Abstract
"Me and Media" was born five years ago at Doshisha International High School. The aim of the course was to think about and create media. We wanted students to be more than passive receivers of media, to widen their ideas and be aware of the effects of various types of media on their lives and thinking. We also wanted them to understand that meaning is personally constructed and that although we all use similar words, we have different meanings in our mind. In order to help students think about these issues, we asked them to create and share new meanings of "media" among themselves and among students in Japan and other cultures.

Keywords
media, international, construction, creative, telecommunication, homepage, group work, communication, European Schools Project, CEC, postmodern, meaning

1. Aims
Our basic aim has been quite consistent: to give students a chance to think actively about topics which are of personal importance to their lives and to expand their understanding about the effects of inputting (receiving) and outputting (creating) various types of media. At the same time, we have been encouraging our students to develop their understanding about the nature of meaning by defining and redefining such concepts as "media" and "multimedia", "communication", "technology", "alive" and so on.

Although our aim is consistent, our ways of going about achieving this aim are very flexible. Each year the subjects under study and the methods used to communicate change quite a lot, depending on the students, the teachers, the schools and the equipment available.

2. Seeking Schools for Exchange
In the first year of our project, 1994, a connection was made with a school in Rastede, Germany through the European Schools Project electronic bulletin board (bbs), and I began to exchange email with the teacher for a few months, planning for a variety of ways to have our students communicate. During the following 6 months, letters by regular mail, email and introductory video tapes introducing our schools and students were exchanged.

The following year in March 1995, at a European Schools Project Conference held in Cambridge England, and the next year in March 1996, in Leuven, Brussels, contact was made with various European schools: first from the Netherlands and later from Estonia and Sweden. Groups of students containing a few members from each school were set up. Each group had a special name and a mailing list, and communication was done through the mailing lists. A homepage was developed by the Doshisha students, but none of the other classes were able to do this.

The next year at the esp conference in Slovakia, our project was presented and evaluated and Norway, Slovakia and Slovenija joined us. In Japan, there was still only one school involved in this project and CEC (Center for Educational Computing) was anxious to have other schools join, so a strong effort was made to contact other schools. At the end of last year's project (in March, 1998), there were 12 classes involved in this project - 6 in Japan, 1 in the US and 5 in Europe. Students are using email, bbs, and homepages to exchange ideas.
Some examples of the work of students involved in "Me and Media" projects can be seen on our homepages at: http://www.intnl.doshisha.ac.jp/projects/me-dia/

3 & 4. Topic Selection and Theme
The overall theme of this project is "media", but because this is defined widely and includes both mass media and what we call "personal media", almost any subject can fit into our studies. We encourage the students to choose topics that are of personal interest to them, because we believe that thinking about media can start at any point. Popular culture is normally not seen as "appropriate" for school study, but it is our belief that working with popular culture is extremely important for young people if they are to be more than passive, unthinking consumers in our future society. Most of our themes relate to popular culture: film, music, tamagochi, comics, fashion. Some themes grow out of other cultural issues - family, sex, and drugs. But since the mass media strongly affects the way we think about sex, drugs, family, love and so on, these also become issues related to popular culture.

To see a list of themes of our 19979-98 project, please visit this site:

http://www.intnl.doshisha.ac.jp/projects/me-dia/97-98/#what-media

5. Activity
Doshisha International was opened in 1980, particularly to help young people who had lived for a number of years outside of Japan adjust to life in Japan and develop themselves as bi-lingual, bi-cultural, internationally minded people. From the beginning, our school had elective English courses which could focus on any subjects which teachers had an interest in. During the past ten years, I have had classes focusing on English through folk dancing, creating a school newspaper, humor in various cultures, and most recently "Me and Media." These elective meet for two forty-five minute periods per week. "Me and Media" was offered to high school second year students.

6. Exchange
Each week students met and thought about, discussed, viewed or created media. We watched some films, such as the opening scene of 2001, "Dawn of Man" and the film "Quest for Fire" both of which were about prehistoric life. The purpose of this was to help them to think about what "media" was for our early ancestors - long before we had electronic mass media. Sometimes films were exchanged with students in other countries and opinions exchanged. We took a walk blindfolded in order to learn something about our dependence on vision, and through this experience we were able to experience the power and importance of our other senses.

We talked about and tried to find ways to see things with "new eyes": for example, thinking about culture, family, dreams, even our inner voice of thoughts as media as well as the more usual film, newspapers, tv. We tried to look at tv and listen to music with more awareness of how media affects our thinking and actions. We watched a bit of a film called, "They Live" in which hidden messages are behind all media. During holidays students had to watch tv mindfully and bring in examples of shows or ads that they learned something interesting from. During one holiday, students were asked to gather information from a wide range of media, including interviews
with friends or family.

7. Students' Reactions
Most students felt that they came into contact with some new experiences and new ways of looking at various things through our class together. They were amazed by the power of electronic media to bridge the space and time gap and the idea of being able to exchange ideas with students around the world really motivated them. We used various new media such as digital cameras and scanners and everyone had experience in creating their group homepages.
Part of the power of this class, was the fact that students were given control to create their own themes to explore, and that their ideas were listened to and part of the body of knowledge we studied together. We continually expressed the point of view that despite the modern emphasis on technical media, the most vital communication for us was human communication and the discussion that took place between people, rather than the media which was a tool for such exchange.

8. Results and Issues
I think all of us who have been involved with "Me and Media" have had our visions and definitions expanded by the experience of working, thinking and creating together. Many of us who thought ofourselve as "not good at computers" could have a different, more confident view of themselves as being able to interact with certain powerful aspects of technology. But the key change that was introduced and reinforced in all of us, was that meaning is something that is created in all of us, both personally and socially. This postmodern approach to thinking about meaning affects our own learning greatly. It also has to affect the way we think about the ideas of others. Experiences in exchanging ideas about meaning and learning how to listen to others and express our own thoughts are vital to developing a peaceful future for everyone. I hope that some of the experiences the learners involved in "Me and Media" had will led to this kind of future.

9. Difficulties or Mishaps
Most students were looking forward to a wide exchange of ideas with others, but there were many realities - technology, language, pressure from other activities - that sometimes prevented our international exchange from being easy or proceeding smoothly. This lack of steady and deep exchange was the biggest disappointment for all of us.

10. Advice
It is very important to spend as much time as possible talking with your co-teachers BEFORE the project begins. Share ideas and schedules! Try to arrange students so that everyone can have some regular contact with a partner. When we work with a large class or many classes of students, I feel that it is very important to divide into small groups, perhaps even pairs. In our recent Me & Media projects, the groups were too large. The first year of this project when there were just two classes - one in Japan and one in Germany - we did this pairing, and we also exchanged an introductory video through the mail; this allowed the students to get a connected feeling and made the other communication more meaningful.

11. Others
For profile information on the schools involved with the 1997-98 Me and Media project, please visit this site: http://www.intnl.doshisha.ac.jp/projects/me-dia/97-98/#what-schools

School: Doshisha International Jr/Sr High School, Kyoto

Author: Hillel Weintraub, Director, Communication Center,

email: hillelw@intnl.doshisha.ac.jp