Reflection 10 - Memes

This is an example of taking an animal or iconic 

character and changing it to make a humorous 

anecdote to suit your own purpose. 

To start out, I have never heard the word ‘memes’ before reading this chapter.  I knew that in each new generation, we had certain clothing styles, catch phrases, jingles, and popular tunes, but never knew there was a name for all of those things.  On page 200, the authors tell us the purpose of this chapter.  This chapter focuses “on online memes as a distinctly contemporary category of (popular conceptions of) memes.”  They discuss a 5-year study during 2001-2005 when memes were found in mainstream media sources.  Newspapers, television, online magazines, and news-based forums all contained memes during this study.  They examined these online memes to address three purposes:

1.    To identify qualities that make it a successful (online) meme

2.    To establish categories of success so we can better understand memes online purpose, uses and appeal

3.    Explore ways teachers might make use of memes as a part of a ‘new’ literacy program

I enjoyed reading about and ‘googling’ all of the popular memes from the article.  The Ellen Feiss meme in particular was pretty comical, but what I took away most from this article was how to use memes in education.  This chapter discusses literacy with a big “L” and a little “l”.  The big “L” is described as, “this distinction explicitly recognizes that L/literacy is always about reading and writing something, and that this something is always part of a larger pattern of being in the world.” (Page 219)  The little “l” is, “describes the actual processes of reading, writing, viewing, listening, manipulating images and sound, etc., making connections between different ideas, and using words and symbols that are part of these larger, more embodied Literacy practices.” (Page 219)  These descriptions fascinate me.  I have heard the word ‘literacy’ for years, but have never understood it quite as well as I do now.

            I believe teachers can take advantage of memes in the classroom.  Kids love to laugh and most of the memes are humorous.  You can take an iconic character, like SpongeBob Squarepants or ICarly and plan a lesson around them.  This would get them excited about the assignment as well as give you some ‘credit’ by making them think you are ‘cool’ because you are interested in those TV characters.  This could be done in the early grades, but will have more options for middle and high school students.  They have the technological skills to create videos and songs with iconic characters.  I recently experienced a good example of this.  My nephew is a sophomore in college. He had an assignment to do for his Sociology class.   His group created a video (with their own words and dialogue) including friends and even a few professors to the tune of the song, “Let Me Take A Selfie”.  (Their version was cleaner of course!)  To me, this is a true example of what using a meme in the year 2014 is all about.