and because of that they talk about their feelings much more then men. I know that they really love about to do this. In opposed to women, men are not like that. They like giving information while they are talking or they talk about the news especially the ones that are related to sports more than details with particular reasons of the situations. Even if a man is sentimental, he doesn’t like talk about his problems about his job, his feelings about his marriage or shortly about his life, for instance. In consequently, we said that women and men are different but they can both talk more. This situation changes in accordance with the subject and I think that their conversation difference between them is the result of their interests and lifestyle. Moreover, another reason for the difference in their conversations may depend on the person or people whom they talk with. For example, men can talk confidently and confortably with people whoever they are, even if they don’t know but women are not like that. I think they can do this with only friends or familiar people. This situation is again related for things that I mentioned before. All in all, not only women but also men can talk more with regard to the topic that they talk about and the people whom they speak with, and in my opinion we all should show respect the people whoever they are and whatever they do.

Reflection Journal Multi-Media Entry 3: Power of Advertising

People are affected by advertisements, however there are some that believe people make their own decisions and are not affected by advertisements. For example they argue that people can resist even subliminal messages. According to Kirkpatrick, who is a professor on marketing in California State University, there is no subliminal messages because subliminal means below our limit of perception . So how can subliminal messages affect people? However, he has not considered one thing. Actually people can perceive them but not recognize them completely. This cause to not remember what we saw or smell or heard clearly. But this does not mean we cannot be affected. I want to give an example to illustrate that clearly. Kirkpatrick stated that “...in a movie theater in 1957, the words ‘eat popcorn’ and ‘drink Coca-Cola’ were flashed on the screen at a speed no one could perceive. During intermission the sales of popcorn supposedly increased 58 percent and the sales of Coca-Cola 18 percent.”. People in movie theatre actually saw the words but they do not know that. Can we say they buy coca cola and the popcorn because of their own free will or the words they see lead to buy them? Another example is a research which is done by Duke University. They took two group of people in research.. Participiants was shown a video which they need to say which corner of the video the box appear and go quickly. However, what participiants did not know is that one group also saw apple logo which is quckly poped up in the video while the another group sees IBM logo in the same way. The researched reveal that participiants who saw apple logo were getting more creative than the others. As a result, we can say that people can easily be affected by what they are not aware of. Actually, people cannot resist what they actually does not recognize? So these advertisements affect people even people do not know.

Reflection Journal 3: Power Of Advertising

POWER OF ADVERTISING

Do you know that in 1991 Sweeden prohibited adevertisements during children’s private time or “In 2001, U.S. advertising expenditures topped $230 billion”? Why are governments banning advertisements or why companies are going through a lot of money for advertising? These bring us to one point. Advertising is powerful in affecting people and they gain this power by bombarding people with advertising and by appealing to people’s senses and emotions to make people buy things that people do not need or not want. Advertising affects people’s buying choices when they are shopping. Advertisers appeal to consumers’ senses and emotions in order to influence their decisions. First of all, advertisers can use sences to sell a product to a customer which does not need that product. For example, Lindstorm states that supermarkets are placing their bakeries near of the exits so that people can smell the “fresh baked smell” and they are willing to buy the products. This is not the only usage of scent. Advertisers have found a new crucial method which is called “sensory branding”. Before this method advertiserts thought that the most effective part of an advertisement is the visual part. But the reality is that when sight is used together with another sence, the power of effectiveness of advertisement is remarkably increasing. So in sensory branding, advertisers use at least two sence, such as smell and sight, together and they are making a link betweeen these sences and consumers’ emotions. Vanilla smell is a good example of this. As Lindstorm stated, there is vanilla flavour in breast-milk. This makes consumers assossiate vanilla scent with their childhood memory, fedding from your mother’s breast, and bring them to happines. That is why “Johnson & Johnson’s Baby’s smell” is always memorable. Smell is more effective than the other sences. In a research which is done in Georgia State University , it is found that “All of our other senses, you think before you respond, but with scent, your brain responds before you think.”. So when you are affected by a smell you like, it is too hard to resist this smell. Because you cnnot think before you take action. This makes smell one of the most powerful weapons in advertisers’ hands. Advertisers use scent and other senses to change our buying decisions. In conclusion, advertising can influence people’s buying choices by making people have to see advertisement everywhere and by using our sences and emotions. People cannot get rid of them while they cannot find a way to escape them and influence of them or while people cannot be aware of them. In this situation, it is undeniable to say that we can buy the same products without advertisements through free will.